McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (55 page)

 
          
 
"Could you just bring in the boots?"
Amanda said.

 
          
 
I decided to be cooperative. I brought in the
boots. Lined up against the bare white walls of the gallery, so far from
cowboys, ranches,
Texas
, they looked pretty silly. Amanda obviously thought so, too.

 
          
 
"Well, they're no worse than bread
sculpture." I said.

 
          
 
Amanda sighed again. I was beginning to like
her a little. She looked tired, probably from the exercise of so much severity.

 
          
 
"I bet you think this exhibit is a
terrible idea." I said,

 
          
 
"What I think has no bearing on the
question," Amanda said.

 
          
 
"Does it have any bearing on any
question?"

 
          
 
Amanda looked disgusted. "Don't ask me
questions like that," she said. "I don't even know you."

 
          
 
"It's because you're not trying." I
said. "I'm very easy to know."

 
          
 
"I don't think I want to know you,"
she said, "You're making my morning a lot more difficult."

 
          
 
"Well, I still own the boots." I
said. "If you don't want to be bothered with the exhibition I could help
out by just taking them away."

 
          
 
"I have instructions to buy them,"
she said, "Firm instructions."

 
          
 
"Then I could set a ridiculous
price," I said.

 
          
 
Amanda shrugged. "We pay ridiculous
prices for everything we buy," she said.

 
          
 
"Well, I want twenty thousand," I
said. Actually it wasn't a ridiculous price, considering that there
were
fifty pair of vintage boots.

 
          
 
"Twenty thousand
dollars?"
Amanda said. "For these?*'

 
          
 
"That's only four hundred dollars a
pair," I said. "Some of these boots are worth four times that.

 
          
 
"I wish you'd smile," I added.

 
          
 
"Offer me a reason," Amanda said,
looking at me gravely. She picked up the phone and dialed. Cindy must have been
sleeping with her head on it, she answered so quickly.

 
          
 
"The gentleman is here with the
boots," Amanda said, in a voice considerably more nervous than the one she
had been using with me. "However, he wants quite a lot of money for
them."

 
          
 
There was a pause.

 
          
 
"Twenty thousand," Amanda said.

 
          
 
I was expecting to be handed the phone, to
explain myself to an irate Cindy. Of course, I might change my mind and just
give them to her, for old times' sake—although there hadn't been that much in
the way of old times.

 
          
 
Just as I started to reach out for the phone,
Amanda said, "All right," and hung up.

 
          
 
It took me aback. I had been primed to hear
Cindy's healthy
Santa Barbara
voice and felt quite disappointed that I wasn't going to.

 
          
 
Amanda then disappeared into a little office.
In about a minute she reappeared and handed me a check.

 
          
 
"Didn't she say anything?" I asked.

 
          
 
"She said ‘Give him a check,'"
Amanda said.

 
          
 
"I guess it's worth twenty thousand
dollars to her not to have to hear my voice again," I said. It was a
depressing thought.

 
          
 
Amanda looked at me with what I felt was a
hint of sympathy. Not much, just a hint.

 
          
 
"Do you want to go to lunch?" I
asked.

 
          
 
"No," Amanda said.

 
          
 
"I wish you'd smiled, at some
point," I said, folding the check. There was a pad on the desk. I picked
it up and wrote Josie Twine's name and Boog's phone number on it

 
          
 
"This is the name of a woman who can give
you some background information on the boot collection," I said. "She
knows the provenance, if that becomes a factor."

 
          
 
Then I also wrote the name and phone number of
Bobby Secundy, my boot scout friend in the
Texas
valley.

 
          
 
"This man is an expert, in the French
sense," I said. "He knows more about boots than anybody alive. If you
send him Polaroids he'll give you full details on the makers of each
pair."

 
          
 
Amanda read the names and phone numbers.

 
          
 
"Thank you," she said. "I can't
believe we're really doing this show."

 
          
 
"I couldn't believe you were doing the
bread sculpture, either," I said. "Bread sculpture?"

 
          
 
"Listen, that exhibit was really well
received," Amanda said. "It did far better than the ice art we had
just before it."

 
          
 
"Well, good luck with Uncle Ike," I
said. "I expect he'll be calling pretty soon."

 
          
 
"He's called six times, collect,"
she said. "Is he really that old?"

 
          
 
"Yep," I said. "I imagine he
just wants to make sure about the color TV."

 
          
 
"We've put him at the Hays-Adams,"
Amanda said. "I think Miss Sanders was hoping you'd be around to help us
with him."

 
          
 
"If she was thinking that, why didn't she
ask me?"

 
          
 
Amanda shrugged. "I just work here,"
she said.

 
          
 
I didn't really want to leave. There was no
place I felt like going. It seemed to me Amanda would soften up, eventually, if
I could just think of a pretext to stay around.

 
          
 
"If you're Harris' cousin how come you're
poor?" I asked.

 
          
 
"I'm not exactly poor," Amanda said.
"I'm just shabby genteel.

 
          
 
"I guess I always will be," she
added thoughtfully. "Actually I would probably do better if I were poorer,
rather than richer. If I got poorer I could just give up. I wouldn't have to
buy respectable clothes, or look respectable, or be respectable."

 
          
 
"You don't like being respectable?"

 
          
 
"Well, it's very wearing," she said.
"At least it is the way we do it in my family."

 
          
 
"Would you like to go to
Texas
?" I asked. "
There's
a lot of galleries down there—the art scene is booming. You could probably get
a great job.”

 
          
 
If the invitation startled her, she didn't
show it. She walked over to the window and looked out. I thought perhaps she
was contemplating my car, which was parked just beneath the window.

 
          
 
"You shouldn't be so whimsical," she
said.

 
          
 
"Why not?"

 
          
 
"Because life can't be based on
whimsy," she said.

 
          
 
"That's the respectable view, all
right," I said.

 
          
 
"It's the mature view," Amanda said.
"You just made more money than I made in a year. You did that whimsically,
too. I don't think you're very mature."

 
          
 
I didn't say anything. I didn't feel up to
mounting a defense of my maturity. Basically I agreed with Amanda. I wasn't
mature, nor had I ever been able to decide what maturity involved.

 
          
 
"If I went to
Texas
with you I would probably permit
nothing," Amanda said. Then, to my delight she grinned.

 
          
 
"I normally permit very little," she
said.

 
          
 
"If you'd just smile once in a while it
might be enough," I said.

 
          
 
For a moment I felt like laughing, at the
absurd twists life could take. Little Joe's wife might take up a happy
existence in
Washington
, while Harris' cousin took the
Texas
art worid by storm.

 
          
 
Amanda toyed with her hair for a moment, half
distracted, half coquettish. Then the fancy that she had been contemplating
slipped past, as fancies will. The quiet merriment went out of her eyes. It was
too bad: Amusement had transformed her into an appealing young woman.

 
          
 
"It's not easy to stop being mature, once
you're mature," she said. "I would probably enjoy stopping, but I can't."

 
          
 
"I guess that means you won't come,"
I said.

 
          
 
Amanda nodded. At that point the phone rang
and she went off to answer it.

 
          
 
"How amazing," she said, when she
came back. "That was John C. V. Ponsonby. He wants you! He won't even
speak to my family, he considers us so nouveau. Well, actually he does speak to
one of my great-aunts, once in a while. But why would he even think of speaking
to you?"

 
          
 
"Because I have a truncheon he
wants," I said. "I offered it to him a week ago when he was drunk.
It's taken him a week to remember it."

 
          
 
"I hate him for not speaking to us,"
Amanda said. "Now I hate him more, since I know he speaks to you."

 
          
 
"Collectors can’t afford these
niceties," I said.

 
          
 
"He could have approached you through an
agent," she pointed out.

 
          
 
"But while the agent was tracking me down
he might lose the truncheon. It's taken him a week to get desperate. Now that
he has he'll stoop to anything to get the truncheon."

 
          
 
"How much will you charge him for
it?"