All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

  “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.”

  I left. In my mirror I saw them looking uneasily at the house, kicking their engines. I turned right and then right again and idled at a stop sign for a minute or two. When I got back to where I could see up Godwin’s street I saw my ruse had worked. Both motorcycles were gone.

  15

  EL CHEVY and I slipped smoothly out of Austin, I had become a Driver, apparently. The wheel felt good in my hands. I liked the way the road slipped under me, liked to see signs, to pass cars, to ease into little towns. Once I got moving my feelings seemed to come back. When I stopped, feeling seemed to leave me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to Houston, where I would undoubtedly have to stop and cope with things.

  Three hundred miles to the north was Idiot Ridge, where Granny Deck had lived and died. It was just a little bluff, with lots of mesquite trees and rattlesnakes, but in a way it was the place most truly mine. The ridge was the northern boundary of a valley called the Sorrows, which my mean old grandfather had homesteaded with his first wife. The Comanches came one day, while Grandpa was gone, and shot six arrows into the first wife. After that Grandpa lived alone in the Sorrows, drinking whiskey and trapping skunks. One day an ex-soldier came drifting through, with a sixteen-year-old girl he had tricked into coming west with him. Grandpa was womanless and took a fancy to the girl. He and the soldier got drunk and he offered the soldier half his winter’s skunk hides for her. The soldier took the skunk hides and left the next day.

  The girl was Granny Deck. Somehow she hung on and survived. She never married Grandpa, but she bore him eight kids. She lived out her life on the ridge. The story of her bartering was one of the best things I had ever written.

  I had meant to use it as a prologue to my second novel. Oddly enough, Old Man Goodnight had helped chase down the Indians that killed Grandpa’s first wife. Then he had gone on to blaze his cattle trails.

  I didn’t turn north. I would have liked to be on the ridge for a little while, but I didn’t want to drive there. Neither did I want to write about it. I didn’t want to tell the world about the sadness of Granny, as she sat in a flapping tent in the 1880s, listening to Grandpa count out skunk hides. I didn’t want to tell it about the sadness of the Indians, as they sat watching the buffalo grunt out its last grunts. I would have liked to sit on Idiot Ridge for a while and watch the April moon float over the Sorrows, but I was too tired to turn. I kept driving, and El Chevy found his way home to Houston.

  She had not reformed. Sh
e smelled as spunky as ever. I drifted over to Rice. Nobody was walking, and I didn’t have a library key. Didn’t matter. I was awfully tired. El Chevy and I needed rest. I drove to my apartment and parked at the familiar curb. I got all my blankets and pillows and Jill’s green rug. The grass would be very wet in such a mist. I slunk through the darkness, carrying stuff. Jenny’s tree was still there. I put several blankets on the ground. I put me on the blankets. I put more blankets on me, which was stupid. It was hot. I made a sort of nest and rested in it. I put the pillows against the tree.

  Parts of my body must have slept, but most of my mind didn’t. I was too tired. Too many things pressed at me. I dreamed of Sally. I struggled to know what might happen, but I couldn’t. I struggled to sleep. I struggled in sleep.

  Jenny found me in my nest. I noticed her standing on her back porch. The sun was well up. She was wearing her same bathrobe. Red. She seemed to take the sight of me in stride. She didn’t panic. She didn’t scream. She looked in her milk box, to see what the milkman had left her. He hadn’t left her anything, apparently. Maybe he had seen me and panicked and screamed. I imagined myself as looking horrible. I hadn’t shaved for a few days. I felt boneless. I didn’t want to move. After a while Jenny came walking across the wet grass toward me. She was smiling. I tried to smile back.

  “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me goodbye?”

  “When I left it was the middle of the night,” I said.

  “Sure it was,” Jenny said, sitting down in the grass. Her bathrobe was going to get wet again. For some reason she seemed glad to see me. She had a very pleased expression on her face.

  “God, you’re even sloppier than you used to be,” she said. “How’s that slut you married?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s here somewhere, about to have a baby.”

  “Who got her pregnant?”

  “Me.”

  “What a sucker you are,” she said. “You must have changed your mind about me, huh? Otherwise you wouldn’t be under my tree.”