"I don't see what's the hurry," I said. "He isn't coming till tomorrow. You can easily get there in the morning."
Cindy glared at me. "He wants me to be there when he arrives," she said. "My service said so. It's your fault I'm here, anyway. Normally I'd be in Washington and I could get there tonight."
As we were rushing across the plains a norther struck, so strong that by the time we reached Lubbock we could barely see for the blowing sand. In Lubbock this is no big deal— the town is usually knee-deep in sand anyway—but it played havoc with Cindy's very tentative schedule, since the flight that was to have taken her to Dallas was canceled. Sand beat against the windows of the Cadillac, and swirled in waves down the flat streets. Cindy couldn't believe it. She had never seen a real sandstorm and she seemed to feel I had conjured it up just to prevent her reaching Spud.
"Why would you do this?" she asked.
"I didn't do anything," I said. "I can't make a sandstorm happen."
"Yeah, but you're glad," she said. "You're already trying to make Spud mad at me. You're terrible when you're jealous, do you know that?"
"I guess we better try and find a motel," I said.
Cindy was scratching her armpit. She was still pretty nervous. She looked at me suspiciously. Then she looked out the window at the rivulets of sand, flowing endlessly off the hundreds of miles of plowed cropland that surround Lubbock. The sand blotted out the lower sky. The streetlights had been turned on and shone a weak yellow against the brown sky.
"Just make sure our room has two beds," Cindy said.
I got a room with two vast beds. Emotional tension had exhausted both of us. I lay on one bed, Cindy on another. When we roused ourselves and fought our way through the sand to the motel restaurant I was too tired to eat, but Cindy rapidly consumed her fourth steak. I offered her my steak too but she only took my baked potato.
"At least you can't accuse me of denying you protein," I said. "That's four steaks."
"I wish you'd stop counting," she said. "I hate people who count."
After dinner we went back to our room and lay nervously on our two beds, fully clothed. There was a Don Knotts movie on TV. It was idiotic but it was better than total silence. Cindy’s plane left at eight in the morning, which seemed a long time away.
"What are you going to do after I go?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said. "The only collector I know here collects bumper stickers and I don't need to see him."
The bumper sticker collector was named Hank Rink. He worked in a shoe store downtown and spent his vacations poking around in auto junkyards all over the south and southwest, looking for early bumper stickers. Sometimes when he found one he floated it off, but often it was easier just to buy the bumper with the sticker still on it. Hank's garage was so full of bumpers he couldn't get his car in it anymore, but he had some wonderful bumper stickers, including four or five from the thirties, the incunabular period for bumper stickers.
However, in her present mood, I didn't think that Cindy would appreciate hearing much about Hank Rink, and I was right.
"I don't want to hear about any of those nuts," she said. "Are you going to see your wife?"
"I don't have a wife."
"You might as well," she said. "She calls you all the time."
I didn't answer. When we stopped talking we could hear the sand beating like fine birdshot against the windows.
"This is an awful place," Cindy said, in a weak voice. "I think it's the worst place I've ever been."
Then I heard a strange sound and looked over and saw that she was crying. She lay flat on her back, fists clenched, tears rolling out of her eyes. At the same time she was trying to stop crying by sniffing the tears back, which wasn't working. I went over and put my arms around her, which she accepted gratefully. She pressed her face into my shoulder, crying so hard that it was as if I had a faucet running on my arm. Finally her crying slowed and she was able to catch her breath.
"Oh, I wish I'd never done it," she said.
"Never done what?"
"Fucked Spud," she said. "I didn't know he would frighten me so much. I should have just stayed with you, even if you aren't very sexy."
"Well, you still can," I said.
She shook her head.
"Why can't you?"
"Because he's got me," she said.
She lay quietly for a while, hugging my arm.
"I don't trust you very much but at least I'm not scared of you," she said. "I did trust you until you met that hippie. You should have told me your wife still calls you."
There was no more talk of separate beds. Cindy clung to me all night. She didn't allow an inch of space between us. We had arranged for a wake-up call two hours before her flight, although the airport was just a few minutes away. She didn't want to take any chances. But we didn't really need the wake-up call. Both of us woke up an hour before it was due, meaning we had three long hours to get through, somehow. Cindy started scratching the minute she woke up.
"I hate this," she said. "I never felt like this in my life. Usually I enjoy guys."
My own most fervent hope was that the hand of the clock would move faster. It seemed to have been about two weeks since we got the news that she was going to Miami.
"You didn't try anything last night, while I was asleep, did you?" she asked, after a bit
"No," I said.
"I wish you were more understanding,” she said. "I thought you were, at first, but now you've just totally stopped trying anything."
"What good would it have done me to try?" I asked. "You were worried stiff about Spud. You still are."
"Yeah, but I notice things," she said. "I'd notice if you tried. You don't seem to understand that little things make a difference."
"It's not such a little thing," I said. "I would try, except I'm depressed that you're going to see Spud."
"The other day you acted like you couldn't get enough of me," she said. "That day we fucked so much, remember?"
“Sure," I said. "That was before you decided I wasn't sexy."
"I didn't decide it," she insisted. "After I fucked Spud I just realized it."
"Why would you want me to try anything if Fm not sexy?" I said. I had been saving that question for a while.
"It would reassure me," Cindy said. "It reassured me yesterday."
"That's funny," I said. "What happened yesterday made me feel insecure. I still feel insecure."
"I don't know what to think of you. Jack," Cindy said. "You weren't so selfish, at first. You thought of me once in a while."
I was getting a strong sense of deja vu. There was no reason why such illogical words should ever be exchanged by man and woman, and yet the conversation was very familiar to me. It was quite consistent with conversations I had had with Coffee, Kate, Tanya, and others.
"You could at least kiss me," Cindy said.
I kissed her. She accepted it eagerly, too. Evidently she wanted to be reassured by a repeat of yesterday's performance. While I kissed her I wondered why I had ever mistaken such a bottomless pit of insecurity for a confident woman. Probably it was just that she had ripped a check out of her checkbook confidently. I've often been misled by clues no larger than that.
I would have been content just to kiss for a while, but Cindy wasn't. She wanted the whole works—or rather part of her thought she wanted the whole works. Her body didn't really want any works, to speak of. When I tried to penetrate her I couldn't. She felt like she was sealed. I pushed for a while but I wasn't getting in. It made me feel ridiculous, so I stopped.
"We better just quit," I said. "This isn't working."
Cindy looked depressed.
"Don't look that way," I said.
"It's depressing to have to give up," she said.
"It's not such a big deal," I said. "You just don't want to make love right now."
"I do and I don't," she said.
"You mostly don't," I said.
"It's because I'm so scared," she said
, clutching my penis. "I'm not my normal self."
"Can I make a suggestion?" I said. "Call Spud and tell him to forget it. Then we'll go buy some classy boots.”
She was silent.
"Why see a man you're deathly afraid of?" I asked.
She shook her head helplessly. Denying him a single wish seemed to be beyond her.
"Just help me," she said. "Try some things."
While I was trying what she wanted tried I got so depressed I lost my erection. By the time it was technically possible for Cindy to have sexual intercourse, I was technically unable to perform the act. I began to get a headache, just from confusion and anxiety.
"Uh-oh," Cindy said. "Now you're impotent."
"Not really," I said. "I just have a headache."
"You look impotent to me," she noted.
I gave up, both on sex and talk, and just lay beside her.
"Maybe it's just as well, with your wife on the loose," Cindy said, in a cheerful voice. My impotence had restored her spirits more effectively than my potency could have.
"I think I'll have one more steak," Cindy said. "I don't like to start the day on an empty stomach."
By the time she had polished off the steak much of her glow had returned, and some of her interest in life. She looked around the coffee shop, which was full of insurance salesmen and wheat farmers, plus a few cowboys.
"People probably eat a lot of protein here," she said. "That's good."
It looked as if she was going to fly cheerfully off, but as we were standing in the terminal, waiting for her flight to board, traces of anxiety began to reappear.
"I hope I don't make any mistakes," she said. She was so beautiful in her doubt that I could hardly bear to look at her.
"You could come," she said, suddenly. "You could get a car and drive around buying things. Then you'd be there if something went wrong."
"I better not," I said. "I better stay here and look for boots for your exhibit."
"You could be more flexible," she said. "If nothing went wrong you could fly back here and get the boots."
Most women make their own rules, where love and language are concerned, but Cindy's rules were so oblique that I could only now and then discern them. Spud seemed to have been the first destructive possibility she had ever encountered, and she was far too healthy to welcome destruction. The mere possibility of it played havoc with her nerves.
"I keep getting nervous," she said. "I think I won't and then I do. I can't control it.
"I hate it," she added. "I wish you'd come."
"I know why, too," I said. "You just want to have one person around that you're sure you can control."
"Yeah," she said, brightening. She was pleased that I had made such simple sense of her fears.
"That's exactly right," she added. "What's wrong with that?"
There was nothing wrong with it, really. A strong self-preservationist instinct was functioning healthily.
"So why won't you come?" she said.
"I'd like to see you have to take a few risks," I said.
She looked at me more closely than was her custom. "You better promise you'll come if I get in real trouble," she said.
"Of course I will."
"Do you want to buy your ticket now, just in case?" she asked.
"No, I may not stay in Lubbock," I said. "Just call me on the car phone, if you need me."
"Boy, I never expected you to behave like this," she said, just before she turned and walked onto the plane.
Chapter III
When I got to the motel I slept all day. I don't think I even turned over—I just slept, awakening to a gloomy plains dusk and the sound of sand beating against the window-panes. A second norther had struck, weaker than the first but still strong enough to move the sand around a little.
I felt so puzzled that there didn't seem to be any real reason to even get up. I tried to think of a next step, but it wasn't easy. My trading instincts were at a low ebb. I was supposed to go buy boots, but I didn't really feel up to it.
Boot collectors are tenacious by nature. Trading with them takes some energy, though most of them aren't really collectors in the true sense. They're just rich people who tend to buy a lot of boots while they're buying a lot of other things, too.
On impulse I picked up the phone and called Jean Arber. I think I just wanted to know if she still liked me.
Belinda answered on the first ring.
"You must live on the top of the phone," I. said.
Belinda was silent a moment.
"I like to get it," she said. "Is this you?”
"You who?"
"I forgot," she said. "What's your name?"
"Jack," I reminded her.
"Who is it, Behnda?" I heard Jean ask.
"It's Jack," Belinda said, as if I were someone who had been hanging around the house for weeks.
"He wants to talk to me," she added.
"He has talked to you," Jean said.
Belinda decided to yield gracefully, in this instance.
"What a surprise," Jean said. "Where are you?"
"I'm in Lubbock," I said. "I miss you."
I had not meant to be so direct, but the words popped out.
"It serves you right," she said. "Poor planning, this trip of yours."
"I may come back sooner than I had planned," I said.
"Does this have anything to do with me?" she asked.
"Sure," I said. "Is that okay?"
"It's a free country," she said. "I'm still amenable to being taken out. What happened to the friend you were traveling with?"
"That didn't work out too well."
"So now you're in the mood for a normal woman," she said. "That's understandable."
"Do normal women spend all their time buying trunks?" I asked.
"Listen," she said. "A few eccentricities like that doesn't mean you're not normal."
"How are the girls?" I asked, to change the subject.
"They're fine," she said.
I couldn't think of anything else to say. I didn't know Jean well enough to be talking to her on the phone. On the other hand I loved her voice. Even when she was jousting with me she sounded kind.
"You sound quite depressed," she said.
"I am quite depressed," I said.
"That doesn't surprise me," she said. "I could tell you were a potential depressive the minute I met you."
"Would you like to bring the girls out west?" I asked.
"I certainly wouldn't," she said. "What a bizarre suggestion."
"Well, we could take them to Disney World, then," I said.
"Ssh!" Jean said. "Whisper when you say that. A person with big ears is sitting in my lap."
"What'd he say?" Belinda asked. Fortunately her attention had wandered.
"He says you ask too many questions," Jean said.
We were silent for a bit.
"I think you ought to learn not to be so spur-of-the-moment," Jean said. "It can cause enormous trouble. I'd like to be taken to a few movies, if you don't mind, before we start planning any road trips. Then I'd know if our tastes really jibe.
"Besides, there's no big rush," she added.
"It feels like there is," I said. It was true. I was conditioned to rush. At estate sales the best pieces go in seconds. At flea markets there's nothing good left ten minutes after the dealers set up. It seemed to me the same was probably true of women. One as good as Jean could hardly be expected to last a day on the open market.
"If I don't rush someone else might find you," I pointed out.
"Someone already has," she said, cheerfully.
"Who?" I asked, my fears confinned.
"A man," she said. "Fortunately for you he’s very shy. He hasn't asked me out yet."
"He'll probably ask you tomorrow," I said.
"Nope," she said. "I'm not divorced yet, and he's very proper."
"I'll probably head back there tomorrow," I said. "Just as soon as I buy a few boots."
&n
bsp; "This call is costing too much," Jean said. "I'm from a family that doesn't believe in spending money just to talk. Jimmy didn't believe in it, either."
"I believe in it," I said.
"I wish I did," Jean said. "I hate being tight-assed about anything, but the fact is I still get anxious when long distance calls go over three minutes."
"I'll cure you of that," I said. "Tell the girls goodnight for me.
"You better not try to exploit my mother's heart," she said. "These girls will pursue you to your grave, if you wrong me."
"I will," Belinda said. "What is it you said?"
"Never mind," Jean said.
Chapter IV
Talking to Jean made me feel considerably better. I felt I had contact with a live person. Of course, another live person, Cindy, had left only a few hours before, but I was far from confident that I still had contact with Cindy. I could easily imagine never hearing from her again, if things went well between her and Spud.
Talking to Jean hadn't really answered any major questions but it had at least restored my energies. I didn't want to waste another night in Lubbock, listening to a second-rate sandstorm. In ten minutes I was up, dressed, checked out, and on my way. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going next, but I knew it had to be east, so I drove in that direction.
Often the strings of homey roadside businesses—pizza parlors, muffler shops, hairdressers, cheap cafes, and 7-Elevens—appeal to me as I drive around. Their overall tackiness is part of the charm of America. But seen through a screen of sand these same little businesses can seem intolerably bleak. Lubbock seemed particularly rich in muffler shops. I passed about forty of them as I was leaving town. Just passing them depressed me. They seemed to bespeak the many disappointments of life. Then I became slightly less depressed. At least I wasn't working in a muffler shop in Lubbock. My fate was more intricate, and less oily.
I soon dropped off the caprock and proceeded through the night, slipping through a number of small silent towns. All of them were one-street towns, and the buildings of their one street were pale under the streetlights. The wind finally blew the clouds away and left a cold sky, sprinkled with stars. My thoughts kept slipping back to Jean. I didn't really think anything very specific about her, I just sort of had her in mind. Thinking about her blanked out two hundred miles. Before I really took note of myself I was buying gas in Wichita Falls, at one in the morning.
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