Sex and Sunsets: A Novel

by Tim Sandlin

Catch a woman if you can

  If you can’t get a woman

  Get a clean old man.

  Well, the women in Gibraltar

  Ain’t got nothing left to offer

  So you better get a slice before the boat goes down.

  Then the old man winked at Julie.

  From the other side of the bed, Mom leaned over Grandpa’s face and said, “Daddy, don’t be such a fuckup.”

  ***

  The thing I’d always looked forward to the most was checking the mail. That’s because, before Colette anyway, my real day-to-day existence had been pretty much limited to cleaning dishes, looking at the mountains, and trying to trick some waitress into bed. I always thought any excitement or opportunity that might enter my life would have to come through the mailbox. I’m not unique in that attitude. For many people, the postal system matters more than the life they see and live every day.

  So far, no one had mailed any excitement or opportunity my way, but where there’s a post office there’s hope, and hope is always better than despair.

  Since Colette’s fateful punt, however, I’d stopped checking the mail two or three times a day. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in the post office—although my not remembering didn’t mean much. My own mom had just called me a fuckup on account of my memory. I did remember that.

  I unlocked the post-office box and pulled out a handful of junk mail—a flyer from CondoShares, a Coast-to-Coast paint-sale ad, some credit agency that was irate because I hadn’t paid on my student loan in several years. Cleveland Amory wanted me to send him money to help save rabbits in Idaho. Some guy offered a free test of my short story talent. Wendy’s promised a twelve-ounce Coke with my purchase of a fish sandwich. No excitement or opportunity there. Julie had a Burpee’s seed catalogue addressed to Mrs. Julie Palamino. I had a postcard from the library saying Desert Solitaire was six months overdue and I should pay for a new copy.

  I wandered over to browse through the army enlistment offers and the wanted posters. No one I went to high school with was wanted, so I dumped all the mail except the seed catalogue into a green garbage can and left.

  It took a half hour or so to find Julie and Rick’s place. I’d seen the house once before when I followed Julie home from work soon after we split up, but that was two years ago in winter, and everything looked different now.

  Julie came out the door as I crossed the lawn. She was wearing white slacks and a jersey top and carrying a brown leather daypack.

  She said, “I didn’t invite you here.”

  “It’s nice to see you again,” I said.

  “You better leave. If Rick thinks you’re bothering me, he’ll hit you.”

  I stood on the grass, looking up at Julie. She’d always been a couple of inches taller than me, but the steps made her much taller. Even though we lived four blocks apart, I hadn’t seen her in several months. I hadn’t talked to her in over a year. She seemed older than I remembered. The little double muscle that runs between her nose and upper lip had sagged. Her hair was a lighter blond and she wore eyeliner.

  “Here.” I held out the seed catalogue. “You got some mail.”

  Julie reached down and took it from my hand. She glanced at the label and handed it back. “That’s not for me.”

  I pretended to study the address. “Has your name on it.”

  Julie’s eyes flashed scorn. “Does not.” Scorn is the perfect word for Julie. Her entire long-legged, big-chested body oozed with scorn.

  “You aren’t Mrs. Julie Palamino?”

  “You know damn well I’m not, and I demand you stop telling people I am.”

  I held up the catalogue. “This proves we were married.”

  Julie snatched the catalogue, opened the door, and threw it inside. Closing the door, she turned back to me. “It proves you’re using that name to order stuff through the mail.”

  “What happened in Victoria, Texas?”

  A kind of mask slid over her face. “I’ve never been in Victoria, Texas, in my life.”

  “How about Father Funk?”

  “Father who?”

  I was silent, trying to remember Father Funk’s big hands and the motel where we paid by the hour. It seemed so long ago. I was a different person then. What if Julie was right? People wanted me locked in a mental hospital. I could be wrong and everyone else could be right.

  Julie’s mouth set in a line that showed edge crinkles inside her cheeks. “You and I went out a few times, Kelly, a fact I deeply regret. That was all. Everything else is lies you invented to humiliate me.”

  “Went out?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What about our apartment in New Orleans? And the cats, the trailer with no door on the bathroom, the bug? What about the joint savings account and the family food-stamp card?”

  “Never existed.”

  “I haven’t even finished paying for your IUD.”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Oh.” I tried to think of something in those six years with Julie that I could grasp and she couldn’t deny.

  She started to move off the porch. “I’ve got to be somewhere now, so you’ll have to leave.”

  “Where you going?”

  “None of your business.”

  I stepped aside to let her pass. What with the too-blond hair and the eye makeup and white slacks, Julie didn’t much look like the girl in the tapestry-jeans skirt that I married.

  “You’re wearing eye makeup,” I said.

  Julie stopped. “So?”

  “The Julie I lived with in New Orleans used to laugh at people like you.”

  She stared at me a moment. “I’m sure if we ever met, I would laugh at her.”

  ***

  September of 1977, Julie and I backpacked up Paintbrush Canyon to the divide between Holly and Solitude lakes. As we reached the top of the divide, a huge thunderhead blew in from the west and we found ourselves trapped in an electrical storm.

  For outright fear, grizzly bears and raging rivers don’t even compare to sizzling electrical death. A limber pine twenty-five feet below us blew up, showering Julie and me with coals. Lightning crackled off a peak to our left. My neck hairs bristled. The smell was awful. The whole sky lit like a strobe light.

  We threw off the metal packs and flattened on our stomachs. “Are we going to die now?” she asked quietly. Julie always acts real calm when she panics.

  “Probably.”

  “What do I do if it kills you instead of me?”

  I gave her detailed instructions on wrapping my body in a sleeping bag and hiking back down to the ranger station for help. So much of my time is spent rehearsing tragedies that I always know just what to do.

  When I finished, Julie said, “I don’t want to be alone up here if it kills you. Don’t leave me alone.” Lightning exploded a rock above us.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll kill you and leave me alone,” I shouted over the roar of thunder and rain.

  Julie started to cry. “Nobody should be left alone,” she cried. “Come over here. If one of us dies, Kelly, we’ll both die.”

  I scrambled the five feet to Julie and lay next to her with my arm across her back. We lay freezing in the driving rain, fully expecting to be killed together at any moment. I didn’t mind because Julie needed me. Death isn’t so bad if someone needs you.

  That was the same woman who three years later told me we “went out” a few times and she deeply regretted it.

  ***

  My earthly possessions filled three large garbage bags and six boxes—almost nothing, considering that Alice and I lived in that apartment for four years.

  Cora Ann helped. We hauled the garbage bags, clothes mostly, also the great pile of dishes, pots, and pans, across the street to the thrift shop in the church annex.
The boxes went upstairs, crammed between Cora Ann’s kayaks, skis, ice axes, and the remains of the hang glider. They were packed with books—I never throw away a book—also a radio, some phonograph albums, the elk skull, my Scrabble game, things like that.

  We carried the plants up two at a time. I left the furniture for Mr. Hiatt.

  I could tell Cora Ann was thinking. Most of the time she’s so comfortable and automatic in her little niche that Cora Ann doesn’t have to think. All possible situations have happened before and all reactions are preplanned and rehearsed. My moving was an event she hadn’t counted on.

  I guess Cora Ann figured I’d always be there below her, crying and laughing and throwing rocks through her window whenever I got drunk.

  “You don’t really have to do this,” she said, looking at me through the leaves of a wandering jew.

  “Do what?”

  “Leave. Hide out. Whatever it is you have in mind.”

  The wandering jew drooped. The move upstairs must have put it in shock because it hadn’t wandered an inch in years. Things in my apartment tended to stay put. I once stumbled over a tennis shoe on the bathroom floor for six months before I realized it didn’t go there and threw it in the closet. “What are the alternatives?” I asked.

  “You could stay here. Sleep on the couch. I’ll feed you until you find another job.”

  I thought about this as we carried an asparagus fern and a peperomia up the stairs to her place.

  “It wouldn’t work,” I said. “I won’t be able to find another job. Besides, as soon as someone told John Hart I was sleeping here, he’d have you thrown out too.”

  Cora Ann sat in the lone chair with the plant in her lap. “I’ll take the chance. I’m not afraid of John Hart or anybody else.”

  She pouted. Looking like a blond, beautiful eight-year-old girl, Cora Ann stuck out her lower lip and pouted.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said.

  “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a family.” Cora Ann gave me a weak smile. “If you stay, I won’t eat your peanut butter anymore.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t.” I stood in the middle of the room with the peperomia in my hands, looking for a place to set it down. Every available spot seemed taken.

  “Why are you screwing yourself up like this, Kelly?” Cora Ann asked.

  I walked to the stove. “You’ll think it’s corny.”

  “Go ahead. I’m in a corny mood.”

  I opened the oven door and put in the plant. Then I walked back to Cora Ann, cleared a place in front of her chair, and sat on the floor.

  “You really want to hear?”

  “I’m your friend, Kelly. Of course I want to hear.”

  I took the loops on her shoelaces and twisted them around, then back. Keeping my eyes on Cora Ann’s shoes, I said, “I love Colette.”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  “That’s not important. All my life I’ve bounced with whatever wave hit me, place to place, job to job, woman to woman, doing whatever I blundered into at the moment. I’m almost thirty and I’ve never made a decision.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It lacks something essential. If I go on like this until I die, the whole thing will have been a waste. I might as well have not lived.” I looked up at Cora Ann’s very young eyes. “It’s take-a-stand time. I’ve chosen Jackson Hole as the place and Colette as the woman. I can’t give up on either one without giving up on myself. If I give up, I’ll be a drunken dishwasher until I die and then I’ll be dead.”

  “Everyone’s dead after they die.”

  I tied the loops of her right shoe into three knots. How could I explain to someone like Cora Ann what it’s like to be under someone else’s control all your life? She’d probably never made a move she didn’t want to make.

  “I’m committed,” I said. “No matter how inconvenient it is, I’ve got to stick by Colette.”

  “You call what John’s doing inconvenient?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a pain in the butt.”

  She sat, holding the fern and watching me. Finally Cora Ann said, “You’re right. It is corny.”

  “Call me sentimental.”

  “All right, Sentimental, what’s living like Tarzan of the Tetons going to prove?”

  “Nothing. I just want to be near Colette. It makes me nervous knowing she’s out on that ranch, alone amidst the enemy. She needs my support.”

  Cora Ann smiled. “Colette needs you like I need body lice.”

  ***

  Cora Ann came downstairs and sat on the couch while I loaded my backpack. Bare necessities—sleeping bag, tent, change of socks, binoculars, one pot and pan, Sierra Club cup, and my typewriter. No food would fit in the pack, so I took the typewriter out. It was a Royal portable in a case with a plastic handle. I could carry it. I only planned on walking a couple of miles.

  The good-bye scene with Alice was touching. I sat on the porch in the old spot and held her in my lap, scratching behind both her ears while she purred quietly. Alice has a very quiet purr. Most people can’t hear it.

  It hurt to leave Alice behind. I knew Cora Ann would take care of her, but it was like a father leaving his virgin daughter at a coed summer camp. All the good intentions in the world can’t protect the young like a righteous parent.

  Another one of my flaws—some people call it a flaw—is that I don’t differentiate between animals and people. I feel just as much companionship from a cat as I do from a person. The death of an animal friend tears me up as much as the death of a human friend.

  All my Romantic Interests have been jealous of Alice, and Alice is jealous of them. She treats them like dead birds.

  Julie was the only one who ever came right out and said something. About a week before she moved out, we were sitting on the couch, watching a Bob Newhart rerun, when Julie said, “No woman is ever going to love you for long, you know that, Kelly.”

  At that time I agreed with everything Julie said. I thought maybe if I was agreeable enough, she wouldn’t go away. “You’re right,” I said.

  A couple of jokes into the TV show later, I asked, “Why?”

  Julie propped her feet up on the trunk and sipped on a Sugar-Free Dr Pepper. “It’s that cat.”

  “Alice?”

  “You love that cat more than you’ll ever love a woman.” She took another sip. “And it’s the same kind of love. A person should have one love for pets, another for lovers, another for friends. You only have one kind of love, Kelly, and no woman wants to be second-class to a cat.”

  I thought about this a moment. “I suppose so.”

  “And if Alice dies, you still won’t find a woman who loves you because you’ll moon over that cat until you get another one.”

  “You’re right.”

  For years, Julie had me convinced that no woman besides her would lower herself to having anything to do with me. She was only nice to me out of pity. She still believes that. I’m not sure.

  Anyhow, the fond farewell would have lasted a good deal longer, but Alice got bored and jumped down and walked away. Nobody ever cooperates when I try to pull off a sensitive moment.

  ***

  On the way out of Jackson, Cora Ann and I stopped at the grocery store for me to stock up on supplies before disappearing into the mountains. Grocery shopping for a fugitive must be very difficult. The outlaw housewife doesn’t know whether to buy on-the-run single servings, or giant economy holed-up-in-one-spot-for-months bulk. Should I menu-plan for two days or two years—or longer?

  I ended up buying family-size flour, coffee, beans, brown rice, and oatmeal, then small boxes of macaroni and cheese, Rice-A-Roni, Cup-a-Soup, spaghetti, anything that could be made into food with water and fire.

  I just couldn’t stand the thought of running off into the hills
without hearing Colette’s beautiful voice again. I told Cora Ann this.

  “Stand the thought,” she said.

  “If I’m going to live weeks at a time without human contact, I need inspiration.”

  “I’ll loan you my copy of The Prophet.”

  “Wait one minute while I call Colette.”

  “She won’t talk to you.”

  “It’ll just take a second,” I said to Cora Ann. She was real patient—for Cora Ann.

  I knew Colette wouldn’t listen to me. She was distressed and couldn’t think straight, but I didn’t want to talk. I only wanted to hear her voice one last time.

  Digging into the side pocket of my pack, I found a red bandanna. All backpacks have red bandannas in them somewhere. I crossed the street to a pay phone and dialed Colette’s number. Before she could answer, I wrapped the bandanna around the mouthpiece.

  An older tourist woman stopped to watch.

  “Hello,” Colette answered.

  “Excuse me, please, Mrs. Hart,” I said. “But do you think your husband would prefer stuffing or potatoes with his chicken tonight?”

  “I told you not to call anymore,” Colette said. She hung up.

  I added up the words. Eight, if you count hello, which is a word and should count. Eight words total, they would have to nourish me in the months ahead.

  Cora Ann drove to the jeep trail above the Broken Hart Ranch. I figured it would be too risky to drive on up to the creek where I’d parked the day of the ill-fated hang-gliding incident, so Cora Ann stopped on the main road.

  We pulled the pack out and leaned it against the side of the Mustang. Then we stood around a minute, looking at the cottonwoods and the Tetons and feeling embarrassed about the whole thing.

  Cora Ann crossed her arms and held her elbows like she was cold, which she couldn’t have been. It was a beautiful, blue June day. Grasshoppers flashed yellow in the sagebrush. Juncos and sparrows flitted through the willow fronds. Sunlight glittered off her Mustang, making it appear clean and new.

  “Well, thanks for the ride out,” I said.

  Cora Ann leaned against the right front headlight and stared off in the direction of Death Canyon. “You’re just going to live in the forest and eat bushes and wait for your true love to see the light, huh?”