McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (42 page)

 
          
 
He snapped his gums a few times.

 
          
 
"You can rent them boots for five hunnert
a month," he said. "But where they go I go. You gotta rent me with
'em. I'll cost you another five hunnert plus expenses. And the hotel room
better have color TV."

 
          
 
"He's hopin' for one of them dirty movie
channels," Hoot said. "They got 'em in
Albuquerque
now."

 
          
 
It was an unexpected turn of events. Uncle Ike
wanted to go to
Washington
.

 
          
 
"Why should a goddamn mangy Indian get to
go someplace I ain't been?" he asked. Evidently he had been brooding about
the matter for seventy-five or eighty years.

 
          
 
"I guess we could manage that," I
said. Cindy was inscrutable, behind her dark glasses.

 
          
 
"If you see the President tell him to cut
out this socialism," Hoot said.

 
          
 
"Well, I might not get asked to the White
House," Uncle Ike said. "I ain't
no
Indian
chief."

 
          
 
"Aren't we even gonna see the
boots?" Cindy asked

 
          
 
There was silence for a moment.

 
          
 
"She's got a mind of her own, ain't
she?" Uncle Ike said. "You best take a bed slat to her before she
takes one to you."

 
          
 
I knew the boots were in a bank vault in
Clovis
.

 
          
 
"We do have to go right back through
Clovis
," I said. "Maybe we could just
stop and look at the boots."

 
          
 
"I'll take the five hunnert for the boots
in advance," Uncle Ike said. "And I ain't gonna do but one talk show
a day. Too many talk shows fog up my system."

 
          
 
His system looked clear as crystal to me. He
had scarcely taken his eyes off Cindy the whole time. I tried to get him to
discuss a few details but he was mainly interested in staring at Cindy*s
nipples.

 
          
 
"I guess you're one of them bra-burnin'
libbers," he remarked. Then he put his teeth in, called his banker, and arranged
for us to look at the boots. We agreed to send him a plane ticket
Albuquerque-to-Washington once the exhibition date was set.

 
          
 
"Don't forget about the color TV,"
he said, as we turned to walk back to the car.

 
          
 
On the way back to
Clovis
the car phone rang. I was reluctant to pick
it up, fearing it would just be Coffee again, but Cindy insisted so I did. In
fact it was her service, informing her that Spud Breyfogle had called and
wanted her to meet him in
Miami
the next day.

 
          
 
Cindy instantly became so nervous she all but
broke out in a rash. She began to scratch her hair, although her hair had been
thoroughly washed just a few hours earlier. Spud had made a reservation for her
at the
Fontainebleau
. By the time we drove into
Clovis
, Cindy had lost all interest in seeing the
boots we had come so far to see. She had begun to scratch under her arms. She
was really nervous.

 
          
 
"Why
Miami
?"
I asked, a little nervous, too.

 
          
 
"I don't see that it's any of your
business," she said. "I hope there's an airport around here
somewhere."

 
          
 
Actually there was one in
Lubbock
, which was not too far, but it turned out
to be impossible for us to make any flights that would get her to
Miami
that day.

 
          
 
This frustration was almost more than she could
bear. She kept the phone tied up for fifty miles, trying to find an air route
that would get her to
Florida
sometime that night.

 
          
 
"I don't see
what's the
hurry
," I said. "He isn't coming till tomorrow. You can easily
get there in the morning."

 
          
 
Cindy glared at me. "He wants me to be
there when he arrives," she said. "My service said so. It's your
fault I'm here, anyway. Normally I'd be in
Washington
and I could get there tonight."

 
          
 
As we were rushing across the plains a norther
struck, so strong that by the time we reached
Lubbock
we could barely see for the blowing sand.
In
Lubbock
this is no big deal— the town is usually
knee-deep in sand anyway—but it played havoc with Cindy's very tentative
schedule, since the flight that was to have taken her to
Dallas
was canceled. Sand beat against the windows
of the Cadillac, and swirled in waves down the flat streets. Cindy couldn't
believe it. She had never seen a real sandstorm and she seemed to feel I had
conjured it up just to prevent her reaching Spud.

 
          
 
"Why would you do this?" she asked.

 
          
 
"I didn't do anything," I said.
"I can't make a sandstorm happen."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but you're glad," she said.
"You're already trying to make Spud mad at me. You're terrible when you're
jealous, do you know that?"

 
          
 
"I guess we better try and find a
motel," I said.

 
          
 
Cindy was scratching her armpit. She was still
pretty nervous. She looked at me suspiciously. Then she looked out the window
at the rivulets of sand, flowing endlessly off the hundreds of miles of plowed
cropland that surround
Lubbock
. The sand blotted out the lower sky. The streetlights had been turned
on and shone a weak yellow against the brown sky.

 
          
 
"Just make sure our room has two
beds," Cindy said.

 
          
 
I got a room with two vast beds. Emotional
tension had exhausted both of us. I lay on one bed, Cindy on another. When we
roused ourselves and fought our way through the sand to the motel restaurant I
was too tired to eat, but Cindy rapidly consumed her fourth steak. I offered
her my steak too but she only took my baked potato.

 
          
 
"At least you can't accuse me of denying
you protein," I said. "That's four steaks."

 
          
 
"I wish you'd stop counting," she
said. "I hate people who count."

 
          
 
After dinner we went back to our room and lay
nervously on our two beds, fully clothed. There was a Don Knotts movie on TV.
It was idiotic but it was better than total silence. Cindy’s plane left at
eight in the morning, which seemed a long time away.

 
          
 
"What are you going to do after I
go?" she asked.

 
          
 
"I don't know," I said. "The
only collector I know here collects bumper stickers and I don't need to see
him."

 
          
 
The bumper sticker collector was named Hank
Rink. He worked in a shoe store downtown and spent his vacations poking around
in auto junkyards all over the south and southwest, looking for early bumper
stickers. Sometimes when he found one he floated it off, but often it was
easier just to buy the bumper with the sticker still on it. Hank's garage was
so full of bumpers he couldn't get his car in it anymore, but he had some
wonderful bumper stickers, including four or five from the thirties, the
incunabular period for bumper stickers.

 
          
 
However, in her present mood, I didn't think
that Cindy would appreciate hearing much about Hank Rink, and I was right.

 
          
 
"I don't want to hear about any of those
nuts," she said. "Are you going to see your wife?"

 
          
 
"I don't have a wife."

 
          
 
"You might as well," she said.
"She calls you all the time."

 
          
 
I didn't answer. When we stopped talking we
could hear the sand beating like fine birdshot against the windows.

 
          
 
"This is an awful place," Cindy
said, in a weak voice. "I think it's the worst place I've ever been."

 
          
 
Then I heard a strange sound and looked over
and saw that she was crying. She lay flat on her back, fists clenched,
tears
rolling out of her eyes. At the same time she was
trying to stop crying by sniffing the tears back, which wasn't working. I went
over and put my arms around her, which she accepted gratefully. She pressed her
face into my shoulder, crying so hard that it was as if I had a faucet running
on my arm. Finally her crying slowed and she was able to catch her breath.

 
          
 
"Oh, I wish I'd never done it," she
said.

 
          
 
"Never done what?"

 
          
 
"Fucked Spud," she said. "I
didn't know he would frighten me so much. I should have just stayed with you,
even if you aren't very sexy."

 
          
 
"Well, you still can," I said.

 
          
 
She shook her head.

 
          
 
"Why can't you?"

 
          
 
"Because he's got me," she said.

 
          
 
She lay quietly for a while, hugging my arm.

 
          
 
"I don't trust you very much but at least
I'm not scared of you," she said. "I did trust you until you met that
hippie. You should have told me your wife still calls you."

 
          
 
There was no more talk of separate beds. Cindy
clung to me all night. She didn't allow an inch of space between us. We had
arranged for a wake-up call two hours before her flight, although the airport
was just a few minutes away. She didn't want to take any chances. But we didn't
really need the wake-up call. Both of us woke up an hour before it was due,
meaning we had three long hours to get through, somehow. Cindy started
scratching the minute she woke up.

 
          
 
"I hate this," she said. "I
never felt like this in my life. Usually I enjoy guys."

 
          
 
My own most fervent hope was that the hand of
the clock would move faster. It seemed to have been about two weeks since we
got the news that she was going to
Miami
.

 
          
 
"You didn't try anything last night,
while I was asleep, did you?" she asked, after a bit

 
          
 
"No," I said.

 
          
 
"I wish you were more understanding,” she
said. "I thought you were, at first, but now you've just totally stopped
trying anything."

 
          
 
"What good would it have done me to
try?" I asked. "You were worried stiff about Spud. You still
are."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but I notice things," she
said. "I'd notice if you tried. You don't seem to understand that little
things make a difference."

 
          
 
"It's not such a little thing," I
said. "I would try, except I'm depressed that you're going to see
Spud."

 
          
 
"The other day you acted like you
couldn't get enough of me," she said. "That day we fucked so much,
remember?"

 
          
 
“Sure," I said. "That was before you
decided I wasn't sexy."

 
          
 
"I didn't decide it," she insisted.
"After I fucked Spud I just realized it."

 
          
 
"Why would you want me to try anything if
Fm not sexy?" I said. I had been saving that question for a while.

 
          
 
"It would reassure me," Cindy said.
"It reassured me yesterday."

 
          
 
"That's funny," I said. "What
happened yesterday made me feel insecure. I still feel insecure."

 
          
 
"I don't know what to think of you.
Jack," Cindy said. "You weren't so selfish, at first. You thought of
me once in a while."

 
          
 
I was getting a strong sense of deja vu. There
was no reason why such illogical words should ever be exchanged by man and
woman, and yet the conversation was very familiar to me. It was quite
consistent with conversations I had had with Coffee, Kate, Tanya, and others.

 
          
 
"You could at least kiss me," Cindy
said.

 
          
 
I kissed her. She accepted it eagerly, too.
Evidently she wanted to be reassured by a repeat of yesterday's performance.
While I kissed her I wondered why I had ever mistaken such a bottomless pit of
insecurity for a confident woman. Probably it was just that she had ripped a
check out of her checkbook confidently. I've often been misled by clues no
larger than that.

 
          
 
I would have been content just to kiss for a
while, but Cindy wasn't. She wanted the whole works—or rather part of her
thought she wanted the whole works. Her body didn't really want any works, to
speak of. When I tried to penetrate her I couldn't. She felt like she was
sealed. I pushed for a while but I wasn't getting in. It made me feel
ridiculous, so I stopped.