Sex and Sunsets: A Novel

by Tim Sandlin

  Leaning forward, I pressed the undershirt against my nose until whatever is supposed to coagulate coagulated. Even in the dark, anyone would have been able to see the under-shirt was ruined, so I decided to abandon it in the tree. My regular shirt wasn’t nearly as bad as the undershirt, only a few dark spots on the collar. I put it back on, buttoned all the buttons except the top one, and tucked the tail into my jeans. I wiped the blood off my glasses and crossed the street to the Cowboy Bar.

  Cora Ann had already ordered a drink for me. “Why don’t you clean up?” she asked, pushing my VO and water down the bar.

  “Did you catch my horoscope in the paper this morning?”

  “There’s grass coming out of your ear.”

  “I’m having a very strange day.”

  Cora Ann said, “I don’t want to hear about it,” nipping an interesting story in the bud.

  I slumped over my drink and stared into the mirror behind the bar. The Cowboy is kind of peculiar. The stools have been replaced by saddles. Hundreds of silver dollars are embedded in the bar. The woodwork is all polished, cancer-warped pine. Drinks are expensive, and if you don’t tip, the second is mostly water.

  The owners run the place as a basic Old West tacky tourist trap for the out-of-towners. By mid-July, vacationers would be sweating all over each other for the fun of polluting themselves in a bar packed full of strangers—no reputations to uphold, no histories to slow down the moves. I’ve wasted several hours of most days the last few years drinking, dancing, and doing my part for the fantasyland atmosphere.

  Lizbeth once told me that if I did normal things in normal surroundings, I might become a bit more normal. Being tragic and crazy is sometimes boring, but I’m not sure I want to try normal yet.

  The drink did wonders for my ribs. VO helps any problem. Looking at Cora Ann in the mirror, I asked, “So, what’s happening?”

  She set down her glass. “For a writer, you talk trite, you know that, Kelly?”

  I figured she’d lecture me about something soon enough, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Do you have any idea how many times a day you say ‘What’s happening’?”

  I thought a moment. “About as often as you say ‘You’re looking at it’ or ‘Nothing much.’”

  “At least I have two answers.”

  “Well, what is happening?”

  “Reword it.”

  “Hell. Is there anything in which I might be interested occurring in the bar tonight?”

  “That’s better.” Cora Ann flipped her blond head toward the lower lounge. “Your bonus baby is here.”

  “My what?”

  “Colleen and her pals.”

  “Colette’s here? Where?”

  “There’s a whole table full of social climbers down that way.”

  I stood up. “I need to talk to her.”

  Cora Ann held out her right hand. “You know what the peace bond says, Kelly. Two steps closer and you’ve invaded her territorial waters. Imagine the shame of a criminal record.”

  I sat back down and picked up my VO. “We had a misunderstanding this afternoon. I need to talk to her.”

  “She’s surrounded, Kelly. Have a drink.”

  I drained the first one. “You buying?”

  “Cheap bastard.” Cora Ann ordered another round.

  The bar wasn’t very crowded, slow for June, even though it was early on a Thursday night. Most of the customers stood grouped around the pool tables. The rest, a few tourists and Colette’s table, sat in the lounge. The band was an Arizona group called Two Week Notice. They’re the best around for dancing western swing.

  “Want to dance?” I asked.

  Cora Ann handed me another drink. “I’m not going to help you impress your honey. You’ll be watching her instead of dancing.”

  That’s one of Cora Ann’s peeves. Sometimes I tend to watch the crowd and forget what I’m doing. “No, I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

  She looked down at my mud-caked shirt. “Can you dance all taped up?”

  “I can always dance.”

  As we walked to the floor, I checked out Colette and her friends. Cora Ann was right about their belonging to the privileged class. The guys wore forty-dollar chamois shirts and Tony Lama cowboy boots. The other two girls at the table had more invested in their hair than I did in my summer wardrobe. One of them was done up in cornrow braids like a black person from Jamaica. By contrast, Colette was fresh air in a perfume factory—a spring columbine in a field of VFW paper poppies. Given the opportunity, I would have married her on the spot.

  I can dance western swing—it’s my one talent outside of washing dishes—and Cora Ann can out-twirl, out-dip, and out-spin any woman in Jackson Hole. We make a colorful pair skimming across the floor: Cora Ann, young, beautiful, and happy; me, round-shouldered, assless, shirttail always half in and half out.

  The band played a Bob Wills song called “San Antonio Rose.” I didn’t look at Colette’s table because I knew they would all be admiring us. Cora Ann and I put on an act too—pretzels, triple twirls, death drops, front dips, moves so complex they don’t even have names. I think Cora Ann tried harder than usual. We could have danced on The Lawrence Welk Show.

  The dance ended with a flashy inside-tuck-type thing where I catch Cora Ann and bend her over backward until her hair brushes the floor. I positioned the move so I could dip Cora Ann and look up into Colette’s loving eyes. Only she wasn’t there. Danny and the two couples were right where they should have been, but the third chair from the left was empty.

  I panicked. “Cora Ann, she’s gone.”

  “Let me up, my spine doesn’t bend like this.”

  “Where’s Colette?”

  Cora Ann leaned farther back so she was looking at the lounge upside down. “She probably went home.”

  “Without Danny?”

  “Let me up, dammit.”

  I straightened, pulling Cora Ann up with me. “She’s in the bathroom,” I said.

  “Women like that don’t go to the can alone.” Cora Ann walked toward the bar and our drinks.

  I followed. “You don’t know Colette. She’s in the bathroom. I can tell.”

  “So what?”

  “Will you go tell her I want to talk to her?”

  “Hell, no.” Cora Ann stuck two fingers into her drink and popped an ice cube into her mouth.

  “No?”

  “No. I won’t give her any messages. I’ll have no part of your soap opera.”

  “Traitor.”

  ***

  The bathrooms at the Cowboy Bar are off a hallway downstairs. One says COWGIRLS on the door, and the other says COWBOYS. I pushed open the door marked COWGIRLS and walked in.

  The walls were painted a different color from the men’s room, and the sinks were on the wrong side. Bending over, I looked under the doors of all the stalls.

  I said, “Colette?”

  Her voice came from the end stall. “Ardith?”

  I pushed against the stall door. It wasn’t locked, so I walked in and closed the door behind me.

  Colette said, “Oh shit.”

  “Who’s Ardith?”

  “Kelly, you can’t do this. My pants are down.”

  “You wouldn’t piss with them up.”

  “Leave. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  I leaned against the metal partition between the stalls. “If you didn’t want to talk to me, you would have locked the door.”

  “You think not locking the door was some kind of Freudian slip?”

  “Yep.”

  Colette looked at me a moment. “Jesus, Kelly, you’re probably right.”

  “Sure, I’m right. Who’s Ardith?”

  “The cowgirl Rastafarian out there. She wouldn’t understand this. You’ve got to leave now. Wha
t if somebody walks in?”

  As if on cue, the bathroom door opened. I sat in Colette’s lap and propped my feet on the toilet-paper dispenser.

  We heard footsteps, then water running in the sink. Colette’s hand made fists on my legs. There were more footsteps, then the door opened and closed again.

  “I’m back to hating you again,” Colette said.

  “We need to talk. We had a misunderstanding this afternoon, and I don’t think either of us will sleep peacefully until we clear it up.”

  “Misunderstanding, hell, you had a woman give you a—you know.”

  “Why can you say ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ without blinking, but you have trouble with ‘blow job’?”

  Colette smiled. “Maybe I’m not a very oral person.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not an oral person. Was that a joke?”

  “Of course it’s a joke. You’re not an idiot on top of everything else, are you?”

  “Because if that was a joke, you couldn’t hate me. I read that no one ever tells jokes to people they hate.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read. Now get up and get out. I’m not listening to you anymore.”

  “You’ll never leave this bathroom if you don’t listen.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  The door opened again and a girl’s voice said, “She’s a little whore.”

  Another, higher voice said, “Did you know she went down on three different guys in the last band that played here? Where did you get those shoes?”

  “Idaho Falls. I hate the straps. They look queer.”

  Someone opened the door to the next stall and a pair of feet walked in and turned around. A pair of jeans settled around the ankles. The girl was right. The shoes did look queer.

  Colette leaned back against the toilet tank. She seemed relaxed, considering. She watched my face a moment, then started laughing—hysterical laughter.

  “What’s so funny over there?” the girl in the next stall asked.

  Colette gasped and tried catching her breath, but that only made her laugh more. Finally she got out, “The graffiti.”

  The voice at the sinks asked, “What’s it say?”

  I leaned back so Colette could read the door. “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

  “That’s an old one,” the girl in the stall said.

  The girl at the sinks said, “Not worth going to pieces over.”

  Colette giggled, “I never heard it before.”

  The jeans went up and the toilet flushed. Then the feet moved away. I heard running water and one of them said, “Let’s go see if the little twit will buy us a drink.” The bathroom door opened and closed again.

  Colette started laughing uncontrollably.

  “I do not see what is so funny,” I said.

  “Will you get up?” she laughed. “My legs are asleep.”

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, standing up.

  “This doesn’t strike you as strange?”

  “What?”

  “Sitting on me while women go to the bathroom. You don’t think that’s funny?”

  “No. We had a misunderstanding and I’d like to clear it up. Nothing strange about that. I couldn’t come to your table, you know.”

  Colette picked something out of her crotch. “You’re all muddy.”

  “We must talk, Colette. This could seriously damage our relationship.”

  “We can’t talk here. They’ll send someone down to look for me soon.”

  “Where then?”

  Colette raised her hand and showed me a chunk of dried mud between her thumb and index finger. “How am I going to explain muddy pubes to Danny?”

  “Where can we meet?”

  She spread her legs and dropped the mud into the toilet. “If I don’t agree, you’ll sit on me all night, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, you’re weird, Kelly.” She thought awhile. “How about Jackson Lake Lodge? I used to work there and we never saw any locals.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I have to work tomorrow.”

  “It’ll have to be Monday, then. Danny has the weekend off.”

  “Okay, Monday afternoon, one o’clock.”

  Colette stared up at me with those all-alive eyes. “You are remarkable, Kelly,” she said. “I think you’ve got a chance to win me over.”

  I opened the stall door. “Of course I’ll win you over. It’s fate.”

  I walked to the sinks and leaned forward to look at my face in the mirror. A dark-haired girl walked in the door. She backed up a step, reopened the door, and read the sign that said COWGIRLS. She looked at me and said, “Excuse me.”

  I said, “Quite all right,” and left.

  ***

  “Danny’s suspicious,” Cora Ann said when I walked back to the bar.

  “Of what?” The ice in my drink had melted so the VO tasted watery.

  “He practically cricked his neck looking for you or Colleen.”

  “Colette.”

  “Did you get to her?”

  I leaned over the bar and waved a finger at Pam, the bartender. “Could I have another one? With less water this time.”

  “Did you get to her?”

  “Yep. I’m forgiven. She’s mine for the picking up.”

  “Forgiven for what?”

  Pam brought my drink and I handed her three one-dollar bills. “We had a misunderstanding. It’s cleared up now.”

  “I bet.”

  “Bet what?”

  “I bet it’s cleared up,” Cora Ann said with some sarcasm.

  “Okay. Ten bucks says she’s living with me by Labor Day.”

  “That’s in September?”

  “Yep. Ten bucks or get off my back.”

  “You’re mixing metaphors again.”

  “You’re evading.”

  Cora Ann leaned against the bar, looking past me. She smiled. “It’s a bet.” Nudging my elbow, she nodded toward the lounge. Colette and Danny were slow dancing, waltzing across the floor. They were kissing each other. On the Cowboy Bar dance floor, right out where the whole world could see, Colette and Danny were kissing.

  I was disgusted. “She’s only doing that so he won’t be suspicious.”

  Cora Ann said, “Sure,” but I could tell she didn’t mean it.

  I finished the evening by drinking a lot of alcohol and going on a rampage of social blunders. I poured someone else’s beer on my head and shouted, “Drinks are on me.” I barked at a guy who was trying to pick up Cora Ann. I made a pass at somebody’s grandmother. “Didn’t we ball on the Champs Elysées the night the Allies liberated Paris?” I asked. The old lady thought it was cute, but her grandson was offended.

  At one point, a man threw me out of an all-night café for offering to sell my shoes to a family of tourists. At another point, I came to on the ground in a cemetery with my jeans around my ankles. The Earth mother Rebecca who used to be Lydia was crouched by a marker, holding her dress over her face and crying. She blamed her unhappy life on a domineering father.

  Much later, I heaved a rock through Cora Ann’s bedroom window. Worst of all, I slept in my shoes and muddy clothes.

  5

  One reason I wash dishes instead of cook is because I don’t have the attention span to grill a medium-well steak—or hold any job that requires alertness. I transcend details. My mind wanders the cosmos, moving effortlessly from past to future and back again, rarely ever stopping in the present.

  The only way I know if I’ve brushed my teeth is to feel the toothbrush. If it’s dry, I brush. If it’s not, I don’t. When walking across intersections, I miss curbs. I’ll fall off the first one
and think that going down one curb means I’ll have to go up another one in a moment, but then I’ll start worrying about Hemingway’s theme or Willie Nelson’s contribution to the world, and bang into the up curb—or walk into a stop sign.

  I wake up from these reveries and don’t know where I am. I’ll be considering the proper way to live when I become rich, and realize I’m staring into a skillet full of black hamburger, or I buy a movie ticket from the girl out front and lose it before I come to the guy who tears them in half.

  At various times in life, I blamed this habit on booze, drugs, my mother, my Higher Purpose, fluoridation of the water, but I think I may have always had it. Maybe I was born lost.

  The first mind-skip I can remember came in the bathroom right after my thirteenth birthday. I was sitting naked on the toilet lid, wondering whether dead people float or not, when I realized I didn’t know why I was sitting naked on the closed toilet. My clothes lay in a pile in the corner, under the towel rack. After some thought, I decided I must be preparing to take a bath.

  I plugged in the stopper, turned on the hot water, waited a few moments, then turned on the cold. When the tub was about a quarter full, I stepped in and sat down.

  Mom walked into the bathroom. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I’m naked, Mom,” I said, covering my privates with a wet washrag.

  “I’ve seen you naked your whole life, now what’s the idea?” She stood above me, arms crossed over her chest, something like a fundamentalist God on Judgment Day.

  “I’m taking a bath. Is there something wrong with taking a bath?”

  “There is when you took one ten minutes ago. I heard the water run the first time. What are you trying to pull?”

  “Nothing. I’m taking a bath.”

  “You were doing something dirty and you thought you could cover it by taking another bath.”

  “What could I do dirty in the bathroom?” I was once naive enough to say that with a straight face.

  “What are you doing under that washrag?”

  “Nothing, I’m modest.” Thank God Mom never caught me with an erection. I think she would have cut it off with the pinking shears. So far as I can tell, she still doesn’t know I’ve ever had one.