The Last Good Kiss (35 page)

raging case of septicemia, and they had to do a

hysterectomy to stop the infection. Pretty, isn't it? I

had left my purse in Albert's car and lied about my

name and my age, so nobody knew. I was afraid for

anybody to know, ashamed, too, I guess. Anyway, by

the time I was released from the hospital, I had been

gone too long to go home, or so I thought, so I lived on

the streets in the Haight until Jack took me in, and then

so many other things happened that I just couldn't face

going home at all. Not even when I heard about Bubba

getting killed in Viet Nam."

"Is that your brother Lonnie?"

"Yes."

"Your little brother's dead too," I said.

"I know," she whispered. "I sneak back every now

and again to hang around Sonoma, and I heard about

it. I nearly went home then, too."

"You should have gone home in the first place," I

said. "A lot of grief could have been spared a lot of

folks, including you."

"I know," she said, "god, I know, but my daddy was

gone and he didn't care, I called him once and he didn't

care, and my momma was a slut . . .

"

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- "Hey," I said.

She looked at me. "Guess I've no right to judge,

huh?"

"Not even if you had lived the life of a vestal

virgin," I said.

"You're right," she sighed. "It seemed so important

back then. Momma tried to act like it didn't mean

anything when she divorced Daddy, but I could tell it

did. She got to drinking a lot and bringing men into the

trailer house, and I'd lie back there in the back

bedroom and listen to them laughing and banging

around and tell myself that if she'd stop that, my daddy

would come home, which was silly, since he never paid

any attention to me when he was there. About the nine

hundredth time he looked at me like a stranger when I

was a little girl, I decided I had been adopted. I guess

every little kid does that, huh?"

"It's an easy way out," I said.

"And it was all so long ago," she whispered.

"Now it's all come back."

"I think I'm glad, you know," she said as she patted

me on the thigh. "I really think I'm glad it's all over. "

"Me too . "

"You drove straight through from Montana, didn't

you?"

"Right."

"You must be exhausted," she said, then moved her

hand from my thigh to the back of my neck. "Go check

into a motel and sleep," she said, "then come back

tomorrow about ten. I'll meet you down here. Is that all

right?"

I yawned. "It's fine."

"You've been so kind to me," she said, "kind to

everybody-Trahearne and Selma and my momma. It's

always like that, you know, for me. Every time things

look bad somebody shows up in my life, and they're so

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much kinder than I deserve-like you and Selma and

Trahearne, even poor old Jack in his own twisted way . "

"Maybe you deserve it," I said.

"Nobody deserves it," she said, "it just happens. I'll

see you tomorrow. " Then she leaned over to kiss me

lightly on the corner of my mouth, a sisterly kiss, but

her breath smelled of herbs and dried flowers and

spring water, fresh and cool. "About ten," she whispered, and I kissed her on the mouth. Her lips parted slightly, our tongues touched for a brief electric moment, and her eyes widened, darkened to a stormy blue. "I'm sorry," she said, apologizing for something

she hadn't done, something she wouldn't do, then she

climbed out of the pickup, snapped her fingers at

Fireball, who lumbered out from under the VW, and

they pranced up the trail.

In that sudden sleepy moment, it became clear to me

that, like it or not, I was standing in the lady's line and I

didn't care about my position. She left me breathing

like a hard-run horse. As I eased back down the

sweeping curves of the canyon highway, I told myself

that if I didn't watch out, Trahearne's women were

either going to break my heart or change my life or be

the death of me. I also told myself to drive north

toward home as fast as the El Camino would go , but I

didn't. I had a few drinks instead of lunch, but the taste

of her mouth remained in mine like a sweet communion

cracker unbroken before the bitter wine. In the middle

of the afternoon, I checked into a Holiday Inn, checked

out into a dreamless sleep, a wake-up call waiting like a

death sentence.

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1 4 ••••

THE NEXT MORNING, THE CONDEMNED MAN , WHO HAD

slept like a child and showered like a teenager

preparing for a date, ate as hearty a breakfast as the

Holiday Inn could provide, then stepped outside to

contemplate the delicate air and the clear blue sunshine

of the high plains. Interstate 25 was two hundred feet to

the east, though, and the diesel stench took the edge off

my enjoyment. Sixty-five miles south, the gray cloud of

Denver's smog humped over the horizon like a whale's

back. But the morning was finally ruined when I saw

Trahearne sitting in his Cadillac barge, an obscene grin

on his round face. He looked like a fat, mean child.

"What's happening?" I said, trying to stay calm.

"Hell, boy, I checked every motel in town before this

one," he said. "I thought you had more taste than to

stay at a Holiday Inn."

"Some of my best friends are Holiday Inns," I said.

"What are you doing here?''

"Looking for you, what else?" he ;said. "After we

talked, I decided to drive down to Meriwether, and

when I got there, your secretary told me that you had

driven down here, so I picked up a couple of hitchhikers, and they helped with the driving, and we drove all night and here I am . . .

" His voice ran slowly down,

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like one of those talking dolls whose string had been

pulled too many times.

"Let's not have any more lying, okay?" I said as I

opened the door of the Caddy and got in. "No more

lying."

"I couldn't find her without you, son," he sighed. "I

didn't know where to look."

"You were already here when you called me, weren't

you?" I asked, and he nodded. "And you sent her

daddy a postcard, didn't you?" His head rose and sank

once, then lay heavily on his chest. "Why?"

"I've got to know who she's seeing," he muttered.

"Okay," I said, "I'll show you. "

"Would you drive?" he asked.

There seemed no need to hurry, so I eased the

convertible through town. Traheame didn't say anything until we were four or five miles on the other side of town on the Laramie highway. As we topped the first

hill and dropped into a little valley beyond a hogback

ridge, he said something, but the wind through the

convertible covered his words.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Not sorry enough to suit me, old man," I said, and

he started to weep. "Stop your goddamned whimpering," I said. "Just stop it. You know what she said when I told her that you'd seen that movie?" He shook his

head. "She said, 'That poor, poor man.' She's too good

for you, you know that?"

"God do I ever know it," he said.

As we turned off 287 onto the Poudre Canyon road, I

asked him, "Why? What the hell did you have in mind?

How did you know where to go?"

"I didn't have anything in mind," he said, "except

finding her. I was out there, driving around in circles

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and drinking, you know, hoping to find her but not

looking for her, you know, and when I stopped at the

Cottontail, I couldn't . . . Well, the little whore must

have told you."

"Told me what?"

"I couldn't get it up," he said blankly.

"She didn't even remember you," I said.

"That's even worse."

"If you want them to remember you, old man, stay

out of whorehouses," I said. "How did you know to go

to Sonoma?"

"Once she was gone, off on a trip, and I went

through her things and found a clipping from the San

Francisco paper, a review of a Little Theatre group

production of Anouilh's Antigone. When I read the

description of the girl who played the lead, I knew it

had to be her. " Then he paused. "I've always known

she wasn't who she said she was," he admitted, "knew

right from the beginning. She had never been to t!:te

south of France, never been to Sun Valley before that

summer. At first it seemed exciting, you know, not

knowing who she really was. But it was like the promise

she made me give her before she would marry me-the

novelty wore off quickly and began to drive me mad."

"What promise?" I said as I parked the Caddy

behind Melinda's VW. A battered gray GMC pickup