Sex and Sunsets: A Novel

by Tim Sandlin

  “Kelly?”

  “I sobered up and you stopped breathing, so I kicked you out of bed.”

  “Oh.” She looked back at the pillows. “Doesn’t look like me.”

  “That’s why I threw you on the floor.”

  Colette gently laid the dummy of herself on the couch. “You’d better hurry with that coffee,” she said. “I imagine the gas and electricity will go soon.”

  I went into the kitchen, but the coffee hadn’t started to perk yet, so I walked back to the couch and Colette.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  “Why not?” Colette was picking at the elk skull. She carried it to the couch and set it against the dummy. It looked kind of obscene. “There. You should have given me a head.”

  I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that. “What’s John got on you?” I asked.

  Colette sat down. “Oh, it’s a bunch of crap. I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “About what?”

  “After the wedding—after you threw that scene in the Americana—Mr. Hart offered to loan Daddy a bunch of money to open his own tap-dancing studio in Davenport.”

  “Tap dancing?”

  “My dad teaches tap dancing. He’s very good. John loaned him ten thousand dollars at a ridiculously low interest rate to open his own school.”

  “I never laid a girl whose daddy was a tap dancer.”

  Colette scowled. “You never will with that attitude. Anyhow, way down in the fine print of the loan agreement there’s a clause that says if Danny and I split up, or I’m unfaithful, or I do anything at all that John Hart considers behavior unbecoming to his daughter-in-law, the note comes due immediately.”

  “What an asshole.”

  Colette didn’t look happy. Her eyes drooped like an unwatered African violet. “I called home. Dad’s already spent the whole ten thousand.”

  “On tap-dancing equipment?”

  “He’s competing against a Jazzercise franchise. Dance lessons are a tough business.” She looked at me. “This new studio is the first thing Dad’s been excited about since Dirk died. I can’t take it away from him.”

  I sat next to Colette and took her hands in mine. She pulled her right hand loose and tucked hair behind her ear. “I think Daddy would like you. You’re kind of like Dirk. Dirk didn’t care what anybody thought of him so long as he was happy.”

  “That’s a good attitude.”

  Colette smiled. “Once when President Nixon came to Davenport, Dirk dressed up like a rat and tried to shake his hand.”

  “I’m not too political myself.”

  “The Secret Service threw Dirk on the ground and handcuffed him. Daddy had to go downtown with bail money. He acted real mad, but I think he was secretly proud of Dirk. The newspaper article is framed on the wall in Mom and Dad’s bedroom.” Colette looked me full in the face. She put her free hand back in mine.

  “Do you want to be with me?” I asked.

  She didn’t blink or sniffle or anything. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know how—it’s so impossible. I can’t ruin Daddy, and you can’t live here with John after you.”

  A truck from the gas company pulled up outside. I could see the logo through a crack in the curtains. It was an orange flame with words printed underneath—TETON GAS.

  “John Hart is the only thing standing between us and happiness,” I said.

  “That might be an exaggeration.”

  “Okay, he’s the only thing standing between us and any chance at happiness. You agree to that.”

  Colette looked down at my hands around hers. “I don’t know. It’s all impossible.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “I don’t know, don’t ask me these questions. I’m confused. I don’t know anything anymore.” Colette raised her face. I could see straight into her brown eyes—eyes soft and alive enough to make a poet sober. “I love you, Kelly,” she said.

  I almost passed out. “My God, I did it.”

  “Yeah, you did it. You got to me, you son of a bitch.”

  Doubling my fist, I hit the trunk. “Fuck, I did it.” I danced. I sang. I knelt on the rug and sanctified the couch. But Colette did not look happy.

  She stood up. “This is it, Kelly,” she said. “No matter how I feel or how you feel, we can’t see each other ever again.”

  “Bullshit, you love me.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Like hell it doesn’t. Where are you going?”

  “I won’t destroy my father or Danny, or you either. I’m leaving.”

  The little bitch left.

  ***

  I sat staring at the skull-headed dummy on the couch, wondering if tennis shoes on the bottom would take the whole thing a step too far.

  I couldn’t believe I had her. I talked all self-assured—“It’s fate, someday you will love me, you and I are inevitable”—but I don’t know if I meant it or not. It was too good a line to know if it was true.

  And now Colette had said right out loud, “I love you, Kelly.” Knowing Colette, she would deny it tomorrow, but that wasn’t important. She had admitted to herself and me that she loved me. That was enough.

  The only remaining problem was that yeast infection in the womb of Mother Nature, John Hart. His bulky ass stood between Colette and happiness, me and happiness, even Danny and happiness. Danny would never find contentment while living with Colette. The most perfect woman in Wyoming isn’t worth day-old piddle as a wife if she doesn’t love you. I know.

  The one, the only, impediment between me and perfect peace was the fat banker. Time for the Avenging Angel to fly down and take possession of my body. I could say the shower made me do it. John, Julie, and Mom thought I was sanitarium fodder. Why disappoint them? Temporary Insanity would please everyone except John, and after six months of Thorazine fog, I’d be back in Colette’s arms before she missed me.

  As I sat staring into Sherlock’s eye sockets and musing on the convenience of Being Crazy, the gas man finished tying off my pipes and a big yellow truck from the electric company pulled up. By noon he’d have me powerless, waterless, and up the creek paddleless.

  Time to pop somebody’s cork.

  I possess—have possessed ever since the death of my Uncle Homer—an exact replica of the 1880 Box Lock Percussion .41-caliber derringer, also known as the “muff gun.” Gentlewomen used to carry this pistol in their hand muffs to blow the prostate glands off would-be rapists.

  It’s a cute gun, a muzzle-loader. It came with a leather bag that contained lead balls, patches of cloth, a tiny rammer rod, percussion caps, an even smaller bag of powder, and a coke-spoon-looking thing made out of horn—the all-around assassination kit for munchkins.

  The derringer had an effective kill range of twelve feet. Past that you could cause more pain with a thrown rock. To my knowledge, Uncle Homer tried to shoot the gun five times and it misfired twice. That gave John pretty good odds in case God wanted to keep him alive.

  I pulled the gun from its secret hiding place in the closet, set all the parts on my living room trunk, and went to work: measure of powder (to be on the safe side I put in two hornfuls), patch of cloth (wool), then the lead ball. Out came my rod and I rammed the ball down the hole in authentic sexually frustrated frontiersman style. I sorted through the percussion caps for the one most likely to work and, saying a little prayer over the one I chose, stuck it on the nipple—another symbolic part of the black-powder gun.

  I shrugged into my red windbreaker, stuck the loaded, primed, and ready-to-kill gun in the right-hand pocket, and walked to the bank.

  Everyone would be real surprised. No one, not even Julie or Lizbeth, knew about my muff gun. It was my one secret never spilled onto a barroom table.

  ***

  His secretary didn’t try to stop me. Hands in jacket pocket
s, I walked straight into John Hart’s office—red shag carpet, desk the size of a ’63 Chevy Impala, antelope heads mounted on the wall paneling.

  John sat behind the desk. For maybe a tenth of a second he looked surprised. Then he said, “Yes?”

  The man had purple jowls. Jowls is a disgusting word. Does it rhyme with pals or towels? But to actually have them hanging off your cheeks…Nobody likes a man with purple jowls.

  “My name is Kelly Palamino,” I said, tightening my hold on the muff gun.

  John played it straight. He shuffled a couple of papers and pushed them aside. “What can we do for you?” We? Who the hell was “we”?

  “I need a loan.”

  John looked relieved. I had approached him in his element. He opened the middle desk drawer and removed a pad of paper. “How much would you like to borrow?”

  “Six or seven hundred dollars. My utilities got cut off and I need deposit money to turn them back on.”

  He smiled. I’ve seen truer smiles on Miss Teenage America contestants. Door-to-door magazine salesmen. TV preachers. Inside my jacket, I pointed the muff’s barrel at John’s Adam’s apple. As if it knew, the apple bobbed up, then down.

  “What is your weekly income?” John asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing.” He wrote this down. “Do you have anything to use as collateral?”

  “A ’71 Volkswagen.”

  “Oh? You still have a car?” The apple bobbed again. It knew. I might not kill him, but he’d talk with a little box pressed against his throat for the rest of his life. Let’s see him threaten me with a voice like a worn-out Barbie doll.

  “What is your address, Kelly?” he asked, bending over the paper.

  “Box 1974, Jackson, Wyoming, 83001.”

  This is it, I thought. It’s prove-you’re-a-real-man time. Nothing happened. I tried again. Okay, now. My finger refused to squeeze. John sat at his desk, alive and pompous as ever scribbling my name and address on his pad. I decided to try a countdown. Three, two, one, fire.

  “Do you have any credit references?” he asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  He asked my parents’ names and what they did for a living. I told him about the Purina feed franchise in Lancaster. When he asked for marital status I said, “Separated.” John looked at me as if he didn’t believe, then he wrote something on the pad.

  God knows, I tried to shoot him. My palm was sweaty, my elbow tingled from the strain, but no trigger slammed the pin into the nipple, igniting the percussion cap and blowing John’s neck into the antelope heads. Something was terribly wrong. I knew in my soul that killing John was right, but my body refused to act.

  Finally, John finished the notes. “I’ll have to take this up with the other loan officers. We’ll see what they say. Can you call in the morning, say around nine?”

  The turd. I had as much chance of getting that loan as leaving the earth and circling the sun before lunch. “Sure, why not?”

  He smiled again, his jowls fracturing like snow crust. “Unless you’re planning to leave town?”

  “I’m not planning to leave town.” My arm went limp. All that I valued about myself as a creature of honor and nobility drained onto John’s shag carpet. I couldn’t kill him. The one true test of my beliefs and I’d failed.

  John leaned his bulk back and made a tent of his ten fingers. He eyed me over the peak of the tent. “Why did you come here?”

  “To borrow money.”

  “I’m ruthless,” he said. “Did anyone ever tell you that I’m ruthless?”

  “‘Ruthless’ wasn’t the word they used.”

  His forehead flushed a bit. “I’m ruthless,” he repeated. “That means I’ll stop at nothing to force you out of Teton County.”

  I blinked. My trigger finger was dead. My spirit would soon follow.

  “Do you know what I mean by nothing?” he continued.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you will leave.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I stood up.

  John leaned forward and placed his weight on both hands on the desk. “Think real hard about it, sport. I can make your worst nightmares seem like fun.”

  I walked away. Passing through the bank lobby, I dropped the muff gun into a garbage can.

  I crossed the street and the square, managing to avoid the transient hordes, the bike packers, backpackers, Teen Tours from Long Island. A million acres of virgin wilderness stretching in every direction, and the tourists jam up like blowflies on a dead horse.

  Nausea rolled up from my stomach. Killing John had been the ethical thing to do, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger because I couldn’t. It felt wrong. I could no longer trust myself. I didn’t know right from wrong or beautiful from ugly. What if I had become a bad person?

  Halfway across the square, I threw up on the grass. A girl holding a Frisbee stared at me. She was wearing white shorts. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and walked on.

  I needed help. Crossing another street, I cut into the Wort Hotel, first phone booth on the right.

  Colette answered on the fourth ring.

  I said, “Hi.”

  “You promised not to call ever again.”

  “That was before you said you loved me. Things have changed.”

  She sighed, a long, sad kind of sigh. “I knew that was a mistake.”

  “Loving me is a mistake?”

  “Telling you was a mistake.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Tourists walked in and out through the lobby doors. A bellman glanced at me and went upstairs. Listening to Colette breathe, I flipped the switch that turned on the fan in the phone-booth ceiling. Checking the coin return, I found sixty cents.

  “I just found sixty cents in the coin return,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Sixty cents. Somebody left sixty cents in the slot.”

  “Calling me wasn’t a total waste after all.”

  I stuck the change in my right front pocket. “I need to see you, Colette.”

  “No. You’ve got to pack up and leave Jackson today. You aren’t ever going to see me again.”

  I turned to face the wall side of the booth. “I just tried to kill John Hart.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I leaned against the side of the booth and looked down at the butts and old gum on the floor. The glass felt cool against my forehead.

  After a moment Colette said, “Oh, crap, Kelly. I do too believe you.”

  “I couldn’t kill him.”

  “That’s good. What made you think you could in the first place?”

  “I want to make you happy.”

  “Kelly,” she said, “don’t ever murder anyone for me. Understand?”

  “Yes, Colette.” I paused. “Colette?”

  “Yes, Kelly.”

  “What should I do now?”

  She sighed again, this time even louder. “Put your stuff in suitcases, throw your cat in the car, and leave.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  I counted seven wads of gum on the floor, two green, one orange, and four indistinguishable black. Colette answered, “Yes.”

  “Where could I go?”

  “Go to your parents. That’s what moms and dads are for.”

  “My mom wants to lock me up.” Colette didn’t comment. “I don’t feel very good, Colette.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know, I feel crazy.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I noticed I was crying.

  After Colette hung up I closed my eyes and felt the glass on my forehead, the phone still in my hand. She was probably right. I could stay at my parents’ house. They only lived fifty miles away, but I hadn’t seen Mom and Dad in a year, or talked to them in
a couple of months.

  I called collect. Mom answered.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Kelly? Is that you?” I guess I was still in emotional turmoil from the conversation with Colette, because as soon as I heard Mom’s voice, I felt like crying again.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Why are you calling? Is everything okay?”

  “Sure, Mom, everything’s fine. I just hadn’t heard from you in a while and figured I’d call.” The phone is in the kitchen on a counter by the breakfast nook. Mom would be sitting down, facing east, probably holding a cup of coffee.

  “Are you still washing dishes?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “How long is your hair?”

  “I got it cut a couple weeks ago. How’s the viola practice coming along?”

  “That stopped months ago. I’ve decided to concentrate all my energy on dancing.”

  A picture of Mom wearing tights jumped into my mind. “What kind of dancing?”

  “Ballet was my first choice, but my teacher says a woman in her fifties is too old, so instead I’m getting into modern. She thinks if I’m committed and stretch out every day I might make it on television.”

  “Gee, that’s great, Mom. Dancing sounds like more fun than the viola.”

  “Your father moved all the furniture out of the den so I can rehearse. He says I have natural talent.”

  “Dad’s usually right about these things. How’s he doing at the store?”

  “There’s some kind of regional sales meeting in Rexburg today. I don’t think he wanted to go, but the home office made him.”

  “That’s too bad.” I’d run out of chitchat and couldn’t think what to say next, so I waited silently, hoping Mom would talk. The subject of an invitation home seemed difficult to approach.

  “How’s the weather over there?” I asked.

  “It couldn’t be much different from the weather in Jackson. Kelly, are you in trouble?”

  “Of course not, Mom. What makes you think that?”

  “We’ve been hearing things. They say you’ve been acting the way you did before the accident.” Mom always calls the suicide attempt an accident. She thinks I was on drugs. No child of hers would ever kill himself from unhappiness. In fact, predictable as mud running downhill, the next question was, “You aren’t on dope, are you?”