I nodded.
“Perfect,” he said. “Put that boy down in the middle of the Gobi and he would have contrived to find a woman like you, and then contrived to lose her. But one is foolish to feel sorry for writers. They’re all fucking liars, and they fatten on pain. Also they invariably steal women, or men, or whomever one happens to be loving.”
We walked on. I looked with different eyes for a few minutes. Some Mexicans went by in a boat. These were Danny’s skies, his hills. It was a pity we had never come to Texas together. I didn’t want to talk about him any more, but Godwin was wound up.
“Though he had a sympathetic heart,” he said. “The boy understood some things. He threw a young sadist I happened to be in love with off a balcony, you know. Then just before he disappeared he sent me five thousand dollars in the mail, to get a young friend of his out of a dreadful jail. The job only cost a few hundred. Danny was never heard from again, and of course I fell in love with the boy. Kept him here in great comfort for three years and then the fool ran away and married. Dear Petey. I suppose he’s aged beyond recognition now.”
“You seem to fall in love a lot,” I said as we walked back. The water was darkening, and the cars driving across the bridge began to turn their lights on.
“It’s been my modus operandi,” he said. “It’s in my genes. I could easily fall in love with you, though I sense that would probably be silly.”
I didn’t answer, because I couldn’t think of any answer to make. I didn’t really want to rejoin the crowd—nicer to sit by the dark water, listening to its lappings. But then I didn’t want to talk about love any more, either, and it seemed to be Godwin’s favorite subject. Soon we heard the tinkle of glasses from the veranda above us. When we got to it, the group was just as we’d left it, only everyone was drunker.
“Ha, I win,” Elmo said when he saw us. “I told you she wouldn’t elope with him.”
“Maybe she just stopped off to get her things,” Winfield said.
“Thank you,” Godwin said, to me. “That was a pleasant walk—though of course it wasn’t much like punting on the Thames. There’s hardly any foliage here.”
Elmo stood up, stretched, and stepped up on the railing of the balcony. He seemed to be about to feign suicide again, or maybe he wasn’t feigning. This time it was about forty feet down, which gave him a chance of sorts. It struck me that we were not a group with very solid attachments to life. The two young girls didn’t count. They were just kibitzers. The rest of us were floating in a kind of middle space—floating as I had seemed to float in my superficial sleep. Elmo’s fondness for teetering on bridges and parapets just dramatized a more widespread proclivity.
I had no reason in God’s name to be in Austin, Texas, with a lot of half-crazed men, but there I was, and they seemed to be the only people left—at least the only ones with whom I had anything in common. Undoubtedly I had friends in other places, true friends, rooted friends, sane friends, stable friends: people who knew what to do about kids with measles and broken plumbing and groceries and in-laws and mortgages. But somehow—if I still had friends like that—I had forgotten their names and their addresses, and even if I could remember them and find them, it seemed doubtful that they would want to put up with my awkwardness and oversensitiveness, my penchant for big, stupid, slightly cruel men, my obsessive need to work, and my general unwillingness to make any of the sensible, mature compromises they had made. I couldn’t make them. They wouldn’t make. The man didn’t exist who could trick me, excite me, or distract me into anything like a marriage now—not even the cautious, hedged play marriages of my living-together acquaintances. That was as clear as the moon, which had already risen and cast its white reflection onto the water below.
I drank a couple of margaritas and watched the moon, so clear and pearlike over the Texas hills, and listened to Godwin as he elegantly and expertly insulted Elmo and Winfield, and their various wives and girl friends, and Texas, and the university, and all universities, and America, and England, and everything else that lay in his mental path. It struck me as strange that a man who spoke so eloquently should have such bad teeth and wear clothes that made him seem so seedy, but then perhaps it was a continental thing: the sensibility having run so far ahead of its outward trappings as to be quite indifferent to them. Perhaps I would be that way eventually, an old lady with a fast mind, wearing awful clothes and the wrong jewels and a hairstyle that didn’t suit me.
It was decided, while the moon shone cleanly in the sky and shimmered in the lake, that the time had come to make our departure for the legendary Rio Chickpea. The men went off to drain their bladders, and I was left with the girls, who seemed not altogether keen on making the trip.
“Last time we went down there we didn’t get back for a week,” the blonde said. “Shoot, I got exams. My folks will kill me if I flunk anythang.”
“Makes me feel like a groupie anyhow,” the other one said, a little morosely. “ ’Course I guess I am a groupie”—she looked nervously at me. “If I ain’t, what am I doin’ here?”
I left them to work out their own dilemma. Joe was standing in the lobby when I went in. He was in front of a water fountain, sort of weaving. When he bent over to get a drink he hit the pedal on the fountain too hard and the stream of water hit him in the eyes. He was pretty drunk, and pretty old. Godwin’s words came back to me, and I felt a pressure building in my chest. I had to do something. I took three or four deep breaths: it was what I had been taught to do in high school, when I was playing girls’ basketball. Take three or four deep breaths before you shoot the free throw.
Joe just stood there, not even wiping the water off his face. He blinked to clear his vision. It was really time to shoot the free throw, as far as he and I were concerned. Though we had been friends for many years, this upstart, animosity, had overtaken our friendship and tied us up, with not much time left on the clock. I had no purse, no Kleenex, so I went over and dried his face on his own shirttail, since it was hanging out.
“I had a handkerchief,” he said, pulling one out of his pocket. There was the spark of hostility in his eyes. Once again, it seemed, I had come as a reformer, attempting to do for him without waiting to be given permission.
When you stop talking to someone you love, really stop, it is like lifting weights to try and start again. I took a couple more deep breaths, feeling overdramatic but also feeling the weights dragging the words I wanted to say back inside me, back into the safe and formal depths so that all can remain conventional and polite.
“Look,” I said—my voice broke and trembled, even on that one word. How can a voice break on a monosyllable?
“Look,” I repeated, hearing it tremble again. “I still love you. I need you for a friend again. I can’t take any more of this resentment.”
Joe just looked at me, lowering his head a bit. His lashes still dripped.
“Let’s don’t go with them,” I said. “We have to get out and stop sometime. We can’t just follow Elmo and Winfield all the way to Rome. Let them go on. We can get a suite, like we had at the Sherry, and stay here a few days and rest.”
Joe was staring across the lobby.
“I like the way that little Englishman talks,” he said. “He reminds me of a lot of people I used to work with. I worked with Aldous Huxley, you know. I even met Evelyn Waugh. The English have a great way with insults. It amounts to a kind of poetry. I guess that’s what they’ve got left. Inspired malice.”
I felt very sad. He wasn’t going to talk to me. He was going to slide right past me, into reminiscence.
But then, to my surprise, he put his arm around me. “Don’t look so resigned,” he said. “So I’ve been an asshole for a while, what can you expect?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, after all, I haven’t been getting any pussy,” he said, with a tired grin.
“That’s not my fault.”
“It is, too,” he said. “You withdrew the stimulus of your disapproval.
Us old guys need every stimulus we can get.”
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” I said.
“Now I can’t even handle a drinking fountain, much less a woman,” he remarked cheerfully. “I like that idea about getting a suite. I’m not up to a rock ranch just now.”
I guess it was only a modest rapprochement, but it was enough to make the weights drop off. I felt physically lighter, freshened by relief, and if Joe hadn’t looked so very tired, I would have wanted to go to dinner. He kept his arm around me and we walked slowly across the lobby. Just as we got to the elevator, Elmo and Winfield and Godwin stepped out of it. At the sight of us standing there arm in arm, Godwin smiled, showing his bad teeth.
“There you are, Winfield, you fat fart,” he said. “You bet on the wrong man. It’s not me she means to elope with.”
“Fuck, so what?” Winfield said. “If I hadn’t been shit-faced drunk, I wouldn’t have bet on what a woman would do anyhow. I’d have bet on something simple, like a horserace, or how long it will take Elmo to fall in love with an Italian whore, once we get to Rome.”
“If you’re implying that ol’ Antonella was a whore, I ought to whip your butt,” Elmo said, but he looked glassy and gave the words no force.
“Much as I hate to miss it, I think we’ll pass on the Chickpea,” Joe said. “Jill’s persuaded me to have a quiet old age.”
“Oh, well, there won’t be anybody there but dope dealers anyway,” Winfield said. “You can see plenty of them when you get back to Hollywood.”
“If you’re still here when we return, perhaps you’ll come to dinner at my house,” Godwin said. “A rather amusing rabble seems to congregate there.”
“Yeah, convicts mostly,” Winfield said as they left.
We went up to my room and sat on my little balcony for a while, looking down at the lake and watching cars drive across the bridge and off into the night. We were friends again—we even held hands as we watched the cars—but there were differences. Before, we had been loquacious friends. Joe had been my teacher, I guess. I had always rattled on obsessively about whatever problem was uppermost in my life, and he had pontificated about it, from the depths of his great experience, as it were. It had made a nice balance and provided a kind of dialogue, but we weren’t that way any more. I was too grown-up, finally, to want to talk about my problems, and he was too bushed to pontificate. We just sat and looked, enjoying the cool, placid night. The only thing we could think of to argue about was whether to get a suite immediately, or wait until the next day. Joe was for immediately, and I was for the next day.
“I don’t understand you,” I said. “We’ve been estranged for a year and now we’ve almost made up and all you can think about is how to get more space between us. I have a bed the size of a living room. I can have half and you can have half. Anyway, I feel out of place in suites.”
“But movie directors love suites,” he said. “I suppose my fondness for them is envy. With a little luck I could have been a movie director. In my day almost anybody could end up directing a picture.”
A little later I realized that one reason we were so silent was because Joe was asleep. Of course he was still drinking, and after a while I stopped hearing the ice tinkle against the glass. I looked over, and his head had fallen sideways, against his shoulder. I got him awake enough to walk to the bed, and got his shoes off, and his pants, but gave up on his shirt, which was a silk shirt anyway and quite good enough for pajamas. Then I went back and sat on the balcony a while, until the steady sound of motors from the highway made me sleepy, too.
I slept without floating. About dawn I awoke, aware that Joe had gotten out of bed. I saw him moving slowly across the room toward the bathroom. For a fat man, he had thin legs and not much of an ass. I dozed again, and when I awoke next there was thin sunlight in the room and the sound of cars from the bridge below.
Joe was propped up in bed, looking melancholy. He had a bit of white stubble on his cheeks, which looked out of place with his well-kept mustache. He smiled at me.
“Do you always wear those nightgowns?” he asked.
“What do you mean, those?” I said. “It’s just a simple nightgown.” It was plain cotton, the only one I had grabbed when we took off.
“What did you expect, something with sequins?”
“I guess something less chaste,” he said. “Though don’t ask me why. You know what’s really depressing about old age?”
“You don’t get any pussy,” I said.
“Oh, well, no,” he said. “Pussy’s in the nature of an accidental blessing—always was. What’s really depressing about old age is not getting erections in the morning. That’s hideously depressing.
“I realize this is an odd conversation to be having on our first morning in bed together,” he added, looking at me quickly to see if I was embarrassed. I wasn’t, particularly—I’m always curious to know what really goes on with men. Joe seemed to be my only immediate hope of finding out.
“All our conversations have been odd,” I said. “Why is it more depressing not to get an erection in the morning than not to get one in the evening, or the afternoon?”
“I always got them in the morning, up until my stroke,” he said. “At least I did unless I was sick or depressed or something. Waking up with a hard-on sort of set the tone for the day. It’s an inducement to optimism. Even if you have a hundred erections and no pussy comes along, it’s still an inducement. Even if it’s your wife you’re in bed with and she doesn’t like to fuck in the morning, or maybe isn’t fucking you for a while, a hard-on sort of reminds you that there’s always hope.
“It could have to do with screenwriting,” he added, frowning.
“Your not getting erections?” I said. “You’re blaming that on screenwriting?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I blame that on age. What I blame on screenwriting is more of an overall condition. A way of thinking. I’m conditioned to think in terms of payoff. Life ought to be like a good script. The incidents ought to add up, and the characters ought to complement one another, and the story line ought to be clear, and after you’ve had the climax it ought to leave you with the feeling that it has all been worth it. But look at my case, just to take one. I passed the climax without even noticing it, and I’ve forgotten half the characters already. There was never a clear story line, and most of the incidents were just incidents. My life would have had a lot more coherence if I’d killed myself when Claudia was having her affairs. I often felt like it.”
“All this you’ve decided because you don’t have erections in the morning any more?” I said. “It sounds to me like ordinary self-pity.”
“That’s what a lack of erections will bring you to,” he said. “I thought when I met that big girl yesterday that I might have a chance for one more, but I guess it didn’t take. Nowadays the old body follows the supposedly ageless imagination, and I guess even my imagination is old. It passed that girl right on by.”
“You mean you’ve been surly all this time because your penis doesn’t stick up any more?” I asked.
He nodded. “Partly,” he said. “Partly.”
In truth, though some barrier had been broken during the evening, I had not recaptured my old loving feeling for him, because he was not his old, cheerful, iconoclastic self. There was too much defeat in him, too little bounce. I needed that bounce.
Also I was tired of letting ideas determine my behavior. Ideas had held me back all my life—mostly my own ideas, which just made it worse. I moved over a little closer to him, which made him look at me quizzically. Fortunately he didn’t look hostile—I am easily rebuffed. He just looked quizzical, and we held hands for a while. I didn’t want him to think I wanted to make love, because I didn’t. That was unthinkable, with Joe. But if all it took to make him cheerful was for his cock to stick up, that was something else, and maybe worth a shot. Without looking at him, or asking permission, I slipped my free hand inside his underpants, thinking maybe just to take his penis i
n my hand—only I found that he was so shrunken away that there was practically nothing to hold. There was just the head, almost hidden in its little nest of hair. I touched it lightly, hoping it would immediately emerge, but it didn’t.
“Not too commanding, is it?” Joe said—just the sort of thing he would say at such a time, when I was making a major effort to do something unlike myself.
“Shut up,” I said. “If you want to be helpful, why don’t you think about all those rich girls you used to fuck? You found them plenty stimulating.”
“Can’t remember anyone but Page,” he said. “My memory’s atrophied too.”
I continued to stroke the head of his penis, which only seemed to draw farther down in its nest. All in all, I had gotten myself into a pretty pickle. Having started what I had started, I couldn’t afford not to succeed, yet I wasn’t succeeding. His penis was trying to vanish. What little experience I had had with impotence involved young men who were nervous, not old men who were tired. I knew that in theory I was supposed to take him into my mouth and resurrect him that way, but I was not about to do that. That was another idea I wasn’t going to be guided by. Even with my lovers I had never been very adept at that, or very excited by it, either. I just didn’t want to think about how sad and embarrassed Joe would feel if I failed, now that I had touched him. The fact that his penis stayed almost hidden in his pubic hair annoyed me, not so much with the stubborn little organ that it was, but with myself. Thirty-eight, and still awkward, still never quite knowing what to do.
“Silly things like this often happen to me in Texas,” he said. “I once slept with a woman in Houston who asked me questions about Gregory Peck during the whole performance.
“You look so earnest, lying there,” he added. “That’s always been one of your problems. How can I get a hard-on when you’re looking earnest?”
“I can’t look like a debutante, not in this nightgown,” I said. “I feel pretty damn earnest, if you want to know the truth.”
Somebody's Darling Page 33
