All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel (8 page)

It was odd, going out the door and knowing I couldn’t just turn and go back in, if I thought of a book I wanted to read. The door clicked and I was really out. I could see Petey through the big window, still waxing. The quadrangle was full of soft, mushy summer mist. Somewhere above the mist I could hear an airplane. I walked over to Main Street and sat on the curb for a while, watching cars go by. The mist made the streetlights look faintly orange. I didn’t feel one bit drunk, anymore. I got up and walked eight or ten blocks down the orange, misty street and turned off into the darker streets and walked another hour or so.

Houston was my companion on the walk. She had been
my mistress, but after a thousand nights together, just the two of us, we were calling it off. It was a warm, moist, mushy, smelly night, the way her best nights were. The things most people hated about her were the things I loved: her heat, her dampness, her sumpy smells. She wasn’t beautiful, but neither was I. I liked her heat and her looseness and her smells. Those things were her substance, and if she had been cool and dry and odorless I wouldn’t have cared to live with her three years. We were calling it off, but I could still love her. She still reached me, when I went walking with her. Her mists were always a little sexy. I felt, in leaving her, the kind of fond gentleness you’re supposed to feel after passion. It was the kind of gentleness I never got to feel with Sally. Its expression might be stroking a shoulder, or something. I had had such good of Houston, she had dealt so generously with me, always, that I walked and stroked her shoulder for an hour or two, in the night. Then, when she was really sleeping, I went home. I wanted to be gone when she woke up.

Almost at once Sally and I got into it. We finished packing in no time. She just had two suitcases full, and I had about as much. When I turned out the lights and shut the door to the apartment I noticed her trying to stuff Godwin’s feet inside the car.

“Where’s he staying?” I asked. “We can drop him off.”

“He’s going with us,” she said. “Didn’t you hear him at dinner? That was all he talked about.”

“I didn’t hear him say a word about it.”

“So what? You were blind drunk.”

“I must have been deaf drunk,” I said. “Anyway, he’s not going. We’re married now. We haven’t even decided where to go.”

“I thought we were going to California.”

It was the only place we had really mentioned, but I didn’t think we had made a firm decision.

“That doesn’t have a thing to do with Godwin.”

“Sure it does. He knows people there. You don’t know a soul. He can help us get settled.”

“We’re grown,” I said. “We can get settled ourselves. Godwin can stay in the apartment tonight. Mr. Fitzherbert won’t mind.”

“No,” Sally said, getting angry. “You don’t know how he is when he wakes up from a drunk. He’ll be crazy at first. He loves me and if he comes to drunk and finds me gone he’ll kill himself.”

“Let him,” I said. “You married me. He has to stop loving you sometime.”

“He doesn’t have to stop tonight,” she said sullenly.

“I don’t have to take him anywhere, either,” I said. “I don’t want him loving you. I love you, remember?”

“Don’t say stupid things like that,” she said. “You’re so fucking jealous you can’t see straight.” She kept trying to get his feet in the car, but his knees wouldn’t bend. I felt feverish, as if I were getting drunk again. I remembered they had been kissing and I went over and tried to make her let go of his feet. It infuriated her and she jabbed me suddenly with her elbow and hurt my ribs. I smacked her cheek, but it had no effect on her at all except to make her stop believing in my existence again. She neither spoke nor looked at me after I hit her, but she managed to get Godwin’s feet in the car. I felt guilty and at a loss. I wasn’t mad enough to drag him out. I went back in the dark apartment and sat on my table awhile. I had begun to long to stay in the apartment. Jenny Salomea was just across the yard, in the big, empty house. I felt I ought to say goodbye to her, but I didn’t see how I could. I felt as if I were running out on her and Mr. Fitzherbert. But I had to go. After I
thought a little I stopped worrying about Godwin. There were thousands of miles of desert between us and California. I could run off and leave him at a filling station if I needed to. He had plenty of money. He wouldn’t suffer.

Outside, it was just graying. I went out and got in the car. Sally ignored my existence.

“You needn’t think I’m taking him all the way,” I said.

She was completely silent. She sat combing her hair.

As we were driving past Rice Godwin suddenly burst awake. Before I knew what was happening he was trying to claw his way out a car window. Characteristically, he was purple in the face, and he seemed to be frightened out of his mind. When he couldn’t get out the window he tried to come over the seat.

“Bloody kidnapers,” he yelled. “Let me out! Don’t you know it’s a capital crime?”

I had to stop in the middle of the street. For about ten seconds Godwin was demonic. “Kidnap! Kidnap!” he yelled. No one was around. Sally screamed at him and I stiff-armed him two or three times, until he fell back panting amid our clothes.

“Fucking white slavers,” he yelled. “Why have you drugged me? Is this the Ivory Coast?”

Sally knew how to handle him. She pressed her hands over his eyes. “Calm down, Godwin,” she said. “You’ll be all right. It’s just us.”

He panted for a while and then grew calm. “Head’s splitting,” he said. “Frightful dream. I was in a brothel. Arabs were abusing me.”

“We’re going to California,” Sally said.

“You’re not,” I said to Godwin, so there would be no doubt about my position. But he was in no state to be talked to.

“It seems an abrupt departure, if I might say so,” he said,
his voice growing softer. “My dear children. Splitting head.” Then he went back to sleep.

I drove out South Main for two or three miles and then remembered the Hortons. I couldn’t leave without telling them that I was leaving. Flap might think it was just part of my discipline, but Emma would be hurt. I turned around and started back.

Sally gave me a questioning look. She was still combing her hair.

“I forgot the Hortons,” I said. “I have to say goodbye to them.”

Sally looked disgusted. “I don’t see why we have to go all the way back, just for them,” she said. “They won’t even be awake.”

I decided not to answer. If she could be silent, so could I. I just drove. The streetlights were on but it was light enough that they looked odd. Rice slept under its light sheet of mist.

“I’m not coming in,” Sally said, when I stopped at the curb in front of the Hortons’.

I got out without looking at her and went to their door. Silence was not so hard to manage. But I felt bad in my stomach and had a hard time knocking on the door. I felt strange about leaving, again. It was not Houston I had to leave now, it was my friends. I knocked several times. Emma was hard to wake up, and Flap was harder. I could see Sally sitting in the car examining her hair. Finally Emma came to the door, a little bleary, in her white bathrobe. A troubled look came over her face when she saw me. Perhaps a troubled look was in mine.

“Come in,” she said, holding open the screen.

“Can’t,” I said. “Could you wake up Flap?”

“Did someone die?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Please come in,” she said.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to go into the kitchen. It would be harder to leave than my apartment and my table. They would try to make me eat breakfast. Emma frowned and went and got Flap. She must have impressed something on him, because he looked awake when he came to the door. His hair was down in his eyes.

“I’m going to California,” I told them. “I’m quitting school.”

They looked at me solemnly. I had meant to go into an explanation involving Razzy Hutton and one thing and another, but it didn’t come out. I couldn’t have stated the real reason—I felt too emotional. The Hortons were beautifully reticent. They left their questions in the same place I left my explanations. Emma’s round face changed as she watched me. Tactfully they didn’t ask me one thing. They accepted it as being a necessity of mine, something I might explain some other time.

“Tell Sally goodbye for us,” Emma said, barely audibly. She was struggling to do her duty. They could see Sally sitting in the car.

“Well,” Flap said. “Who will we drink with now?”

“I decided last night,” I said, by way of explanation.

I couldn’t think of another remark, one to leave on. As I was trying, Emma slowly started crying. Suddenly she yanked open the door and hugged me, sobbing.

“You shouldn’t,” she said. “You can’t take care of yourself. You just look like you can.” Then she rushed back into Flap’s arms. As usual Flap looked sheepish. He rubbed Emma’s back.

“She won’t be good to you,” Emma said, crying. “I know she won’t! She won’t be good to him—I know she won’t!”

“I promise I’ll write you,” I said.

At the car I waved and they waved. Sally still looked
disgusted. I drove on out of Houston, thinking of Emma and feeling very down. I had nothing snug left. When I noticed things again we were in the gray grasslands beyond Rosenberg. Houston was somewhere behind, beneath great white banks of Gulf clouds. Sally was idly nibbling her nicely combed hair. We were both silence experts. She had always been one, and I had just become one. Godwin Lloyd-Jons’ pleasant snoring was the only human sound in the car.

WHEN GODWIN
woke up, one hundred and fifty miles later, he immediately began to talk about Stendhal. Unlike Sally and me, he seemed to feel wonderful. He lay back comfortably amid our clothes and talked almost without interruption for two hours. He was really conning me, like Scheherazade conned the Sultan—he knew I was itching to kick him out, and his talk was just a stall. But it was a brilliant stall, and anyway my spirit was at a low ebb. I let myself be conned. Sally was as silent as Stonehenge.

From Stendhal Godwin went to Alexander Herzen, whose memoirs he had just read. From Alexander Herzen he went to literary hoaxes, and from literary hoaxes he went to the Portuguese epic. From the Portuguese epic he went to pornography and from pornography he went to Lady Murasaki. It was at Lady Murasaki that I began to suspect a con, but Godwin didn’t stop talking just because I was suspicious. From Lady Murasaki he went to Baron Corvo, from Baron Corvo he went to skaldic verse, and from skaldic verse he went to Ezra Pound. He even seemed to have read Sara Teasdale. He was only a sociologist, but the literatures of
the world seemed to be at his fingertips. It was a virtuoso performance, two hours long. He told us all about the Angry Young Men, reviewed the life and works of John Stuart Mill and ended up discoursing on Uruguayan fiction. I admire virtuoso performances, and was an ideal audience. I listened and kept driving westward, through towns where the name of Stendhal had probably never been uttered. Sally was not so appreciative. I doubt she even realized it was a virtuoso performance, but if she had it wouldn’t have mattered. Godwin should have known better than to bore her, but he was intent on his performance. At Uruguayan fiction her gorge apparently rose.

“Oh, shut up, Godwin,” she said. “Nobody wants to hear about all that stuff. I wish this car had a radio.”

“It has one,” I said. “It’s just broken.”

“Big deal,” she said. She was not in a friendly mood. Determined as I was to get rid of Godwin, I was almost grateful for him. He absorbed part of her unfriendliness.

“Sorry, love,” he said.

We stopped and ate in Del Rio. It was an overcast day and the barren country looked dismal. The fat carhop who served us looked dismal, and the three of us looked dismal too. None of us had cleaned up before setting out for the West. Godwin had monologued himself into a state of hoarseness.

“I say,” he croaked, “did the three of us strike one another during the night? I believe we were all outrageously drunk. Wasn’t there some kind of row?”

“Yeah,” Sally said. “You kissed me and Danny behaved like a horse’s ass.”

“I just behaved like a husband,” I said. “What did you expect me to do?”

“It was none of your business,” she said. “I always kiss people when I’m drunk.”

“Now, now, now, now,” Godwin said. “Really, now.”

“Have you actually read skaldic verse?” I asked.

“I read the
Times Literary Supplement
regularly,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk about reading,” Sally said. “You two should have got married. You both know too much about books.”

I decided I had better remind Godwin he couldn’t go all the way with us. I didn’t want him to think I was a fool—or a marshmallow.

“You have to get a bus back to Austin,” I said. “We can’t take you to California with us.”

Sally looked at me as if I had said something very inhuman, but Godwin didn’t seem surprised. “You won’t abandon me here, will you?” he asked, looking out at Del Rio as if he expected to see vultures circling in the sky. I couldn’t really blame him. It was bleak country.

“No,” I said. “You can ride with us to Junction and get a bus straight back to Austin.”

“Righto,” he said gamely.

But he was sly. We hadn’t driven twenty miles before he began to get sick. I knew immediately that it was just another performance, but this time it was the kind of virtuoso performance that Sally was susceptible to. Godwin was clever. He pretended he was trying to be stoic. Now and then he would groan, making it sound as if the groan had been wrenched from him inadvertently. Sally asked him what was the matter.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Could have been the hot dog.”

Slyly, he had eaten a hot dog, whereas Sally and I had eaten cheeseburgers. I had no way of disproving that he had been poisoned. The drive-in had been pretty fly-blown. Godwin became limper and limper and made himself look sicker and sicker. The country we were going through was
dippy and he pretended the dipping gave him great pain.

“Vile place,” he said. “I shall have a colon spasm if I’m not lucky.”

“I’m worried about him,” Sally said. “Maybe he’s got ptomaine.”