Cadillac Jack

by Larry McMurtry

  "Give it a try," she said. "Same time same station."

  Cindy hadn't taken her eyes off me. She smiled as she watched. Then she began to stroke one of my legs with one of her heels.

  Boss seemed to have no more to say. Neither did I. Desi Amaz was screaming at Lucy when I hung up the phone.

  Chapter XIII

  Cindy's all-day sex-fest only lasted half a day. Of course it started at dawn, so it was a long half day. During the half day I attempted to help her do all the things she had never got to do with men more successful than myself. They were not really very revolutionary things. In fact, they were sexual staples, familiar to millions, if not billions. But for some reason they had not yet become staples to Cindy, and she enjoyed them a lot.

  We had to go out to lunch, since we were both ravenous and there was not enough food in Cindy's larder to feed even one of us. So we went out and wolfed down some bacon cheeseburgers and happened to notice that there was a Humphrey Bogart double feature at a movie theater two doors from the restaurant. To Have and Have Not and Casablanca were the movies.

  "We could go see them," I suggested.

  Cindy was delighted. It fit in perfectly with the unconventionality of the day. Seeing movies in the afternoon was an even greater defiance of the laws of success than lying around fucking. The latter was at least tinged with romance —the former was just lazy.

  "We can eat popcorn and hold hands," I added.

  "Naw, I hate popcorn, it's not good for you," she said.

  "But we can hold hands. I've never seen either of those movies."

  "You must be the only person in the world who hasn't seen Casablanca," I said.

  She looked at me as if I had just made a serious assertion.

  "I don't think I am," she said.

  If she was, she still is, because the minute we sat down she fell asleep and slept contentedly through most of both movies. I slept through most of To Have and Have Not myself—it had been a strenuous morning—but I woke up in Casablanca just as they were singing the "Marseillaise." Not Cindy. She was snoozing soundly, her head on my shoulder, her mouth open. On the screen Ingrid Bergman was looking her freshest, her eyes liquid with the dew of youth and life. Cindy looked the picture of vulnerability. I kissed her and when she opened her eyes they were just as dewy as Ingrid Bergman's. We abandoned the movie, bought a huge sack of groceries, and went back to her house.

  Cindy went in the kitchen and began to put the groceries away, yawning big healthy yawns as she did it. She had bought five or six kinds of soup. Leek soup, turtle soup, gazpacho, split pea, lentil, and Manhattan clam chowder. She was happily stuffing them into her shelves, which already seemed to contain a lot of soup.

  "It's my favorite thing," she said, a bit defiantly, when she caught me looking at the soup. Somehow it was a winning touch. Behind the poised social climber was a girl who liked to stockpile a lot of soups. Probably having a lot of soup made her feel secure. In an odd way it sort of made up for her lack of interest in antiques.

  In effect she was a soup collector, a realization which cheered me, for some reason. I went over and kissed her just as she was starting a yawn. It was a happy move. A woman who is just getting into being awakened is usually eager to have the awakening continue.

  "I'll make you some soup," she remarked, after the kiss.

  Chapter XIV

  At 11:30 that night I remembered Belinda Arber, who had been expecting me to come by that afternoon and take her, her mother, and her sister to Baskin-Roberts, as she called it. Of course Belinda was only three and might have forgotten that I was supposed to come, but I had a feeling she hadn't. Natural winners are not forgetful where their own interests are concerned.

  Beside me, Cindy was sleeping deeply, in her pink nightgown, recovering from a long day of sexual awakening. Actually she had gone to sleep with one of my hands squeezed between her legs and it was still there, slowly growing numb. It was already numb nearly up to the elbow. Once I had pulled it out, to give my blood a chance to circulate through it, but Cindy had grunted and succeeded in stuffing it back against her fundament without even waking up.

  I felt an inward disquiet, although it was a quiet night, so quiet that I could hear Cindy's steady breathing. True to her word, Cindy had given me some soup, and I had given her some love. I don't know that it was an unequal trade. The soup was probably as good on the soup level as the love was on the love level, all things considered.

  Cindy took my feeling and swirled it around in the blender of her body, absorbing it instantly, as if it were a healthy mixture of sugar, orange juice, and raw eggs. Sex was the raw eggs. Since she herself didn't have to bother feeling very much she got the full and immediate benefit of emotion that might otherwise have been doled out over several months of domestic life or social partnership, like a balanced meal.

  Cindy didn't want a balanced meal. Like Belinda, she just wanted a quick trip to Baskin-Robbins.

  For the second night in a row, I fidgeted, while my hand went to sleep against Cindy's cunt. At some point she rolled over and spread her thighs and my hand tingled for about twenty minutes, as it came back to life. While it tingled I tried to imagine the future.

  What my imagination prefers to do with futures is furnish them. I see large airy rooms, filled with all my most treasured and spectacular things, and then I see myself and the woman of my immediate dreams living in them.

  I lay in bed and furnished a few rooms, but my imagination couldn't keep Cindy in one of them for more than a tenth of a second. My imagination is more realistic than I am. Cindy wasn't gom2 to be in any of those rooms. My objects held no interest for her and my towns and roads would bore her.

  Though for the moment she was asleep beside me, in her pink nightgown, Cindy really was just waking up. Once she was really awake she wasn't going to want me around. She would go out into the capital, as Boss had, and pick the men she wanted, from the berry bushes of diplomacy, politics, journalism, the arts, the law firms, or whatever capital bushes she might be passing. The juice of many men would stain her lips for a time, before she reduced them to mulberry-colored pulp.

  In the morning she was up at 6:30, and she punched me five times before leaving for her high-level exercise class at 7:30. All five were unpremeditated punches that occurred whenever she remembered that I was going to Middleburg with Boss. She punched me once in bed, once in the shower—which she insisted we take together in memory of our romantic yesterday—twice while we were dressing and once in the kitchen. The last punch caused milk to slosh out of the bowl. She didn't wipe it up, or explain any of the punches. I might only be the berry-of-the-week but I wasn't supposed to be anybody else's berry during that time.

  "You better be back here by six," she said, from the door. "We're going to Oblivia's tonight. We have to try and act like normal people."

  "My gosh," I said. "We are normal people. Even the most normal people in the world are sometimes late."

  "That's not true," she said.

  "Of course it's true. Punctuality is not synonymous with normality."

  If it hadn't been 7:25 I think we would have had a terrible fight. Cindy was itching for one. I wasn't, but I realized one was practically inevitable, in view of the fact that I had a sort of date with Boss.

  The minute she left I dug out a Maryland phone book and called Jean.

  Belinda answered on the second ring.

  "I'll get it," she said, having got it. Then she breathed into the receiver for a bit.

  "Who is it?" she asked, having caught her breath.

  ''That's not what you're supposed to say," her sister said, from somewhere nearby.

  There was silence on the line as Belinda tried to remember what she was supposed to say.

  "Is this the Arbers' residence?" I asked.

  Belinda wasn't listening.

  "I know what to say, Beverly!" she said.

  "Then say it!" Beverly yelled.

  More silence.

  "Can't remembe
r right now," Belinda admitted, though in clear and unrepentant tones.

  "Are you Belinda Arber?" I asked. "I'm the man with the big white car."

  "Are you gonna take us to Baskin-Roberts today?" she asked, coming straight to the point.

  "You better," she added.

  "Why had I better?"

  "You jist better come over here," she said.

  "I just better talk to your momma first," I said. "She might not want me to."

  "She cried," Belinda remarked, apropos of nothing.

  "Uh-oh," I said. "When?"

  "Two times," Belinda said. "Are you coming over here?"

  "Let me have that phone," Jean said, from somewhere behind her.

  "I'm talking!" Belinda insisted.

  There was silence while a struggle took place. I could imagine Belinda clinging grimly to the receiver.

  Jean, however, was stronger.

  "Hel—" she said, just as we were disconnected.

  Jean answered. In the background I could hear loud howls. Belinda had lost a round.

  "I can't believe she did that," Jean said, sounding a good deal strung out. One of the times she cried had not been long ago.

  "What'd she do?" I asked.

  "Disconnected us," Jean said. "The little bitch. If she can't win she makes sure everybody else loses."

  "Did you spank her?" I asked.

  "Of course I spanked her," Jean said. "You think I'm gonna let her get away with that?"

  "I couldn't come by yesterday," I said. "I just called to apologize."

  Jean was silent for a moment.

  "I didn't expect you to," she said. "There's no reason you should rearrange your life just because I have a bossy daughter."

  The howls came closer. The bossy daughter was returning to the attack.

  "Don't you hit me," Jean said soberly.

  "But... I... was jist talkin'," Belinda insisted, her voice bubbly with sobs.

  "So? There's no justice," Jean said, in the voice of a mother who was not very impressed with the tragic little figure standing before her.

  "Is . . . he . . . comin' over?" Belinda asked.

  "I don't know, are you?" Jean asked.

  "I was thinking I might come over this afternoon," I said. "I'd still like to see your antiques."

  It was actually true. I was eager to see what kinds of chests Jean had managed to dredge up.

  Also I wanted to see Belinda, Beverly, and Jean—they seemed a likable and promising trio.

  "You realize that if you come it means Baskin-Robbins," Jean said.

  "I can live with that," I said.

  At mention of Baskin-Robbins Belinda fell silent. There was a rustling sound, such as a little girl might make when she's climbing up in her mother's lap.

  "Jist tell him," Belinda said.

  "You don't tell people, you ask them," Jean said.

  "I'll tell him then,” Belinda said, repossessing the phone.

  "You're rude, Belinda, you grab," Beverly said. "I don't grab, do I, Mom?"

  "Nope,” Jean said. "You're my well-mannered daughter.”

  Her other daughter was not interested in such distinctions.

  "You come an' take us to Baskin-Roberts, okay?" she said.

  "Okay," I said. "I'll come."

  "I tolded him," Belinda said.

  "I heard you," Jean said. "I didn't hear you say thank you, though."

  "No, 'cause I didn't say it yet," Belinda said blithely.

  Then she held the phone close to her mouth and breathed into the receiver, as if to make it clear that her will had not relaxed one whit.

  "Is you the one with the soft car?” she asked.

  "I’m the one," I said.

  Belinda giggled. "What's your name again?" she asked.

  "Jack."

  "It's Jack," she said, to her mother.

  Then she breathed into the receiver some more.

  "You’re coming today?" she asked.

  "That's right," I said.

  "Okay, but no forgets," she warned.

  "No forgets," I said.

  Chapter XV

  The first thing I saw when we drove into Cyrus Folmsbee's second-best horse farm, near Middleburg, was a wooden-sided Rolls-Royce hunting brake. It was sitting on a beautifully kept gravel driveway, and a small man in striped pants and a neat little black cap was waxing its wooden sides, rubbing them gently and expertly with a soft cloth.

  "I can't believe it," I said to Boss. "That's a Rolls-Royce hunting brake."

  It sat in front of a beautiful red brick house, beneath trees whose leaves had just turned, in the midst of rolling green country filled with white fences and sleek horses.

  Just seeing it there gave me a feeling akin to nausea. It's a feeling I only get when I have to go onto the properties of the very rich and see wonderful things that I can't possibly buy.

  Boss noticed that I immediately fell in love with the car.

  "Don't try to buy it," she said, smiling a little, in a motherly way, which was the way she had been smiling all the way to Middleburg.

  We were in her Lincoln rather than my Cadillac, because Boss was afraid the sight of a Cadillac would send Cyrus Folmsbee into a rage. Evidently he harbored a long-standing grudge against the Cadillac division of General Motors because they had once sent him a car whose color had been slightly wrong.

  "Cyrus is picky," Boss said. She was in a cool but cheerful mood. She let her eyes rove a bit over Cyrus Folmsbee's second-best horse farm before getting out.

  "He's probably just selling it because the fences need painting," she said, pointing at the miles and miles of white fence that stretched over hill and dale, to vanish in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. In the crisp fall morning the Blue Ridge mountains were living up to their name. They were as blue as the flame of a welder's torch.

  "The fence looks okay to me," I said.

  "Un-uh," Boss said. "It's dingy. Not really up to standards."

  We got out and strolled over to where the little man in the striped pants was polishing the heart-stopping car. He made a little bow when he saw Boss.

  "How are you, Herbert?" she asked, putting her hand on his shoulder in a friendly fashion.

  Such kindness made Herbert look like he might cry.

  "Very well, thank you, Mrs. Miller," he said. "It's kind of you to ask,"

  "What does he intend to do with you, if he sells this place?" Boss asked.

  Herbert shook his head, a little forlornly. "I expect I will go with the cars," he said. "That probably means Connecticut. I shouldn't think he'd require seven cars in Maine, though of course that is a possibility. He does like the way I do these cars."

  I could see why. The hunting brake had probably been made in the late twenties, from the look of it, but one would have had to crawl underneath it to find any evidence that it had ever been used.

  "Why hasn't he painted the fence?" Boss asked. "It's not like Cyrus to let things run down."

  Herbert was not happy to have been asked such a question. His horrified look reminded me of my old friend Goat Goslin, who also hated to be asked questions, though in all other respects no one could have been less like Goat than Herbert. The latter had all his fingers, and had probably never seen a rodeo.

  Herbert looked carefully around before answering. After all, his boss had once run the CIA. His caution was understandable.

  "It's the neighbors," he said finally. "I'm afraid Mr. Folmsbee has fallen out with them. He says they deserve to have to look at a dirty fence."

  He stopped polishing and stared with something like shame at the long line offence, which looked perfectly white to me. It wasn't as white as my Cadillac, but it was still pretty white. Nonetheless, its condition was obviously a matter that weighed on Herbert.

  "There's been a great deal of talk," he said mournfully. "No one is happy about the situation. Mr. Folmsbee has received complaints. But, as you know, he is not a man who bends to public opinion."

  "Yeah, he's a stubborn
son of a bitch," Boss said, giving Herbert a comforting pat. "If he ever fires you you come to work for me, okay?"

  Herbert's face was a study in confusion. It was plain he regarded the prospect of working for Boss rather than Cyrus Folmsbee as sort of a dream of heaven, not a life that was likely to happen here on earth.

  It was hard for me to imagine, too. A little man who wore a black apron and striped pants when he polished cars wouldn't stand much of a chance in the Miller household. He reminded me of diminutive servants I sometimes caught glimpses of in Beverly Hills, all of whom seemed to spend their time watering down acres of Mercedes. At least Herbert had a Rolls-Royce hunting brake to polish.

  "So is the Squire up?" Boss asked.

  "Oh yes indeed," Herbert said. "I think you will find him with the ferrets."

  On our way to the ferrets, wherever they were, we passed a large garage with six more cars in it, five of them covered with neat canvas car covers. The car that was uncovered was an ancient Pierce Arrow, the size of a bus.

  "A family could live in that Pierce Arrow," I said.

  "That Herbert's really sweet," Boss said. "I got a soft spot for men like him."

  "Why don't you just hire him?" I asked. "He doesn't look very happy."

  Boss chuckled. "You don't go stealing servants from the Folmsbees," she said. "Cyrus would have one of his Koreans assassinate me."

  Just as she said it, two Koreans popped out of a small arbor we happened to be passing. Like Herbert they wore striped pants and neat little caps. They stopped, deferentially, until we passed, and then made off toward the house. I had to admit that they looked pretty efficient.

  "Cyrus says they make the best assassins in the world," Boss said. "They also make pretty good bartenders."

  Once we passed the little arbor the estate opened up before us. It stretched without interruption across a gentle valley to the Blue Ridge. There were a couple of red-roofed barns and several small trellised houses, all ivy-covered, that looked as if they ought to contain little English ladies who read Dorothy Sayers. There was a lake to the northwest, and the pastures beyond it were crisscrossed with white fence that had evidently not been kept up to standards. Several bay thoroughbreds grazed in one pasture, while another held a scattering of black Angus cattle. The horses were swishing their tails and gamboling a bit in the crisp morning, but the black cattle were just standing there. I never saw one move. The landscape before us was so perfectly composed, with green grass setting off blue mountains, white fences setting off orange leaves, and bay horses contrasting with black cattle, that it occurred to me that perhaps the Angus weren't allowed to move. Perhaps they had been trained to spend all day in one place, for the sake of perfect visual composition. If they had bunched up in one corner of the pasture, as cattle frequently do, the whole balance of the landscape would have been spoiled.