Moving On (51 page)

“You seem as down in the dumps as I am,” Patsy said. “You haven’t even said anything crude.”

Joe looked down disconsolately at the sprawl of lights. “This is wretched food,” he said. “You’d think with the goddamned ocean forty miles away they could at least keep a fish fresh long enough to cook it. Mine was almost rotten.”

“Does my aunt get you down, or what?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “She’s fun. Let’s see if they’ll bring us some brandy here. I just needed to get away from that mob we were with. Mobs like that make me wish I’d done something.”

“Like what?”

He waved vaguely at the ground far below. “Oh, been a turnip farmer or something,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t have had to spend so many sophisticated evenings. Crowds like this one hurt my goddamn colon, to tell the truth.”

“Was this sophisticated?” Patsy asked.

“After a fashion. Maybe I was a little depressed by your aunt. She’s a peach but she seems intent on kidnaping me for the evening. I don’t quite know how to get out of it. Is this guy Squatty really in South America? Things like this make me miss my dead wife.”

“He’s in Canada, making millions.”

“Maybe the scholar will beguile her away from me,” he said.

“Maybe Sonny will beguile his wife away from him,” Patsy said. “What do you think?”

“I try to think about more appetizing things,” he said. “This fish didn’t help much.”

“How do you stand to work for Sonny?”

“For money. For money alone I’ve worked with the worst in the business.”

“You mean my aunt just asked you to spend the night with her?” It had just registered.

“More or less. She’s a type I’d forgotten. There used to be women like her around L.A. in the thirties and forties, but I thought they’d passed out of existence. A lot of them came from Texas, come to think of it.”

“You’ll have to admit she’s well preserved.”

“Sure. Ladies like her are always well preserved, and it’s fools like me that have preserved them. I bet Squatty is a fool like me. The poor bastard probably loves her. He’s probably off in Canada with his ass in a mudhole, thinking of her right now.”

“Do you suppose he does?” Patsy said. It had never occurred to her. All she remembered about Squatty was that he was badly freckled and had skin problems from years of exposing a fair complexion to the tropical sun.

“She’ll be well preserved for fifteen more years,” Joe said. “Why not? She keeps all she’s got. You’ll be a withered hag before she will.”

“Me?”

“Sure,” he said, looking at her with real affection. “You’re the food of the world.” He looked up and saw the company returning and didn’t elaborate on the remark, but Patsy felt deeply, embarrassingly flattered by it; for years, whenever she remembered the way Joe Percy said it, she felt warmed.

The company looked very gay and attractive and was in boisterous good spirits. “Arise, arise,” Bill said. “Sonny’s promised to take us dancing. Shit kicking, I believe the term is in these parts.”

“That’s the term,” Joe said. “Read all about it in
V
, if you haven’t. I’ll have to pass. My favorite dancing partner is incapacitated due to pregnancy and I’m not in the mood to kick shit with anybody else.”

“I want to go home, anyway,” Patsy said.

“You’re going with me, anyway,” Dixie said to Joe. “We can take Patsy home and Sonny can take them dancing.”

Jim tried to persuade her to come with them to the honky-tonk, but he didn’t try very hard and she declined. He and the Duffins and Sonny got out at the hotel. “Hope you know what you’re doing, going off with a wild man from Hollywood,” Sonny said to Dixie.

“I wouldn’t know what I was doing if I knew what I was doing,” she said simply.

“I just loved that scholar,” she said, once they were moving. “I never met a scholar before. Are their wives always skinny?”

When they got to South Boulevard Joe Percy gallantly got out and walked Patsy to her door. He kissed her on the cheek and started back down the steps. “Good luck,” she said. “Don’t let her drive you crazy.”

Inside, in bed, her feet tucked under her, she felt very cozy, read a little, and looked up from time to time to stare at the hairbrush or the chair or the books on the bedside table. Hank had come back to mind, and she was wondering when he would find her again.

15

J
OE
P
ERCY HUNG
to the handrest, checked his seat belts three times, and tried to remember the prescribed position for car wrecks, if there was one. Dixie was whirling him out a freeway in a light drizzle, the meanwhile filling him in on her life. They came off the freeway and, just as he had feared, she miscalculated the slipperiness of the streets and slid completely through a red light.

“Oh, hell,” she said. “I’ll stop twice as long at the next one. Don’t you like my niece?”

“Sure. I don’t know her very well but I hope I live to see her again.”

“I can tell you all about her. I practically raised her. Her daddy doesn’t have any sense, even if he is my brother. Squatty’s made six times as much money as Garland, and Squatty’s no genius himself. I don’t think we have geniuses in Texas.”

“They’re probably all killed in car wrecks,” Joe said, but his point was lost on Dixie.

“I don’t like Jim very much,” she said. “She just married him because he was the first one who asked her. I was off in the Orient and didn’t even know about it until it was too late to stop it.”

She sped into a large high-rise apartment building. The garage men sprang into action instantly. Joe barely had time to get his seat belt unbuckled before the car was gone. Dixie’s apartment was on the top floor. For a few minutes he thought it
was
the top floor, but after she had taken him out on a balcony and shown him around he concluded it was only about one quarter of the floor.

“That’s River Oaks down there,” she said. “It’s noted for trees. All sorts of great people live there. I guess this place is dinky compared to the ones they have in Hollywood, huh?”

Joe felt sleepy and suppressed a yawn. “It’s not dinky compared to the ones they have anywhere,” he said. “You’d have to be Howard Hughes to need more room than this.”

“I never met him,” Dixie said. “I’ll make some coffee.”

She did, and it was very good. Joe had been wanting very much to be back at his hotel and had even built up a slight hostility to Dixie, but he couldn’t maintain it. Her friendliness carried the day. She sat in a deep leather chair frowning—something she didn’t do often enough to do convincingly. The worst she could look was quizzical.

“I’m not sure I liked the scholar after all,” she said. “I hate it when I can’t tell if somebody likes me or not. I couldn’t tell about him. Let’s go to bed, okay? I really do like to get enough sleep.”

Joe followed her irresolutely into the bedroom. What had seemed like possibly a good idea that afternoon over drinks had come to seem like folly. The bedroom, like almost every other room he had seen all day, had a fine view of southwest Houston. It would have been a comfort to have a room that didn’t have a view of southwest Houston.

“Do you mind if I wear a nightgown?” Dixie asked, emerging from the bathroom. Without makeup she looked younger rather than older.

“No,” he said. “I don’t care if you wear overshoes and a parachute. I really ought to go back to my hotel, you know. I shouldn’t molest you, I don’t think. The thought of your poor husband haunts me.”

“Squatty? I haven’t been married to him in fifteen years.”

“He sounds pretty husbandlike. I thought all Texas husbands were apt to come in and shoot men their wives were in bed with.”

“Oh, yeah, it happens all the time,” she said. “I’ve known plenty of cases. It’s perfectly legal, you know.”

Joe put his coffee cup on the windowsill and sat down on one edge of the large triple bed. He stared unhappily at southwest Houston. “Somehow the legality of it dampens my ardor,” he said. “If I was to get blasted for screwing I’d want some bastard to pay for it. Maybe he’s winging his way back from Alberta at this very moment to check up on you.”

“Not Squatty.” She emerged from the closet in a demure white gown and sat down on the floor and began to do exercises vigorously. She made a strange snorting noise through her nose. “That’s yoga,” she said, stopping to explain.

“I don’t have any pajamas,” Joe said, grinning despite himself.

“Get in bed while I’m not looking,” she said. “I have to exercise a little more.”

“Well, it’s not as if I’m a virgin,” he said, a little fed up with life. He got in his side of the huge bed and lay on his back. Now and then he caught a glimpse of Dixie’s head as she exercised. Finally she turned out the light and got in the opposite side of the bed. The only light came from the city far below.

“Well, it’s been a great evening,” he said heartily. “See you at breakfast.”

“I haven’t seen Sonny in years,” Dixie said. “That scholar liked him. I wouldn’t have thought a scholar would like Sonny.”

“Intellectuals are all fascinated with athletes,” he said. “It doesn’t work the other way around.”

They were silent for a bit. Joe was hoping she would go to sleep.

“Sonny would have made a good match for Patsy,” she said. “He’s older. People the same age have the same kind of problems. How can you get along with someone if you have the same problems they have?”

“You’re off your nut,” Joe said mildly. “Nobody I can think of should marry Sonny.”

“I should have married him,” Dixie said. “When are you coming over here?”

“You’re not really interested in me, are you?” he said.

“Well, you’re a man and I’m a woman. That’s what men always tell me when they want to screw me. Come on.”

“There must be some real dimwits in this state if that’s the kind of line they come up with,” he said. “I was writing lines like that in 1935. I’m shy and depressed tonight. I think we ought to wait.”

“I know you’re depressed. I’m not dumb. If you screw me maybe you won’t be depressed. I can’t stand people who are depressed.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. “I’m a mad romantic. I feel like plunging a dagger into my breast at this very moment. Once I taste the delights of your body you’ll never get rid of me.

“Come on,” she insisted. “It will cheer you up.”

He looked at her across the several feet of bed that separated them. “This is a swell bed,” he said. “You could put a small football team in it. If I’d been sober this afternoon this would never have happened. I’ll meet you halfway but don’t place any bets on the outcome.”

They both scooted sideways until they were about a foot apart on the bed. They lay silently, flat on their backs. The pillows had not scooted with them.

“I’m getting depressed,” Dixie said. “I told you if you didn’t cheer up I’d get depressed. I catch things from people.”

Joe raised up on one elbow. She had the sheets pulled up to her chin, and the frown was back.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t been taking all this seriously. Forgive me. You know, I don’t think you have any notion at all of what a human relationship should be. Do you?”

“No,” Dixie said simply. She didn’t look at him but the young-girl perkiness had left her voice and she sounded like a woman who was getting on. Joe was touched. Everything that her bouncy manner hid was suddenly exposed. Dixie was exposed.

“Well, you poor thing,” he said.

They were silent again. He was sorry he had exposed her, for he had no way to cover her again. She lay as she was, holding on to the top of the sheets, the puzzled frown on her face.

“I just go around keeping cheerful,” she said. “I’ve done it for years. When I’m cheerful it doesn’t matter to me whether I know anything or not.”

Joe couldn’t stand to see her lying there silently, strained and puzzled. He took one of her hands.

“Look,” he said. “You don’t want to go bringing strangers like me home. You shouldn’t go around asking people. It doesn’t make good sense.”

“Oh, I almost never ask,” she said, brightening a little. “Usually they just do it and leave, or go to sleep. If I decide I don’t like them I wake them up and make them leave.”

“My lord,” he said. “How have you survived? You don’t feel sexy and you know it. Why do you think it would cheer me up? Jesus, it would drive me out of my skull.”

“It would cheer you up if you weren’t so shy,” Dixie said. “I thought Californians went around screwing people all the time.”

“They do, the damn fools,” Joe said. “Better they became Buddhists. The point is, you don’t really want me. And if you don’t, what’s the point?”

“I guess I do,” she said. “You’re from Hollywood, that’s enough for me. I’m not very snobbish about it.”

“Snobbish!” he said. “You’re crazy, that’s what you are. My penis doesn’t have Beverly Hills stamped on it, or anything.”

“I meant you were someone sweet from Hollywood,” she said quickly.

“Am I sweet enough that you’d want me even if I wasn’t from Hollywood?”

“Oh, sure. I told you I wasn’t very snobbish.”

Joe sighed. “You win,” he said. “I’m glad I came—you’ve got to be unique. Can I ask you one question? What do
you
really
like?”

“You mean about screwing?”

“About anything. Start with that if you like.”

Her frown went away and she gave him a shy, almost mischievous look. “Maybe I’ll tell you, now that you’re jolly again,” she said. “It was awful when you were depressed. Maybe I’ll show you—it might be fun for you.”

“Maybe,” he said dubiously. “Why don’t you kinda sketch out what’s involved before we launch into it. I’m not very acrobatic and I’m a real novice at yoga and stuff like that.”

“Come on,” she said. “Don’t think about it. If you do you’ll get depressed again. I’ll help you.” She thrust a hand into his shorts and helped him. Somewhat to his surprise, he became erect. “See?” she said. “Why’d you talk so much?”

“I can’t remember,” he said, thinking, What the hell. He took off his underpants but his erection went as quickly as it had come and by the time he was in position it was mostly gone. He tried a bit, embarrassed, and Dixie decided that a little conversation might help matters. Just as he thought he was about to return to potency she became very talkative.