Driving on the Rim (38 page)

Lane said, “Let’s have some music for the occasion” and punched a button on the tape deck. A booming song emerged, “I’m in love with my car,” with extraordinary words—“When I’m holdin’ your wheel, all I hear is your gear”—all sung against screaming arena rock guitars and keyboards and end-of-the-world percussion. At last it was over and Lane turned it off.

“You like Queen?”

“Sure …”

“I’ve got news: that wasn’t Freddie Mercury.”

“Oh. Who was it?”

“That was the drummer, Roger Taylor. Freddie was backup and backup only on this one. But bottom line, great album. Triple platinum, to be exact. You like glam rock?”

I didn’t know what glam rock was, but I was so averse to having Lane explain it to me that I told him I liked it very much. That seemed to satisfy him and he sank into a steady concentration on the road ahead.

We dropped my car in the parking lot of a repair shop. A cold wind blew. I paid Lane and walked to the Grand, where I got a room and tried to figure out how to get hold of Jocelyn. Nothing worked; it sounded as if she just had her cell phone turned off. I crawled into bed in a vague state of worry and managed to go to sleep. In the morning I went downstairs to check out. Womack and Jocelyn were sitting in the lobby reading the
Big Timber Pioneer
. I said, “My car broke down.”

She said, “Whatever.”

I chirped, “Good morning, Jocelyn!”

“Right.”

Without looking up from the paper, Womack said, “You needed to get rid of that piece of shit a long time ago. Don’t look to me like being a doctor is doing you no good.”

I stood in front of the hotel, furious, as I watched the two of them drive off. I think that describes it. I knew I was offended and belittled by
my own jealousy. I disliked caring about Jocelyn so much, but there it was: her swagger, skills, and independence were so attractive. Our lovemaking was something of a clash, but it was powerful and showered sparks. She regarded the missionary position as an ironic exercise and threatened me if I closed my eyes. I felt vacuumed by orgasms and rarely regained full consciousness before finding myself admiring her naked body through the bathroom door as she concentrated on brushing her hair. She was very unconscious of her body until she needed it to make something happen; when she thought there was a chance we’d make love again, she would stand next to me as I lay on the bed, and brush her teeth in a mischievous way, blowing bubbles in the toothpaste. Then with a laugh she would whirl away, giving me time to think and knowing I’d be ready as soon as she had rinsed. She was never wrong. And if she thought that by luring me into this erotic cellar she could addict me to her with no other effort at being thoughtful, she was right. It was not good for my self-respect.

I resolved to discuss it with Jinx. The Olds was out of the shop and the hands of reluctant mechanics, who urged me to haul it to the wrecking yard. The weather had abated and I was heading for the Corral Motel in Harlowton, plying the heaving road across the northern half of Sweet Grass County, not a cloud in the sky. I was no longer a sitting duck in my house—though I felt the tug of possibly missed walk-ins, and the day-and-night worry over Jinx’s plan to move away. And that was just about how specific a plan it was: away, a yawning destination to say the least. I wanted to forbid it. Was this friendship?

The desk clerk—or I guess he was the owner—just said “five,” leaving me to work out that it was room 5. I left the Olds parked by the office and walked around the front of the building in a rising disorientation that made my feet on the gravel sound like someone was following me. And yet the smell of pavement and sagebrush, the cloudless sky and great distances visible all around, were almost pleasant intimations that I was in a story and it was my story.

I knocked on the door of room 5, which produced a scurrying noise from beyond. Finally, the door opened: Womack. He didn’t open it very far but we were face-to-face. As though he had never seen me before, he said, “What can I do for you?”

I held his gaze and said, “Jocelyn, may I speak to you, please?”

Womack said, “Who?”

I said, directly over the barely exposed left shoulder of Womack, “Jocelyn, may I speak to you?”

Womack said, “Pardner, I think you must have the wrong room. Go back and ask the desk clerk to get you a way safer room number. That’s today’s tip.” I was prey to sufficient self-doubt that I had a moment of thinking that I actually had the wrong room and this was not Womack. Somehow an idea penetrated my nausea: “5” was the only room number I was going to need.

Throckmorton said, “My God, are you okay? You look okay. Jesus Christ, I hope you’re okay. I don’t know if you realize this, Mr. I. B. Pickett, but everyone hates you.”

“No doubt. Where’ve you been?” I asked wanly. We were at the threshold of his office and his secretary was staring at me with the same gaze she would have bestowed upon Lazarus. I preceded Throckmorton just to get away from it. We flopped in our respective overstuffed leather chairs, Throckmorton scooting his around the side of his desk to better see me.

“Tahiti.”

“Seriously?”

“Always wanted to go. It was full of surprises. The first thing I saw when I got off the plane was a billboard for Colonel Sanders chicken. Those Tahitian pricks tried to clean me out, but I’m home now, I’m okay.”

“I thought I’d see how we’re doing.”

“Well, it looks like it’s still going to be Judge Lauderdale. I made the mistake once of citing the jurist Benjamin Cardoza, which inspired Lauderdale, once he had me in chambers, to caution me against confusing things by ‘citing some obscure wop.’ ”

“How’s he going to feel about me?”

“Hard to say. We hope for ‘valuable citizen.’ But he might suspect immorality in your relationship with the deceased.”

“Tessa.”

“For our purposes, ‘the deceased.’ ”

“Whatever he’d want to call it, it was a long time ago.”

“For the Lauderdales of this world, immorality never dies. First, we try for a dismissal. You had an enemy on the hospital board, old moneybags—”

“Wilmot.”

“Whatever. I want to see if we can’t neutralize him. He is connected through common stupidity to a number of state legislators. So it might not be easy.”

I abruptly knew that it was not certain I would be absolved, and that it was possible I could no longer do the work at which I was most useful. Previously, I had dreaded loss of freedom. Now I was uninterested in freedom. I wanted to be useful and I wanted it more than anything—or almost anything, because I was also raring to be with Jocelyn.

I think it must have been late, at least eleven. I was still awake, in fact, not even sleepy. The neighbors were fighting and I helplessly listened in. “I don’t care what it smells like! I care what it looks like!” I hadn’t seen Jocelyn in several days and I was worried. While I felt she cared for me as much as ever, I did consider she had become somewhat perfunctory in our lovemaking, as would be appropriate for a preoccupied person, is what I believe I thought at the time. Or something. Whatever misgivings I might have had were canceled by a kind of gratitude—yes, somewhat stupid gratitude, but all of my thoughts were of Jocelyn, her grace and particular self-propulsion, which in my enforced idleness I possibly overvalued. So what, I loved her. And even so what if she didn’t love me. Of what final good was love if valued only when reciprocated? As I ran this rhetorical question around my thick skull, I recognized for the first time that Jocelyn did not love me. However obvious it was, I found this a disquieting discovery. Nevertheless, I figured I could go on loving her anyway, and her willingness to make love with me could be a stand-in for actual love until I could make her love me. But how? What if I learned to fly an airplane? There was something about all this that was arousing memories of a long submerged state of mind, that period of my college days when I slipped off to Florida with my host’s wife. That world of eroticism, subterfuge, guilt, and fear set against meaningless vistas of sea and tropical vegetation had produced a sort of disorientation that I felt for the first time in a very long while. Happily, my mind shifted effortlessly
to Jocelyn and her marvelous limbs. But it wouldn’t stay there. I should have jacked off, slept, and gone to breakfast, but I wasn’t that smart. I was in that moronic oblivion that makes the world go round. To make things worse, my neighbors were still fighting and I could hear them all the way across the street. The man with the bass voice shouted, “There’s cat hair on my ChapStick!” And shortly after that, “For Christ’s sake, hold the snow peas!” And back came the woman’s tiny, shrill voice: “I won’t let you spoil one more Christmas!” This was just too troubling because we were nowhere near Christmas. I had to get out of there.

What I meant to do was drive over to Jinx’s house and get her out of bed, but by the time I got to her door she was up. “I heard that awful car of yours.” Of course, there were a lot of awful cars and it was interesting that she was so attuned to mine that she got up before I could get to her door. She motioned me in.

Jinx was in a bathrobe and barefoot. I noticed what pretty feet she had and was touched that she liked them well enough to paint her toenails, then had the ridiculously inappropriate thought that if I painted my toenails Jocelyn would never speak to me again. Jinx had tied her hair at the top of her head, and it made her face, which always revealed such a play of moods, seem even more expressive.

I sat at the table while she made a pot of tea with the electric kettle. “You couldn’t sleep?”

“I didn’t try. It wouldn’t have worked if I had. Did I wake you?”

“Uh-huh. You don’t want anything in this, do you?”

“No.” I only wanted to talk about myself. Once we sat across the small round table and smiled at each other over our tea, we were comfortable again. I felt at ease in pouring out my passion for the fair Jocelyn. I threw in various ironies including the uncertainty of Jocelyn’s feelings. I hinted at her lovemaking and described her great skills as a pilot. Jinx listened, smiling quietly, occasionally sipping her tea. At length, tears ran down her cheeks and I felt a wave of gratitude that our friendship was so strong she exulted in my happiness. Jinx had her own sort of beauty, which her tears brought out from where it resided in a deep nature. I admired Jinx and in my excited state could easily picture someone—someone I couldn’t quite imagine—falling in love her, in a different way than I loved Jocelyn but love is love is love.

Right?

•  •  •

I did see Throckmorton once that week. I stopped at the desk of his receptionist, Maida, who had a cake in front of her. She sat there, arms crossed, glowering at me. “He in?” I asked but got no reply. Then Niles emerged and said without emphasis, “It’s her birthday. She’s not speaking. Are you, Maida?” No reply. “See?”

He led me in and I slumped in the special chair that by forcing the client into a degraded slouch allowed Niles to lay down the conditions by which he would stream billable hours into the client’s mailbox.

Niles’s face crumpled in a look of worry and pain. I didn’t like the anxiety it produced in me. He laid his hand across his stomach and stared at me without a word. My anxiety rose in the eternity that transpired before he spoke. He said, “Ribeyes and bourbon don’t mix.”

“Right …?”

“Gotta slip off and pinch a loaf. It’s killing me. Keep talking—” He abruptly crossed his office, entered the bathroom, and closed the door. “Go ahead, I can hear you from here!”

“Jesus, Niles!” A fart and a booming laugh were the only reply. “You want me to come back?”

“Oh, hell no. You’re here, let’s get some work done. Plus, I’ve got news. I went to see Wilmot and the board. What a mausoleum! I think Wilmot has been behind this all along. He’s got a sympathetic audience with a few of the doctors who are not operating on the facts of the case but on a visceral loathing of you and your calamitous lifestyle. Excepting of course Jinx Mayhall, who thinks you’re cuter than a speckled pup.” I didn’t reply but went on looking at the bathroom door as though it were doing the talking. “One thing I bore in mind is that the way you get on hospital boards is by demonstrating a capacity to create and maintain a substantial bank account. This is where I trained my jeweler’s eye for persuasion. Pretending sympathy for these deviant swindlers, I commiserated over the loss of value to the clinic once this malpractice case hit the papers. I suggested that in such a scenario if turkeys were going for ten cents a pound they wouldn’t be able to buy a raffle ticket on a jaybird’s ass. No, I didn’t really say that, but I hinted as much. Thus I began to pave a trail leading to fabulously ignorant and corrupt Judge Lauderdale’s chambers, where a pagan reverence for lucre also obtains. Hey, you don’t have to hang around here, Berl, that’s all I’ve got for
today. And no sense sharing the details of my current physical discomfort. But if you need help interpreting the legal niceties with which I’ve showered you, let me say this about that: the news is good.”

“All right, well, I’ll wait to hear.”

“Sorry about this. I may have to turn to the Lamaze method.”

Odd how you adapt to things: I waved good-bye to the door, walked through the reception area where Maida stared past the birthday cake into the middle distance, out into the street, the sunshine, and the welcome faces of a few pedestrians, picturing freedom with Jocelyn. It wasn’t until the next day that I learned that Niles had been having a heart attack. A remarkable number of hard-driving Type A men die on the toilet. It’s almost traditional. Some seem to see it coming, as witness Elvis Presley clutching his Bible. Niles didn’t die, but he was never the same again, and I no longer had a lawyer. But while he was in the hospital, he insisted on having me as his physician, so by this peculiarity, I was employed.

I’m reluctant to admit this level of self-absorption, but standing next to Niles’s bed I was giddy to be back to work, almost hysterical. Alan Hirsch, an actual cardiologist, had briefed me about Niles’s condition, somewhat stablized with the current onboard levels of Coumadin. He grimaced when I told him all the vitamin K things he would need to limit or avoid—beef and alcohol being particularly painful subjects.