“Let’s forget the coffee, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Maybe some hair of the dog,” he suggested. “You got anything?”
“Beer,” she said. “And an old bottle of brandy.”
“That’ll do. Even old.”
Standing on a chair, she got the bottle out of a cabinet over the refrigerator. “You want a glass?” she asked.
“No. Just the bottle.”
She brought it over and gave it to him, grudgingly. Taking his first pull on the bottle, he closed his eyes and waited, straining to keep it down. And then he felt it, the special gift of brandy, the sudden stain of warmth spreading through his stomach.
“You gonna get drunk again?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s the hangover, that’s all. A little of this and I’ll feel better.”
“How about a little food?”
“Later.”
She looked at him dolefully. “Don’t stay here, okay?”
Bone tried to smile. “Not too keen on me, huh?”
“On them. The clap twins. They won’t be good for you.”
“I can believe it.” He took another drink.
“I’m getting out too.”
“Can’t blame you. The place is a pigsty.”
“I know. I just gave up after a while.”
“One does.”
She watched him as he took another pull on the bottle. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Richard Bone.”
“You drink pretty fast, Richard Bone.”
“Not fast enough.”
“I thought you weren’t going to get drunk.”
He was feeling better now, as the warmth continued to spread in him. “I’m not. I meant something else.”
“What?”
He met her gaze for a few moments, the unblinking eyes above the pugnacious tomboy mouth and chin. “I forget,” he said.
She seemed to give up on him then. Turning away, she went back into the kitchenette. “Is there anybody you want me to call?” she asked. “Someone to come and get you?”
Bone thought about it. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I don’t know the number—George Swanson in Santa Barbara. Ask for Cutter. Mister Alexander Cutter.”
She got the phonebook and began to leaf through it, looking for the number. “You don’t want me to call Mo?” she asked.
Bone could not remember alcohol hitting him so hard before. The bottle of brandy had been only half full when he started and though there was still at least a third of it left he felt totally and painlessly high. And he imagined the reason was that he had started out already halfway home, with a respectable level of alcohol still sloshing about in his blood. But whatever the cause, he was not about to complain, for his hangover had gone the way of his sobriety, and he missed neither of them.
As he drank, he sat on the davenport looking out the window at the few raunchy kids still left around the fire, poking and worrying its smoking ashes like scavengers at a city dump. He also watched the Virgin of Isla Vista banging around in the kitchenette, putting things away and straightening up and starting to wash the dishes. And then he stretched out and slept again, for how long he had no idea. There was no question, however, as to what it was that woke him finally—a cane sticking him in the ribs. And then Cutter’s voice:
“Wake up, my son. Thy father hath need of thee.”
Bone remembered trying to push the cane away, but it kept prodding him in new places. And he remembered getting up finally, teetering there in the middle of the room like an infant while the two of them struggled to dress him. As they were working him into his jockey shorts, he recalled warning them to look the other way because he was actually the Virgin of Chicago Plains and it was rumored that anyone who dared look upon his private parts would be blinded by their purity and perfection. And Cutter went along, saying something to the effect that, yes, he and the girl were aware what a signal honor fate had visited upon them. But then he ruined the moment by observing to the girl that probably never before in human history had so little given so many so little, and Bone remembered the girl laughing, smiling happily, and how unexpectedly beautiful that smile had seemed, lighting not only her drab little face but even for a few moments the alcoholic wastes of his own spirit.
Dressed finally, and clutching his precious hangover antidote, the fifth of Christian Brothers, he let Cutter and the girl lead him downstairs and outside to a late-model Ford station wagon, which Bone recalled seeing in Swanson’s driveway and garage, the family utility vehicle, something for George and his wife to fall back on in such dire emergencies as having to carry a third person or an extra sack of groceries. At the car Bone noticed that the girl had brought her own suitcase with her, an expensive overnight bag which she stuffed into the back of the wagon, next to Bone’s own luggage from his room at Mrs. Little’s. It crossed Bone’s mind that none of this made any sense—the girl going along, and his own things being there, packed and loaded—but it just did not seem important to him, not where he was, gliding up above it all like a beatified seagull. And even when he got into the back seat of the wagon and had to make a place for himself amid all the junk—the rifles and shotguns and cameras and tape recorders—he still did not bother to ask any questions.
After driving back to Santa Barbara, Cutter pulled into the parking lot of Swanson’s real estate office and got out. He said he would not be long and he was true to his word, coming out of the building within a few minutes and grinning as he fanned himself with a piece of paper—a check which he promptly cashed at a drive-in bank near the freeway. For some reason Bone remembered his instructions to the teller:
“Make it twenties, my good woman. Fifty of them.”
And Bone thought: good old George, trusting Cutter to pick up a thousand dollars for him.
But instead of going back to George’s house, as Bone expected him to do, Cutter swung south on 101, which caused Bone to look up from the bottle of brandy long enough to inquire where they were headed—Hollywood? Tijuana? Chile?—he thought it might be a good idea if he knew. But Cutter said he was not to worry; they were just out for a drive, that was all, a quick spin down the coast in order to give Bone time to sober up, because, as he well knew, George’s wife wasn’t keen on lushes or one-eyed cripples, and while they couldn’t do anything about the latter, the former was a different matter. So he advised Bone to drink up, finish what he had started, and then once he was safely back on the wagon, they could all repair to Santa Barbara, there to live happily ever after. Bone said he would drink to that, and he did.
They were not much past Carpinteria, however, when Cutter announced that he was starved, and turned off the freeway. Pulling up to a Sambo’s restaurant, he gave the girl twenty dollars and sent her off with instructions to load up on hamburgers and fries and Cokes and anything else that tickled her fancy. When she was gone, he reached back for the brandy and took a few pulls himself. Then he sat there looking at Bone and shaking his head.
“Did it help?” he asked.
“What?”
He gestured with the bottle. “This.”
“Help what?”
“Richard Bone, the secret bleeder.”
“That’s me.”
“Old blood and tears.”
“Now you know.”
“Well don’t sweat it, kid. We gonna get ours. We gonna make ’em pay.”
Bone took the bottle back. “Right on. Let’s stick it to ’em.”
Cutter was not taken in. “Who?” he asked.
Bone grinned. “You name ’em, pal. I’ll do the sticking.”
“You don’t know who, do you?”
“Them.”
And Cutter laughed. “Of course, them. Who else?”
Cutter let the girl drive from then on. Bone ate some of the fries and about half of a hamburger—his first food in almost two days—but most of the time he stayed with the brandy, and by the time they reached Los Angeles he had finished the bottle an
d had stretched out on the seat with a rolled-up coat under his head. He was vaguely aware of their stopping once, in some crowded urban alley, where Cutter scooped up most of the junk on the floor and disappeared for a while, for what purpose Bone did not know or care. Again sleep seemed so much more important.
When he woke again, he woke in pain and thirst and cold, the latter roaring out of the car’s air conditioner. Slowly sitting up, he looked about him and all he could see were the rolling wastes of the Mojave Desert, gray in the twilight, a lunar terrain scored by the twin bands of the blacktop freeway stretching ahead of them. The girl was still driving. Cutter, next to her, raised his head to look back at Bone.
“It lives,” he announced. “It has risen.”
Bone was in no mood for comedy. “Where the hell are we?”
“Just past Barstow.”
“Barstow!”
“Yep, Barstow.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s on the way.”
“On the way where?”
“That we don’t know.”
“Where, Alex?”
“Monk and me,” he said, “We got to thinking about it back in L.A. And we decided why the hell not just keep right on going. See America first and all that.”
Again Bone asked him where they were headed, what was going on.
Sighing, Cutter sank back into the car seat. “I told you he wouldn’t dig it,” he said to the girl. “The man is other-directed.”
She looked back from the wheel, flashing Bone an anxious, almost frightened look. “You were asleep,” she said. “And when Alex brought it up—well, it seemed like such a super idea, you know? Just to keep right on going, the three of us.”
“Yeah, super,” Bone muttered.
“We got the bread,” Cutter assured him. “And it’s like I was saying to Monk just a few miles back—school keeps. It’ll all still be there.”
“When we get back,” the girl put in.
By now Bone was feeling sick, puking sick. But he fought it down. He was angrier than he was sick. “Not me, Alex,” he said. “Not on your goddamn life.”
“Well, it’s up to you, old buddy. We sure want you to come along. But if you feel you got to go back—well, we can let you out anytime, anyplace. Just say the word.”
Bone wanted to tell him to pull over right then, but the words would not come. He knew what shape he was in. And he knew the desert. He knew it that well anyway.
“Needles will do,” he said. “You can let me out there.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Cutter was still slouched down in the seat, staring out at the darkening desert. “We’ll miss you, Rich,” he said. “It just won’t be the same.”
10
When they reached Needles, Cutter announced that he and the girl were going to stay the night and get an early start in the morning, and he suggested that Bone do the same, since he looked like a dead man and smelled worse and his only hope for a lift back across the desert would be a Hell’s Angel with advanced rhinitis. Bone had not intended to start back yet anyway, not feeling the way he did, but he knew that his staying the night in a motel, or for that matter even eating, depended on Cutter’s generosity, which, as he soon found out, was not excessive. He asked him for a loan, or more accurately, compensation.
“A hundred,” he suggested. “I figure that’s about what you owe me. Sort of a kidnapping fee. The cost of getting me back where I was.”
And Cutter shrugged a grudging agreement. “Of course, my son. But not now. Not tonight. You’d only spend it on spirits, poor souse that you are. I’ll give it to you in the morning. Meanwhile, you can stay with us.”
Bone did not object. If he had really wanted the money now, he knew he could have insisted, he could even have strong-armed Cutter for it. But the next morning would do fine, he decided. For one thing, it meant he would not have to pay for his food and lodging for the night. And for another, he wanted to find out if Cutter was serious about this aimless little tour through the motherland or whether it was all a put-on, a smokescreen he was laying down for the girl as well as for him.
They rented a twin-bed room in a dreary rundown little motel with a sign out in front that succinctly recorded the nation’s recent economic history—an original $6 per nite with a crudely painted number 1 inserted to make $16, which in turn was crossed out with a large and angry X. All bets were off, all contracts canceled. It was a lodging for today, tonight. No one was making any promises about tomorrow.
Once inside, Bone waited for Cutter and the girl to finish with the bathroom and then he preempted it for almost an hour, most of which he spent in the shower, first trying to steam the alcohol out of his system and then resorting to the shock treatment of a full cold spray the final ten or fifteen minutes. After dressing, he continued the pursuit of his lost health by talking Cutter into dining at a nearby steakhouse instead of the usual hamburger joints he favored whenever haute cuisine was either unavailable or unaffordable. There Bone tried to restore some of his vitamin loss with a fourteen-ounce New York-cut steak and french fries and a tossed salad washed down with tomato juice and milk and coffee, all in quantities that had the waitress watching him with wary hostility, as if she were afraid he might be putting her on. She was middle-aged and hard-faced, with a beehive of champagne-colored hair that she kept patting and touching to reassure herself it was still there in all its glory. But she was not a bit out of place in the steakhouse, with its linoleum-covered floor and tube-steel furniture and blaring, country-rock jukebox. Bone did not care about any of that, however, for the food was good. And he noticed that the Virgin of Isla Vista seemed to be taking almost as much pleasure in his eating as he was, probably because she had considered him a doomed alcoholic until now. She even insisted on giving him part of her own steak, had cut off a sizable portion and forked it onto his plate almost ceremoniously, like an offering, a bribe to keep him sober. Then she settled back, arms folded, eyes shining, looking every inch a twelve-year-old First Class Boy Scout who had just done his good deed for the day.
“You know, I still don’t know your name,” he told her now.
“Monk.”
“That’s not a name.”
“It’s an insult, yeah,” she laughed. “The clap twins hung it on me.”
“Well, the hell with them,” Bone said. “What’s your real name?”
“Monk’s fine,” she insisted. “I’m used to it now. I like it.”
Cutter was lighting a cigar. “We’ve already been this route, Rich,” he said. “The alternative is Dorothy or Dot.”
Bone gave in. “Okay—Monk it is.”
“Monk from San Jose,” Cutter continued. “Surname Emerson, nineteen years old, English Lit major, only child of divorced parents. Daddy’s a dentist, Mom’s a social worker, and Monk herself is a nigger-loving, com-symp, atheistic socialist with allergies. And a bad case of virginity. It just won’t go away.”
The girl gave Cutter a rueful look. “Don’t talk about that, okay? I’m sorry I told you.”
“You should be,” Cutter scolded. “Shame on you. With all your advantages. And in this day and age.”
Bone tried to rescue the girl. “You’ve been busy, Alex. No grass growing under the old foot, huh?”
“You forget, Rich, you been bombed out for some time now.”
Bone could only agree. “Yeah, a day and a half, as I recall. And it seems like a month and a half. Last time I touched ground was the funeral home. And now here I am, sober in Needles.”
“Stuck in Needles,” Alex amended.
Bone did not pick it up. Mention of the funeral home had suddenly brought it all back. He would never understand why the sea had rejected him.
“The funeral,” he said, “is it tomorrow?”
Cutter looked away and shrugged, almost as if he had been asked the time. And Bone did not understand. He sat there waiting, shaken. Finally he turned back to the girl.
“I
forgot to thank you for helping me,” he said. “I guess it isn’t your fault I wound up here in the desert.”
“I’m afraid it’s my doing as much as Alex’s,” she said. “I thought you’d be all for it. And I still think it’s a super idea—the three of us just taking off, going nowhere in particular.”
“You sure there’s such a place?” Bone asked.
“Might as well give it up,” Cutter advised her. “The man would be a drag anyway, looking for hidden meanings and grand significances all across this great land of ours. I can just see him poring over every greasy spoon menu—‘What does it really mean, over easy?’ And that we don’t need, Monk. We can get by.”
Bone tried to set the matter straight. “Hidden meanings I’m not after, Alex. Just a few answers, that’s all I want.”
“Like what?”
“Like what went wrong at George’s? Why this sudden flight into the desert?”
Cutter flicked ash off his cigar. “Nothing big,” he said. “George’s wife just wasn’t enamored of my bathroom deportment. She’s very keen on closed doors and individual towels, toothbrushes, toilet paper—you name it. I think the lady has a Ph.D. in personal hygiene.”
Bone was grinning, but he did not believe. “What about the car?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“George give it to you, loan it to you, what?”
“A kind of loan.”
“The kind he didn’t know about?”
“I left him a note.”
“That was considerate.”
“Thank you.”
“And the check?”
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