Life Its Ownself (33 page)

I was impressed with how adultly Kathy handled the Margaritas I ordered for her so quickly.

All they did was give her a friendly glow.

I had learned through experience that there was a fertile hour with Margarita drinkers. Smart money had to be alert.

If you missed that hour, you were no longer with the lascivious harlot of a porno film, you were with an unidentified body that had been dredged up from the Hudson River.

Kathy drank her Margaritas without salt around the rim of the glass, which was how salt crept into the conversation.

She never ate salt, she said.

I didn't accept that.

"Everybody eats salt on something," I said.

"Not me," Kathy said, tossing her golden hair and sipping her unsalted Margarita. "If food is cooked properly, you don't need salt."

"Eggs," I said. "You can't eat eggs without salt."

"I can."

"I don't believe you."

"Why not?"

"How often do you eat eggs?"

"I don't eat eggs every morning, but I eat them sometimes."

"Fried or scrambled?"

"Both."

"Soft-boiled, too?"

"Yes."

"Without salt?"

"Why do you find it so peculiar?"

"Don't get me wrong," I said. "I love eggs. I'm an egg guy. But if I had to eat an egg without salt and pepper, you'd have to rush me to a hospital."

"It must be how you were raised."

"Yeah, I'm normal. I was raised on salt and pepper."

She smiled at me.

I said, "I'm gonna think of something you can't eat without salt."

"You can't."

"Give me a minute," I said, taking the challenge seriously.

I inhaled a young Scotch and did the same thing to a Winston.

"Honestly," she said, "You can't name anything I would put salt on."

"I've got it," I said, believing I had it. "Popcorn."

"I don't eat popcorn," she said with a look of apology.

Back at the hotel, I steered Kathy to the lobby bar for a nightcap.

We took stools at the service bar rather than sit in the cushiony sofas and chairs. A serious drinker never sits in cushiony sofas and chairs. If they don't put you to sleep, they make it impossible to stand up without tearing your coat.

Except for the bartender and a waitress who were discussing auto repairs, we were the only people in the lobby bar.

Our stools were close. We were almost touching shoulders. Kathy switched to Scotch when we ordered a drink.

I said, "I tried to get you drunk on Margaritas, but I think I got myself drunk on Scotch. Seeing as how I'm drunk, I have an excuse for letting you kiss me right now."

"You're lonely," she said—and startled me with a wet

kiss.

My response led to a longer kiss—and some clutching. In the history of moist kisses, these didn't deserve to be enshrined in a movie library, but they were interesting enough to make me motion to the bartender for the check.

"Shall we go meet our destiny?" I said.

In a whisper, she said, "Billy Clyde, I'm not going to bed with you. It's not like I haven't thought about it. I have. But...we can't do it."

I suggested we talk about it upstairs.

She said, "Your friendship means too much to me, it really does. I want to be friends with Barbara Jane, too. You guys are special."

Where were the Jim Tom lines?

I said, "What's a friend for if you can't count on 'em? You
do
know we're going to wind up in bed someday, don't you?"

"Not if we don't let it happen."

She initiated another kiss, but this one fell into the sister category.

"There's something else," she said, softly. "I've been wanting to talk to you about it, but I could see you were getting interested in me—and I couldn't help but like that. You're Billy Clyde Puckett. I'm nobody."

"We owe it to sports," I said. "We're not talking about a lifetime commitment here."

"I'm in love with somebody," Kathy said. "I want the two of you to meet. I want all of us to be friends."

"Tomorrow," I said. "Tomorrow, he'll be the best fucking friend I ever had."

She laughed as I signed the bar tab.

Kathy was aloof in the elevator. It was obvious that she had no intention of raping me.

In the hall outside the door to her room, she gave me a long hug but only a kiss on the cheek, and she said:

"You mean so much to me, Billy Clyde. You have no idea. See you in the morning, huh?"

"I learned something tonight," I said.

"That I have a lover?"

"No, that doesn't surprise me. How the hell can a girl who looks like you not have somebody? I learned something about Barbara Jane."

"What?"

"She does mental telepathy."

Feeling an indescribable sense of relief, even an odd pinge of pride at not having made a complete fool of myself, I walked to the door of the suite. I looked back down the hall. Kathy had waited to enter her room until she could wave goodnight to me.

I smiled at her like a sophisticate, went into the suite, turned on the movie channel, and watched an idiotic romance I'd already seen three times on airplanes.

At mid-morning on Saturday, we set up the Shake Tiller interview in the Adolphus suite. Lights, two cameras, lapel mikes, Kathy directing.

Kathy had to caution Priscilla not to walk in front of the cameras or make any noise at the bar once the cameras started to purr.

Priscilla Handler, an SMU co-ed, was Shake's holdover houseguest from the previous evening. She was a willowy, olive-skinned, sleepy-eyed beauty of about twenty. She was wearing one of Shake's dress shirts as a bathrobe, and nothing more that I could tell. She had made a face when told to turn off the TV so that we might conduct the interview, but generally speaking, Priscilla seemed to approve of our suite. She also approved of Shake Tiller's stash. Priscilla looked like someone who intended to practice hedonism for the next thirty-five or forty years.

"When will this be on TV?" Priscilla asked anyone who cared to answer.

"Tomorrow before the game," I said.

"Here in the room?"

"Yes," said Kathy. "We aren't blacked out."

"Dilly!" Priscilla said. She opened a can of beer, lit a joint, and made herself comfortable in an easy chair where she could watch us do the interview.

Priscilla's shirttail scrooched up as she wriggled in the chair. Her bare legs and hips were exposed. There was even a glimpse of the whup thrown in. This didn't bother Priscilla, but one of the hand-held cameramen was distracted.

"You want to go to the game?" the cameraman said to Priscilla. "I have an extra ticket."

"I hate the Cowboys," Priscilla said. "Talk about stuck- up people!"

She drew on the joint.

"Y'all go ahead and do your deal," she said. "I'll keep still."

Kathy had been staring at Priscilla. I couldn't have guessed whether Kathy thought she was looking at a reptile or just your average Tri-Delt.

On camera, I introduced Shake Tiller by saying I had known him since the third grade when he had driven Old Lady Hedderman half-crazy with ventriloquism. I had known then he was destined for fame.

I said he had the mementos to prove he had been a great football player—a Super Bowl ring, a wall full of plaques, an assortment of game balls. He had since become a successful writer—a noted author, I said—but the NFL wasn't too happy about this fact right now.

Grinning as I faced him, I said, "I guess the first thing anybody wants to know is why you wrote that story and embarrassed everybody in pro football."

"Had to," he said. "It got to where I couldn't sleep at night. I'd close my eyes and see zebras jumping over safety-deposit vaults."

"One in particular," I said. "Charlie Teasdale, the referee."

"No, I'd always see Charlie in Switzerland," Shake said. "He'd be opening numbered accounts."

"Your story says Charlie Teasdale tried to manipulate the scores of games."

"He didn't
try
, he did it," said Shake.

"Your main source is an exotic dancer."

"I have other sources I can't name."

"What about the rest of the zebras? Any crooks?"

"I don't have proof, but if you want an opinion, I'd vote guilty on some others. Too many games have looked like science fiction."

"Aren't you relying on the word of gamblers and bookmakers?"

"In part," Shake said. "Who's a better judge of reality?"

"Your story says the players have been having a little fun of their own this season, like not putting forth their best effort. Why are they doing this, if it's true?"

"It's true. Look at the records of the teams. Nobody's going to get to the Super Bowl with better than a 10-8 record. The winner of the Super Bowl will have an 11-8 record and call itself the 'world champion of pro football.' Are you kidding me? Contrast this to the 17-0 record that Don Shula's Dolphins had back in '72...to Lombardi's great Packer teams...to our 15-2 the year the Giants did it all. The pros have become the biggest boost to college football since Grant- land Rice named the Four Horsemen. In college, it takes a 12-0 or an 11-1 to be a national champion. What's happened is this. The players want a say in determining their wage scale and they want the right to become free agents. The owners won't give 'em these things, and meanwhile, the owners want parity. They're getting it, man. The players have gone Dixie."

"What you're saying is, the players are intentionally giving America an inferior brand of football, and they're going to keep doing it until the owners realize what's going on and come to the bargaining table?"

"Right," said Shake. "The players have the ability to turn every game into a comedy. I say they're already doing it. The owners ought to be worried."

"I fail to see what good it will do to kill the sport," I said.

"They won't kill the sport. They'll just kill the NFL. Some rich guys will start a new league and the players will be back at work."

"There are thousands of fans who must not agree with you … They're excited about the season."

"That's their problem," Shake said. "But I don't think there are enough fools out there to keep the league alive."

"With all this in mind, what do you look for in the playoffs?"

"I'd like to buy some pharmaceutical stock," Shake said. "There's no telling how much speed it'll take to keep America awake."

"Who do you think's going to the Super Bowl, and who'll win?"

"I like boredom over tedium by a fumble."

Shake thought it better not to go to the Cowboys-Giants game Sunday. Too many people in Texas Stadium would want to ask him about the
Playboy
article—or assassinate him.

He stayed in the Adolphus suite with Priscilla, a girl he liked in a curious way. Priscilla might be what he had been searching for his whole life, he said. She was certainly good- looking and had no shame whatsoever about the fact that she was only interested in eating, sleeping, fucking and doing dope.

They had discussed the possibility of Priscilla going back to New York with him. She could keep him company while he worked on the novel. There would be no unreasonable demands on her. All she would have to do was eat, sleep, fuck, and do dope.

Leaving SMU would be no problem for Priscilla. She would deal with the spring term the way most of her friends did.

"Drop City" was the academic phrase she had used.

"You know what's great about Priscilla?" Shake had said. "Nothing's complicated."

Kathy Montgomery had never seen Texas Stadium, so I gave her a guided tour Sunday morning.

We started in the big private club above the west end zone that was for drinking, dining, socializing, dancing to live country music, or even watching the game for those who were still sober when it came time for the kickoff. In many ways, the Cowboy Club was like being back at Mommie's Trust Fund.

I led Kathy on a tour of the private suites in the stadium. Most of the doors to the suites were standing open, enabling us to glance inside at the decor and the revelers. An owner of one of these suites could decorate it as he or his wife saw fit.

Kathy was fascinated with everything she saw, which included cocktail parties in progress in a French Provincial living room, an Art Deco patio, an Early American library, a harem, an aquarium, an exercise gym, an oyster bar, a bird sanctuary, and an unfurnished room in which we found six airline stewardesses drinking champagne.

We stopped by the visiting owner's box for a drink with Burt Danby and Veronica. I no longer felt any guilt about having Kathy with me. She belonged to somebody else. She was my trusty sidekick and stage manager, that's all.

Needless to say, Burt was taken with Kathy.

"Jesus," he said, gaping at her from hair to ankle, "I knew broadcasting was a grimy, thankless business, but I didn't know it was fucking gutter work!"