McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (24 page)

 
          
 
Cindy's all-day sex-fest only lasted half a
day. Of course it started at dawn, so it was a long half day. During the half
day I attempted to help her do all the things she had never got to do with men
more successful than myself. They were not really very revolutionary things. In
fact, they were sexual staples, familiar to millions, if not billions. But for
some reason they had not yet become staples to Cindy, and she enjoyed them a
lot.

 
          
 
We had to go out to lunch, since we were both
ravenous and there was not enough food in Cindy's larder to feed even one of
us. So we went out and wolfed down some bacon cheeseburgers and happened to
notice that there was a Humphrey Bogart double feature at a movie theater two
doors from the restaurant. To Have and Have Not and
Casablanca
were the movies.

 
          
 
"We could go see them," I suggested.

 
          
 
Cindy was delighted. It fit in perfectly with
the unconventionality of the day. Seeing movies in the afternoon was an even
greater defiance of the laws of success than lying around fucking. The latter
was at least tinged with romance —the former was just lazy.

 
          
 
"We can eat popcorn and hold hands,"
I added.

 
          
 
"Naw, I hate popcorn, it's not good for
you," she said.

 
          
 
"But we can hold hands. I've never seen
either of those movies."

 
          
 
"You must be the only person in the world
who hasn't seen
Casablanca
," I said.

 
          
 
She looked at me as if I had just made a
serious assertion.

 
          
 
"I don't think I am," she said.

 
          
 
If she was, she still is, because the minute
we sat down she fell asleep and slept contentedly through most of both movies.
I slept through most of To Have and Have Not myself—it had been a strenuous
morning—but I woke up in
Casablanca
just as they were singing the "Marseillaise." Not Cindy. She
was snoozing soundly, her head on my shoulder, her mouth open. On the screen
Ingrid Bergman was looking her freshest, her eyes liquid with the dew of youth
and life. Cindy looked the picture of vulnerability. I kissed her and when she
opened her eyes they were just as dewy as Ingrid Bergman's. We abandoned the
movie, bought a huge sack of groceries, and went back to her house.

 
          
 
Cindy went in the kitchen and began to put the
groceries away, yawning big healthy yawns as she did it. She had bought five or
six kinds of soup.
Leek soup, turtle soup, gazpacho, split
pea, lentil, and Manhattan clam chowder.
She was happily stuffing them
into her shelves, which already seemed to contain a lot of soup.

 
          
 
"It's my favorite thing," she said,
a bit defiantly, when she caught me looking at the soup. Somehow it was a
winning touch. Behind the poised social climber was a girl who liked to
stockpile a lot of soups. Probably having a lot of soup made her feel secure.
In an odd way it sort of made up for her lack of interest in antiques.

 
          
 
In effect she was a soup collector, a
realization which cheered me, for some reason. I went over and kissed her just
as she was starting a yawn. It was a happy move. A woman who is just getting
into being awakened is usually eager to have the awakening continue.

 
          
 
"I'll make you some soup," she
remarked, after the kiss.

 
          
 
At
11:30
that night I remembered Belinda Arber, who
had been expecting me to come by that afternoon and take her, her
mother,
and her sister to Baskin-Roberts, as she called it.
Of course Belinda was only three and might have forgotten that I was supposed
to come, but I had a feeling she hadn't. Natural winners are not forgetful
where their own interests are concerned.

 
          
 
Beside me, Cindy was sleeping deeply, in her
pink nightgown, recovering from a long day of sexual awakening. Actually she
had gone to sleep with one of my hands squeezed between her legs and it was
still there, slowly growing numb. It was already numb nearly up to the elbow.
Once I had pulled it out, to give my blood a chance to circulate through it,
but Cindy had grunted and succeeded in stuffing it back against her fundament
without even waking up.

 
          
 
I felt an inward disquiet, although it was a
quiet night, so quiet that I could hear Cindy's steady breathing. True to her
word, Cindy had given me some soup, and I had given her some love. I don't know
that it was an unequal trade. The soup was probably as good on the soup level
as the love was on the love level, all things considered.

 
          
 
Cindy took my feeling and swirled it around in
the blender of her body, absorbing it instantly, as if it were a healthy
mixture of sugar, orange juice, and raw eggs. Sex was the raw eggs. Since she
herself didn't have to bother feeling very much she got the full and immediate
benefit of emotion that might otherwise have been doled out over several months
of domestic life or social partnership, like a balanced meal.

 
          
 
Cindy didn't want a balanced meal. Like
Belinda, she just wanted a quick trip to Baskin-Robbins.

 
          
 
For the second night in a row, I fidgeted,
while my hand went to sleep against Cindy's cunt. At some point she rolled over
and spread her thighs and my hand tingled for about twenty minutes, as it came
back to life. While it tingled I tried to imagine the future.

 
          
 
What my imagination prefers to do with futures
is furnish them. I see large airy
rooms,
filled with
all my most treasured and spectacular things, and then I see myself and the
woman of my immediate dreams living in them.

 
          
 
I lay in bed and furnished a few rooms, but my
imagination couldn't keep Cindy in one of them for more than a tenth of a
second. My imagination is more realistic than I am. Cindy wasn't gom2 to be in
any of those rooms. My objects held no interest for her and my towns and roads
would bore her.

 
          
 
Though for the moment she was asleep beside
me, in her pink nightgown, Cindy really was just waking up. Once she was really
awake she wasn't going to want me around. She would go out into the capital, as
Boss had, and pick the men she wanted, from the berry bushes of diplomacy,
politics, journalism, the arts, the law firms, or whatever capital bushes she
might be passing. The juice of many men would stain her lips for a time, before
she reduced them to mulberry-colored pulp.

 
          
 
In the morning she was up at
6:30
, and she punched me five times before
leaving for her high-level exercise class at
7:30
. All five were unpremeditated punches that
occurred whenever she remembered that I was going to Middleburg with Boss. She
punched me once in bed, once in the shower—which she insisted we take together
in memory of our romantic yesterday—twice while we were dressing and once in
the kitchen. The last punch caused milk to slosh out of the bowl. She didn't
wipe it up, or explain any of the punches. I might only be the
berry-of-the-week but I wasn't supposed to be anybody else's berry during that
time.

 
          
 
"You better be back here by six,"
she said, from the door. "We're going to Oblivia's tonight. We have to try
and act like normal people."

 
          
 
"
My gosh
,"
I said. "We are normal people. Even the most normal people in the world
are sometimes late."

 
          
 
"That's not true," she said.

 
          
 
"Of course it's true. Punctuality is not
synonymous with normality."

 
          
 
If it hadn't been
7:25
I think we would have had a terrible fight.
Cindy was itching for one. I wasn't, but I realized one was practically
inevitable, in view of the fact that I had a sort of date with Boss.

 
          
 
The minute she left I dug out a
Maryland
phone book and called Jean.

 
          
 
Belinda answered on the second ring.

 
          
 
"I'll get it," she said, having got
it. Then she breathed into the receiver for a bit.

 
          
 
"Who is it?" she asked, having
caught her breath.

 
          
 
''That's not what you're supposed to
say," her sister said, from somewhere nearby.

 
          
 
There was silence on the line as Belinda tried
to remember what she was supposed to say.

 
          
 
"Is this the Arbers' residence?" I
asked.

 
          
 
Belinda wasn't listening.

 
          
 
"I know what to say,
Beverly
!" she said.

 
          
 
"Then say it!"
Beverly
yelled.

 
          
 
More silence.

 
          
 
"Can't remember right now," Belinda
admitted, though in clear and unrepentant tones.

 
          
 
"Are you Belinda Arber?" I asked.
"I'm the man with the big white car."

 
          
 
"Are you gonna take us to Baskin-Roberts
today?" she asked, coming straight to the point.

 
          
 
"You better," she added.

 
          
 
"Why had I better?"

 
          
 
"You jist better come over here,"
she said.

 
          
 
"I just better talk to your momma
first," I said. "She might not want me to."

 
          
 
"She cried," Belinda remarked,
apropos of nothing.

 
          
 
"Uh-oh," I said.
"When?"

 
          
 
"Two times," Belinda said. "Are
you coming over here?"

 
          
 
"Let me have that phone," Jean said,
from somewhere behind her.

 
          
 
"I'm talking!" Belinda insisted.

 
          
 
There was silence while a struggle took place.
I could imagine Belinda clinging grimly to the receiver.

 
          
 
Jean, however, was stronger.

 
          
 
"Hel—" she said, just as we were
disconnected.

 
          
 
Jean answered. In the background I could hear
loud howls. Belinda had lost a round.

 
          
 
"I can't believe she did that," Jean
said, sounding a good deal strung out. One of the times she cried had not been
long ago.

 
          
 
"What'd she do?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Disconnected us," Jean said.
"The little bitch.
If she can't win she makes sure
everybody else loses."

 
          
 
"Did you spank her?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Of course I spanked her," Jean
said. "You think I'm gonna let her get away with that?"

 
          
 
"I couldn't come by yesterday," I
said. "I just called to apologize."

 
          
 
Jean was silent for a moment.

 
          
 
"I didn't expect you to," she said.
"There's no reason you should rearrange your life just because I have a
bossy daughter."

 
          
 
The howls came closer. The bossy daughter was
returning to the attack.

 
          
 
"Don't you hit me," Jean said
soberly.

 
          
 
"But... I... was jist talkin',"
Belinda insisted, her voice bubbly with sobs.

 
          
 
"So? There's no justice," Jean said,
in the voice of a mother who was not very impressed with the tragic little
figure standing before her.

 
          
 
"Is . . . he . . . comin' over?"
Belinda asked.

 
          
 
"I don't know, are you?" Jean asked.

 
          
 
"I was thinking I might come over this
afternoon," I said. "I'd still like to see your antiques."

 
          
 
It was actually true. I was eager to see what
kinds of chests Jean had managed to dredge up.

 
          
 
Also I wanted to see Belinda, Beverly, and
Jean—they seemed a likable and promising trio.

 
          
 
"You realize that if you come it means
Baskin-Robbins," Jean said.

 
          
 
"I can live with that," I said.

 
          
 
At mention of Baskin-Robbins Belinda fell
silent. There was a rustling sound, such as a little girl might make when she's
climbing up in her mother's lap.

 
          
 
"Jist tell him," Belinda said.

 
          
 
"You don't tell people, you ask
them," Jean said.

           
 
"I'll tell him then,” Belinda said,
repossessing the phone.

 
          
 
"You're rude, Belinda, you grab,"
Beverly
said. "I don't grab, do I, Mom?"

 
          
 
"Nope,” Jean said. "You're my
well-mannered daughter.”

 
          
 
Her other daughter was not interested in such
distinctions.

 
          
 
"You come an' take us to Baskin-Roberts,
okay?" she said.

 
          
 
"Okay," I said. "I'll
come."

 
          
 
"I tolded him," Belinda said.

 
          
 
"I heard you," Jean said. "I
didn't hear you say thank you, though."