To Skin a Cat

by Thomas McGuane

  “That’s different. I was in Colorado. I was skiing. I was tooted out. And it could have been taken as a political gesture. Exxon was on every slope.”

  “What kind of airplane do you have?”

  “De Havilland with a custom galley. When it’s on autopilot, the pilot cooks. What does that have to do with it?”

  “A week with the plane and the hawk is a gift.”

  The sheikh unwinds his rig from about his ears as he thinks. It makes the sheikh’s beard seem wrong.

  “Bobby, it’s a deal. You should have been a pimp.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  In Blake’s small dining room, Bobby and Marianne sit at separate tables, though tiny rippling energy waves connect them. Bobby sends Marianne a Shirley Temple. Marianne sends Bobby a Bionic Boy. These concoctions are like the filaments sent out by warring spiders.

  Marianne calls out, “Thank you, it’s fantastic! But don’t drop by the table to discuss it!”

  “Can I interest you in a martial-arts film festival?”

  “Gosh, no.”

  Marianne gets up from her table and walks to Bobby’s.

  “Don’t get up. Listen, you’re terribly interesting. But I’m here to see my fiancé, and you’re a vulgar little shit.”

  “I have a de Havilland and an MEA pilot who cooks.”

  “Right, and then I’m going back to the United States. It’s silly, really it is, to spend your time on something that isn’t happening. Isn’t happening, got it?”

  Bobby hears a knock on the door of his room. When he opens it, there is Marianne. He says, “Come in, come in.” No surprise here. Atop her in no time.

  “Got anything to read?”

  “Sure do. A history of falconry in Persia do?”

  “Just right,” says Marianne. Bobby fishes the old volume off the shelf and hands it to her.

  “I’m going to the country with my fiancé. I need something to read. Haven’t got your bookplate in here, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Good, thanks, ’bye.”

  Gone.

  “You be sure and bring that book back. It’s—it’s—” Bobby goes to the empty falcon perch. “It’s my book.”

  Bobby Decatur is all alone in an unsuccessful tearoom.

  “A weekend can be a long time when you’re missing someone. Darling, it was an eternity. I thought of you in the country with an Englishman the color of putty. And I ached. I really did.”

  A waiter peers at Bobby from the doorway.

  The Silver Cloud cruises from Iver Heath. Do-wop millions, in relatively stable pounds, pay the freight.

  “I don’t think you ever took the trouble to get Mummy’s point of view.”

  “Mummy has a problem,” says Marianne to her fiancé.

  “Which is?”

  “She’s an absolute pill.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “That’s my point of view.”

  “See over there? Next to the Hogarth Laundry? That’s where the engraver Hogarth lived.”

  “Got a plaque?”

  “Yes, Marianne. The house is history, Marianne. Therefore the plaque.”

  “Then I want a plaque for us.”

  British Airways flashes in the window of the Silver Cloud.

  “So, that’s how it is.”

  At the desk in Blake’s, Marianne tells Hildegarde she would like to leave the American a message.

  “What did you do with that chicken?”

  Marianne requests of the Dutch girl that she not be impertinent. They once were friends. Now Marianne stares at her and concludes: a real cluck. Hildegarde.

  “I told you once, Hildegarde. I ate it.”

  One room of the British Museum contains a Norse ship whose swept dragon-shaped prow dominates the venerable space. Bobby and Marianne, together at last, are in its dusty shadow.

  Bobby says, “Look at it, Marianne. I always come to see the Viking stuff. Can you imagine building a boat like that and then invading England, kicking their rotten little monasteries into the Atlantic?”

  A glass case holds a Viking skull, splendid in a winged helmet. Bobby is in rapture.

  “Now there’s who I want to be.”

  A peregrine scatters larks in a vivid diorama.

  “Falcons take splash baths in clear water about ten times a day. If they get mites and little parasites other birds take for granted, they lose their edge and can no longer win the game of survival. If they lose one percent of their pure efficiency in killing, they are the ones to die.”

  An illuminated Bible from the Middle Ages catches his eye for bright colors. Bobby is explaining everything.

  “The only people in the world like Vikings and falcons are pimps. They prey on the world. Look at that God damned Bible. That’s the book that put Joe Blow in the driver’s seat. It’s a regular operation manual.”

  “I want something to eat.”

  “A pimp doesn’t care if he ever eats again.”

  “If we find the right restaurant we can make beautiful music together. What do pimps have to do with it?”

  It was an awful restaurant. Both Bobby and Marianne ordered so as not to upset the waiter. Then the waiter was rude. But they were scared of him.

  “How did you meet the Englishman?”

  “He was in their trade commission. Now he’s a music producer with a specialty in do-wop.”

  “What did you lobby for?”

  “Meat byproducts.”

  “Women have the hearts of assassins.”

  “These big statements, Bobby! We’ve got some difficult eating ahead of us.” The waiter brings their ghastly platters, gratuity in the price.

  The rakish de Havilland jet has Arabic writing on the fuselage. Bobby leads Marianne aboard. All is luxury-thick aluminum.

  “Marianne, meet Abdul. He bombed a kibbutz and can really cook.” Abdul is the first pilot Marianne has seen in a fez. He has twinkling eyes.

  The jet heads out over the Atlantic. The navigator serves drinks to Bobby and Marianne. They are keen on the upholstery. Later, Bobby attempts to seduce Marianne by putting his hand up her dress and fiddling awkwardly with her underthings as though he were trying to retrieve a letter through a mail slot. After a good deal of this, he spots America through the window. He also notices Abdul and the navigator watching to see if he’s going to get his thing into Marianne.

  When he closes the door to the cockpit, he says, “Watch where you’re going or you’ll ram America.”

  Then Bobby does something strange. He pulls a gun on Marianne and yells for her to undress. When she is naked she lies on the floor with her feet on either side of the aisle. Bobby mounts her as the airplane sinks into the atmosphere of America. The wings make an eerie chiming as they angle toward the coast.

  In the taxicab, New York goes unnoticed. Bobby and Marianne are discussing her rape.

  Marianne says, “If it hadn’t been for the peering Arabs, the airplane would have been a good place to make love.”

  “What about when I pulled the gun?”

  “I thought it was pretentious.”

  At last they take a room at the Pierre. Though the room has a handsome view, they have thus far avoided looking at New York. Only after two orange juices have been delivered does Bobby go to the window.

  “There are some very remarkable hawks that live on the tops of those buildings,” he says, “and they bang into the shit-heel pigeons for dinner.”

  “I thought we were going to Deadrock, Montana. Even the cur took me to the country.”

  “To Mummy’s place, so he could bop you in his old playroom.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Spreading yourself thin.”

  “Bobby, you’re jealous. How very nice.” Marianne beams without guile, two thousand miles from the chicken.

  Then rather strangely, Bobby says, “I don’t know why we came here.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “I thought coming back t
o America would give us a sense of starting over.”

  “I don’t want to start over. I want to have a nice time.”

  “We have to find a place to live, a place with the atmosphere of home. But before that, let’s send out for a whore.”

  “For what?”

  “Inspirational chats.”

  Marianne gazes at him with serene gray eyes.

  “Let me ask you this, do you have a mother?”

  “Yes, I do,” says Bobby.

  “And where does she live?”

  “She recently moved to the Carlyle.”

  “From where?”

  “Deadrock, Montana.”

  “Are we going to see her? Is that why we’re here?”

  “Yes, one reason.”

  “Is it to get money?”

  “There is that.”

  At the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, Bobby says, “That is it, the best oyster stew in America. Little wonder Lillian Hellman chose this for the site of her soiree. Did she have it at Twenty-one? No, she had it at the Oyster Bar because she knew the city and she knew her oysters.”

  “Bobby?”

  “What?”

  “May we order?”

  After Bobby has gone on and on about hookers and they are now in a corridor of the Carlyle Hotel, Marianne states the following in no uncertain terms:

  “What you would do with a hooker is your own problem. I have no interest in hookers. And what does that have to do with your mother? Let’s see her first, and please may we get off the subject of hookers. I am increasingly suspicious that you are treating me like one.”

  The door swings open and there stands Emily Decatur, Bobby’s mother. She has neatly arrayed silver hair and wears a Dale Evans cowgirl suit.

  She says, “Howdy, Bob. And who might this be?”

  “Marianne, a sport from Duluth. Mother is a cowgirl from New York, Deadrock, and Santa Barbara.”

  “Come in. How do you do. Come right in.”

  Amid the French walnut furniture are barbed-wire collections, western bronzes, and mounted arrowhead collections. Leaning against a fine old armoire are a couple of wagon wheels.

  “How broke are you, Bob?”

  “Fairly broke. It wouldn’t be so bad but I have plans.”

  “So, something new.”

  “It’s been on the back burner,” says Bobby. “But I’d be in motion, I think, if I had the wherewithal.”

  “This is where the rich old broad comes in,” says Emily Decatur to Marianne, a speech which, in the atmosphere Bobby has tried to induce, seems brightly candid.

  “I’m afraid it is,” says Bobby, preserving sincerity.

  “Would the Deadrock ranch be a help?”

  “Would I have to run it?”

  “It’s been leased out for twenty years. You’d need to supply an address, though, if you wanted the checks to come to you. Are you up to that?”

  “Yes, that would be very nice.”

  “Then it’s yours,” says Emily Decatur. “Would you like an aerial photograph of it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you sure? You can see the little homestead, and tiny figures of cows and horses.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t really want it.”

  “Okay, it’s a deal then,” says Emily Decatur, pumping her son’s hand.

  “That’s quite a gesture, Ma. Say, thanks for the nice ranch.”

  “The West is where it all begins.”

  “I think so.”

  “You’re free, Bob.”

  “That’s what the West is for, Ma, to make men free.”

  “Now what’re you going to do?”

  “I’m going to San Francisco to become a pimp.”

  Bobby is staring from the window while Marianne does her makeup at a little desk. Bobby opens the door to permit a room-service waiter to push a linen-covered cart in and set up a table.

  “How many places shall I set, sir?”

  “Three, and keep the entrees in the warmer, as we are not yet ready to dine.”

  The waiter sets out melons, cheese, and red and white wines while Bobby signs the check. He wishes the waiter a spirited “Andale, muchacho!” as he goes.

  “Hungry, darling?”

  “Famished, but I want to get my eyes on first.”

  Marianne has made herself up vividly, like a courtesan.

  A knock.

  Bobby admits Adrienne, a brown-eyed handsome young lady.

  “Just right,” Bobby cries. “Oh, goody.”

  “Hello, I’m Adrienne.”

  “And this is Marianne. I’m Bobby Decatur. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering you some lovely noisettes of lamb. Marianne is having coquilles Saint-Jacques and I—I’m having a cheeseburger, and I really don’t want a cheeseburger but I want to soak in the tub and watch you two dine and chat. I think the cheeseburger will be a little handier. The prospects of the entree floating between one’s knees will be eliminated.”

  Adrienne says, “Here’s one with his mind in the gutter.”

  “I’m no real animal,” Bobby objects, as he stacks hundreds on the table. “That should cover the eventualities.”

  Soon Bobby floats in the tub, idly nipping at the cheeseburger, spurting soap from his free hand, and gleefully peering out through the bathroom door.

  “Aw, come on in!”

  “No!”

  “Adrienne has to!”

  “You said we were partners!” retorts Marianne strangely.

  At the table, Adrienne says, “He must look like a prune by now. Hey, what do you guys want from me?”

  “I think he’s looking for a life story.”

  “No chance.”

  Bobby asks Adrienne to undress and bring him some french fries. Even naked, Adrienne seems so different that the french fries acquire the status of clothes. At any rate, they soon make a tiny log jam in the tub. Bobby climbs out, scrutinizes Adrienne, touches a thing or two, and wraps himself in a towel. When they come out of the bathroom, Marianne is unclothed.

  “Want to see mine?” she asks. “Bobby, you and Adrienne should go to bed together.”

  “All it takes is money,” says Adrienne. Bobby is mortified by this burst of actuality. He commands Marianne to dress.

  “Adrienne, look! His face is red!”

  “I thought this was his idea.”

  “He’s full of ideas. It’s quite lovable. He has a big inheritance, and all he wants is to be a pimp.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! I’m leaving,” says Adrienne.

  At the door, Bobby and Marianne call out good night to Adrienne. Then, mute, they stare at one another.

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “I didn’t say it was a bad idea.”

  “At least it didn’t cost anything.”

  Bobby says, “I felt that girl was on the cynical side.”

  “Nobody knew what you had in mind.”

  “No, no, no. That’s not it. What I was feeling was that you two felt I knew but that I had lost my nerve.”

  “You had.”

  When Bobby bursts into the hallway, he says, “We’ll see about this!” He goes off in his bathrobe.

  Marianne follows him to the elevators. A bellhop is standing there, and Bobby says to him, “I want a whore!”

  “This isn’t that kind of hotel, sir.”

  “It isn’t? I just sent one off. Now I want another.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No.”

  In the lobby, Bobby pushes through clients of the hotel to the front desk. The clerk, in uniform, has seen all of this he wants to.

  “I’m in Four-eighteen and I want a whore.”

  “That’s out of the question.”

  “Gimme that phone. This hotel needs hookers. Do you hear me?”

  “Four-eighteen? You have thirty minutes to vacate Four-eighteen or I’ll see to it that New York’s finest do it for you.”

  Bobby’s draining face seems to be superimpos
ed on those of the outraged guests. Marianne has subtly blended in among them.

  She asks, “Who is that young man?”

  Soon Marianne sits atop the luggage outside. Bobby comes out of a phone booth. His spirits are a little droopy.

  “Can’t get a room anywhere. We’re leaving this terrible city where even the smallest civilities are nonexistent.”

  Bobby and Marianne sit under the vague circles of the reading lights. Rows of sleeping hands, resting upon armrests, stretch down the aisles toward the captain and crew, who cautiously adjust the 747’s triggers for the Pacific.

  “When I get tired,” Bobby says, “I get scared.”

  “I do too. I think about the plane falling.”

  “I think we’re very tired. I’m scared and I don’t even know what of.”

  “Don’t say that,” says Marianne. “I’m completely terrified.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “San Francisco. I think something is waiting for us in San Francisco. And I don’t know what it is.”

  Bobby imagines fog; the airplane penetrates a low ceiling to an eerie groundscape. “We’re just tired,” he says.

  “That’s not the whole story. The whole story is, the attraction is getting too—I don’t know—too something.”

  Bobby says, “And pretty soon the ghosts of our past will emerge.”

  “How terrifying. How foul.”

  “We have to wipe it all out before it kills us.”

  By Nebraska, Marianne is asleep. Bobby has a reptilian restlessness the magazine rack can’t sop up. He begins to move about the aisles, staring hard at the sleeping faces, avoiding those stunned by air travel, until he catches the eye of a traveler, a man in his thirties who is wide awake.

  “How you doing?”

  “Fine. Kind of a long deal at night, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is. Can I sit down?”

  “Do, go right ahead.”

  “How come you’re going to San Francisco?”

  “I’m a maritime lawyer there.”

  “Married?” Bobby asks. He doesn’t seem impertinent.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m looking for a kind of nice hotel. Something right in the middle of things.”

  “Stay at the Saint Francis. It’s on Union Square. Couldn’t be handier. You on business?”

  “I just got out of one.”