"Listen, we have to get to New Mexico today," Cindy said. "Could we just go?"
"Oh, you sure can," the cop said. " 'Preciate it if you could just take it a little slower."
"Okay, thanks," Cindy said, immediately pushing the button that raised the window. She was off so quick that gravel splattered against the officer's pants leg. It did not affect his decision to exercise leniency. He just stood there watching us go, as transfixed as the gas station attendants in Nashville.
Once we were safely off Cindy gave me a lovely how-about-that smile, quite aware that her beauty and nothing else had spared us a trip to the Muskogee courthouse.
"I like this," she said. "I’ve never driven a hundred miles an hour before."
When I woke again we were well past Oklahoma City, bearing down on the Texas Panhandle. Cindy didn't offer to surrender the wheel—she didn't even acknowledge my waking. She was on a little driving high of her own, keeping her foot down and letting the Cadillac eat up the road. We were far beyond the trees now, on the high plains. There was nothing between us and New Mexico but road and sky. The sun had just gone down and the plains were shadowed and somber, with vapor lights just beginning to wink on in the yards of ranch houses. Far to the south a patch of yellow light indicated a small town.
"Getting tired?" I asked.
"No," Cindy said. "I like this. I want to drive all night."
"It won't take all night," I said. "We're almost there."
"I ought to go visit my folks sometime," Cindy said. "They won't leave California."
"Why not?"
"Because they like California," she said, as if it were a stupid question.
"I'd like to meet them," I said.
But Cindy was interested in driving, not talking. However, she proved to have one thing in common with Belinda, namely a tendency to the quick fade. I noticed the fade just as it began and got her to stop at a motel on the west edge of Amarillo. She had become sleepy so suddenly that she went to sleep at the wheel while I was registering at the motel. The minute we got in the room she fell on the bed in a deep sleep, without even having brushed her teeth. I ordered myself a steak from room service and watched a little TV over her sleeping form.
Just as the steak came a call of nature woke her. She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth thoroughly, and came back to the bedroom just as I was about to eat my steak.
"Can I have a bite?" she asked, and proceeded to eat the whole steak, fat, gristle, and all, plus the rolls and most of the salad I had ordered.
"Didn't you even order any milk?" was her only comment. I ordered some, as well as another steak. I told them to rush the milk, so Cindy could drink it before she went back to sleep. In a sense she wasn't really awake, she was just stoking her body after a long day's drive. Long before the second steak came she was in bed in her T-shirt, sleeping soundly.
When I awoke the next morning she was watching me solemnly, so solemnly that it made me a little nervous.
"Hi," I said, since she was watching me.
"Did you try anything last night?" she asked.
"No," I said. "You went right to sleep."
"I still thought you'd try," she said.
"I don't know why I came on this stupid trip," she added, looking miserable. "I think you're in love with that hippie."
"The trip is to get boots for your exhibition," I said. "It's not stupid at all. This is where the boots are."
"What's the point, if you're not even gonna try anymore?" Cindy asked. It was clear she was in the grip of a major attack of insecurity. I got her to turn her head so I could kiss her. I didn't expect matters to go very far, but Cindy was interested. I hadn't really expected to get to make love to her again, and the fact that I got to filled me with relief. I became very enthusiastic, but Cindy didn't, particularly. She had encouraged the lovemaking, but she herself was in neutral. I figured that had to change soon— Cindy was too selfish to cheat herself out of a nice early morning orgasm—but I was wrong. I had one and she didn't, which immediately depressed me.
"I don't understand you," I said. "I guess this is a stupid trip."
"I don't see why you always want to argue," she said. "I'm starving. If you ate a good breakfast you might feel better."
We got up and showered together. Cindy had a little rubber thing with prongs that she used to massage her scalp. After she had massaged hers she massaged mine, assuring me that my hair would be grateful. She used a lot of shampoo—streams of foam coursed down our bodies. She was apparently in an excellent humor, whereas I was in a real depression. My emotional life was becoming ever more surreal, and it had always been surreal enough. So far as Cindy was concerned, we were perfect pals. I was even a pal with sexual privileges, perhaps even sexual responsibilities. She didn't want me not to try, nor did she really want me to succeed.
Meanwhile, she was hungry. The only shadow on the morning was that the newspaper dispensers outside the coffee shop did not dispense The New York Times. The best she could do was The Wall Street Journal. While she made her way through the Journal she consumed two eggs, a breakfast steak, and several glasses of milk. I was eating pancakes with syrup and butter.
"No wonder you're so grumpy, if you eat stuff like that,” she said. "Your body needs protein."
"I don't believe in protein," I said. "I think it's a myth, like vitamins. I don't believe in nutrition, in fact. I think it's all a myth."
Cindy greeted that little outburst with silent contempt, finishing her steak. She put on her sunglasses and insisted on driving. The sunglasses made her seem doubly inscrutable, but I could tell from her mouth that she was rather happy. We sped south, over the Staked Plains, and in not very long were in Clovis, New Mexico, with Fort Sumner the next stop down the road. As we were passing out of Clovis Cindy used the car phone to check her service.
"Are you sure?" she asked, with a slight frown. Then she hung up. I felt better immediately. Spud hadn't called.
Cindy reached over and took my hand.
"Are you sure that woman isn't a hippie?" she asked.
"She's not a hippie."
"Why'd she leave her husband?" she asked.
"How come you're so interested?"
"Don't berate me," she said. "Just answer my question."
"Her husband was a spoiled rich boy," I said.
She thought that one over for a while.
"That's good," she said. "He'll probably get her back.”
"I doubt it," I said.
"He probably will," Cindy said. "It's harder to leave a rich person."
"Is that your philosophy of life?" I asked.
She didn't answer, but she kept holding my hand. It was a beautiful day, with high fleecy clouds racing over New Mexico. It all seemed to be strange preparation for a visit to Uncle Ike Spettle.
"It's a good thing we left town," Cindy said.
She didn't elaborate, and I didn't answer.
Book V
Chapter I
It was just past midday when we pulled into Fort Sumner, passing a big antique shop that functioned as a kind of homemade Billy the Kid museum. We stopped at a little cafe on the main street and ate lunch. Cindy consumed her third steak in less than twelve hours.
"That's your third steak in twelve hours," I pointed out.
"So what?" she said. "Did you expect me to ask them for veal nioise?" She was slightly belligerent, in her insecurity.
The waitress at the cafe was named Myrtle. I knew her slightly, from past visits. She was a big rawboned woman who took life lightly. This last was an uncommon trait in eastern New Mexico, at least in my experience.
"Seen Uncle Ike today?" I asked, when Myrtle brought up two orders of peach cobbler and a little pitcher of cream to pour on them.
"Yeah, he come in and gummed on a doughnut awhile," she said. "I don't see what keeps the pore old sucker from starvin' to death. He hasn't had a tooth in his head since 1956 and he won't wear his dentures 'less he's on the TV."
"What so
rt of mood's he in?" I asked.
"Bad," Myrtle said. "Hoot's been beating him at dominoes, day after day. Uncle Ike ain't won in two weeks. Losing always makes him feisty. He peed in the street three times last week—I don't know what we're gonna do with the old sucker."
As we were about to cross the street to the little domino parlor where Uncle Ike spent his days we heard my car phone ring.
"Answer it," Cindy said. "It might be my service."
I didn't think it was her service, and I was right. It was Coffee.
"Where are you?" she said. "You never call me anymore."
"I’m in New Mexico," I said. "Fm very busy but I'll call you a little later."
Cindy was standing two inches away, listening to every word.
"I’m very disappointed in you. Jack," Coffee said. "You used to call."
"Well, Fm very busy," I said.
"Oh, you always are, now," Coffee said, with a heartbreaking little crack in her voice. "You used to treat me with kind respect, but now you treat me awful."
I wanted to deny that I treated her awful, I wanted to tell her I’d come and see her, I wanted to ask her why she sounded so unhappy, but I didn't want to do any of those things with Cindy two inches away, waiting with palpable annoyance for me to get off the phone.
"I'm just trying to make a big buy," I said. "I'll call you when I can."
Coffee sighed. She put her whole strange little heart into the sigh.
"I thought I could count on you," she said. "I thought you'd be the one who was always nice."
I was beginning to think it was time to get rid of the car phone. It was bringing me nothing but awkwardness.
"Coffee, will you just wait," I said. "I'll call you when I can. It's not the end of the world."
"How would you know?" she said. "It might be."
Then she hung up.
"Why do you let her call you if you're divorced?" Cindy asked immediately. As we crossed the street she put her sunglasses back on, a signal that she was very annoyed. Two cowboys in a pickup stared at her as they went by, and then made a U-turn in order to come back by and stare at her again.
"The fact that you've divorced somebody doesn't mean you stop knowing them," I pointed out.
"It would if I did it," Cindy said with finality.
After the windy brightness of the street the little domino parlor was cool, dim, and dark. Only three people were in it: Uncle Ike, a man named Hoot who looked older than Uncle Ike but was thirty-five years younger, and a man they called Junior, who might have been in his late sixties. They were concentrating hard on their play and we did nothing to disturb them until Hoot started to shuffle the dominoes.
"You're a goddamn cheater," Uncle Ike said, addressing Hoot. "That's how come you're winning."
"I'm smart is how come I'm winnin'," Hoot said.
"Well, I've known a lot of smart men that was domino cheats," Uncle Ike said. Of the three he looked much the most alert, and was also the most spiffily dressed. He had taken long ago to wearing a clean white shirt every day, and to polishing his boots once a week, just in case a TV crew from Clovis or Albuquerque happened to wander in hoping to get a few shots of him on his home ground. His shirt was starched to such a crispness that it crackled when he moved his dominoes. In contrast, both Hoot and Junior were dressed in dirty khakis. They both wore oily dozer caps, whereas Uncle Ike had on a neat, small-brimmed Stetson.
Uncle Ike had originally been of a fair complexion, but 110 years in the wind and sun of New Mexico had gradually freckled him to an unusual degree. He consisted of layer upon layer of freckles, overlapped and interwoven into a mosaic so thick that he seemed actually to be brown, rather than fair. What was left of his hair was snow white. When we came in his teeth were out, resting beside his elbow on the domino table.
"It's Jack," Hoot said, recognizing me. "I guess he finally got marrit."
Uncle Ike swiveled around at once to inspect my wife, and took a good long look at Cindy. His blue eyes had not lost any of their keenness. He looked mostly at her nipples, which were puckered from our walk across the cold street. He snapped his gums a few times, reflectively.
"Air you his wife?" he asked Cindy.
"Un-uh," Cindy said, not very impressed with the domino parlor or the three men in it.
"I guess you're from Hollywood then," Uncle Ike said.
"Wanta make a motion picture about me? It wouldn't be the first chanct I've had to be in a motion picture."
"Howdy, Uncle Ike," I said. "You're looking feisty."
"He peed in the street three times last week," Hoot remarked. "They're gonna put him away if he keeps that up."
"Who's gonna do the puttin'?" Uncle Ike asked belligerently. "I doubt they'll send in the National Guard just because I took a piss."
"If that fat deputy ever gets the cuffs on you they won't need no National Guard," Junior remarked.
The threat of arrest did not seriously interest Uncle Ike. He had not yet taken his little blue eyes off Cindy's nipples.
"How much is she gonna pay me to be in the motion picture?" he asked, addressing me. "If it's just a talk show I ain't interested. Get enough talk show business right around here."
"She's not from Hollywood," I said.
Uncle Ike worked his gums several times.
"Air you a libber?" Uncle Ike said. Cindy had definitely caught his interest.
Cindy didn't reply. She was waiting for me to begin negotiations for the boots, that and nothing more.
"You'll be right at home around here, if you're a libber," Uncle Ike said.
"Yeah, Myrtle's a libber," Hoot said.
"She's always been sassy," Uncle Ike said. "That woman's sassed me about enough."
"She may sass you some more, before she's through," Junior said.
"Somebody ought to take and break a bed slat over that woman's noggin," Uncle Ike remarked.
"I wish you'd hurry up," Cindy said, to me.
"This lady's got an art gallery," I said. "It's in Washington, D.C. She's gonna put on a big exhibition of cowboy boots in about a month. We thought maybe you'd loan us the Kid's boots for a week or two, if we made it worth your while."
"Okay," Uncle Ike said, without a moment's hesitation, surprising us all.
"I guess he's finally gone round the bend. Junior," Hoot said.
Though surprised, I was not immediately euphoric. From the way Uncle Ike was staring at Cindy I knew he had something up his sleeve.
"Well, great," I said. "It's just like we'll be renting them for about a month. How much do you want?"
"I always did want to go to Washington, D.C.," Uncle Ike said. "Hell, ol’ Geronimo got to go. All them old mangy Indian chiefs got to go."
"A hunnert and ten and all he wants to do is travel," Hoot said.
"Whose else boots was you gonna get for your show?" Uncle Ike inquired.
"Well, maybe Pancho Villa's," I said.
"I never cared for Mexican boots," Uncle Ike said.
He snapped his gums a few times.
"You can rent them boots for five hunnert a month," he said. "But where they go I go. You gotta rent me with 'em. I'll cost you another five hunnert plus expenses. And the hotel room better have color TV."
"He's hopin' for one of them dirty movie channels," Hoot said. "They got 'em in Albuquerque now."
It was an unexpected turn of events. Uncle Ike wanted to go to Washington.
"Why should a goddamn mangy Indian get to go someplace I ain't been?" he asked. Evidently he had been brooding about the matter for seventy-five or eighty years.
"I guess we could manage that," I said. Cindy was inscrutable, behind her dark glasses.
"If you see the President tell him to cut out this socialism," Hoot said.
"Well, I might not get asked to the White House," Uncle Ike said. "I ain't no Indian chief."
"Aren't we even gonna see the boots?" Cindy asked
There was silence for a moment.
"She's got a mind o
f her own, ain't she?" Uncle Ike said. "You best take a bed slat to her before she takes one to you."
I knew the boots were in a bank vault in Clovis.
"We do have to go right back through Clovis," I said. "Maybe we could just stop and look at the boots."
"I'll take the five hunnert for the boots in advance," Uncle Ike said. "And I ain't gonna do but one talk show a day. Too many talk shows fog up my system."
His system looked clear as crystal to me. He had scarcely taken his eyes off Cindy the whole time. I tried to get him to discuss a few details but he was mainly interested in staring at Cindy*s nipples.
"I guess you're one of them bra-burnin' libbers," he remarked. Then he put his teeth in, called his banker, and arranged for us to look at the boots. We agreed to send him a plane ticket Albuquerque-to-Washington once the exhibition date was set.
"Don't forget about the color TV," he said, as we turned to walk back to the car.
Chapter II
On the way back to Clovis the car phone rang. I was reluctant to pick it up, fearing it would just be Coffee again, but Cindy insisted so I did. In fact it was her service, informing her that Spud Breyfogle had called and wanted her to meet him in Miami the next day.
Cindy instantly became so nervous she all but broke out in a rash. She began to scratch her hair, although her hair had been thoroughly washed just a few hours earlier. Spud had made a reservation for her at the Fontainebleau. By the time we drove into Clovis, Cindy had lost all interest in seeing the boots we had come so far to see. She had begun to scratch under her arms. She was really nervous.
"Why Miami?" I asked, a little nervous, too.
"I don't see that it's any of your business," she said. "I hope there's an airport around here somewhere."
Actually there was one in Lubbock, which was not too far, but it turned out to be impossible for us to make any flights that would get her to Miami that day.
This frustration was almost more than she could bear. She kept the phone tied up for fifty miles, trying to find an air route that would get her to Florida sometime that night.
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