All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel (31 page)

I went to a phone booth and called New York. Maybe she wasn’t still there. But she was. She was still registered at the Hotel Pierre. She was even in her room. When I heard her soft quick voice my heart pounded. My chest filled. I could hardly speak I was so relieved. I said hello.

“Danny,” she said. “Where are you?”

“On the Mexican border. I’ve been meaning to call for days.”

“Why is your voice cracked?”

“I’m pretty tired,” I said. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Tell me,” she said. “I’ve been worried.”

She sounded like she had been worried. She sounded right, like she knew me and liked me. For a minute I had been afraid she would just be wary.

I told her. She listened. Across the thousands of miles I could imagine her face as she was listening. It was a great relief to talk to her. I told her so several times.

“Stop saying that,” she said.

When I had told her everything, we were silent. Jill sighed.

“I’ve never known anybody who could screw up as bad as you do,” she said.

I had no answer for that. “What are you doing?” I asked. I had said enough about me.

Jill sighed again. “Oh, Danny,” she said. “I don’t want to say it.”

“Why? Say what?”

“I’m going to Europe next week,” she said, very low. “Carl was in New York when I got here. I may marry him. I think I may be what he needs.”

I felt horribly, terribly awkward. What I really wanted was to be off the phone.

“So you see I can’t save you,” she said. “I know exactly how lonely you are. I know exactly how wonderful you are, too. But I can’t even try and help you. I’ve promised to go try and help Carl.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m going to hang up,” she said. “I can’t stand to hear you. I’m sorry. I’m just not strong enough to try and talk.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said.

The silence after the call was a new condition. There had been silence, and then there had been Jill’s voice for a few minutes, and now there was silence again. Only there wouldn’t ever be any more of Jill’s voice. There would only be silence. People were dropping away from me. I might as well have been in space. I felt like I was in space. I was walking on the earth, but I wasn’t walking on it like the other people on the streets of McAllen. I was somewhere else, in a silence.

I decided to go to Reynosa. It was a whorehouse town, just across the river. I didn’t feel like driving very far. I didn’t feel like whoring, either, but I could sit in Reynosa and drink, or something. There would be a lot of college kids around, whoring. The Valley had beautiful night skies. Purple sky, stars over the palm trees, soft, warm air. Ordinarily I would have been happy just being in the Valley.

At the border I parked El Chevy and got a Mexican taxi. My taxi driver was a fat Mexican who talked about Stan Musial. He wanted to know if I had seen him play. I was forced to admit I hadn’t.

“Stan the Man,” he said. “He is great ball player. I have seen him play. You should see him play sometimes.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

I sat in the same whorehouse for two hours. I drank enough tequila that the whores even quit pushing it. Every girl in the house came over to feel me up—or all but one. Most of them were young and many of them had their hair dyed red. I didn’t want to screw anybody. I just drank and listened to the jukebox. Lots of Anglo college kids were there, bragging about their cocksmanship. They looked at me askance. I looked at them askance right back. The one whore who didn’t feel me up was the only one I would have been interested in, if I had been there to whore. She
was an older woman, for a whore—dark-haired and maybe twenty-five. Lots of kids were pestering her. She looked half-contemptuous and half-sorrowful. She didn’t play the usual games. She didn’t giggle and feel boys up. I came to like her. She only went off with boys who dropped all pretense and insisted. She came and went several times, and I got drunk.

Finally a gang of Aggies came in and began to pester the dark-haired whore. About six of them clustered around her. She sneered at them. They pestered. She was very attractive. I had watched her long enough to want her. Besides, I was feeling chivalric. I didn’t like Aggies. They would just grow up to be Texas Rangers, probably. I got up and went over. When the woman looked at me I smiled and held up some money. I had a good bit in my hand. I smiled again and nodded. She looked at me again, solemnly, and then got off her bar stool. The Aggies all looked around. They didn’t like my looks at all.

“What the fuck,” one said. “We seen her first.”

I merely waited for the woman to thread her way through them.

“What the fuck,” the lead Aggie said again. He had short sandy hair and he looked belligerent. I didn’t care. I had had lots of tequila and besides I had already had my scare for the day. No Aggie or combination of Aggies was going to scare me.

“Big idea?” another one said. He had just realized what was happening. He was drunk and didn’t enunciate very clearly.

“Why don’t you farm boys go fuck a tractor,” I said, and walked off with the whore. The Aggies were nonplused. I think they considered me insane.

The whore took me behind the bar, to an open courtyard. Rooms opened off the courtyard. Hers was an ordinary
little whore’s room. Cheap bed, cheap dresser, two or three dresses hanging on a nail. A color picture of two grinning Mexican children, undoubtedly hers. A pitcher and a basin. A dressing table with a cheap mirror. I was wondering why I had done it. I had seen such rooms before, and I didn’t need the depression I usually took away from them.

The woman was friendly enough, but reserved. We made no small talk. Her reserve was part sadness and part dignity. It was the dignity of her face that had made her stand out among the teen-age whores. Most of the others were not even old enough to have been disappointed. The woman I was with had been. But there was no bitterness in her reserve. She was just keeping something of herself for herself. Her underwear was cheap. She had a lovely body still, just beginning to show in the abdomen and thighs the falling off there would be in the next few years. Her breasts were beautiful, neither nubile nor fallen, and her skin was a little olive, only faintly. It made me think I might like Italy, where I had been told women were that way. I passed my examination and we got on the bed. The lady composed herself and I felt odd. I wanted to screw her but at the same time I felt wrong about it. Not wrong enough to stop but wrong enough to make me enter as gently as I could. I knew it would have to be depressing, having the hard organs of strangers jammed into one, time after time, day after day, week after week. She seemed a nice woman and though I wanted her I didn’t want to increase the difficulties of her life. I entered gently and came quickly. Soon I withdrew. I sat on the edge of the cheap bed. The dark-haired whore sat beside me a moment. She looked at me.

“You gotta wife?” she asked.

I shook my head no. I didn’t have a wife.

The bed squeaked when she got up. She went over to the little basin and squatted to wash herself. “Too bad,” she
said, looking at me for a moment as she was cleaning herself. “You are a good man.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I could not have told her how grateful I was. She wasn’t my friend, she didn’t love me, she wasn’t the whore-with-the-heart-of-gold pouring out sympathy. There had been no sympathy in her remark. A woman of some experience had passed a practical judgment, while cleaning herself. Someone appreciated something about me. In my whole life I had never felt so certain that I was more or less a good man. She cleaned me and got into her cheap underwear and cheap dress and we walked back through the warm Valley night, without saying much more. Her name was Juanita. The Aggies were still in the bar, at a table with several young whores. They left us both alone. Juanita and I parted with respectful looks.

But I couldn’t leave it at that. I tried. I meant to. I just couldn’t. I got a taxi and went back across the border to El Chevy and drove to McAllen. Then I got very lonely again. I had it vaguely in mind that I would drive to Roma and look up the old actor that Petey knew. He ran an all-night filling station, so he would probably be up. But while I was driving through McAllen I changed my mind. I was too lonesome to go see an eccentric. I knew too many eccentrics as it was. I needed someone normal, for a while. If I didn’t get someone normal for a little while I knew I would never get anyone normal, for any length of while. I was right on an edge. I couldn’t get lonelier and stranger than I was or I would never stand a chance of getting back where the normal people were.

Juanita was my best hope. I would go see her again. It would only cost twenty bucks, and it might change everything. Maybe she didn’t have anything going in her life. Maybe she wanted to quit whoring and come to America.
It wouldn’t hurt to see. I went back to the border and got the same taxi and had the same conversation about Stan Musial. It didn’t bother me. Inside I was imagining how Jill and Emma and Jenny would all scream and tear their hair with vexation if they knew I was about to ask a Mexican whore I had just met to come to America and live with me. It would confirm their worst fears about my impulsiveness. I couldn’t help it. Jill and Emma and Jenny weren’t going to help me. I would have to help myself. I liked Juanita. There was no one else who might want to live with me.

She was a little surprised to see me back so soon. The Aggies had left the young whores and were clustered around her again. They were dumfounded to see me. I held up my money again. Juanita smiled a little. She raised an eyebrow, not sure I was serious. I kept the money up. She shrugged and got off the bar stool.

“Fucked any tractors yet?” I asked the Aggies.

They didn’t say a word. Perhaps they thought I was a holy man.

I asked Juanita how much for the night and she said fifty dollars. I gave it to her. She seemed surprised and friendly, but she kept her reserve. I didn’t care. I was not out to rob her of her reserve. Sex didn’t work, the second time. I was too tired, or too empty. I didn’t want to go on and on, trying. I hadn’t come back for sex, anyway. It worried Juanita a little. She wanted me to try harder. Instead, I withdrew.

Juanita sat up. She looked at me and frowned.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “You got somebody you love?”

“I love two or three people,” I said. “It just doesn’t seem to work out.”

Juanita smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Pussy’s
pussy, honey,” she said. “You might as well get it from me. Come on. We can do it. I’ll help you.”

“No thank you,” I said. “I’m really too tired.”

I had come back for company—sex was what Juanita had to sell. In another few minutes we weren’t going to know what to do with each other unless we quit being whore and customer. I told her I had a lot of money and asked her if she would like to come to America with me. She was smart enough to know I was serious and it flattered her slightly. But she shook her head. “Couldn’t get no papers,” she said. “Besides, my children. They live in Morelia. I go see them. I couldn’t go see them from the U.S.

“You can come see me, when you get horny,” she said. “That’s easier. I make you a good price.” She lay back with a long easy yawn. She had a wonderful body. I decided to go on. She probably wanted to sleep. By morning I might be in love with her, if I didn’t go. I told her I had to go and refused to let her refund me any of the money. It bothered her a little. She didn’t think she’d given me anywhere near fifty dollars’ worth. I think she decided I was a little crazy, but it didn’t make her stop liking me. Naturally she got up and went in when I left, to whore some more. She was a practical woman, with children to think of, and she wasn’t lazy. She held my arm as we were walking across the courtyard. She knew she had a satisfied customer and I think she thought I’d probably be back tomorrow. I left her with the impression that I’d certainly be back sometime. It wasn’t insincere. I liked Juanita. I would have liked to see her again. It was just that the odds were against it. If I did ever get back to Reynosa, Juanita would be somewhere down the line. She was sitting in the bar when I left, a little reserved, a little melancholy, a little proud. The men around the room were getting up their nerve. Maybe she would
escape them, finally. Maybe she would turn into a fat Mexican grandmother, with sleepy sons like Petey.

In any case I wouldn’t see her again, probably.

I got another taxi, rode to El Chevy, and this time made it through McAllen. I pointed up the river, toward Roma. El Chevy was rattling a bit. He was old. He had taken me more than a hundred thousand miles. Perhaps it was time I retired him, gave him his freedom, let him rest. I was so tired I was a little high. I had stopped feeling sorry for myself. No more feeling sorry for myself. Why should I? None of my models in life felt sorry for themselves. Not Emma, not Jenny, not Jill. Not Juanita. It was odd that all my models in life were women, but no odder than a lot of things. Wu was a sort of model. He didn’t feel sorry for himself.

I saw two hitchhikers, standing at a little crossroads. A man and a woman. I stopped and backed up to them. They were an old couple. The man carried a large paper sack. When they got in the car it immediately filled with their smell, which was the smell of sweat and old clothes.

“Where you folks headed?” I asked.

“Del Rio,” the old man said. “We’re sure grateful to you. Ma’s momma’s taken sick. We ain’t had no car these last few years.”

“Momma’s been porely for six months now,” the old woman said. “I’m afraid this time it’s apt to be the end. She’s eighty-five years old.”

“Gentleman might not want to talk, Ma,” the old man said politely. “Some people just like to drive along quiet.”

“Oh no,” I said. “I like to talk.”

“Well, we don’t need to be talkin’ about death and such, nohow,” the old woman said. She had false teeth, not fitted too well. Her cheeks pooched a little.

They were silent for a while. Their faces were grave, but
in different ways. The old man’s was thin, the old woman’s fat. The paper sack held their funeral clothes. The old woman held it in her lap and from time to time smoothed the collar of a dress that was uppermost in the sack. The old man reached in the pocket of his worn coat and brought out a bottle.