Then, when it seemed to be slowing a little, I raced over to the rent-car counters, which proved to be farther away than they looked. By the time I actually reached them I had slowed to a walk and was so out of breath I could hardly stammer.
“Hey, you’re a little out of shape, ain’t you, mister?” said the bright young girl at the Budget counter. “Have you had that cholesterol level checked out lately?”
After flying all the way from Cairo, the last thing I wanted to deal with was a health freak. Unfortunately, all my women friends were health freaks; the day scarcely passed without criticism of my cholesterol level, my indifference to exercise, green vegetables, and other presumably healthy things. Thousands of times I had pointed out to women that medicine—not to mention nutrition—is a soft science, and that things such as vitamins and cholesterol are merely the reigning health myths of our age, no more scientific than the theory of humors that prevailed during the late Renaissance.
None of my women friends enjoyed hearing my little speech about health fads; they believed that the current orthodoxies exalting exercise, vitamins, and the like were unassailable truths. Health theories (and I insisted that all statements about health were no more than theories) were a permanent bone of contention between me and several women, and I certainly didn’t enjoy having to deal with health issues at a rent-car counter while for all I knew Godwin Lloyd-Jons’s lifeblood was draining away in the parking lot.
“There’s an injured man in Remote Parking B,” I gasped. “He may be bleeding to death.”
“Oops, better get that ambulance right over there,” the young lady said, grabbing a phone.
By the time I managed to stumble back across several acres of asphalt to where Godwin lay, the ambulance was there, red lights whirling, and Godwin was having what could only be described as a seductive conversation with the two young attendants who were trying to strap him onto a stretcher. Both of the young men looked as countrified as the young woman at the rent-car counter; I doubt either of them realized that the diminutive, demented Englishman drenched in his own blood was making a pass at them.
“It’s rather like bondage,” he said happily when they finally got him tied to the stretcher.
“I guess I better follow you to the emergency room,” I said. “You may be sicker than you think.”
In the emergency room, somewhere in the hideous labyrinth of subdivisions and amusement parks that constitute Arlington, Texas, the blasé emergency-room staff soon made it clear that they didn’t consider Godwin sick enough to treat.
“It’s a slow night, though—I guess we’ll condescend to stop your nosebleed,” a cool young intern said condescendingly.
They brusquely sponged him off, stuck a bandage on his nose, and relieved me of one hundred and fifty dollars. Godwin, of course, had arrived back from Brazil without a cent, a fact that didn’t dampen his spirits at all. The young nurse who sponged him off caught his fancy to such an extent that he began to try to impress her with his scholarly accomplishments.
“Look, I’ve done a little book on Catullus that you might enjoy,” he told her. “It’s a trifle, but it might amuse you for an hour or two. If you’ll just give me your address I’ll send it to you at once.”
“Is he the one who wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull?” she asked.
I didn’t think Godwin had ever heard of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He looked bewildered.
“No, the man he’s talking about was a poet,” I said.
“Oh,” the girl said. She wore a good deal more eye makeup than you usually see on nurses. Hers was silverish and was probably meant to coordinate with her frosted blond hair.
“I write poetry sometimes,” she said. “I don’t read much, though—I doubt you ought to waste your little book on me.”
Godwin was not quite ready to give up on the notion, absurd on the face of it, that reading his book on Catullus would cause the young lady to plop right into his arms.
“It’s really a very quick read,” he said hopefully.
“Naw, mostly when I read I just get a kind of depressed feeling, you know,” the girl said. “It’s that feeling you get when you realize you’re kinda missing out on life.”
“I often get that feeling,” I admitted. I was beginning to like the young nurse, but Godwin merely looked perplexed. I don’t think he could imagine missing out on life.
“A little book on Catullus can’t hurt you,” he insisted. “It received excellent reviews.”
“Naw, you keep it,” the girl said, squinting briefly up his nose. “I’m gonna give you some cotton to take with you, but I don’t think you’ll need it. You ought to be coagulatin’ any time.”
17
“You haven’t changed a bit,” I said to Godwin as we drove hopelessly around Arlington—hopelessly because municipal Arlington contains one of the largest numbers of suburban cul-de-sacs west of the Mississippi. Once you penetrated far enough into that city it was almost impossible to find your way out without a native guide: cul-de-sac followed cul-de-sac in an intricate but discouraging procession.
The detached part of me that hoped to become a meticulous travel writer some day made itself a mental note to write a travel article called “Arlington: City of Cul-de-Sacs”; meanwhile the fatigued part of me that had been twenty-three (now twenty-five) hours getting home from Cairo grew depressed at the thought that I had flown around the world only to get profoundly lost one hundred miles from my home. Fort Worth lay only fifteen miles to the west, Dallas fifteen to the east. If I could catch a glimpse of either skyline I felt sure I could rapidly extricate myself from the maze I was in, but I couldn’t see a building in any direction taller than the millions of ugly two-story houses that fill greater Arlington. Night had fallen while we were in the hospital, and at night everything in Arlington looked alike.
Another cul-de-sac I was failing to extricate myself from—a moral one, in this instance—was the presence of Godwin Lloyd-Jons. He had coagulated, just as the young nurse predicted, but he showed no sign of being the least bit interested in fending for himself. He also showed no sign of having changed a bit in the twenty-two years since I’d last seen him.
“Why are we driving around this ugly town?” he asked, somewhat insolently. “I’d like to go to a bar. I need a drink. That young nurse was extraordinarily rude to me.”
“She wasn’t rude, she just didn’t find you attractive,” I said. My fatigue was beginning to open a tunnel deep into my memory—many horrible things that this same little man had done, mostly things involving my then wife, were beginning to hop around like crickets at the bottom of the tunnel.
“I feel sure she would have liked my book, though,” Godwin said wistfully. “It might have disposed her to be kind to me.”
“You’re far too old for her, and anyway your chances of seducing her were nil,” I pointed out unkindly, as we emerged from about the eightieth cul-de-sac of the night.
Then a glimmer of hope appeared, in the form of lights in the sky. The lights belonged to airplanes, descending in graceful sequence into the great airport we had just left.
“Look, the airport’s over there,” I said. “If I just go toward the planes we’ll eventually get out of here.”
“I’m sure she would have been kind to me in time,” Godwin said, his mind still on the nurse with the silver eyelids. “It was your presence that threw things off. You’re very sulky now, Daniel, quite sulky. I suppose it’s because you’ve grown fat.”
“Where’s your car, Godwin?” I asked. “I want to take you to your car.”
“I’m afraid I lent it to a friend,” he said. “I think he planned on touring Seattle, or some place near Alaska.”
It was exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
“So where were you planning to go?” I asked.
“I never plan, it’s so middle class,” he said. “Why won’t you take me to a bar?”
“Godwin, I just flew in from Cairo,” I said. “I want to go home.
In fact, I’d be home now if it wasn’t for you.”
“You can’t be much of a world traveler,” he said. “Look at you. You’re not even able to find your way out of Arlington.”
Godwin and I had never complemented one another that well. His fervor only seemed to activate my passivity. The minute he came around, my hands slipped right off the steering wheel of my own fate, to put it grandly.
It happened that night, too. I did finally find my way out of Arlington, but instead of driving straight home to Los Dolores I let myself be talked into stopping at a honky-tonk in the stockyards area of Fort Worth.
Actually, I had a dark motive in stopping at the honky-tonk. So far, Godwin had tried to seduce virtually everyone we’d met since leaving the airport. Undoubtedly he would continue to try, and maybe he would actually succeed. Maybe he’d find a horny barmaid or a gay cowboy—anyone to take him off my hands. He did, apparently, manage to seduce a good many people; possibly he’d get lucky in north Fort Worth.
Nothing of the sort happened, of course. The cowboys in the honky-tonk interested Godwin more than the barmaids, but the cowboys, most of whom were probably carpet salesmen or drywallers anyway, seemed not to be gay. None of them appreciated Godwin’s forthright suggestions, and one or two seemed inclined to give him a thorough stomping. As he got drunker and drunker, his suggestions became more and more forthright.
Finally I gave up. Much as I didn’t want to take him home, even less did I want to get into a fight, and a fight was looming. Godwin had never won a fight in his life, and neither had I. In a literary bar we might have stood some chance, but Peppy Lou’s Lounge in north Fort Worth was not exactly Elaine’s. When you got stomped in north Fort Worth you knew you’d been stomped.
“Godwin, let’s go,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “I’m not even very drunk.”
“I don’t like the ambiance here,” I said. “It’s a violent ambiance, if you ask me.”
“But that’s the fun of it,” Godwin said, his eyes shining. “I’ve been knocked about in far worse places than this, I assure you. It might be stimulating.”
“Also it might be fatal,” I said. “I just flew home from Egypt. I’m really not in the mood for any more emergency rooms.”
“Oh, stop harping on Egypt and enjoy yourself,” he said. “Are these real cowboys or are they the pharmacy variety?”
“Drugstore, not pharmacy,” I said. “Listen, I’m serious. I’m getting out of here. I don’t feel like getting beaten up. I’m not a masochist.”
“Possibly not,” he said, looking at me coolly. “You don’t seem to be anything, really—just fat.”
“Let me point out that I’m not responsible for you, sir,” I said formally. “It’s not my fault your car’s in Alaska. I’m willing to put you up for a few days, though it’s against my better judgment. But the offer expires in three minutes. I’m leaving, and if you don’t come I may never see you again.”
Godwin fell silent. He looked wistfully at one of the carpet salesmen, two or three of whom were glaring at him.
“Oh, well, they’re probably only pharmacy cowboys anyway,” he said, draining his Scotch.
We arrived at Los Dolores two hours later. Since Cairo, I had been awake for twenty-four hours, but it was Godwin who was asleep—so soundly that I had to leave him in the car. The next morning I heard the unfamiliar sound of whistling from the kitchen and came in to find him scrambling eggs. Gladys was squeezing oranges. She seemed to take Godwin’s presence for granted, and she might as well have—that was five years ago, and he had been with us ever since.
18
The drive to Houston did little to awaken the nascent travel writer that I hoped was slumbering within me. The Decatur courthouse was the last sight on the whole trip that could fairly be described as picturesque.
Once the Fort Worth courthouse had also been picturesque, but the thing that rendered it picturesque—a neon American flag with forty-eight neon stars—had been removed. Both Fort Worth and America had outgrown the flag. America had summarily added Alaska and Hawaii, and Fort Worth had added a veneer of big-cityness. Now the old courthouse, shorn of its wonderful, bright flag, was just an ugly pile of granite on the Trinity bluffs.
I had once liked Fort Worth. I never loved it as I loved Houston, but I did enjoy its hicky vigor, of which the neon flag had been a perfect symbol. Dallas would never be original enough to stick a neon flag on a public building; Dallas remained what it had long been: a mediocre big city, growing larger, but never growing interesting.
I passed through Fort Worth like an arrow and then deflected the arrow slightly eastward until it pierced I-45, the interstate connecting Houston and Dallas. Once on that interstate it was smooth but boring sailing. The black land south of Dallas receded, the horizon began to thicken with trees, but the change was undramatic; the next real sight was the huge prison at Huntsville, two hours south.
I was glad I had bought the Cadillac; it passed scores of Datsuns and Toyotas as easily as a powerboat passes canoes. Just driving it made me feel almost stable, a feeling I rarely enjoyed.
But even a brand spanking new Cadillac couldn’t make me feel stable for long. Soon I was in the pine trees, which meant that Houston couldn’t be far. Even if I crept along at the legal speed limit, instead of doubling it as was my habit, I was sure to be on the banks of Buffalo Bayou within an hour or so.
Then what?
Although I had traveled much in the twenty-two years since my daughter’s birth, I had never been back to Houston. Many times, the city had tried to entice me back; in the years of my success, when I was the reigning genius of American television, Houston had attempted to claim me. I had been educated there—why shouldn’t it claim me? I was offered banquets, honorary degrees, a Danny Deck day, the keys to the city, etc., all of which I sadly declined.
Sadly because Houston had been, among cities, my first love. In my failed second novel, the one I had wisely drowned, the only parts that might have deserved to survive were paeans to Houston, to the city’s misty beauty and sweaty power, to its funkiness and its energy. I had come to it at the right time, as a young man sometimes comes to his ideal city. In Houston I began to write, formed my first young sentences. Its energies awakened mine; the ramshackle laziness of some of its forgotten neighborhoods delighted me. I walked happily in it for years, smelling its lowland smells. It was my Paris, my Rome, my Alexandria—a generous city, perfect home for a young talent.
But that time ended. Disorder and early sorrow, of a very average kind, thrust me out and propelled me westward where for many years I failed at everything. All that time I missed Houston and missed it keenly. When I would happen on an article about the city in a newspaper I would hastily turn the page; just seeing the name Houston in a newspaper made me miss the place so much that I ached.
I missed it as much as I’ve missed certain women—and there are women I’ve missed so much that I’ve become afraid to see them again: it becomes too big a risk, because if you miss them that much and then see them and they turn out not to like you anymore—or, worse, you turn out not to like them anymore—then something important to you is forever lost.
Once I got famous and began to fall in love with famous women, queens of the screen and the tube, I came to understand why I preferred to skirt all mention of Houston. I soon started trying to avoid all public mention of my famous loves as well.
Perhaps in some respects all love may have common elements, but it can also have striking differences, and attempting to love famous women, women whose pictures appear regularly in newspapers and on the covers of magazines, involves dangers that don’t arise in loving obscure women. The dangers don’t lie within the women, of course—any suburban housewife can stab you with a paring knife just as quickly and as fatally as the most high-strung movie star.
The danger develops in that brightly lit, well-patrolled area called publicity. Loving women who merit more or less continuous publicity is a special
ized pursuit, rife with little dangers. The innocent and common act of going into a 7-Eleven to buy a gallon of milk acquires a new tonality if you happen to be in love with someone whose face is apt to appear regularly in USA Today or the National Enquirer. There she’ll be—Jeanie, Nema, Marella—with a new or a fading husband, or a rumored new boyfriend. In all likelihood I would already know that the husband was being phased out or the boyfriend phased in, but such knowledge did little to cushion the shock. There was always a moment of unease as I fumbled for change; sometimes I marched stoutly out without buying the tabloid, only to stop and buy it at the next 7-Eleven down the road.
As much as I hated encountering my girlfriends’ pictures in one of those publications, I was apparently not equipped to resist even the most absurd and fallacious mention of them, or the hastiest and most unflattering paparazzi picture. In fact, the more unflattering the picture, the worse the temptation: the sight of one of them looking wildly unkempt, hair a mess, ridiculously dressed, some lout on her arm, undid me more than the glamour shots that were always turning up on the covers of People, Paris-Match, or Vanity Fair. In the glamour shots, staged with a full complement of hair, makeup, and costume personnel, you got more or less the woman the world wanted to love; the work of the paparazzi, disgusting as it was, nonetheless gave you something more true—the woman herself, in all her bewilderment, vivacity and élan undimmed, messiness unreduced, gloriously or ingloriously female, and always, to me, deeply affecting: the woman, in short, that I did love.
For decades I had been a haunter of newsstands the world over, but as the years passed I gradually began to avoid them, along with drugstores, 7-Elevens, any place where I might see a picture of one of my girlfriends on a magazine cover. I didn’t want to have to handle the emotional electricity such little shocks produced—and it was for more or less the same reasons that I had flipped past hundreds of mentions of Houston in the years since I left her. Houston, too, was sexy, glitzy, high-profile, her green trees and shining glass buildings a temptation to photographers of all levels of skill. Even a slick shot in an airline magazine, glimpsed high above the Pacific, sometimes made me deeply homesick for Houston, for the weedy neighborhood, the pulsing freeways and cunty smells of the Houston that I still loved.
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