“Maybe you’re just out of practice with girls, Mr. Moore,” Anne said. “If I’m feeling naughty I sometimes let my boyfriends shave my legs. It seems to be a big turn-on even for computer geeks.”
She turned and went back into the office without giving Duane another glance.
14
DUANE PEDALED OUT to his cabin in a state of deep confusion. The road led past the graveyard where Ruth Popper had just been buried—he realized that, with Ruth’s passing, he had lost not only a lifelong friend but also a reliable sounding board. Karla, his wife, had never been particularly reliable as a sounding board—Karla was compelled by her own agenda, which she fought for with great tenacity. She had no interest in objectivity—just in what she believed in and wanted.
Ruth Popper could be perverse. She would start out by regarding almost anything Duane said or did with skepticism—but then she would lighten up and give reasonable opinions on almost any question that he brought to her.
If he asked Ruth if he was weak with women she would take her time thinking about it, but would eventually tell him what she thought. Her ultimate fairness had served him well in many disputes over many years—and yet now, when he was more confused than he had ever been, Ruth had gone and died, leaving him without a sounding board.
For a long time—for decades—Duane had been considered the most successful man in Thalia. He had been, at various times, mayor, president of the school board, and chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. His oil company had survived both booms and busts. Moore Drilling employed more people than any other company in the county. True, it wasn’t much of a county—there was still only one stoplight in the whole county. Excessive traffic was one problem that Thalia didn’t have. It had drugs aplenty and oilfield theft and all manner of marital irregularity—but at least, unless there was a colossal wreck, the traffic rarely piled up.
When he left for Egypt, only about three weeks earlier, he still considered himself more or less successful. Of course his therapy with Honor Carmichael had shown him that he was not really quite what he seemed. He knew that he was confused about some things and that there were areas of pain inside him he had to be careful not to expand. But, generally, he had no reason to consider himself an out-and-out failure in his sixty-four years on earth. He had been a decent father, a decent husband, a decent citizen of his community.
Now, though, as his bike made a little dust trail along the country road, Duane found his conviction of self-worth severely shaken. For one thing he had lost his entire family to the call of other places. Karla had died in the smash-up and the rest had simply left. Of course, to be fair, most of them had left before Karla’s death. Perhaps more important, it was obvious that none of them were coming back. Dickie was close by, but the other three of their children were gone. He knew he might as well put his big house on the market. He didn’t want to be in it, and neither did any of his descendants. So far as the Moore family was concerned, Thalia was a place of the past. The family roots had been shallow to begin with—now the children had pulled them up. They were out of there.
Duane soon came to the hill where his little cabin sat, but he didn’t turn into the dirt trail to his little dwelling. He felt too confused—he needed to talk to someone, if only in a mundane way about mundane things. Jody Carmichael’s crossroads convenience store was only eight miles farther, so Duane kept pedaling. Jody sold fishing lures, and Duane had once been a keen fisherman. With so little to do in what he supposed was his retirement perhaps he should get back into fishing. Even if he didn’t, buying a few lures would give him an excuse for the visit.
Duane was really hot by the time he reached the store. Jody’s green Buick station wagon was usually parked under a good-sized sycamore tree, but today, in place of the Buick, there was a small blue Subaru pickup.
Seeing the Subaru where he had been expecting the Buick made Duane suddenly anxious. Jody had weathered various fairly serious ailments over the years. Maybe he had died; though, if he had, surely Bobby Lee would have mentioned it.
With some trepidation he parked his bike and pushed open the screen door. There was no sign of Jody Carmichael, or of the big computer he used for his computer gambling. The store was clean as a pin, though, and two small alert men the color of plums greeted Duane with smiles.
“Howdy—what happened to Mr. Jody?” Duane asked, cautiously.
The two plum-colored men kept smiling.
“He moved to Inglewood, it’s in California,” one of the men said.
“Play the horses,” the other man said. “Mr. Jody sold the store to us.”
“I’m Mike, he Tommy,” he added. “Maybe you are Mr. Moore.”
“How’d you guess?”
“Mr. Jody said you would come on a bike,” Tommy told him. “He said you are such a good customer we should give you a discount.”
“How about ten percent?” Mike asked. Neither of them had stopped smiling.
“Well, sure—that’s nice of you,” Duane said. “Where are you gentlemen from?”
“Sri Lanka,” Mike said. “Long way.”
“I bet it is,” Duane agreed.
“We have wok—we have grill,” Tommy said. “Feed the oilboys when they get off work. Spring rolls very popular with the oilboys. So is barbecue. You want some?”
Duane realized he was hungry. At the back of the store Mike and Tommy had set up up a little buffet: spring rolls, barbecued pork on skewers, shrimp dumplings, chicken wings. The food smelled delicious and, as it proved, was delicious. Jody Carmichael had merely provided a microwave and some packaged burritos. No wonder the oilboys liked the new Sri Lankan menu. He could not imagine how Mike and Tommy had made it from Sri Lanka to that dusty crossroads in West Texas, but it was fortunate for the oilboys that they had.
Indeed, once he had eaten and was pedaling away, three pickups full of his own roughnecks came barreling up to their new South Asian deli.
Mike and Tommy wanted to give their new business a name and had asked Duane to suggest something, a suggestion that left him somewhat at a loss. As far as he could recall, the little store had once been called the Corners.
“You might call it the Corners,” he said, but Mike and Tommy thought that suggestion rather dull.
“We might call it Asia Wonder Deli,” Tommy said. “Wonder has nice ring.”
“You’re right, I like it,” Duane said.
“No charge,” Tommy said, when Duane tried to pay for the food, of which he had eaten a healthy amount.
“We hope you come back,” Tommy said. “In Sri Lanka we ride bikes too—but not here. Here too far.”
“And too crazy,” Mike added.
“Too crazy is right,” Duane said.
15
SOMETIMES, IN THEIR SESSIONS, Honor Carmichael would talk. She was never exactly chatty, but neither was she loath to speak out when she had an important point to make about Duane’s behavior or his attitude.
Other days, Honor would be completely inscrutable, listening closely but not responding. When he told her about Anne Cameron she watched him but didn’t say anything. When he mentioned that Anne said he was weak with women Honor merely shrugged.
“You aren’t with a woman and you haven’t been for some time, if we don’t count your office staff,” Honor said.
“So it doesn’t much matter whether you’re weak with them or not—it could be that you’re tired of women and are ready to let all that go.”
“All what go?” he asked.
“Sex—romance,” Honor said. “I doubt that you know much about sex, really, Duane, and unless Annie Cameron or someone like her decides to eat you for lunch you probably never will know much about sex.”
“I once thought I knew something,” Duane said. “I was married a long time.”
Again, Honor shrugged.
“Millions of married men go through life knowing very little about sex,” she said.
“Yesterday a woman told me I was weak with women,” Duane said. �
��Today you tell me I don’t know much about sex. And two Sri Lankans are running your father’s quick stop and running it well. It’s too much for an old country boy to take in.
“And that’s not counting my daughters,” he added.
“Last time you were here you said you wanted to see me four times a week,” Honor said. “Is that because you’re really troubled, or is it because you’re still hoping to interest me romantically?”
“I’m pretty troubled,” he said. “Even at the cabin I don’t get the old peaceful feeling very often. I wake up anxious most days. Real anxious, sometimes.”
Then he remembered that Honor had called Anne Cameron Annie—it suggested that she knew her.
But when he asked, Honor shook her head.
“Never met the girl—but I know her family,” Honor said. “One of her aunts roomed with Angie at Smith, way back in the dreamtime. They’re very rich Californians, the Camerons. They basically own Pasadena—or at least they did. Small world, isn’t it?
“At a certain level of wealth—a high level, obviously—all the really rich people more or less know all the other really rich people. They go to the same schools, or the same spas, and have their palaces in the same impeccable places. I’m sure Angie knows a lot more about the Camerons than I do, but I don’t think I’ll tell her that one of Cecil Cameron’s daughters is trying to seduce one of my patients.”
“I don’t think she has any interest in seducing me,” he said.
Honor snorted.
“You walk in from Egypt and her nipples get hard,” she said. “Then yesterday she shows you her sexy French armpit hair and mentions that some of her boyfriends get to shave her legs. Doesn’t that strike you as seductive behavior?”
“Yet she may just be a flirt,” Duane said. “After all, I’m an old codger.”
Honor thought about it for a moment.
“You’re not presentable socially, which, in Cameron terms, means you’d be a particularly hot fuck. To put it bluntly. But don’t expect her to take you to lunch at the yacht club in Newport Beach, or Newport, Rhode Island, either.”
Honor began to drum her fingers on the desk in front of her. She had seldom exhibited such restlessness in their sessions. He didn’t know what it meant. Also, she seemed worried. Honor had a capacity for merriment, even mischief, that she seldom suppressed for long. But since her vacation in Maine neither the merriment nor the mischief had surfaced.
“Is something wrong?” Duane asked, after a considerable silence had grown.
“I’m supposed to ask you that, Duane,” Honor said. “What might be wrong with me is none of your business. But I do have some advice for you. Go off and learn a little something about sex. Acquire some real skills. You might need them someday.”
Duane didn’t answer. His time was up. Honor politely but silently showed him out of the room.
16
BY THE TIME Honor’s office door closed behind him, Duane knew he was dropping into a serious depression. The sun was merciless—at least he had left his bicycle in the shade. He felt hopelessly discouraged. What was he to do? Honor was the one woman he wanted, and she did not want him. Who would he find to help him learn whatever it was he didn’t know about sex? He was sixty-four. If he hadn’t learned to be a good lover by then, how likely was it that he would ever be a good lover?
At a loss, worried, sad, he pedaled to the offices of Moore Drilling. He went slow. The day was really hot.
Dickie, his son, was talking on a cell phone when he walked in—something about his father’s look evidently worried Dickie so that he broke off the call.
“Daddy, you look terrible,” Dickie said. “You’re gray as oatmeal. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know,” Duane admitted. The remark about his color surprised him—he had never given a thought to his color.
“You worry me,” Dickie said. “You look like you’d keel over if you had to dig a posthole, or even mow the lawn.”
He quickly shut the door to his office, so he and Duane could be alone.
Duane had always been a healthy person, so much so that he had never thought of himself as anything but healthy. If he looked bad to Dickie it was probably because his intense depression showed.
“What do you think of Annie?” Dickie asked.
“I haven’t seen enough of her to know what to think,” Duane said. “She’s prettier than Earlene, I know that.”
“Well, she’s going to make us richer,” Dickie said. “She’s going to show us old wells that could be big producers. The only reason they weren’t big producers the first time around was because we couldn’t get the money to go deeper. Annie’s not only got the schooling for this job—she’s also got the instincts.”
“Reexploration—I suppose that’s the trend,” Duane said, though he could not really work up much interest.
“Do you ever hear from your sisters?” he asked.
“I know about Nellie being gay, and I know Julie wants to be a nun,” Dickie said. “I’m more interested in you, though. You just don’t look right. I doubt you should be pedaling a bike around in one-hundred-and-ten-degree heat—hell, nobody should.”
“Oh, I’ll take it slow until it cools off,” Duane said.
Nonetheless Dickie was still looking worried as he pedaled away.
Duane’s destination was the Asia Wonder Deli. He thought he might just eat a spring roll or two. He had enjoyed his few minutes with his son, but depression settled in before he was out of sight of his own offices. Duane mostly ignored heat, as he ignored cold or any other weather short of tornadoes. But he had not gone more than a mile before he began to feel that the heat had become an element in his depression. The heat suddenly surrounded him—he felt as if he were riding through a furnace; he wanted to get out of the furnace but there was no way out. The furnace wouldn’t cool until sunset—perhaps wouldn’t cool much even then. Soon the heat—or was it the depression—was affecting his breathing. Before he had gone three miles he knew that he had overmatched himself with the heat. Dickie was right: he shouldn’t be riding a bike in one-hundred-and-ten-degree heat. He had begun to tremble; so much sweat dripped into his eyes that he could barely see. He began to wobble on his bike. He didn’t know what a heat stroke felt like, but he had begun to fear he might be having one.
Fortunately he was only about two hundred yards from a little creek that had some good shade trees around it. Mike and Tommy’s was out of reach, but he thought the shade trees might save him.
He was wobbling worse and worse, but he just made it to the shade trees and got off his bike, Fortunately he still had nearly a full water bottle. He drank a few swallows and poured a little of what remained over his head. The little creek, alas, was dry.
It was good to be off his bike, but he wasn’t getting any cooler, and he became aware that his heart was racing. The heat was still all around him, like an invisible tent. He was trembling as hard as he had ever trembled in his life. He could not remember ever having reacted so severely from heat before. The heat and his reaction to it were so intense that he lost his feeling of depression. He realized he was just too old to have attempted what he had attempted. He wondered if he might die—a dairy farmer he knew slightly had died one day of a heat stroke, on a day about as hot as this one.
Duane sat for twenty minutes—he felt no better, but at least he didn’t feel worse. In an hour it should start feeling cooler. Fortunately he still had a little water. In two hours he might be able to pedal on to Mike and Tommy’s and eat a spring roll or two.
While Duane was waiting, being as still as possible, waiting for the heat to subside, he heard a pickup coming. The road it was on was rather out of the way. Only an occasional cowboy or oilboy, to use Tommy’s term, would be likely to be on it. Somehow the approaching pickup, which was still a ridge or two away, had a motor that sounded familiar. When it finally hove in sight it was familiar: it was Bobby Lee, in his old battered Toyota.
Bobby was smoking al
ong at top speed, as usual, and no doubt his mind was on other things as he drove. He failed to see Duane as he sped by but just noticed the bike out of the corner of his eye; he hit his brakes and stopped, then slowly backed up until he was on a level with the bicycle. Duane stood up then, and was chagrined to find that he was even weaker and shakier than he had been when he stopped and parked his bike.
“Whoa, hoss—you’re white as a sheet,” Bobby said. “Why would you ride a damn bicycle when it’s this hot?”
“I’ll be fine,” Duane said—not feeling fine at all. “Just haul me to my cabin.”
“Duane, if you could see how you look I hope you’d have better sense than to even think of going to that cabin,” Bobby Lee said. “For all I know you could be dying. I’m calling an ambulance.”
Duane felt a momentary resistance. He had always controlled his own state of health. But the fact was, he did feel very strange. Bobby Lee got on his cell phone and called 911. Duane leaned against one of the shade trees. He found that, for once, he was rather glad to let Bobby Lee make a decision for him.
“It’s lucky you came by, I guess,” he said, weakly, “I wouldn’t have made it to Mike and Tommy’s. What brought you out this way?”
“Dickie said I should hurry up and find you, that’s what brought me out on this miserable fucking road,” Bobby informed him.
Very soon they heard the wail of the ambulance—Duane was only some four miles from his office, and still in sight of Wichita Falls. When the ambulance showed up he fell silent—he made no protest when he was put on a gurney and lifted into the cool ambulance, which, in only a few minutes, arrived at the emergency room of a big, cool hospital. Dickie showed up, and he and Bobby Lee handled all the details of Duane’s admission. The sound of their voices seemed to come from a great distance. Duane knew that what they were doing was for the best. He had no doubt been foolish and had probably had a heat stroke—but somehow he felt a great disinterest in it all. It didn’t seem to be happening to him, but to another man who resembled him. He mainly wanted the formalities of admittance to be over so he could take a nice long nap. A nice nap in a cool room would, he felt sure, put him right again.
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