Texasville (24 page)

“Forget it,” Karla said. “You was born with one of those little plastic spoons like they give you to stir coffee with on an airplane.”

Duane saw that the conversation was making Sonny nervous, though Karla and Bobby Lee talked that way to one another all the time. Bobby Lee’s little sinking spells always made Karla’s spirits rise.

It wasn’t a long trip from Bobby Lee’s house to the Dairy Queen, but Karla and Bobby wouldn’t stop badgering one another, and Sonny looked more and more nervous. The more nervous he got, the more irritated Duane became with the conversation.

“You two are driving me crazy,” he said.

“The movie I was watching was called
The Burning Hills”
Sonny said. “It had Natalie Wood and Tab Hunter in it.”

“Natalie Wood, it’s sad that she drowned,” Karla said.

That afternoon Sonny got a crowbar and pried the little fragment of balcony off the frame of the picture show. The balcony had been so flimsily attached that it only took him an hour to complete the job.

CHAPTER 33

T
HE APPOINTMENT WITH THE NEUROLOGIST HAD
been made at Karla’s insistence. Duane backed her up, and Sonny didn’t fight them. He was reluctant to talk about what happened, though. He refused two dinner invitations to avoid having to talk about it. They got the name of a neurologist and made the appointment. When they showed up on the appointed morning he got in the BMW, but he didn’t really look willing.

“Just because you tore down the balcony don’t mean you’re well,” Duane said.

“Do you see whole movies in your head, or what?” Karla asked.

Sonny considered the question—it seemed to interest him.

“I saw a lot of
The Burning Hills,”
he said.

“It’s like I have a VCR in my brain,” he said, a few miles later. Then he chuckled sadly.

“Was it a good movie?” Karla asked. Since the morning they had seen Sonny in the balcony, her spirits had been volatile. She had had several crying jags, and spent more and more time with Jacy.

She had also stopped wearing T-shirts with mottoes on them, dropping them in favor of blank black T-shirts.

Sonny had no opinion on
The Burning Hills.
He said nothing. The road to Dallas seemed interminable. The three of them fell silent and rode along submerged in gloom. Once they hit the Dallas traffic the trip seemed even more interminable.

“Turn on the radio, Duane,” Karla said. “Get the traffic reports. We don’t want to run into any traffic jams.”

“What do you call this?” Duane asked. They were inching along in bumper-to-bumper traffic, a mile or two inbound from the Dallas airport. The skyline of Dallas was clearly visible fifteen miles away. Like the mountains of Colorado, the skyline seemed near and yet far. Twenty minutes later it looked just as distant.

The impenetrability of the traffic made Sonny nervous.

“I wish I weren’t causing this trouble,” he said. “I hate to cause people trouble.”

“Everybody causes somebody trouble,” Karla said. “If you don’t cause anybody trouble then you might as well be dead. Think of it that way.”

“Don’t think of it that way,” Duane said. He didn’t want Sonny thinking he might as well be dead. “Just think of it as a slow trip to Dallas with two old friends,” he advised.

“I cause Duane trouble every day of his life,” Karla pointed out.

“It’s not fair, either,” Duane said. “It’s unilateral.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Karla said.

“It means I never cause you any back,” Duane said.

“You cause me plenty,” Karla said. “I have mental anxiety because you never tell me what you’re doing with your girlfriends.”

“There’s little to tell,” Duane said, grinning. “I just do simple things.”

That was certainly true where relations with Suzie Nolan were concerned. Suzie seemed to be a great deal more relaxed than most people in Thalia—or perhaps than most people anywhere. For that reason, what they did seemed simpler than it had with other girlfriends. Their desire, though urgent, left no overhang and produced no complications, which seemed too
good to be true, or at least, too good to stay true. Yet, so far, it had stayed true.

“Wipe that cocky grin off your face or I might jump out of this car,” Karla said.

Sonny looked horrified at the prospect of Karla jumping out on a crowded freeway.

“Just kidding, just kidding,” she said quickly. “I’m not going to jump out of the car.”

Sonny’s examination took four hours, during most of which time Duane and Karla sat in the BMW and listened to Willie Nelson tapes. Karla had a major collection of Willie Nelson tapes. Duane liked Willie Nelson’s singing a good deal, but after a couple of hours he began to wish for the sound of another voice. Even Karla’s. Even Jenny Marlow’s.

“Don’t you have any other tapes?” he asked.

“I don’t like to hear anybody but Willie when I’m depressed,” Karla said.

“Why are you depressed?” Duane asked. “It’s Sonny who’s sick.”

“He doesn’t understand us very well,” Karla said. “He thought I was gonna jump out of the car just because you’re in love with Suzie Nolan.”

“I’m not in love with Suzie Nolan,” he said.

“She’s a step up from Janine, I’ll admit that,” Karla said.

Duane didn’t say anything.

“You could just admit it,” Karla said. “I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

Duane laughed.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Karla asked. “I solemnly promise I won’t hold it against you. Curiosity can drive a person crazy.”

“What are you so curious about?” he asked.

“What kind of sex things you do with your girlfriends,” Karla said. “I’ll get insecure if you don’t tell me.”

“Just listen to Willie,” Duane said. “I don’t believe in talking about my private life.”

“You probably do a lot more things than you ever do with me,” Karla said. “She’s a younger woman, too. It makes me insecure for you to sleep with younger women.”

“Arthur’s about fifteen years younger than I am,” Duane pointed out. “He went to Yale, too. He probably knows how to do things I never even heard of.”

“He does, but he don’t wanta do them with me,” Karla said, looking glum.

“Why not?” Duane asked.

“Because he wants to do them with boys,” Karla said. “Arthur was a big disappointment. It seemed like he was normal for a while, and then it turned out not to be true.”

Duane immediately began to feel more cheerful.

“Win a few, lose a few,” he said, not unkindly.

“I don’t even win one twice a year,” Karla said. “And now you’ve got a younger woman and who knows where that’ll stop?”

“Suzie Nolan’s not two years younger than you,” he pointed out.

Karla looked pretty depressed. “I knew I’d get a confession out of you,” she said. “I can’t blame her for wanting you. Junior’s a total dud. He claims he took a headache pill two years ago and has been impotent ever since.”

“What do you and Jacy talk about all day?” Duane asked, hoping to change the subject.

“I wouldn’t tell you if you were the last person on earth,” Karla said. “Two years younger is a lot younger when you’re staring forty-seven in the face.”

“You’ve always been the best-looking woman in town, and you still are,” Duane said truthfully.

“I wouldn’t have been if Jacy had stayed around,” Karla said. “I’ve got better skin but she’s got those good cheekbones. But Nellie and Julie are both going to be more beautiful than me. At least I’m the mother of beautiful daughters.”

“What do you mean, at least?” Duane said. “There’s nothing wrong with your life.”

“Nothing except my boyfriends and my husband,” Karla said. “Every trouble I’ve had, a man was the cause of it. I might try being a feminist, only it’s probably too late for me to learn it.”

“Don’t get depressed thinking I do a lot of weird things,” Duane said. “I’ve never done a weird thing in my life.”

“I know, you’re just straight vanilla,” Karla said. “That’s why I took up boyfriends. You only live once. I thought somebody must know something you didn’t know, but the truth is there’s people who know even less than you do, Duane.”

“Hard to believe,” he said.

“Men are jerks,” Karla added, turning up the tape.

The last hour seemed to go on for a week. Duane wondered if Willie Nelson ever sat around outside doctors’ offices for four hours. He wondered what tapes he listened to, if he did.

Twice, feeling that the day would never end, he offered to take Karla shopping. She shrugged off the offer.

“I hate shopping,” she said. “Just because I spend about a million a year don’t mean I like doing it.”

“Why do you do it then?” he asked, surprised. She didn’t seem to be joking.

“I don’t know,” Karla said. “Do you think we ought to see a marriage counselor? It’s not a good idea to let things slide too long.”

“I didn’t know things were sliding,” Duane said. “They seem to be going along pretty level. Now and then there’s a bump, I guess.”

“No, it broke my heart seeing Sonny sitting in the balcony,” Karla said. “Then I realized that was not what broke it. It was already broken. You broke it. Seeing him just made me realize I didn’t have a whole heart anymore.”

Duane looked at her. Her eyes, usually devilish, were blank, a sign of real depression. He decided the situation might be more serious than he had thought.

“You might be listening to too much Willie Nelson,” he said.

Karla took the tape out of the tape player and threw it out the window. She took the shoebox containing her seventy-eight Willie Nelson tapes and threw it out the window too. She opened the glove compartment and found five or six more tapes. They immediately went out the window.

Duane didn’t say anything. Neither did Karla. Two carpenters from a construction site just down the street came walking along. The sidewalk in front of the doctor’s office was littered with tapes. The carpenters were drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups. They looked curiously at the tapes. Both were thin
kids with a rather hangdog look. They squatted down and began to give the tapes a leisurely once-over. They seemed to be connoisseurs, like Karla. They examined the list of songs on each tape carefully. They discussed one or two of the tapes quietly between themselves. Once or twice they glanced at the BMW to see if there could be any connection between it and the tapes. Karla had put on her darkest dark glasses. They rendered her totally inscrutable as she watched the two young carpenters picking among her tapes. They continued their leisurely examination. One of them began to make a tentative keep pile.

“Are you going to sit there and let them take eighty-five Willie Nelson tapes?” Duane asked. He was beginning to feel annoyed.

“Why not?” Karla asked.

“I think you should see a neurologist yourself,” Duane said.

He got out of the car and began to gather up the tapes. The young carpenters looked startled, but immediately relinquished their find. One of them gave Karla a youthful, dubious smile as they left.

Duane filled the shoebox with tapes and brought them back to the car. Ten or fifteen tapes had to be piled on top, in a kind of pyramid.

As he was sliding under the wheel Karla threw the box of tapes back out the window. Then she got out herself and walked off in the direction the carpenters had gone.

Before she reached the construction site Sonny came out of the doctor’s office. He got in the back seat. Then he noticed all the Willie Nelson tapes on the sidewalk.

“Are those Karla’s tapes?” he asked.

“They were,” Duane said. “I guess she doesn’t want them anymore.”

“It’s a lot of tapes,” Sonny said, with some anxiety in his voice.

“Well, I picked them up once, I’m not picking them up again,” Duane said.

“I don’t think I could have been married,” Sonny said. “Tension upsets me.”

“You’re in for a rough trip then,” Duane said.

He saw Karla coming back down the sidewalk with the young carpenter who had smiled at her. He started the BMW, backed up a little, jumped the low curb, and began to go forward and then backward in the area where the tapes were scattered. The tapes crunched like shells. When he felt he had crunched the majority of them he drove off the sidewalk and parked.

Karla and the young carpenter had stopped to watch. The young carpenter turned back. Karla strolled on toward the car.

“What will she do?” Sonny asked, apprehensively.

Duane didn’t answer.

“I should never have caused you all this trouble,” Sonny said. “I thought you were happy.”

Karla squatted down amid the crushed tapes. She examined them in the same leisurely manner that the carpenters had displayed. She picked up three tapes, got in the car, and smiled at Duane.

“That was real childish of you, Duane,” she said. “Besides, you missed the best three.”

Duane immediately drove off. They passed the hangdog young carpenter, who had a frightened look on his face.

“I doubt he could put in a garbage disposal either,” Duane said.

“If Richie bothered you that much you should have said something at the time,” Karla said, with another vivid smile.

They were passing the airport before Duane remembered that Sonny had been to a neurologist. To the north, like silver steps in the sky, eight or ten jetliners were lined up in their landing pattern.

“Go a little faster, Duane,” Karla said.

“Why?”

“One of those airplanes could land right on top of us,” she said. “I never liked roads that go right under airplanes.”

She continued to talk, but a DC-10 lumbered down just above them and the roar drowned out her words. The plane reminded Duane of an elephant. Air waves rocked the BMW. Karla shut her eyes and hid her head in her arms.

“That was another childish thing you did, Duane,” she said, once they were past the airport.

“No, that was a coincidence,” Duane said. “I don’t think Sonny’s ever gonna want to ride with us again, though.”

“I don’t want to ride with us either,” Karla said. “If there is an us.”

She looked back at Sonny, who was white with tension.

“What was wrong with your head, Luke?” she asked.