The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “Do you hate him?” Laurie asked.

  “Is he still behind us?” Harmony asked. She was having an unkind fantasy, which was that the water swishing along the curbs was not a shallow little runoff but a deep pool that Sonny would step into and drown. It wasn’t that she hated him so much, either, it was just that she hoped to avoid him for the rest of her life.

  “Let’s just edge over to the right,” Laurie whispered. “If we turn real quick he might see you, but if we give it another block or two and then turn, maybe we can get over to Columbus Avenue and hit the subway.”

  “He might recognize me from my walk,” Harmony pointed out.

  They gave it one more block, edging west as they walked. When they came to Seventy-third Street they just slid around the corner. After they had walked half a block, toward Columbus Avenue, Harmony couldn’t stand the suspense, she had to know if Sonny was still behind them.

  She turned her head and there he was, not a yard behind her, looking at her out of the same big dumb brown eyes he had always had.

  “I guess you thought I wouldn’t recognize you by your walk,” Sonny said. “Always playing hard to get.”

  “Sonny, my daughter died, just let me alone, please,” Harmony said. “I have to take the subway.”

  “I heard about Pepper, I was at a club in the Poconos—this guy she danced with told me about it,” Sonny said, holding his ground. “It’s tragic, kiddo.”

  “Bye, Sonny, I have to take the subway,” Harmony said.

  “All the more reason why you need the Cowboy,” Sonny informed her. “Muggers will be on you in the subway like ticks on a coon.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you, buddy,” Laurie said. “She just said so in plain English. Will you excuse us now?”

  Sonny’s big brown eyes didn’t change expression. He held out a hand.

  “Sonny Le Song, ma’am,” he said. “I have no intention of intruding on a mother’s grief.”

  “But you are intruding on it,” Laurie pointed out, not unkindly. She had been prepared to be abrasive, in the manner of the New York streets, but something about the small man’s look stopped her. He just looked dumb and scared.

  “I’ve been in love with Harmony since the day we met,” Sonny said.

  “Oh, Sonny,” Harmony said. He was just one of those men who were easily hurt—even now, on West Seventy-third Street, he looked as if he might cry, just from the fact that she hadn’t been exactly welcoming.

  “Do you want him to come home with us, Harmony?” Laurie asked. Then she walked away several steps. She had been ready to slam the guy on the sidewalk, but now she felt uncertain. She felt strange. Just when she was able to get Harmony to come to life a little—to eat, to take a walk—they start across Seventy-fifth Street and run into a little yokel who happened to be an old beau of Harmony’s—or at least an old would-be beau. Harmony had freaked at the sight of him, but now she seemed to be a little ambivalent.

  “Sonny, could you just give me a day or two?” Harmony asked. “This is my first day to be with Laurie—I wasn’t planning on male company right now.”

  “I knew you were in town, babe,” Sonny said, more or less sidestepping Harmony’s request. “I saw your little boy on TV—talk about star quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if Caesars signed him up—maybe the pup could do a diving act or something.”

  Harmony wished he would just stop looking at her with those eyes. Sonny couldn’t stand rejection—it was the only reason she had ever slept with him. He got so upset if he was rejected that it was easier just to sleep with him; it took less time. She knew that Laurie probably wouldn’t think that was very good grounds for a relationship; probably it wasn’t, but it was what had kept Sonny Le Song in her life for the better part of a year. Basically she did it with him as a means of avoiding listening to him cry. Sonny explained that he couldn’t help it, his feelings lay close to the surface; he didn’t feel he should be blamed for bursting into tears because of his close-to-the-surface feelings. Harmony had been hopeful for a while that there might be a part of Sonny that wasn’t so close to the surface; after all, she developed a few tender feelings for the guy; even if she was just sleeping with him because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, still, she was sleeping with him.

  But if there was a part of Sonny Le Song that didn’t lie close to the surface, Harmony never located it. All he liked to do was sing and screw, and he wasn’t exactly casino class in either department. So far as Harmony could remember, he never got higher in Las Vegas than a lounge act at the Best Western, and, in the romance department, Harmony got the sense that Sonny never got higher than her. But those were just reflections; they didn’t help her know what she was going to do with the guy now that she had had the misfortune to bump into him or her first and only walk in New York.

  There he stood, with his “I’m gonna cry if you send me away” look on his face.

  “How old are you now, Sonny?” Harmony asked. She was really just stalling, hoping he could be distracted into a normal conversation. Maybe they could walk along together to the nearest subway, after which maybe Sonny would just go one way and she and Laurie would go another.

  “Not too old to cut the mustard, babe,” Sonny said. He had a short upper lip—probably it was one reason he never got higher than a lounge act at the Best Western. When he smiled there was something a little chipmunky about Sonny—people just didn’t go to shows in Las Vegas to be sung to by a man who reminded them of a chipmunk.

  Later, she knew, Sonny had sunk considerably lower than the lounge at the Best Western; he had even been forced to try country-and-western for a while. Once, when she had borrowed Gary’s car and stopped to fill it up at a brand-new Chevron station on the Strip, there was Sonny, dressed in rhinestones, with a little mike and an audience of four or five old couples who had pulled in to fill up their RVs, singing “Behind Closed Doors.” It turned out that the Chevron station was even more brand-new than she had thought; it had only been open about two hours—Sonny had been hired to entertain at the opening. There was a little sandwich board propped over by the airhose that said:

  SONNY LE SONG

  STAR OF STAGE AND SCREEN

  (appearing exclusively for Chevron)

  For a second or two Harmony thought that maybe she could just gas up and head on down the Strip, but while she was gassing up, Sonny spotted her. There was no way she could leave without hurting his feelings, so she sat on the fender of the car and listened to a few songs. Being polite didn’t work out too well, either. Quite a few people turned out to be more interested in getting her autograph than in listening to Sonny sing—he had never had perfect pitch, exactly. Of course it was the middle of the day and it was pretty hot over by the airhose—that might have thrown Sonny’s pitch a little further off than usual.

  Finally he finished his set and came over to say hi. Several old couples who had seen Harmony on stage wanted to snap her picture. Harmony didn’t care, it was part of her job to welcome vacationers to Las Vegas. Sonny promptly squeezed himself into the pictures. One or two of the old couples weren’t too happy with that development, and neither was she, to be truthful. What if one of the old couples sent her a copy of the photograph and Jay, her boyfriend, who was definitely the jealous type, happened to open the mail that day and saw Sonny Le Song practically sitting in her lap? On the whole, she was glad when Sonny’s break ended.

  Little did she know that trouble was coming with Jay anyway, and it didn’t involve Sonny or the photographs the old people took at the opening of the Chevron station. Jay had accidentally happened to walk through the casino one day and noticed Harmony chatting with Hank, the captain of the cleaning crew. Hank was sitting on the seat of a big, silent vacuum cleaner that he swished around on, sucking crumbs and other trash off the floor. Harmony had known Hank for years, since long before he became head of the cleaning crew at the Stardust. They were just chums—they had never even gone on a date, none of which mattered to Jay, of cou
rse. Jay didn’t accept the chums part, he took the position that there was more going on; or, if there wasn’t more going on already, there would be more going on sooner or later; in his view men and women could never be chums. He came over and got huffy with Hank, who just turned on the big vacuum cleaner and swished away. Harmony felt a little hurt that Hank hadn’t stayed around to explain, but of course he had his position to think of, he had an important job; people liked the casinos to be clean. Hank couldn’t afford to be in a controversy on the casino floor—he just smiled, and left her to her fate.

  Later, at home, Harmony tried over and over again to explain to Jay that she wasn’t romantically interested in Hank; she had just stopped to chat—after all, she and Hank had worked at the same casinos several times. But all her talk fell on deaf ears—Jay didn’t even listen. He yelled at her, and called her a slut in front of Pepper—after which he slapped her hard enough that she fell over the back of a couch. Then he stalked out the door and Harmony never saw him again.

  It was during that time that Harmony gave up and slept with Sonny Le Song. His real name was Butch Gussow, but of course you couldn’t go on stage in Las Vegas with a name like Butch Gussow. Sonny’s gig at the Chevron station was for three days—she would drive by and see him, with his white suit on and the mike in his hand, singing some country-and-western song to three or four old couples—well, somehow it touched her.

  In a town where Elvis and Mr. Sinatra sang to millions, over the years, the thought that Sonny wanted to be a singer so badly that he would keep trying, even though it was just to old couples at a Chevron station—couples who were just taking a little break from driving around America in their declining years—well, you had to admire persistence, at least she did.

  When it turned out that Jay had no interest in making up—he was soon sleeping with a checker at the Big Bear supermarket—Harmony opened the door a crack to Sonny. She knew it was a mistake, he wasn’t her kind of guy, but then her kind of guy wasn’t working out too well—it wasn’t helpful to Pepper to hear her mother called a slut, not to mention having to watch her get knocked over a couch. She decided that maybe someone with a milder approach would be better, and Sonny seemed mild. She just hadn’t reckoned with his problem with rejection, really it was a major problem. Once they finally did become lovers Sonny’s problem with rejection took some pretty extreme forms—for example, he expected her to hold his dick all night, if she even took her hand off it long enough to scratch her nose or turn out the bedside light Sonny would begin to feel rejected. At first it was a little endearing, that he wanted her to stay so close, but later it definitely presented some difficulties. He didn’t even like Harmony to go to the potty by herself—if she went in her own bathroom and started to close the door he got a desperate look on his face.

  “Sonny, I’m just going to the bathroom,” she would say, hoping he would see that it was no big deal.

  “Do you have to close the door?” Sonny asked.

  “Well, it’s more private if I close the door,” she said. “I don’t follow you when you go to the bathroom, do I?”

  “No, but I wish you would,” Sonny said.

  “Sonny, I don’t want to watch you use the potty,” Harmony said. “I think you should have a little privacy.”

  “Why, if I don’t want it?” he asked.

  Some of their conversations made Harmony feel a little crazy; they made her realize she should have given Sonny a pass and stuck with her kind of guy. At least none of them got a desperate look in his eye if she needed to use the potty. They hadn’t insisted that she hold them by the dick all night, either.

  Now Harmony could tell just from a brief moment of eye contact that Sonny Le Song was still a man whose emotions lay close to the surface. Why did I have to meet him? she kept asking herself, or asking God or fate or whatever power had caused Sonny to show up on West Seventy-fifth Street at that particular time. It was probably the one moment in her whole life when she would be on the opposite street corner. But nothing gave back any answer, not Sonny, not the heavens, not anything. The fact was, she met him, in his cowboy boots and his old mashed hat, on a rainy day in New York.

  The question that had to be answered was what to do next. Laurie was being very patient, but Harmony could tell that she thought it was a little odd that she would give him so much attention. “Hi, how are you, hope I can see you again when I have more time,” would have been Laurie’s approach.

  “Sonny, could you just give me your phone number?” Harmony asked. “Laurie and I have to get home—but if you’ll give me a phone number I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Babe, if you only knew how I missed you,” Sonny said, but at that point Laurie Chalk whipped back into her aggressive New York mode and cut him off.

  “Buddy, she said she’d take your number, which I think is certainly generous under the circumstances,” Laurie said. “If I were you I’d just give her the number so we can go. She’s had a tragedy, you know. She needs to get some rest.”

  Sonny just ignored Laurie, as if she didn’t enter into the matter at all.

  “Let’s go, Harmony,” Laurie said, grabbing her arm. “We asked this man politely to let us be. I don’t know what his problem is, but it’s his problem, not ours.”

  “I don’t have a phone number,” Sonny admitted. “Sometimes if I have a gig they let me sleep under the tables. But I think I’ll be getting a situation in the Poconos in about a week. I think things will be looking up.”

  “You mean you’re homeless?” Laurie asked.

  “Well, until the situation in the Poconos comes through,” Sonny said. “I have a gig tonight though. I expect I’ll have a place to sleep tonight.”

  “Where’s the gig?” Laurie asked.

  “Way uptown,” Sonny said. “It’s an old folks’ home—a lot of old Jewish grandmothers. They won’t turn a nice boy like me out on the streets.”

  “Well, nice to meet you,” Laurie said. “I hope it works out in the Poconos.”

  Harmony had no idea what the Poconos were—the name just rang no bells. She felt a little torn, though—she had offered to call. Maybe knowing Sonny wouldn’t be so bad if she could just know him over the telephone. It was pointless, though; he was homeless and had no phone.

  “Is it the old folks’ home on a Hundred and Tenth Street, south side?” Laurie asked.

  “That’s it—if you want to come to the show I’m sure I can get you on the list,” Sonny said.

  Evidently he considered them dumb enough to believe there would be a waiting list for his concert at the Jewish old folks’ home. Even Laurie, who lived in New York City and considered herself unshockable, was a little shocked by the novelty of that idea.

  “Oh, Mr. Le Song, it’s too bad,” she said. “We have to get home. Eddie’s going to be on the Letterman show tonight, and we promised we’d watch.”

  A second later she wished she hadn’t said it. How was the little dope going to feel? Harmony’s five-year-old was going to be on the most popular talk show in America, and Sonny Le Song was singing—if he was singing, even that small claim could be a lie—at an old folks’ home on 110th Street. Why in God’s name did we have to meet him? she asked herself—but, like Harmony, she got no answer.

  “I know that old folks’ home,” Laurie said. “If they let you spend the night they’ll let you stay for breakfast. That’s when Harmony will call.”

  Sonny Le Song didn’t answer. He just stood on the sidewalk, mute, looking at Harmony with the same needy brown eyes that he had trained on her years ago, when he wanted her to hold his dick in her hand for a few hours.

  “Bye, Sonny,” Harmony said, as she allowed herself to be led away. After a while she looked back and saw that Sonny was standing right where he had been when they left.

  Laurie looked back and saw the same sight.

  “We can bring him home if you really want to,” she offered.

  “I don’t really want to,” Harmony said.

&n
bsp; “Do you still have a soft spot for the guy, or what?” Laurie asked.

  Harmony shook her head. It wasn’t really a soft spot. Mainly it was just the memory of him singing at the Chevron station that touched her.

  “Maybe it was the rhinestones,” she said, thinking out loud.

  “What rhinestones?” Laurie asked.

  “He used to wear rhinestones when he sang country-western,” Harmony said.

  3.

  “Were you in love with that guy?” Laurie asked, once they rounded the corner onto Columbus Avenue. Sonny Le Song still stood right where they left him.

  “If there was ever to be a movie of your life Joe Pesci could play him,” she added.

  “I was never in love with Sonny Le Song,” Harmony said. She had been inclined to let the question slide by, but that didn’t seem fair; after all, it was an easy question to answer. Of course, Sonny didn’t know she had never been in love with him, he was so naive that he assumed women only slept with men they were in love with. He didn’t consider sympathy or the hots or any of the various other reasons why a woman might find herself in bed with a guy she wasn’t in love with.

  “I bet he was in love with you, though—not that that’s your problem,” Laurie said.

  “It wouldn’t have been my problem if I had walked down another street and never met him,” Harmony said.

  “It still isn’t your problem,” Laurie said. “He’s a grown man. His clothes were clean. It’s not like he’s been sleeping under bridges or something. He may have a girlfriend here, for all you know.”

  “He was always neat,” Harmony remembered. As to the question of girlfriends, who could say? Even when Sonny was so in love with her that he hated to leave her side long enough to allow her to answer calls of nature, he still found time to keep in touch with all three of his ex-wives, all of whom lived in Las Vegas. Now and then he would show up in the evenings and she would catch a whiff of a perfume that was not her perfume, but Sonny always maintained that it was fans who had just been particularly enthusiastic about hugging him after his set at the Chevron station or wherever he was performing at the time. Sonny wasn’t much of a singer; it was hard to imagine fans being that enthusiastic. Now and then she had the suspicion that there might be girlfriends but she didn’t really have time to press any investigations.