McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (31 page)

 
          
 
To a detached bystander like
myself
, the results were anticlimactic, just like most of
the unzippings I had witnessed in high school. About all that happened was that
George got a lot of powdered sugar in his pubic hair.

 
          
 
The women regarded the attack as highly
successful, though. They laughed like banshees and continued to hold George
down, perhaps hoping that he would get a hard-on and impale the doughnut in a
more colorful manner. It didn't happen.

 
          
 
The minute the women let him up George marched
out of the room without a word to any of us, and was never seen again, at least
by me. Khaki made the prudent decision to spend the night with Lilah. The
doughnut they had tried to stick George's penis through lay on the floor.

 
          
 
"He never admits defeat," Khaki
said, speaking of George's silent exit. "It's one of his facets."

 
          
 
"He'll claim he was high and didn't
notice," she added. "We better not let him catch one of us alone for
a while, though."

 
          
 
"I'm not scared of George," Cindy
said, calmly. "I could always handle him and I still can."

 
          
 
"Ah well, he broke my heart," Lilah
said, unexpectedly, as if she had just remembered it. Neither Khaki nor Cindy
responded to the remark, but they responded to the taxi driver, who had just
taken a turn they didn't like. The man looked like he had just left
Pakistan
a few days before. His turban was dirty,
and I doubt he was used to being bossed around by women, because he looked
pretty surly when they all started yelling at him.

 
          
 
Then he started muttering. I think his pride
was hurt. He was not in his own country, and three women were giving him a hard
time.

 
          
 
"He'll break yours, too," Lilah said
to Khaki, referring to George's penchant for breaking hearts.

 
          
 
"That's all right," she added.
"Then we can be best friends again. I can't be best friends with anybody
who's sleeping with George."

 
          
 
Cindy was looking out the window of the cab.
The conversation seemed to hold little interest for her.

 
          
 
It held none for the Pakistani taxi driver,
either.

 
          
 
"Be quiet!" he said, turning
suddenly to glare at Khaki and Lilah. While he was turned the taxi narrowly
missed a head-on collision with a city bus. When the driver saw the bus he
honked and shook his fist at it, although he was on the side of the street that
rightfully belonged to the bus.

 
          
 
"I kill it!" he said menacingly,
looking at the women again.

 
          
 
Unfortunately his ferocity did not impress
them. He was a little fat man, not unlike George.

 
          
 
"Listen, just watch where you're
going," Khaki said. "And you know what? You ought to wash that turban
sometime."

 
          
 
"One took me to the
Iwo Jima
monument," Lilah whispered.
"Just last week.
I wanted to go to the F Street Club
and he took me to the
Iwo
Jima
monument. I
don't think they should let them immigrate if they can't learn their way around
any better than that.

 
          
 
"Why would I want to go to the
Iwo Jima
monument anyway?" she asked, after a
moment.

 
          
 
"Maybe he wanted to hang you from
it," Khaki suggested, as the driver let them out.

 
          
 
"Did George ever break your heart?"
I asked Cindy, the minute we were inside her door. Unfortunately, I was
developing a curiosity about her past.

 
          
 
Cindy looked at me as if I were only slightly
less dumb than the Pakistani taxi driver.

 
          
 
"Naw," she said.

 
          
 
She was looking intensely beautiful. She had
looked great at the party, but now she looked subtly better. Something had
happened to elevate
her a
notch or two, beauty-wise.

 
          
 
I knew enough about beautiful women to know that
when that happens their prospects have changed. A new and better future
suggests itself, causing their already excellent cells to radiate at an even
higher level.

 
          
 
That must have happened to Cindy. Deep down
inside her, some prospect was throbbing. Even as I watched it was being weighed
on the scales of her instincts. That was why she looked so detached. I
remembered that she had been seated by Spud Breyfogle at Oblivia's.

 
          
 
She went upstairs without another word. Her
new mood left me out to such an extent that I felt a little hesitant about even
following her up to the bedroom. I was no stranger to such occasions. Often I
had temporarily ceased to have an existence in the consciousness of a
particular woman. One minute they're talking to you, the next minute you could
just as well be in
Tibet
, where they're concerned. Sometimes you
fade back in in a few minutes, other times it might take months.

 
          
 
Once I had followed Coffee into the bedroom,
when she was in such a mood, and when she looked around and saw me sitting on
the bed taking my boots off she was as shocked as if I had tried to rape her.

 
          
 
The only way to determine Cindy's attitude, in
such a situation, was to go on upstairs, so I did. She had already washed her
face, and she came out of the bathroom with her nightgown in her hand. She was
neither hostile nor welcoming. She behaved as if she
were
alone, yet she never registered the slightest objection to my presence.

 
          
 
"Do you want me to leave?" I asked,
just to be sure.

 
          
 
Cindy looked at me curiously. She had put on
her nightgown.

 
          
 
"Why would I want you to leave?" she
asked.

 
          
 
"I have no idea," I said.

 
          
 
"You're really goofy," she said,
turning down the covers.

 
          
 
I sat down on the bed and took off" my
boots.

 
          
 
"Brush your teeth," Cindy said.

 
          
 
When I came to bed, Cindy took my hand. She
liked to hold hands at night. It allowed her to be sure that somebody was
there. We lay side by side, holding hands. There was just enough light from the
streetlight that I could see her profile. Her eyes were wide open. While she
was holding my hand she was thinking about whatever it was that had happened at
the party—the thing that had detached her, and elevated her, beauty-wise.

 
          
 
"I think Spud wants to go out with
me," she said.

 
          
 
I felt touched. She had actually spoken her
mind to me. It seemed a considerable act of trust, all things considered.

 
          
 
“I think so, too," I said. It had been
obvious to me at the Embassy party that Spud was interested in Cindy. I had
noticed him feeding her a shrimp. Men seldom feed shrimp to women they aren't
interested in taking out.

 
          
 
Cindy sat up in bed and looked at me.

 
          
 
"How would you know about it?" she
asked.

 
          
 
"I saw him coming on to you at the
Embassy party," I said. "He fed you a shrimp."

 
          
 
"Yeah," she said, startled that I
had noticed something she had registered only subliminally.

 
          
 
"You must have a good memory," she
said, rubbing my stomach. "I didn't even remember that.

 
          
 
"So what, though?" she said.
"It was just a shrimp,"

 
          
 
"Feeding people is sexy," I pointed
out. "It's a form of coming on. If I had a shrimp I'd feed it to you right
now."

 
          
 
Cindy looked at me silently. That shrimp
eating could be a form of sex play had evidently not occurred to her. I decided
to see what could be accomplished without the shrimp, which proved to be an
excellent decision.

 
          
 
"It's getting better,” she said, in a
surprised voice, when we were resting and holding hands again. The surprise in
her voice was extremely appealing.

 
          
 
"Do you want to go out with Spud?" I
asked, pleasantly.

 
          
 
"Don't browbeat me," she said
meekly, sounding like a little girl who was about to be sent to bed without her
supper.

 
          
 
"I'm not browbeating you," I said.

 
          
 
She pursed her lips, as if irritated by the
complexities life springs on one.

 
          
 
"I like Jennie," she said.

 
          
 
"Who's Jennie?"

 
          
 
"Spud's daughter," she said.
"Jennie's my friend. I don't know about Betsy."

 
          
 
"Is Betsy another daughter?"

 
          
 
"Betsy's his wife," she said.
"He's from an old family, you know.

 
          
 
"Actually, his family is better than
Harris'," she said, again with a touch of surprise in her voice. The
thought that a man from a family better than Harris' might want to take her out
had never occured to her.

 
          
 
Now that it had, the complexities of life were
gathering fast. One of them obviously was that Spud had magnetism, while Harris
only had a good family. Spud could walk through doors and feed ladies shrimp at
Embassy parties.

 
          
 
"Harris is sweet, though," she said,
as if answering a question I had asked. "He takes me to every single Marx
brothers
movie that comes to town."

 
          
 
"If you like the
Marx
brothers that's
got to be a factor," I said.

 
          
 
"I got too much to think about,"
Cindy said. "I hate having too much to think about. I can't even sleep
when that happens."

 
          
 
"You don't really have to think about
it," I said. "Spud hasn't done much yet. Maybe he's just
flirting."

 
          
 
"He better not be," she said,
indignantly. "He could get me in a lot of trouble, you know." Her
brow wrinkled at the thought of the havoc an affair with Spud Breyfogle could
wreak.

 
          
 
"I hope you stick around/* she said.

 
          
 
"Why do you hope so?" I asked,
though I was touched that she hoped so, whatever the reason.

 
          
 
"I like you," she said simply.
"If you stick around maybe nothing will happen."