“I know,” Muriel said shortly. “You told me. Now, have you got everything back in here? I’ll close it up for you.”
“Any decent father stays with his children even if he doesn’t get along very well with his wife. Children, they’re our only hope of immortality.”
“Well, I’m fixed then. I’ve got two hopes of immortality chasing cows back in Texas.”
“When my time comes, I won’t completely die, because part of me will keep on living in Daisy.” He wiped a little moisture from his eyes because it was so sad thinking of his own death, far sadder than thinking of anyone else’s.
“If you’re such a bum,” Muriel said, “how come you want part of you to stay alive in Daisy?”
“Ah, you wouldn’t understand, Muriel. You’re not a man.”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve noticed it. How about you notice it a little more often?”
Fielding winced. Muriel was a well-meaning woman, but her earthiness could be embarrassing, even destructive at times. When he was on a delicate train of thought, such as this one, it was a great shock to find himself suddenly derailed by the sound waves of Muriel’s powerful voice.
To cushion the shock, he opened another bottle of beer while Muriel pushed the suitcase back under the bed.
“There,” she said with satisfaction, and made a gesture of wiping her hands, like a doctor who has just stitched up an especially bad wound. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Things are not that simple.”
“They’re not as complicated as you make out, Stan Fielding. If they were, we might as well all go jump in the ocean. Say, how about that? Why don’t we go down to the beach and sit in the sand and watch the people? That always gives you a laugh, Stan, watching people.”
“Not today. I don’t feel like it.”
“You just going to stay here and brood?”
“A little brooding may be exactly what I need. Maybe I haven’t brooded enough in my lifetime. Whenever I became depressed, I simply packed up and moved on. I ran away, just as I ran away from Daisy. I shouldn’t have done that, Muriel. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Stop crying over spilled milk,” she said harshly. “Every drunk I’ve ever known, that’s their trouble. Bawling over things they done and then having to get tanked up to forget they done them and then going ahead and doing them all over again.”
“Well,” he said, blinking, “you’re quite a psychologist, Muriel. That’s an interesting theory.”
“Nobody needs a fancy degree to figure it, just eyes and ears like I’ve got. And like you’ve got, too, if you’d use them.” She came over to him, rather shyly, and put her hands on his shoulders. “Come on, Stan. Let’s go to the beach and watch the people. How about trying to find that place where everybody’s building up their muscles? We could take a bus.”
“No, Muriel. I’m sorry. I have other things to do.”
“Like what?”
“I’m going back to San Félice to see Daisy.”
She didn’t speak for a minute. She just backed away from him and sat down on the bed, looking bewildered. “What do you want to do that for, Stan?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Why don’t you take me along? I could see you didn’t get into any trouble like you did last time over that waitress.”
When he returned to Los Angeles on Monday night, he’d told her all about his encounter with Nita and Nita’s husband in the bar. To diminish the importance of the incident, in his own mind and hers, he’d made quite a funny story of it, and they’d both had a good laugh. But Muriel’s laughter hadn’t been too genuine: suppose the girl’s husband had been bigger and meaner? Suppose, and it often happened this way, that the girl Nita had suddenly decided to take her husband’s side against Stan? Suppose no one had called the police? Suppose... “Stan,” she said, “take me along to look out for you.”
“No.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t ask you to introduce me to Daisy, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t dream of asking such a thing, her being so high class and everything. I could keep out of sight, Stan. I just want to be there to look out for you, see?”
“We haven’t the money for bus fare.”
“I could borrow some. The old lady in the apartment across the hall — I know she’s got some hidden away. And she likes me, Stan; she says I look exactly like her younger sister that got put away last year. I don’t think she’d mind lending me a little money on account of the resemblance, just enough for bus fare. How about it, Stan?”
“No. Stay away from the old lady. She’s poison.”
“All right, then, maybe we could hitchhike?”
He gathered from her hesitance and tone that she had never done any hitchhiking, and the thought of it scared her almost as much as the thought of his going to San Félice without her and getting into trouble. “No, Muriel, hitchhiking isn’t for ladies.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “You just don’t want me along, that’s it. You’re afraid I might interfere if you decided to pick up some cheap waitress in a...”
“I didn’t pick up anyone.” Fielding’s tone was all the sharper and more positive because he was lying. He’d gone deliberately into the café with the idea of finding the girl, but no one suspected this (except Muriel, who suspected everything), least of all the girl herself. Nothing had worked out as he planned, because the husband had walked in before he had a chance to ask her any questions or even to find out for sure if it was the right girl. “I was trying to protect a young woman who was being assaulted.”
“How come you can protect everyone but yourself? The whole damn world you can protect, except Stan Fielding, who needs it worse than...”
“Now, Muriel, don’t go on.” He went over to the bed and sat down beside her. “Put your head on my shoulder, that’s my girl. Now listen. I have a certain matter to take care of in San Félice. I won’t be away long, no later than tomorrow night if things go well.”
“What things? And why shouldn’t they?”
“Daisy and Jim might be away for the weekend or something like that. In that case I won’t be back until Monday night. But don’t worry about me. In spite of your low opinion of my powers of self-protection, I can take care of myself.”
“Sure you can. When you’re sober.”
“I intend to stay sober.” No matter how many hundreds of times he had said this in his life, he still managed to put so much conviction into it that he believed himself. “This time, not one drink. Unless, of course, it would look conspicuous if I refused, and then I would take one — I repeat, one — and nurse it along.”
She pressed her head hard against his shoulder as if she were trying to imprint on him by sheer force an image of herself which would go along with him on the trip, as her substitute, to protect him while he was protecting everyone else.
“Stan.”
“Yes, my love.”
“Don’t get tanked up.”
“I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I? No drinks, except maybe one to avoid looking conspicuous.”
“Like for instance?”
“Suppose Daisy invites me to the house and opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?” With her head against his shoulder she couldn’t see the sudden grimness of his face. “What’s there to celebrate, Stan?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Then why should she open the bottle of champagne?”