Austin Nights

and take some to my pops.”

  She walks over to us. Her friends are on a nearby stoop. They salivate over the saucy plume that finds its way up to the white Austin sky. Gloria asks, “Where y’all live?”

  Although we already told her, we point to Building Nine, “Right up there, on the second floor,” says Bridget.

  “Which balcony is yours?” asks Gloria, too drunk to remember our first encounter.

  “The one with the lei hanging on the candelabra,” I say. “Two bikes.”

  “Oh,” says, Gloria, “I see now. Me and my husband live right there.” She points to the balcony on the third floor, directly above ours. “We’ve lived there ten years.”

  “Ten years!” I say, thinking it was only nine. “That’s a long time.”

  Meanwhile, I remember the other night I shut the sliding glass door too many times and made the baby cry. I don’t think it was Gloria’s kid. But it was probably her grandchild.

  “Yessir,” says Gloria, tracing a swoosh with her chin, “it sure is a long time, it sure is, but we love it here.”

  Gloria turns to the two other people she’s feeding, minus her pops. We wave as she introduces her husband and her best friend, Candy.

  “I’ve known Candy for six years,” says Gloria. “Candy’s the greatest, and she’s doing great.” Gloria gets closer to us and more or less whispers, “Candy’s an alcoholic. She hits the bottle hard.” Here Gloria makes a gesture with her clenched fist to emphasize how hard Candy hits the bottle. She says, “But she doing great now. She’s been clean for four months. You know, today she’s having one beer, but she can control it.”

  Bridget and I nod imperceptibly. Candy is hewn rough around the edges. Half her face doesn’t seem to be in line with the other half. Her hair is also imbalanced: cut mullet style in the back and left puffy in front. She doesn’t acknowledge our greeting.

  Gloria’s husband drinks luxuriously out of a brown bag. I wonder if it’s Steel. He lifts his double chin to nod hello.

  “I’m feeling good, too,” confides Gloria. “I’ve had my beer, had my drink.” She does a neat jig on the balls of her feet. “Y’all drinking?”

  “We’re about to,” says Bridget.

  “What y’all drink?” asks Gloria.

  “Michael likes whisky,” says Bridget. “I like rum.”

  “They both work!” assures Gloria. She claps her crabby tongs and eyes the plume, “I love it here,” she says. “It’s so close to everything. There’s even a liquor store within walking distance, if you need to walk.” Again she reacts physically to her punch line. She says, “It’s perfect location.”

  Bridget and I are quick to agree, nodding more perceptibly.

  “I know,” I say. “You can walk everywhere. The grocery store is right there.”

  I point to the north. Gloria tamps her burnt hair and uses her fingertips to wick the globes of sweat along her widow’s peak.

  “What,” she asks, cutting to the chase, “you guys don’t got a car?”

  “No,” says Bridget, “we have a car.”

  “Me and my husband,” says Gloria with pride, “we each have our own car. Come here and let me show you my ride. Oh yes,” she says, “I like my ride.”

  We follow her to the parking lot. She points to a white Town Car that’s backed in.

  “Oh, that’s yours?” asks Bridget, acting like she doesn’t already know. Then she taps my shoulder, “Michael likes the way you park. He copies you sometimes.”

  “You don’t say!” bursts Gloria. The women laugh at this revelation. I nod.

  “That’s my sexy ride,” says Gloria. “It is so spacious. I used to own a Ford Ranger, but one day it was raining and I was fixing to get on Ben White, and the back of my truck went like this.” Here, Gloria flaps her hand.

  “You fishtailed?” I ask.

  Gloria quizzically looks at me. Apparently she has never heard of the term.

  She says, “I don’t know what I did, but my truck ran right into a wall.” Gloria shakes her head. “I shoulda been dead,” she says. “But instead I got that spacious ride right there. I do have payments to make on it still, whereas my truck was all paid off, but I don’t miss that truck. My car is spacious enough to fit all my grandkids when they be asking for a ride. I got so many grandkids, there’s some I don’t even know I have.”

  Yep, I think, it was her grandchild.

  Then I say, “That is a spacious ride.” I say. “It’s like a boat.”

  “Exactly!” says Gloria. “I feel like I’m steering a boat in that thing.”

  “Our car isn’t as spacious as yours,” I say.

  “Which one’s y’all’s?”

  “That red one right next to yours,” says Bridget.

  “Oh,” says Gloria, sounding like she’s about to say something clever, “y’all finally got around to washing it!” She bows her head and dances on the balls of her feet. “Which of y’all parked all crooked like that?”

  Bridget and I can’t gauge it’s crooked from where we stand, but we trust Gloria.

  “I think I did,” volunteers Bridget, laughing to make light of the situation.

  “No,” I finally admit, “I parked last, and Bridget washed it at the gas station.”

  Gloria likes the way we answer her question, with willingness and honesty. She sees her saucy plume calling for attention.

  She says, “Listen, it was real nice meeting y’all. What’re your names again... Michael and Bridget?” Gloria looks at me, “Michael, that’ll be easy to remember. My son’s name is Michael. Well, y’all enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

  2

  Shaggy is on the beach, running recklessly on the sand, waiting for us to join him on this beautiful day. I squeeze Bridget’s slender waist and walk down the stairs, toward the pastel lifeguard tower. The three of us, standing in a triangle, toss the football playfully. Without meaning to we throw it more gingerly to Bridget. She catches and throws. Her reddish gold hair is full of action. If we had a fourth, we’d be quick to start a game of touch football.

  Alas, we’re an odd number.

  Soon, however, Bridget says she’s tired. She wants to feel the water to see if it’s not too cold to swim. We aren’t pleased with her decision to secede, but when we beg her to stay, she smiles, shakes her head, and walks toward the east, toward the vastness that lies at the edge of all continental cliffs.

  “All right now, show me what you’ve got!” I challenge Shaggy.

  “Don’t be talking, Coz.”

  Shaggy easily flings the football 20 yards. It spirals into my hands with a force I can hear. I nod my head indifferently and fling the football back. Mine doesn’t spiral like his, but it makes it to him zippy enough.

  “You can throw,” he says, close to sounding condescending.

  “I know. I have a good arm,” I say. “I just can’t get a nice spiral going.”

  Shaggy runs back another 20 yards and launches a throw that lands right in my so-called breadbasket. This time I’m more impressed. I don’t lengthen the distance between us anymore than he already has, but I manage the completion.

  Shaggy nods and palms the football. With outstretched arm, he tells me to run toward the ocean. I follow his gesture, and he steps back, loads the right half of his body, and whips his shoulders through. The football meets me on a full clip. Again I hear the force, like a bullet I somehow manage to catch, and I give myself a pep talk:

  “C’mon, Michael.”

  Being the unoriginal man I am, I copy Shaggy and tell him to run like he asked me to run, except I say to run west, away from the ocean, and I follow his advice on how to position my fingers on the white lace.

  The same wobbling jellybean flies through the air, but this time it doesn’t even make it the distance to Shaggy. The football scuffs against the sand. Shaggy bends down to pick it up. Although he’s kind enough not to comment on my errant throw, this is the first time in my 30 years on earth I feel myself not growing older, but aging.
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  I don’t let the thought make me pointless. Shaggy and I go on playing catch. My core muscles are acutely aware of the springy youthfulness in Shaggy that seems to get springier and more youthful as his body warms and I tire.

  But I can run like the wind, I think. I think, I may no be able to out throw Shaggy, but I can definitely outrun him, and I’ll be able to for a long time still.

  5

  Austin’s sun has made Honeyed Cat strictly an indoor pet. She appreciates the luxury of shade. Under this Austin sun, she cannot rest her tiny head and snooze. Direct sun in Miami, on the other hand, was drowsing and maternal for Honeyed Cat, but this damn Austin sun is venom, especially as we near summertime. Austin’s sun is diffuse in a thinly clouded sky. The light comes from everywhere, and it’s merciless, like I imagine the sun to be in the Texas plains, right around the place where Larry McMurtry grew up, Archer County. Austin’s sun is arid and too strong as it hangs up there forever in the biggest sky I’ve ever lived under.

  The balcony is a place Honeyed Cat loves to populate, but only during the temperate early mornings and cool nighttimes. When the sun’s out, she stays inside, away from that sun-seared land. If, for some reason, she’s trapped on the balcony during those punishing hours, she’s antsy and obsessive about finding shade somewhere, and her eyes are squinty and mean looking, and her ears are slicked back, and she paces like a great cat in a cage. But she’s desperate for shade. I know this because I’ve locked her out there twice. The first time in an attempt to make her diurnal, and the second when someone came over to