“Don’t go blowing off,” he said. “I didn’t make him any promises, but I can’t see why I shouldn’t take the job. It would be fun. Don’t you have any curiosity about how movies are made?”
“Not much. Where is this one going to be made, may I ask?”
“Amarillo. Or somewhere near there.”
“Oh, great!” Patsy said, striding about the apartment. “I’m supposed to take our infant child and live in Amarillo? Monster! Infanticide! Amarillo! You’re out of your mind.”
“Is that all the epithets you can think of?” he asked, amused.
“Don’t you be polite to me,” Patsy said. “I’ll make you rue the day you were ever polite to me. I will not live in Amarillo.”
“Well, it’s six months away,” Jim said. “We don’t need to fight about it just yet. You look great today. We should make love, not war. Pretty soon we’ll have a baby and won’t be able to in the afternoons.”
“Yeah, well too bad that didn’t occur to you months ago,” Patsy said. “I feel more like making war.” And she went off in a huff to put the clean laundry away.
Later, as she was dressing, she began to feel that her life was dissolving, losing its natural shape. What had happened the day before with Hank did not seem very real. It was much more natural to be fussing and bitching at Jim. But the dinner to come also seemed unreal, and the people unnecessary forces pressing in on her. She wished the baby were born, so she would have an excuse to stay home. She dressed with unusual care, irritated that she had to be so large, slow, and bulky on such an occasion. She was sure to be outshone by both Lee and Dixie. Since she could not be slim she combed her hair out to see if she looked good that way. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. She simply had no glow. In the morning she had had some glow, but the afternoon had dissipated it and she felt flat and sallow. She was tempted to fake a stomachache and stay home but decided that would be ignoble. She chose a black dress that she thought made her look mature and austere.
They went to pick up the Duffins and found them already a little in their cups. They were throwing verbal daggers at each other. Bill was wearing a white dress turtleneck and looked a little too high-colored, whether from drink or anger Patsy could not tell. Lee wore a blue dress with a very short skirt and was dancing by herself to the Mammas and the Papas.
“Come in, fellow sufferers,” Bill said. “My wife’s just been castrating me.” He used his deepest oracular tone.
“Ignore him,” Lee said. “He dresses like George Plimpton, pontificates like John Kenneth Galbraith, and cries like Johnny Ray, if anybody but me can remember Johnny Ray.”
“Everybody remembers Johnny Ray,” Bill said. “In our circle everybody remembers everybody. It’s one of your persistent delusions that you are the only one who remembers people.”
“I don’t remember Johnny Ray,” Patsy said.
“Stout girl,” Lee said. “I’m teaching her the art of castration,” she said to Jim, smiling. “Hope you don’t mind.
“Let’s get on to the cowboys,” she said.
“There’s only one,” Jim said. “The other guy’s a screenwriter.”
“One cowboy will wreak enough havoc,” Bill said. “Two would just overstimulate Lee. She once had a thing on a shot-putter, as I recall.”
“He was a javelin thrower,” Lee said. “Shows how observant you are. Makes me wonder how you ever find those cute little things in the texts of poems, on which your reputation is based.”
“I like poems better than javelin throwers.”
“Or me, for that matter,” Lee said. She saw that the Carpenters were a little disconcerted by the acrimony and dropped it. “Sorry. Bill and I should never have seen Virginia Woolf. Let’s do go.”
They found their party at a nearby hotel. Dixie was resplendent in an orange dress. Joe Percy had on a conservative gray suit but a bright pink tie, and Sonny had a white turtleneck to match Bill Duffin’s. It looked good with his maroon coat. He also wore a black Western hat, and that too looked good. They were all three in good spirits, Dixie particularly.
“Hi, duck,” she said, kissing Patsy. “I love these people. Mr. Percy’s the nicest man I ever met in my life. Isn’t Sonny something in the sweater. I see your friend has one too.”
Lee smiled, but Jim was uneasy. Bill shook hands gravely with all three of them. His gravity made an instant impression on Dixie, who got her impressions in an instant, most of the time.
“You have to promise not to mind me,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll be afraid to open my mouth. You’re probably the smartest man I ever met.”
“What?” Joe Percy said. “You just conveyed that distinction on me, not five minutes ago. I thought sure I’d hold the title a little longer than five minutes.”
“Too bad,” Dixie said.
“Good to see you again, honey,” Joe said to Patsy, taking her hand for a second. “Surely you realize I’m the smartest man you ever met.”
“Give me your keys, Dixie,” Sonny said. “I’m the dumb-ass in the crowd, but at least I can drive.”
“Don’t be surprised when I say dumb things,” Dixie said to Bill. “Do you like The Carpetbaggers?”
“I don’t believe so,” Bill said.
“We just won’t talk about books then,” Dixie said.
They got in Dixie’s Cadillac and Sonny whirled them smoothly downtown. Dixie regaled them with an account of life in Puerto Vallarta, where she had just been.
“I even took Squatty,” she said. “He speaks all kinds of Spanish, from working in South America so long.”
“Squatty?” Lee asked.
“My little fat ex-husband.”
They were soon seated atop of Houston, with a view of half the city. Lee sat between Sonny and Jim, Patsy between Bill Duffin and Joe Percy. Bill Duffin did the ordering and did it in his most solemn editorial tone. The presence of Dixie, perky in her orange dress, right at his elbow, seemed to have sunk Bill into a kind of reserve; he talked to her as he might have talked to a class of graduate students, only more politely. Lee, on the other hand, was very pepped. Sonny was paying her a lot of attention and she liked it. Once she turned and said something to Jim, even put her hand on his wrist, but in a maternal fashion, as a lady of presence might put her hand on the wrist of her son’s roommate.
Though it irked Patsy to admit it, it was Sonny who dominated the table. A few passing guests glanced at Bill Duffin curiously, or at Dixie, whose dress was so bright it was almost impossible not to glance at her; but the person they really looked at was Sonny. The force that Bill Duffin was able to project at a graduate party or a gathering of his colleagues was not being projected. He looked old and seemed scarcely the man who had been saying acid things to Lee an hour earlier. To Patsy’s surprise he said almost nothing to her. He passed her the pepper mill, he gracefully poured her wine, but otherwise he left her be.
Sonny stood out. If he had seemed diminished that morning standing under the great overlapping trees of South Boulevard, he seemed diminished no longer. His white teeth and black hair and white shirt worked for him; and unlike everyone else at the table he was perfectly at ease. Everyone else was eating fish, but he was eating steak. He gave most of his attention to Lee, grinning at whatever she had to say and occasionally putting in some quiet sardonic comment of his own. Once in a while he glanced at Patsy. She was almost glad, since he was the only one who did glance at her; but she was not entirely glad. In the glances she saw the only Sonny, the man who had lifted her like a doll in Phoenix. Once he looked at her just as he was lifting a buttery piece of French bread to his mouth, and his lips curved and he bit slowly into the bread, as if he had slowed down his bite just because he knew she was watching. He inclined his head to hear something Lee was saying, but his eyes stayed on Patsy for a moment. Then he bit into the roll.
Patsy nibbled her trout and felt low and confused. She had tried to chat with Joe Percy, but his mood seemed to correspond closely to hers. He had become suddenly and und
isguisedly melancholy, and though he responded politely and even wittily, his heart was clearly not in the conversation. She gave up on the evening and sat silently looking out at the lights of Houston; she felt unwanted, unnoticed, and unsure. Everyone there was stronger and surer than she was—Joe Percy in his melancholy, Bill Duffin in his reserve, even Dixie in her bright strong ignorance. They were all strong compared to Jim and herself; they were all grown up; they all knew what they were doing. She thought wistfully of Emma and Flap; they would have looked incredibly out of place in such a posh club, but their wry out-of-placeness would have been a comfort. She thought of Hank Malory and could not picture him in such a place at all. He had said he loved her. If he did she could not see how it could help but make both of them more unhappy. She could scarcely believe she had spent an afternoon kissing him. She didn’t know what she felt and took what comfort she could from the lights of Houston.
The company wanted to go to the bar for brandy, but she didn’t feel like moving and fortunately Joe Percy came out of melancholy sufficiently to second her. “Stay here with me and have some more coffee,” he said. The company went and they stayed. Jim was puzzled; he could not see why anyone would prefer the company of Joe Percy to that of Sonny Shanks and William Duffin. But he said nothing.
“You seem as down in the dumps as I am,” Patsy said. “You haven’t even said anything crude.”
Joe looked down disconsolately at the sprawl of lights. “This is wretched food,” he said. “You’d think with the goddamned ocean forty miles away they could at least keep a fish fresh long enough to cook it. Mine was almost rotten.”
“Does my aunt get you down, or what?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “She’s fun. Let’s see if they’ll bring us some brandy here. I just needed to get away from that mob we were with. Mobs like that make me wish I’d done something.”
“Like what?”
He waved vaguely at the ground far below. “Oh, been a turnip farmer or something,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t have had to spend so many sophisticated evenings. Crowds like this one hurt my goddamn colon, to tell the truth.”
“Was this sophisticated?” Patsy asked.
“After a fashion. Maybe I was a little depressed by your aunt. She’s a peach but she seems intent on kidnaping me for the evening. I don’t quite know how to get out of it. Is this guy Squatty really in South America? Things like this make me miss my dead wife.”
“He’s in Canada, making millions.”
“Maybe the scholar will beguile her away from me,” he said.
“Maybe Sonny will beguile his wife away from him,” Patsy said. “What do you think?”
“I try to think about more appetizing things,” he said. “This fish didn’t help much.”
“How do you stand to work for Sonny?”
“For money. For money alone I’ve worked with the worst in the business.”
“You mean my aunt just asked you to spend the night with her?” It had just registered.
“More or less. She’s a type I’d forgotten. There used to be women like her around L.A. in the thirties and forties, but I thought they’d passed out of existence. A lot of them came from Texas, come to think of it.”
“You’ll have to admit she’s well preserved.”
“Sure. Ladies like her are always well preserved, and it’s fools like me that have preserved them. I bet Squatty is a fool like me. The poor bastard probably loves her. He’s probably off in Canada with his ass in a mudhole, thinking of her right now.”
“Do you suppose he does?” Patsy said. It had never occurred to her. All she remembered about Squatty was that he was badly freckled and had skin problems from years of exposing a fair complexion to the tropical sun.
“She’ll be well preserved for fifteen more years,” Joe said. “Why not? She keeps all she’s got. You’ll be a withered hag before she will.”
“Me?”
“Sure,” he said, looking at her with real affection. “You’re the food of the world.” He looked up and saw the company returning and didn’t elaborate on the remark, but Patsy felt deeply, embarrassingly flattered by it; for years, whenever she remembered the way Joe Percy said it, she felt warmed.
The company looked very gay and attractive and was in boisterous good spirits. “Arise, arise,” Bill said. “Sonny’s promised to take us dancing. Shit kicking, I believe the term is in these parts.”
“That’s the term,” Joe said. “Read all about it in V, if you haven’t. I’ll have to pass. My favorite dancing partner is incapacitated due to pregnancy and I’m not in the mood to kick shit with anybody else.”
“I want to go home, anyway,” Patsy said.
“You’re going with me, anyway,” Dixie said to Joe. “We can take Patsy home and Sonny can take them dancing.”
Jim tried to persuade her to come with them to the honky-tonk, but he didn’t try very hard and she declined. He and the Duffins and Sonny got out at the hotel. “Hope you know what you’re doing, going off with a wild man from Hollywood,” Sonny said to Dixie.
“I wouldn’t know what I was doing if I knew what I was doing,” she said simply.
“I just loved that scholar,” she said, once they were moving. “I never met a scholar before. Are their wives always skinny?”
When they got to South Boulevard Joe Percy gallantly got out and walked Patsy to her door. He kissed her on the cheek and started back down the steps. “Good luck,” she said. “Don’t let her drive you crazy.”
Inside, in bed, her feet tucked under her, she felt very cozy, read a little, and looked up from time to time to stare at the hairbrush or the chair or the books on the bedside table. Hank had come back to mind, and she was wondering when he would find her again.
15
JOE PERCY HUNG to the handrest, checked his seat belts three times, and tried to remember the prescribed position for car wrecks, if there was one. Dixie was whirling him out a freeway in a light drizzle, the meanwhile filling him in on her life. They came off the freeway and, just as he had feared, she miscalculated the slipperiness of the streets and slid completely through a red light.
“Oh, hell,” she said. “I’ll stop twice as long at the next one. Don’t you like my niece?”
“Sure. I don’t know her very well but I hope I live to see her again.”
“I can tell you all about her. I practically raised her. Her daddy doesn’t have any sense, even if he is my brother. Squatty’s made six times as much money as Garland, and Squatty’s no genius himself. I don’t think we have geniuses in Texas.”
“They’re probably all killed in car wrecks,” Joe said, but his point was lost on Dixie.
“I don’t like Jim very much,” she said. “She just married him because he was the first one who asked her. I was off in the Orient and didn’t even know about it until it was too late to stop it.”
She sped into a large high-rise apartment building. The garage men sprang into action instantly. Joe barely had time to get his seat belt unbuckled before the car was gone. Dixie’s apartment was on the top floor. For a few minutes he thought it was the top floor, but after she had taken him out on a balcony and shown him around he concluded it was only about one quarter of the floor.
“That’s River Oaks down there,” she said. “It’s noted for trees. All sorts of great people live there. I guess this place is dinky compared to the ones they have in Hollywood, huh?”
Joe felt sleepy and suppressed a yawn. “It’s not dinky compared to the ones they have anywhere,” he said. “You’d have to be Howard Hughes to need more room than this.”
“I never met him,” Dixie said. “I’ll make some coffee.”
She did, and it was very good. Joe had been wanting very much to be back at his hotel and had even built up a slight hostility to Dixie, but he couldn’t maintain it. Her friendliness carried the day. She sat in a deep leather chair frowning—something she didn’t do often enough to do convincingly. The worst she could look was quizzica
l.
“I’m not sure I liked the scholar after all,” she said. “I hate it when I can’t tell if somebody likes me or not. I couldn’t tell about him. Let’s go to bed, okay? I really do like to get enough sleep.”
Joe followed her irresolutely into the bedroom. What had seemed like possibly a good idea that afternoon over drinks had come to seem like folly. The bedroom, like almost every other room he had seen all day, had a fine view of southwest Houston. It would have been a comfort to have a room that didn’t have a view of southwest Houston.
“Do you mind if I wear a nightgown?” Dixie asked, emerging from the bathroom. Without makeup she looked younger rather than older.
“No,” he said. “I don’t care if you wear overshoes and a parachute. I really ought to go back to my hotel, you know. I shouldn’t molest you, I don’t think. The thought of your poor husband haunts me.”
“Squatty? I haven’t been married to him in fifteen years.”
“He sounds pretty husbandlike. I thought all Texas husbands were apt to come in and shoot men their wives were in bed with.”
“Oh, yeah, it happens all the time,” she said. “I’ve known plenty of cases. It’s perfectly legal, you know.”
Joe put his coffee cup on the windowsill and sat down on one edge of the large triple bed. He stared unhappily at southwest Houston. “Somehow the legality of it dampens my ardor,” he said. “If I was to get blasted for screwing I’d want some bastard to pay for it. Maybe he’s winging his way back from Alberta at this very moment to check up on you.”
“Not Squatty.” She emerged from the closet in a demure white gown and sat down on the floor and began to do exercises vigorously. She made a strange snorting noise through her nose. “That’s yoga,” she said, stopping to explain.
“I don’t have any pajamas,” Joe said, grinning despite himself.
“Get in bed while I’m not looking,” she said. “I have to exercise a little more.”
“Well, it’s not as if I’m a virgin,” he said, a little fed up with life. He got in his side of the huge bed and lay on his back. Now and then he caught a glimpse of Dixie’s head as she exercised. Finally she turned out the light and got in the opposite side of the bed. The only light came from the city far below.