Moving On

by Larry McMurtry

  “That guy was an American Nazi,” Joe said. “Thus the armband.”

  “Goodness. I supposed someone in his family was dead.”

  They went back to Joe’s place and he fixed them a great, exotic omelet, with Patsy helping and advising. Between them they made short work of it and then sat in Joe’s living room having coffee. His living-room window did not look out on all L.A., but it did have a nice view of the Hollywood hills, with enough lights to make the night lovelier. It was an intimate vista, very different from the dazzling one he had shown her in Beverly Hills.

  Patsy felt quiet and relaxed, as if her head had just cleared after a long stretch of fogginess. She felt as if she had gone through some kind of crisis, of a sort she did not understand; all she knew was that she felt she was through it. In such moods it was possible for her to notice other people in ways that she didn’t when her mind was hazed with her own problems. She noticed once again that her host looked melancholy.

  “You make a good omelet, Joe,” she said. “Why are you depressed?”

  “Me?” he said.

  “Don’t kid me. I’ve seen you depressed before.”

  “Oh, yes, the night Dixie raped me. How is she, by the way?”

  “Fine. I remember you telling me she would always be fine, and why.”

  “I was talking through my hat. Dixie could take a tumble any time.”

  “Don’t beat around the bush,” she said. “I tell you my troubles constantly. Why are you depressed?”

  “I’m trying to keep from falling in love inappropriately,” he said. “That’s the sum of it. It’s very hard not to let yourself love when you see someone lovable, you know.”

  “Who is she?”

  “The wife of an English screenwriter. Married about a year. She’s something like you, only a little younger. As lovely a woman as I’ve seen in years.”

  “Uh-oh,” Patsy said. “What about her husband?”

  “He’s queer and she doesn’t realize it. She knows something’s wrong but it’ll be a long while before she realizes it’s that simple. On the surface he’s the opposite of queer. I shudder to think how much she’ll have to take before she figures out that he really doesn’t like her at all.

  “I see a lot of them socially, and she likes me,” he added. “That makes it tricky. It would shock her out of her mind if she thought I was in love with her, and I almost already am.”

  “You already am,” Patsy said. “No almost about it. What endless messes. I’m going to call Jim while I feel sensible.”

  She dialed, and Clara Clark answered. “Could I speak to Jim, please,” Patsy said.

  “Uh, who’s calling?”

  “Mrs. Carpenter,” Patsy said very matter-of-factly.

  “Oh.”

  “Hi,” Jim said cautiously, after a moment. “Where are you?”

  “In Hollywood.”

  There was a silence and Patsy could picture the two of them making startled faces at each other and trying to figure out what it meant. Despite her matter-of-factness the sound of Clara’s voice had irked her.

  “What brings you?” he asked. “Are you going into pictures?”

  He sounded defensive—as if her proximity made it necessary for him to maneuver in some way. It irked her more.

  “Don’t get in a panic,” she said. “I’m not here to make trouble for you. I’m here to do something about Miri. She’s pregnant.”

  “In L.A.?”

  “In San Francisco. I stopped here thinking we might ought to see one another and straighten some things out. Since your companion is there I guess it would put you on the spot to ask if you wanted to see me?”

  “I guess it would,” Jim said, sounding very conscious of the spot he was on. “Where are you?”

  “At Joe’s.”

  “Why are you staying with him?” he asked, as if it irked him.

  “Why not? He’s the only friend I’ve got in this part of the world.”

  “You pick strange friends.”

  Patsy sighed. Nothing much had changed. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t let’s go into that. I was thinking you might want to go help me with Miri. I hate to be blunt but what else can I be. Do you want to or not?”

  Jim was silent.

  “I realize this is probably a bad time to call,” she said. “I’ve called before and missed you. Several times. Roger Wagonner died the other day. I went to the funeral and then came right out here.”

  “Goodness,” Jim said. “I wish you’d got me. What did he die of?”

  In telling about Roger they grew a little friendlier and less edgy, but when the subject was exhausted they were left with the same question: Did he want to go, or not?

  “I can’t manage it right now,” Jim said. There was a tone of regret in his voice and Patsy softened a little.

  “Could you manage it if I were calling at a better time?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “Miri never liked me, anyway. I’d probably just make it more complicated.”

  “That’s right,” she said, angered. “We don’t want to try anything hard or complicated, do we?”

  “I will if you insist,” he said.

  “I don’t. I’m very bad at arm twisting.”

  “No you aren’t.”

  “Well, I don’t like to do it, anyway,” she said. “If you don’t want to, forget it. Don’t you think we might as well start thinking about divorce?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Any conclusions?”

  “None that I want to talk about right now. How long will you be in town?”

  “Just tonight.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said, the tone of regret in his voice again.

  “Yes, it’s too bad,” she said. “I can’t help it. I should be in San Francisco now. We have no idea who she’s pregnant by, or how far along she is.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “Well, look, I’m sorry I bothered you and put you on the spot. It’s my fault. I should have planned better. Will you let me know when you come to some conclusions about divorce? I’ll probably be back in Houston by Monday or Tuesday.”

  “I’ll let you know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” she asked crossly.

  “Generally, I guess.”

  “Oh, screw,” she said. “I don’t like your being sorry. Just forget it. Good night.”

  He said good night and she hung up. Joe was attempting to look noncommittal. “That’s that,” she said.

  He nodded sagely. Patsy paced about the room, very dissatisfied. “I wish we were back at that place dancing,” she said. “Would you have let me dance with that Nazi if he had asked?”

  “No,” Joe said.

  “Why not? I think that’s small of you. I’m a free woman and can dance with whom I please. What if I had made a scene?”

  “I’d have bawled you out.”

  “Oh, I’m just mad at myself for being so bitchy with Jim,” she said. “I get so harsh when I talk to him. Do you suppose I could still love him?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think so either.”

  “It’s been my observation that resentment lasts longer than love,” he said, so pontifically that it amused her. She went in and changed out of the barebacked dress. She put on a gown and robe and came and lay on his couch; in a few minutes she recovered her good humor. Joe drank Scotch and she sipped wine and they watched old movies on TV until very late. First they watched Algiers, with Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer. “I guess you know them, don’t you?” Patsy said.

  “I’ve seen them around.”

  After Algiers, when they were both a little bit tipsy, they watched a strange, hilarious Italian superspy movie, with Terry Thomas and Marissa Mell. It was about a thief so talented that he gradually drove a small European country into bankruptcy. In the end the government was forced to melt all its remaining gold reserves into one giant twenty-ton ingot, something they assumed no th
ief could steal. But the thief, whose name was Diabolik, managed. As the ingot was being shipped out of the country on a special train, he dynamited a causeway. The train and the ingot fell into the sea. Diabolik then affixed giant balloons to the ingot and towed it to his secret hideaway. Joe and Patsy laughed and laughed. They had both been in a state of suppressed gloom, but under the impress of drink, each other’s company, and the ridiculous movie their gloom spent itself in bursts of hilarity.

  “It’s a relief to know there are people making worse movies than us,” Joe said.

  Patsy was lying full length on the couch, very relaxed, her head on a green pillow and her ankles crossed and propped on the end of the couch. She was barefooted and kept wiggling her toes. Joe was reminded several times of the girl he had fallen in love with, whose name was Bettina; she had nice legs and ankles too, but instead of being brunette she had ashy blond hair and was taller than Patsy, an awkward long-legged young beauty who had not yet learned to handle her body.

  “Are you going to seduce her or aren’t you?” Patsy asked, divining the drift of his thoughts.

  “I’m twice her age,” he said. “I don’t think I could really do her any good. Maybe I should hold off and let someone younger find her.”

  “Don’t be so noble,” Patsy said. “She’d be lucky to get you.”

  He got up and switched channels, but they were tired of movies. He turned the TV off and they sat looking at the lights of the Hollywood hills.

  “It’s a miserable town for a girl, really,” he said. “Two thirds of the men are queer and the others are predatory. They’re not looking for anything but pussy.”

  “I’d become a drunkard if I lived here,” Patsy said. “Does TV go on all night?”

  “All night. It’s a bad town for girls but a great town for insomniacs.”

  “You really want to go help me with my sister?” she asked, yawning.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay. Do we drive or fly?”

  They couldn’t decide. Both of them were too sleepy. But when Patsy went to bed Joe was still sitting in the chair in his living room, drinking and staring somberly at the lights.

  17

  JOE WOKE HER EARLY. Sometime during his midnight deliberations he had decided he wanted to drive to San Francisco. “It’s a nicer drive than the one from here to the airport,” he said. Patsy was in her bathrobe, still half asleep, having coffee. But when she succeeded in showering herself awake she found that she felt rather good. Joe was putting the top up on the Morgan. She protested, but he put it up, anyway. “You’d get wind-burned,” he said.

  At times, as they zipped north in the fast morning traffic, Patsy was a little frightened. Joe was a silent, intense driver, and the traffic around them was intense without being silent. Sometimes they shot into valleys between two huge trailer trucks, and Patsy could look out and see huge tires looming higher than her head, only a yard or two away. It seemed to her that a sudden gust of wind could blow the Morgan right under such a truck and she was always relieved when they slipped ahead and were back among ordinary cars.

  They stopped and breakfasted in Santa Barbara, debating how much time to give to the drive. Joe wanted to drive the coast highway. Patsy had never been on it and had no objection. At San Luis Obispo Joe got out and took the top down, and they spent the day driving slowly up the beautiful coast. Joe regaled her all day with Hollywood stories while the curves of the coast unfolded themselves before her. At midafternoon they stopped and ate cheese and crackers and wieners, parked on a little point that looked down on the sea. Before they reached Big Sur it was evening. They saw the last of the sun, and the country and the sea turned gray. Before they reached Monterey they were driving in a thick fog. Joe became an intense driver again. By the time they were back on 101, Patsy was asleep. Joe shook her awake almost two hours later as they were passing South San Francisco. “We’re nearly there,” he said. “Sit up and look.”

  Patsy got her eyes open but found that sitting up was not easy. Sleeping in a Morgan was not as comfortable as sleeping in the Ford, and as she tried to uncramp herself she was for a moment lonesome and homesick for Texas and her house and her car and her son. She was cold as well. “There’s no place quite like it,” Joe said sentimentally as the city of San Francisco appeared before them. He obviously loved it. Patsy felt that he had made the drive for that moment, when the lights of the city came into view. For herself, she felt little, though the lights had a certain beauty in the fog, and the way they were grouped together on the cluster of hills was more appealing than the millions of lights in the sprawl of L.A. She was cold and rumpled and in no mood to appreciate the singularity of San Francisco.

  A little later, when Joe drove them up to a very formidably posh hotel off a large square, with a cable car running in front of it, it was her rumpledness that worried her the most. She was not comfortable until the door of her room was shut behind her. Joe had offered to show her the town, but she felt far too exhausted.

  When she had bathed and was warm again she sat at her window looking down on the thronged streets; she watched the cable cars and called Miri. A message said that the number was no longer in use. It scared her. Where could Miri be? How could she be found? She lay awake a long time worrying about it, hearing the muffled clang of the cable cars.

  When she awoke the city was gray and she felt rather gray herself. Miri was going to seem a stranger, she was sure, and it might not even be possible to find her. All she had was the address where the phone had once been. She had a vision of herself having to hire a private detective to find her sister, a grubby detective, of the sort one saw on late TV. She called Joe, and after a time he answered, in a voice indicating that he had been asleep.

  “I’m sorry. I guess you were out late.”

  “Um.” His tone reminded her of Teddy Horton.

  “Do you mind if I wake you up?”

  “No,” he said gallantly.

  “You sleep awhile,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure you got in safely. I’ll call you if I really need you.”

  “Be awake in a minute,” he mumbled, but she quietly hung up. She was a little irritated with him for having picked such a splendid hotel. Whatever she wore that would look good enough to get her through the lobby was going to look awfully haut monde wherever she came upon Miri. Fortunately her choice was limited. She wore her dark green suit and had an expensive breakfast, with good marmalade, in the hotel coffee shop.

  The house where the phone had been was in the center of a steeply sloping block between Fillmore and Van Ness. It was a gray three-story house, amid a block of gray and light green and white three-story houses. There were six mailboxes outside the door but Miri’s name was not on any of them and she felt a growing distress. Miri was indeed gone. She tried the door but it was the sort that had to be opened either by a key or a buzzer, and she turned back, very discouraged. She was about to go down to the street when she noticed that the name on one of the mailboxes was Melissa Duffin. She hesitated again, conscious that it was little too early to be ringing doorbells in California—particularly the doorbells of people one hardly knew. But she was there and Melissa was the only person she could think of in the whole city who might know where Miri was. She rang the bell. Almost immediately the buzzer sounded and she pushed open the door, realizing only after it had closed behind her that she had forgotten to check the number of the apartment. Fortunately Melissa came out almost as soon as Patsy was in. She looked down the stairwell from the third floor and Patsy saw her.

  “Oh, hi,” Melissa said. “You’re Patsy. Come on up. I thought you were the postman bringing me a package from Momma. Today’s my birthday.”

  “No, it’s only me, empty-handed.”

  “And I bet I know why you’re here,” Melissa said. “I was wondering when her folks were going to show up. I’m glad it’s you instead.”

  “Did I get you up?”

  “Oh, no.” Patsy could believe it. Melissa looked love
ly and wide awake and fresh. She wore a long loose black dress. It surprised Patsy for a moment, but once they were inside the apartment the dress seemed ideal. It was a clean, light white-walled apartment, very pleasant, and Melissa’s dark hair and the dark dress were perfect for it. The floor was bare and instead of furniture there was a profusion of cushions and a mattress covered with a nice orange spread.

  “We love cushions,” Melissa said. “Won’t you have some oranges? I was having some for breakfast.”

  Patsy was taking in the room, looking at the three or four drawings on the wall and out the little bay window. There was a chair near the bay window, the only chair in the room, small, done in a smooth unpainted wood, with a rope bottom. “A friend of ours made that for us,” Melissa said. “He’s a carpenter of sorts.”

  “A good sort, I’d say. I will have an orange, if I may.”

  The morning paper was spread out in the middle of the floor. Melissa was reading it while she ate oranges. Patsy got a blue cushion and joined her. “I see you put your seeds on the want ads,” she said. “I was always slovenly with mine. Your boy friend must have you well trained.”

  “He does,” Melissa said. “Hey, Barry, get up. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Outside, the morning mist had just broken and the sun shone on the houses across the street. The room, which was already light, became even lighter and more pleasant. While Patsy was peeling her orange there was the sound of a male dressing in the room past the little kitchen, and in a minute in walked Barry, an amazingly tall, lanky young man with a nice red beard and a shy grin. He was barefooted, in chinos and a blue tee shirt. He stood scratching his head.

  “I was determined to get someone taller than Daddy,” Melissa said. “You want oranges or not?”

  “Is there any coffee?” Barry asked politely.

  “No, because I didn’t know I was going to wake you up so soon,” Melissa said. “Have an orange and I’ll make some.”

  Barry sat down and peeled his orange, grinning shyly at Patsy now and then. “Gee,” he said, “I’m not usually up so early. I’m a nut for all-night movies.”