I Loved You More (25 page)

For me, it took a couple sentences to get my voice calmed down. By the end of the first page, though, I'd hit my stride. The audience, I could feel them. My words and my voice speaking the words were holding the audience up. As if they were people in deep water, found my little rowboat, crawled on to safety, and were floating.

Then Hank. I got to watch Hank go to where I'd just been. His voice on his words wasn't no rowboat. We were all of us in the bar floating on his ocean liner big as the building.
Motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker
. Gave us all permission. At one point, my eyes were closed and I was listening hard, the sudden awareness that my lips were moving to his words. Lip-synching. I quick opened my eyes to see if anyone had caught me. Thank God all the eyes were on Hank.

And something else, standing outside looking in like that, at Hank, my friend, behind the podium, his lips at the mic, I saw him in a way I'd never seen him before. I mean I know I've always admired Hank. But that night, he was one of King Arthur's knights or a cousin of Chief Joseph's. A warrior. Bold, big, full of light. Maybe, just maybe, someday I could see myself a warrior too.

Afterwards, there was a swarm of people and Hank and I got out our suitcases and sold a shitload of books. Could have sold more but we only took cash. Standing there in the middle of it all, people crowding around us, felt good, felt the way we were supposed to be feeling. People wanted their books signed. They wanted to talk about writing, to talk about New York City. People wanted to talk about the meaning of life. All the while, I'm scribbling away, fucking up my Catholic School penmanship. Still, I kept looking for my sis.

Two beers into it, talking to a guy from Idaho Falls and a
girl from Leadore, I remembered Wilbur Tucker. My eyes went straight to the door where his wheelchair had been.

Outside on the sidewalk in front of the Blind Lemon, on Center Street, as far as I could see, only street lamps and twenty year olds. No wheelchair, no oxygen tank, no Wilbur Tucker.

I was going to leave a note for Wilbur with the bartender, but Hank and I got so caught up that night, it wasn't until way later on the air mattress on Margaret's living room floor that I remembered.

Wilbur Tucker. I never got to thank him. To this day, twenty years later, I still remember I forgot. Now, more than ever I know how important a thank you from a student can be.

Sometimes that's all you got.

HANK GETS UP,
does a little jig around the table. The way he moves is like the night at Judith's he danced to “April in Paris.” In the lobby of the Hotel Whitman, Hank shaking his ass. After a while the double doors behind the curtain of orange hanging beads open and there's a blast of rock and roll.
Welcome to the Hotel California
. The waitress with her small round tray walks through the orange hanging beads. Big red hair, lots of cleavage. The skirt of her blue-striped polyester uni is short. Textured pantyhose. Spike heels. They click with every step she steps to our table in the corner by the window. She sets two glasses of water on our table and a yellow plastic pitcher.

“If you boys want cocktails,” she says, “you've got to drink them in the bar.”

I watch Hank watch her. When she goes back through the orange hanging beads, she doesn't close the doors.

It's no longer quiet in the lobby. I'm thinking of the old man in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” At least that's how I remember it. That's what it is for me, now that I'm an old man, memory: a short story by Hemingway about an old man in a café. Way too many
copitas
.

But the loud rock and roll doesn't bother me. I check Hank
to see and it doesn't bother him either. The world has just spun us around a loop we've never spun on before. Live rock and roll can't hurt us. Even when it's local and bad. We look at each other as if we stop looking at each other the night will go away. It never ceased to startle me how Hank and I could look at each other. Mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved. All that's important, all of it, we're full to bursting, we're talking talking talking.

MIDNIGHT. ACTUALLY THE
black cat on the clerk's wall says 12:10. I finally take a breath. The lobby where we're sitting is twenty feet tall. On the walls, bad seams in the four-by-eight fake wood paneling. From the middle of the room, a huge swag light from the Fifties that hangs down – something too bright with gold projectiles that looks like the Jetsons. Two black marble columns. Black wrought iron tables, glass tops. White plastic outdoor chairs. Floors made of those tiny white square tiles. At the check-in counter, an orange and red throw rug. The deco sconce on the wall behind Hank's head pushes light up the shiny brown plastic wood.

“This place is weird and fucking ugly,” I say.

“Historic landmark meets trailer park,” Hank says.

About then, a woman steps through the orange beads. Mary Tyler Moore just off the golf course. Bette Davis eyes. My big sister, Margaret.

Some moments come along in your life, there's so much going on in them, you don't know what to feel first. Actually I always know what to feel first. I mean my body does. The problem comes after the moment passes and I don't know how to say it right, all the things I felt and in what order.

Here's some of it: just like always, my heart jumps up the way it always jumps. How high is going to depend on her. Then I'm sure of something. She doesn't show it, but I know. The way she makes her face have no expression. Her chin, the higher that chin gets, the more I can tell.

Shit-faced. My sister Margaret is totally shit-faced. I mean she's staggering.

The orange beads behind Margaret sway and clack against each other. Margaret stops, looks over at Hank and me. For a moment, that empty face, her chin a little higher, she pretends to, but really, she doesn't recognize who we are. Then it's like we're somebody she knows she thinks she must know, so she smiles, gives us a goofy laugh.

“Somewhere around here's a cigarette machine,” she says. “You guys know where the cigarette machine is?”

Hank's black eyes are on me. He's watching me like a writer watches for humanity. That's when I remember. I mean how could I forget. But it really isn't a memory at all, I mean it's not in my head, the way everything, my body, gets heavy, slows down, sinks. There's a crash too. Hit by a fucking truck.

Margaret didn't make it to our reading.

I'm amazed at how I am a child. How much it hurts me that she didn't make it. The hurt is in my chest, the fire bell going off in my chest. So loud I have to cover my ears. My teeth at the back of my mouth grind down.

But this fire is a fire I can't feel for too long. It is too hot. Plus what's underneath. Something way too derelict, too dark, and I won't have any part of it.

HANK GIVES THE
night clerk five bucks to watch our suitcases and at the cigarette machine I help Margaret with her change and pulling the right knob for her Virginia Slims. She's standing too close. Her hand and her perfect fingernails, her forearm against me. Hell, it ain't long and her whole body is leaning against me. I'm her little brother Benny she won't let go of. Before Margaret's got her cigarette lit, she's apologized over and over maybe five times.

“There was so much going on,” she says. “And so many people. God, I didn't know I knew so many people. And we were having so much fun, and we were all drinking and some of us
were pretty f'ing drunk and I didn't want to go crashing into your reading with twenty drunken people.”

It makes sense what Margaret says. Immediately I'm sorry for the sulking, all the ways my heart's been sore.

“Hey,
no problemo
,” I'm saying, “
no problemo. Nada y pues nada
.”

That's about it for my Spanish, besides
salon de belleza eres, mariscada de salsa verde
, a few cuss words, and a short poem by Lorca about the color green. Still, a part of me wonders why the fuck the sudden switch to a Romance language.

ON THE OTHER
side of the hanging orange beaded curtain, it's the Round Up Room Friday night forty-five minutes before closing time. Everything glows toxic orange and it's jammed with people and smoke and noise. Up on the bandstand, the local band, in matching white western shirts and white cowboy hats, is singing “Desperado.” Margaret's got both me and Hank by the arm, her in between. She's leading us through the bar. Really though, Hank and I are holding her up. Everyone we come to, Margaret makes a fuss, she pulls her mouth up close to their ears, she yells in their ears, and then everyone looks at Hank and me, sticks out their hand and laughs extra loud. Hank and I, all we can do is smile, shake hands. There's no way to hear a fucking thing. Except every once in a while,
stretch Cadillac
and
Happy Birthday
.

At the line of parquet where the dance floor starts, just then the band starts up with “China Grove.” Jitterbugging and two-stepping, way too many bodies are way too drunk flying around in a cramped space. Making it across that dance floor is more like making it over an extreme sport obstacle course. Then, in the middle of all the bodies, in all the noise and smoke, Hank on one side of Sis, me on the other, there's a moment and a memory: Hank and me at the Spike.

Kevin's in the booth next to the bandstand with a bunch of other people. They all shout when they see us and clap, then scoot over to let us in. Hank smashes in against Margaret,
Margaret smashes against me, Kevin smashed in on my other side. Three other people at the table, two men and a woman we're introduced to. They all look right off the golf course, but there's no way I can get their names. Kevin is saying something to me but I can't hear. I move my ear in real close.

“Your sister had a great time tonight,” he says.

I lean back and look at Kevin. He's a sturdy guy, thick in the neck and his wrists and chest and arms. A blue and green Hawaiian shirt, a couple buttons open down the front. Blonde. That blonde thick hair out of his shirt and on his arms. What I see is how much Kevin loves my sister. What a pleasure it's been for him to give her this magical night. That quick it's pretty clear to me that I need to give the shit up. My sister is in love with this man and he's in love with her and he's gone through a lot to get the limo and set the whole night up and all. And those plans were made long before Big Ben decided in the Strand Book Store back in New York City that he and Hank were coming to Idaho. Really, to hold on to the fact that my sis didn't make it to the reading all of a sudden seems selfish and silly.

And something else. Some part of me sees a bigger picture. Sees me and Kevin as two guys in competition for my sister's attention. At that very moment, in fact, I'm the guy sitting between him and his loved one. What I feel next is a shitload of drut. I immediately want to get up and get away from in between them. But there's no way. I can barely move. So I take a deep breath, breathe in all that smoky orange alcohol air, and just let it the fuck go.

When the cocktail waitress gets to us, Margaret orders margaritas. Hank tries to say no. I try to say no. But everyone is so trashed and it's so loud, it's no use.

THE SINGER AT
the microphone pushes back his sweaty white cowboy hat and announces to the crowd last call. There's high whistling and boos and one long cowboy yahoo. Then something strange, something you'd never figure. The band goes into a
song my ears can't believe they're hearing. I look over to Hank and his black eyes are already looking right at me. That bass line, you can't mistake it. Lou Reed and “Walk On the Wild Side.” Then from out of nowhere it's the Mormon Lady from the bookstore. Frieda, Hank said her name was Frieda and she wasn't a Mormon at all. She's standing at the end of our table and asking Hank for a dance. Hank's got that I'm-such-a-smooth-ass-lady-killer smile on his face. Margaret loves it that a woman has broken the rules and asked the man for the dance. She puts her Virginia Slim into the ashtray, laughs hard, big wide smile, rubbing her palms together. Something in her face changes. Her eyes. She is looking at Hank in a whole different way. I know that look. It's the way she looks at our father.

We all got to get up so Hank can get out. The dance floor is too crowded, so he can't get far away from our table. But he wants to. I know how stingy he is with his dance moves. Especially since everybody at the table will be watching his ass. There's not room to breathe, let alone move, but somehow Hank manages to get Frieda's butt toward the table and his own self behind her. They do a moderate straight guy two-step dance. Still, whatever Hank does, it always turns out sexy.

We're all sitting there, admiring the fuck out of Hank. There are two margaritas lined up in front of me. My elbows on the table, I'm smoking one of Kevin's Marlboros. The wood table is a mess of empty glasses, piled high ashtrays, cigarette butts. My big sis is on my left, Kevin on the right. Both of them know what this song's about and because it's what it's about they think it's about me. Margaret leans forward, Kevin leans forward, and they smile at each other across my chest. It's like I'm a puppy and the song is “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?” Still, though, it's cool.

That's when it happens, somewhere around in there, the moment. Margaret lights another Virginia Slim, inhales, swallows the smoke, blows the smoke out, leans into me, puts her lips right up against my ear.