All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel (24 page)

Godwin Lloyd-Jons met me on the front porch of his house, with two cans of beer. I don’t know how he could have known I was coming. Maybe he just happened to have two cans of beer in his hands. Godwin looked thinner and older, but he was still the perfect host.

“Welcome back, my boy,” he said. “Is that beer cold enough?”

“It’s fine. Is Sally here?”

“No,” he said quietly. We sat down on the steps and sipped our beer. He had pretty spring flowers in his yard. We looked at each other and said nothing. We weren’t engaging. It was a feeling I had had for weeks, ever since Jill left San Francisco. I hadn’t engaged with anyone. I was very separate. My words got across to people, but it was all verbal. At a deeper level, some level of needs and responses to needs, I was separate from everybody.

“Has she had the baby?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s not called.” He grimaced, as if his gums were aching.

“Is she with her folks?”

“They took her,” he said. “I believe they have rented her an apartment. At least I have an address. I doubt she’s entirely alone, though. She expressed some interest in a Mr. Leonard. A genius at the calculus, I believe.”

“Mathematicians have no more scruples than writers,” I said.

“Oh, fuck it,” Godwin said. “Fuck it all.” His legs seemed thinner and his socks were slipping down his skinny ankles.

“I haven’t had any Mexican food in a long time,” I said. “Do you want to go and eat?”

Godwin belched. After he belched, he sighed. “I don’t
suppose we ought to be breaking bread together,” he said. “Not technically. You
did
take her from me.”

“I don’t live very technically,” I said. “Anyway, she never gave a damn about either of us.”

I felt very discouraged. Godwin had suddenly become a romantic purist. I would love to be a romantic purist but I knew there would never be any way for me to fake it. I stood up to go to Houston.

“Oh, let’s do eat,” Godwin said. “I was just remembering how much I hated you once.”

I remembered my autograph party was the next evening. It was something I knew I mustn’t forget. Godwin and I ate at a cafe by the river. It was full dusk, and the moon had risen. I could see the moon out a window and it grew whiter as it rose. The cafe was full of Mexicans and students. The Mexican food was very hot. I scalded my mouth with hot sauce and cooled it with beer. They brought us beer in large half-gallon pitchers. The beer was cold and the pitchers sweated and dripped. My tiredness turned right away into lightheaded drunkenness. The drunkenness gradually seeped down from my head to the rest of my body. The only part of me that resisted was my stomach. In my stomach somewhere, amid the beer and enchiladas and chili con queso, was a hair ball of anxiety. No amount of beer was going to dissolve the hair ball, but I drank anyway. It would dissolve the rest of me. I drank beer like a horse drinks water, dipping my nose in it. Godwin was getting drunk too. I went to the jukebox and punched Elvis Presley records. Out the window the white moon hung over the river. When I got drunk enough not to be flat anymore I noticed that Godwin’s face was ravaged. His teeth were awful. I could see their stems.

“You don’t look happy,” I said mildly.

“You notice everything, don’t you?” he said, suddenly
belligerent. “Bloody little writer. No doubt you pride yourself on your powers of observation. The ever observant eye, the note-taking mind. Godwin looks unhappy. Why is Godwin unhappy? Find out cause. Put in book. Make great name for oneself. And up the fucking ladder you go, from my unhappiness to the bloody Nobel Prize.”

“You got me wrong,” I said.

He grumbled for an hour about my Nobel Prize, but I don’t think he really cared. We went back and sat on his porch and drank brandy. The Austin night swirled around us, warm and familiar. Crickets made noises. Godwin sunk himself in a deep wicker chair and passed his brandy under his nose.

“A fine brandy,” he said. “A rare distillation, like my unhappiness. Only a connoisseur could appreciate an unhappiness such as mine. It would take a mind trained to the finer subtleties. That’s what they should be giving Nobel Prizes for, unhappiness.”

I was silent, determined not to say anything that would make him purple.

“To Godwin Lloyd-Jons,” he said, “for high and singular achievement in unhappiness. Years of dedication. Years of sacrifice. Dedication to folly. The sacrifice of all good sense.”

“Come on,” I said. “Sally’s not that tragic.”

I should have kept quiet. He flashed at me.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” he said. “What do you think Sally has to do with it? That little cunt couldn’t make me unhappy. My unhappiness is compounded of a hundred unworthier loves than her.”

I shut up again, and sniffed my brandy.

“Tragic is not a word that is called for in this discussion,” Godwin said. “Nothing tragic has ever happened to me, or ever will. I was speaking of unhappiness, not tragedy.” He was still bristly.

“I don’t know anything about anything, Godwin,” I said.

“That’s quite true,” he said, smiling. “You’ve a touching humility, really. Never confuse unhappiness with tragedy.”

“How do I tell them apart?” I asked.

Godwin stared at his brandy. He was really very sad. “I envy the victims of tragedy,” he said, in a very flat voice. “They haven’t to feel guilty, or to blame themselves for their own waste and the waste of others. War. Starvation. Loved ones dead before their time. The concentration camps. What have I in common with people who have suffered such things? Nothing.”

He sniffed a couple of times—tears, not brandy.

“Tragedy is no achievement,” he said. “It happens to you or it doesn’t. The foolish can be as tragic as the wise. Look at this house,” he said suddenly. “Forty thousand dollars. Completely insured. Look at my job. Twenty thousand a year for walking three blocks and shooting off my bloody mouth six hours a week. That too is completely insured. Tenure, retirement. They’ll probably even buy my fucking coffin. I eat the best food that’s buyable and drink to excess of very excellent liquor. I have students to fuck—absolute scores of them. A good car, clothes, books, cinema, parties—home to England in the summer, if I want to go. I could waste two thirds of what I have and still have more than any man needs. I
do
waste two thirds of what I have—I’m so fucking bored with having it.”

We were silent. The crickets cricked. Students walked by, hand in hand.

“No tragedy here,” he said. “My circumstances are hopelessly incommensurate with my capacity for suffering. I can’t be tragic when I’m made so fucking comfortable twenty-four hours a day. Who can? One summons all ones resources for the fight for unhappiness. I’ve no war to fight, no prison to endure. My body’s known no duress, no tyrant
is out to trample my spirit. It’s all in personal life, for such as us. Famine, drought, war, injustice—anything you want. We pump it all into our personal life.”

I was well into my brandy, and very tired. I lost track of what Godwin was saying even as I tried to fix my mind on it. Sally was in Houston and I had to get up and go on. Just as I was about to raise myself, a motorcycle turned into Godwin’s driveway. A young guy in a leather jacket was riding it. A minute later two more motorcycles turned into the street and stopped at the curb. The first rider killed his cycle and got off. The second two killed their cycles and didn’t get off.

Godwin stood up. There was a sudden new tension on the porch. The kid who had driven up first came to the steps. He had a distinct swagger. I decided to hate him. In my state such decisions came easy.

“Well, Geoffrey,” Godwin said. “I thought you were coming to dinner last night.”

“I got busy,” Geoffrey said. The fabled Geoffrey, finally. He wasn’t apologizing one bit.

“Quite all right,” Godwin said. “I wasn’t chiding you. I’ve been a little worried, I guess. This is Danny Deck, Sally’s husband.”

“Let’s go in the house,” Geoffrey said. He squinted at me. His hair was very short, but it didn’t look like it had been cut that way. It looked like that was as long as it would grow.

Godwin looked pained. He flashed me an apologetic look and followed Geoffrey in. I got up and followed Godwin in. I wanted to look at Geoffrey in the light. When I got in he had sprawled on Godwin’s couch, his arms crossed on his chest. He had a bad complexion and a thin stingy mouth, I had expected him to be a kind of young Adonis, but he was only a young runt. He was just a little Central Texas
thug, in greasy Levi’s. I had seen a million of him. He put one of his dirty boots on Godwin’s mahogany coffee table.

“You got any money?” he asked Godwin.

“Certainly. How much do you need?”

Godwin’s hand was trembling when he pulled his billfold out. He was getting the screws put on him by a teen-age hood, in full view of me. I should have left the room, but I didn’t want Geoffrey to think his dirty clothes impressed everybody.

“Three hunnerd,” he said, in reply to Godwin.

Godwin was badly startled. “That’s quite a lot,” he said. He counted his money. “I’m afraid I’ve only got sixty. You’re welcome to that, of course.”

“I gotta have three hunnerd,” Geoffrey said flatly.

“I could get it in the morning,” Godwin said. “Won’t that be soon enough?”

“Naw. Wrote a hot check for a hunnert and fifty. Can’t afford no hot checks. Besides, we’s going to have a party.”

“That still doesn’t come to three hundred,” Godwin said, pained and plaintive. “Why do you need three hundred?”

He asked for it and he got it. A mean little smile cut across Geoffrey’s thin mouth. “We’s gonna get laid,” he said. “Going down to La Grance to ’at whorehouse. Ain’t got no money for the whores.”

I decided I didn’t want to watch, and I went to the kitchen and got myself a beer to chase the brandy with. When I got back to the living room the argument was ending.

“I’ll run and try the Seven-Eleven,” Godwin said. “Perhaps they’ll cash my check. I’m well known there. I buy there often. Do you want to ask your friends in, while you wait?”

He was very pale.

“Naw,” Geoffrey said.

“Do excuse me for a few minutes,” Godwin said, not meeting my eye. He left.

“Where you from?” I asked, conversationally.

“Odessa,” Geoffrey said. He got up and went upstairs. I assumed he was looking for something to steal. That didn’t bother me, but he did. I went upstairs too. There was a nice balcony-patio on the second floor. I went out on it and looked at the stars. Nothing was swirling, but I was tired enough to feel strange. It was a nice little drop from the patio to the graveled backyard—maybe ten feet. The stars over Austin were beautiful. It was kind of terrible, Godwin’s life. I could imagine what Geoffrey must do to him when they were alone. I usually like people but I didn’t like Geoffrey. I didn’t like him getting away with the things he got away with. I drained my beer and waited on the patio. I felt strange and a little dangerous. Zapata was about to come out of the mountains. Zapata’s people were needing corn. I leaned against the balcony rail and when Geoffrey came out of Godwin’s room and swaggered down the hall I hailed him. For better or worse, old Godwin was one of my own. Boy did he need corn.

“Hey, Geoffrey,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Geoffrey stopped and stared at me. I didn’t ask again. I waited. He stood. Finally he opened the door and came out. I walked toward him, very unsteady. He saw I was deeply drunk. He didn’t know what else I was, though—what else I was deeply. He didn’t know what I cared about, or what I didn’t care about.

“Watcha want?” he asked, frankly wary.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I just wanted to say hi to you from Sally. She asked me to. She talks about you a lot.”

“Yeah?” Geoffrey said. I wandered back to the rail, and he followed.

“She says you’re a great fuck,” I said.

Even Geoffrey could be pleasantly surprised. His stingy mouth grinned. He leaned both elbows on the railing and looked down at the gravel.

“’At Sally,” he said tightly. For him it must have been expansiveness. I was behind him. His tight smugness was just like hers. For a hot second I could have killed him. I grabbed both his legs and heaved. He was looking down, caught for half a moment by some memory of Sally. It must have been a horrible surprise to him, to find his legs suddenly rising above his head. He tried to wiggle and grab but it was too late. I had caught him completely off guard. I took his legs completely over his head and shoved him out with my body. He had an odd expression on his tight little face. He twisted in the air and hit on his side. I watched—I wanted to know if I was a murderer or what. I was glad the yard wasn’t grass. Gravel was his desert and gravel was what he got. It didn’t kill him. He writhed on the gravel, not even knocked out. I looked at him. I was silent. He couldn’t believe it. He made some groans, looking up at me. I suddenly felt sick. I could never be good at violence. Geoffrey looked up at me in pained innocence. He had no idea what he had done to me, or to anyone. I looked at him silently and went downstairs. Godwin was just coming in the living room door, lots of money in his hand.

“Where’s Geoffrey?” he asked.

“I just threw him off the patio,” I said.

“My God,” he said. “Are you serious? His friends are criminals. They’ll kill you.”

“Not me,” I said. “I’m going to Houston. You can ride along, if you like.”

“It would do no good,” he said. “You’re most inconsiderate. Of course he’s a horrible little fucker, but that’s not the point. They won’t blame me, I’ve got the money. I
must calm down. But you have to run. They’ll be on you like wolves.”

It obviously did behoove me to get moving, but I felt quite calm. I shook Godwin’s hand.

“That kid’s too tough for you,” I said.

Godwin smiled crookedly. “Best of luck,” he said. “I shall buy your book.”

The two hoods were sitting on their cycles, right behind my car. They were both about twice as big as Geoffrey.

“You guys better scram,” I said. “Geoffrey just committed suicide.”

“Done what?” one said, opening his fat mouth incredulously.

“Yeah,” I said, getting into El Chevy. “He cut his throat with a paring knife. The cops are on the way. Nice to meet you.”