McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (20 page)

 
          
 
At Cindy's house, while we were changing for
the embassy party, some fooling around occurred. I started it. It's seldom a
bad idea to fool around with women who've recently been mad at you. It may not
lead to the heights of passion, but it will often suspend their memories and
keep them from getting mad at you again over the same thing.

 
          
 
Besides, Cindy had very sexy shoulders—they
were
both strong
and soft, rounded and dimpled, tanned
and lightly freckled. In effect her shoulders were a kind, of microcosm of the
body that lay below them. I liked them a lot.

 
          
 
She was not loath to be fooled around with,
either. I believe she felt I owed her something for having caused her to miss
an important cocktail party. The dress she had chosen for the evening was a
beautiful white one that covered one shoulder and left one shoulder bare—it was
while she was considering it that the fooling around started.

 
          
 
It ended with Cindy having secured herself two
orgasms, the second strong enough to send her into a form of repose. She didn't
close her eyes, but she was in repose. Her eyes were bright, her body utterly
still, and her face blank and smooth, like the face of a child who has just
awakened from a nap.

 
          
 
My own exertions had been sufficient to induce
a nap, though it turned out to be a very short nap. Cindy woke me with her
favorite tactic—an elbow. I felt very sleepy. Cindy had apparently just come
out of the shower. She looked very awake. Like Boss Miller, she evidently had
excellent cells. She looked ready for about three sets of tennis.

 
          
 
"You look pretty sluggish," she
said. "I think you should watch your diet."

 
          
 
It was an absurd thing for her to say. I was
sluggish but it was because she had just let me sleep about eight minutes.
People who think everything is a function of diet give me a pain. In her
preoccupation with waking me, she had forgotten to dry her legs and little
streams of water were running down them onto her rug.

 
          
 
"Dry your legs," I said,
"unless you want to drip."

 
          
 
She thought that was amusing and went over and
got the white dress. Her closet contained more dresses than her dress store,
which only contained maybe fifty dresses. They were costly dresses, but their
numbers were not large.

 
          
 
An eight-minute nap disorients me. Instead of
postcoital sadness I woke to postcoital surrealism. It seemed surreal to me
that I was about to go to a party with a girl whose dress shop only contained
fifty dresses. I don't know why that fact struck me, but it did.

 
          
 
I took a cold shower to try and reduce my
disorientation and only succeeded in making myself feel sexy, which in itself
was surreal. A cold shower is supposed to reduce one's ardor, and I had no
reason even to have any ardor just at that time, but nevertheless I got an
erection.

 
          
 
For some reason this made me reluctant to come
out of the shower. I turned off the water, to see if that would have any effect
on the erection, but it didn't. About that time Cindy came into the bathroom to
look for a comb and noticed that the shower wasn't running and that I wasn't
out. These facts struck her as novel.

 
          
 
"Hey," she said. "What's with
you?"

 
          
 
I hardly knew what to say. I didn't really
know. So I said nothing.

 
          
 
Cindy had no patience with mysteries. Also, it
was her shower. She opened the door and saw me and my erection. At the time she
was brushing her dark blond hair and she kept brushing it. A man in her shower
with an erection was no big deal in itself. For all I knew it could have been
an everyday sight.

 
          
 
"What was Harris doing standing by that
parking meter?" I asked. I had meant to ask earlier but had forgotten to.

 
          
 
"He was trying to decide if it was
raining enough for him to open his umbrella," Cindy said.

 
          
 
"Do you mind if I just stand here for a
minute?" I asked, since she was still brushing her hair. I was beginning
to be aware that I was probably only a temporary indulgence on Cindy's part. I
wasn't exactly her chosen mate. I could feel my own temporariness, dripping
like the shower. After a week or two of dripping I would be gone, probably.

 
          
 
At least her good humor extended to my
erection.

 
          
 
"Why have you got a hard-on?" she
asked pleasantly.

 
          
 
"I don't know," I said.

 
          
 
Actually, I felt a little blue. All at once I
had the sense that I understood the workings of life. It worked through irony
and paradox, like a metaphysical poem. The chief paradox seemed to be that what
you most wanted was what you were least likely to get.

 
          
 
Cindy evidently sensed something plaintive in
my attitude. The orgasms had eliminated her memory of my recent failings, as
well as much of her natural combativeness. A faint sexual afterglow in her
smooth cheeks was nicely set off by the white dress. She seemed willing to
overlook the fact that I was standing in her shower with a hard-on just as she
was almost ready to leave. She looked girlish, friendly, and a little absent.

 
          
 
"If I told Oblivia about you she wouldn't
believe it," she said.

 
          
 
"Why not?"
I asked.

 
          
 
Cindy let her head hang to one side and
brushed her hair that way for a while. The head hanging kind of kept the
afterglow from fading.

 
          
 
"Oblivia doesn't understand people who
don't do things at the right time," she said. "She was brought up
among successful people."

 
          
 
"Come on." I said. "Nobody does
everything at the right time."

 
          
 
"Oh yeah, around here they do,"
Cindy said. "Somebody like the Secretary of State isn't going to get a
hard-on just before a party."

 
          
 
It was plain that my aberrant behavior
intrigued Cindy a little. It might make me unfit for a Cabinet post, but I had
a feeling that it kept me in the running with Harris, for at least one more
day.

 
          
 
"I just don't know what she'll think of
you," she said, laying down her brush. The uncertainty seemed to excite
her. I was an ambiguous factor, socially and otherwise. On that provocative
note, we left for the party.

 
          
 
The first person I saw at the Embassy that I
recognized was Boog. He was talking to the second person I recognized, Sir
Cripps Crisp. The two of them were standing by a small tree that had somehow
been coaxed up through the floor of the Embassy.

 
          
 
Apart from the fact that he
was standing upright.
Sir Cripps gave no sign of life.

 
          
 
Boog was wearing a raspberry tuxedo that would
have nicely outfitted the maitre d' of a dinner theater in
Killeen
,
Texas
, or somewhere.

 
          
 
"There's Boog," I said to Cindy, but
she was by this time well out of her period of afterglow. Also she was pissed
at me for having taken too long to park.

 
          
 
"Do I look like I'm blind?" she
said.

 
          
 
At the time we were about eighty-sixth in the
receiving line, a position Cindy clearly did not relish. Her natural
impatience, deflected briefly by a little sex, had returned with a vengeance.

 
          
 
"At least Khaki's here," she said,
having evidently spotted someone she knew.

 
          
 
Her impatience made me nervous. I myself
evidently have too much patience—a useful quality if one spends half one's life
waiting in auctions—and female impatience always makes me nervous, as if it
were somehow my responsibility to hurry the universe.

 
          
 
"Khaki who?"
I asked,

 
          
 
Cindy turned and looked at me. The friendly
look she had given me when I had the hard-on in the shower might have occurred
a year ago. My reluctance to park my Cadillac in the middle of
Massachusetts Avenue
had finished off the friendliness, at least
for a time. She insisted that the middle of the street was under the protection
of the Embassy, but I didn't believe her. I parked anyway.

 
          
 
"Haven't you ever heard of Khaki
Descartes?" she asked.

 
          
 
"I may have," I said, trying to look
thoughtful.

 
          
 
Cindy waited, skeptically. I kept looking
thoughtful for about thirty seconds, and then gave up.

 
          
 
"I guess I haven't heard of her," I
admitted sorrowfully.

 
          
 
"You could try reading a newspaper,"
she said.

 
          
 
In fact I often try reading newspapers. I'm
just a flop at it. The only part that really interests me is the want ads. The
news itself seems to be an interchangeable commodity: Today's is seldom very
different from last week's.

 
          
 
But want ads are ever fresh. What people are
willing to try and sell or buy bespeaks the true variety of the human race.
News only bespeaks the old constants: war and famine, earthquake and flood,
politics and murder.

 
          
 
That very morning I had clipped a wonderful ad
from the Post. "Authority on animal architecture wishes to sell approx.
10,000 nests," it said.

 
          
 
I thought that was wonderful. Some old person
had actually spent a lifetime collecting nests. In all my years as a scout I
had only seen one or two varnished hornet's nests for sale.

 
          
 
Naturally I called the collector at once and
made an appointment to see his nests. He sounded like he was munching a nest
when I called, though probably he was only eating Shredded Wheat.

 
          
 
Just having the appointment made me feel
hopeful. A world that harbored a nest collector was a world that could be
enjoyed.

 
          
 
The minute we got through the receiving line
Cindy abandoned me.

 
          
 
The experience of the receiving line was not
very enjoyable, either. A row of diplomats was planted at the head of it like
small tuxedoed shrubs. Shaking hands with them turned out to be really creepy.
Their hands were like fleshlike plants. Their plantlike fingers made no attempt
to close around my hand, or any hand. We just rubbed palms—their hands swished
slightly as the receiving line trotted by. Most of their palms were clammy,
too.

 
          
 
The minute Cindy got through the line she made
straight for a small ferretlike redhead in a khaki safari suit. Within seconds
they were chattering like sisters. The redhead stared at me, but Cindy didn't
beckon me to join them.

 
          
 
It was clear she was not the kind of girl who
forgives a slow parker.

 
          
 
Feeling at a loss, I turned toward Boog, only
to discover that he and Sir Cripps had left their position by the tree and had
disappeared. Like Brisling Bowker, they moved with stealth when the mood struck
them.

 
          
 
I let a stream of people carry me through a
door into a huge hall, where the first person I saw was Boss Miller. She was
walking along talking to a tall, graying, tightly wound man with an
aristocratic manner. I would have bet he was a squash player, squash being a
game the tightly wound excel at.

 
          
 
Boss seemed greatly amused by him, but then
she was greatly amused by most men,
myself
, Micah, and
Boog being no exceptions. She was wearing a black silk dress and a magnificent
string of pearls. Boog had expended a whole oil well on the pearls, in
Paris
years before.

 
          
 
Coming upon Boss unexpectedly, in the great
hall of the Embassy, put life in a new perspective, suddenly. Boss seemed not
merely beautiful, she seemed timeless. She could have been wearing that dress
and those pearls in any capital, in any modem century.

 
          
 
Boss tossed her head in a way that meant I
should come over, so I went over.

 
          
 
"Have you met Spud?" she asked,
nodding toward the tightly wound aristocrat at her side.

 
          
 
Spud took me in at a glance. His glance did
not have the radarlike qualities of Freddy Fu's, but it certainly had flash.
When he looked at me I felt like I feel when a flashbulb goes off":
exposed. Then he gave me by far the hardest handshake I had ever had from
anyone in a tuxedo.

 
          
 
"Spud Breyfogle," Boss said,
"meet Cadillac Jack."

 
          
 
"A pleasure," Spud said.

 
          
 
He nodded at me, gave Boss a knowing look, and
turned away. For some reason he reminded me of Paul Henreid, in Casablanca,
although he looked more like William Holden than Paul Henreid.

 
          
 
"He doesn't look like someone who would
be named Spud," I said. The only other Spud I had known had been a small
saddle-bronc rider from Junction,
Texas
. His name had been Spud Welch.

 
          
 
"Spud's a nickname," Boss said.
"His real name is
Newton
. He's the most competitive man I ever met."

 
          
 
Then she slipped her arm through mine in a
friendly way.

 
          
 
As we were promenading I noticed that Boss had
an avid look in her eye. I followed the look, to see if there was a man in the
crowd that she could be wanting, and discovered that we were actually
promenading along beside a feast. One whole side of the great hall was given
over to tables heaped with food. Three or four lambs lay atop great piles of
rice, cooked to a crisp. Other tables were piled with seafood: shrimp, squid,
smoked salmon, tiny fish. There was even a vast tureen of caviar. It seemed to
be the caviar that prompted Boss's avid look.

 
          
 
Nearby was a vast tub of couscous, surrounded
by platters of flat bread.

 
          
 
All the food was roped off behind thick velvet
ropes. They were the kinds of ropes used in the foyers of movie theaters, to
restrain eager crowds.

 
          
 
This crowd was eager, too. Most of the people
in the receiving line had looked half dead, but the sight of a feast had
brought them back to life. They were massed three deep behind the velvet ropes.
Almost every eye in the house was shining, like Boss's, and a good many faces
were shining, too. The sight of so much food must have released internal floods
of gastric juices, causing sweat to pop out on many faces. The people were
oblivious to one another. Lamb, caviar, and big pulpy shrimp were what they
wanted.

 
          
 
I felt slightly revolted by the sight of so many
avid, sweaty people—a totally unwarranted reaction, since I see avid sweaty
people massed together at auctions every day. Also I felt an equally
unwarranted jealousy of Spud Breyfogle.

 
          
 
"Is Spud famous?" I asked.

 
          
 
Boss chuckled. "Most famous editor in
America
," she said.

 
          
 
Then she lifted her head alertly. She seemed
to be waiting for a signal. While she waited she adroitly edged into the crowd.
All around us, alert men and women were edging into the crowd, skillfully
displacing some of the people who were already there. Many of those who were
already there seemed to be in a trance. They had made the mistake of edging in
too soon and had sweated themselves out. They looked like exhausted runners, so
wobbly as to be unaware that they were losing their positions to cool
latecomers like Boss. Their unseeing eyes were still fixed on the food.

 
          
 
Meanwhile, Boss had taken my hand. She
evidently had a use for me. As the crowd got thicker we were crushed together.
Boss was sidling slowly toward the velvet ropes. Once in a while she gave my
hand an encouraging squeeze. Crushed in the crowd, we were almost having an
intimate moment.

 
          
 
As greed for objects welds crowds at an
auction, greed for food welded this crowd. It was hard to imagine that such a
well-dressed crowd could look so hungry. I’ve been to some wild barbecues down
in
Texas
, where whole beeves were consumed, and yet
I'd never seen a
Texas
crowd crammed up together, beaded with sweat. It didn't seem possible
that a lot of people well off enough to own tuxedoes could be so hungry, and
yet they seemed oblivious to everything but the food.

 
          
 
"Why are they so hungry?" I
whispered to Boss, brushing back her dark hair so I could get to her ear.

 
          
 
Boss was uninterested in the question, but she
seemed briefly interested in the fact that I had brushed back her hair. She
looked at me curiously, as if she expected me to try and kiss her. It had not
been my intention, but I saw no harm in trying. The crowd would never notice.
It was oblivious to who was kissing whom. I bent to kiss her and it looked for
a tenth of a second like it might work. But just at that moment, she smiled.