“Great! Nothing like a little drive to change the mood. Just let me slip into a skirt.”
She took off into the house.
“A skirt? That’s all?” I said.
“Sometimes I wonder if you ever think of anything else…”
I went inside and turned the fire off under the pot. Betty fixed her hair in the mirror. She winked at me. I had the feeling I’d scored a point.
We took Betty’s car, a red VW that burned oil. We parked in the middle of town with one wheel on the curb.
We hadn’t been in the pizzeria five minutes when this blonde walks in and Betty starts jumping up and down next to me.
“Hey, that’s Sonia. HEY, SONIA! OVER HERE!”
The girl in question suddenly moved toward our table, almost knocking the guy behind her off balance. The girls kissed and the guy plunked himself down in front of me. The girls seemed happy to see each other-they held hands. They introduced everybody. The guy let out a sort of mumble. I lost my self in the menu.
“God, let me look at you! You look like you’re in great shape!” said Betty.
“You too, sweetheart! You don’t know how happy I am to see you!”
“Pizza for everybody?” I asked.
When the waitress showed up, the guy seemed to wake up. He took her by the arm and slipped a bill in her hand.
“How much time do you need to make champagne appear on this table?” he asked her.
The waitress looked at the bill without saying a word.
“A little under five seconds,” she said.
“You got it.”
Sonia threw herself at him and bit his lips.
“Oh, baby, you’re fantastic!” she said.
After a few bottles I agreed with her completely. The guy was telling me how he’d struck it rich speculating on coffee just when the prices skyrocketed.
“My telephone rang off the hook and money rolled in from all directions at once. See, you had to play it close to the chest. You had to hold off until the last minute, then sell everything at breakneck speed. At any second you could either double your money or go bust…”
I listened attentively. That kind of story fascinates me. Talking about money blocked the effects of the alcohol in this guy. All he did was burp a little loudly from time to time. I sucked on this bad-ass cigar he’d given me and kept the glasses filled. The girls’ eyes were shining.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he added. “You know that movie where the guys jump out of their cars just at the last minute before they go over the cliff? Can you imagine how they must feel?”
“Hard to imagine,” I said.
“Well, that’s what it was for me, multiplied by a hundred!”
“You jumped out at the right time?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think I jumped out at the right time. After that I collapsed and slept for three days straight.”
Sonia ran her lingers through his hair and squeezed herself against him.
“And in two days we’re taking a plane to the islands!” she cooed. “It’s my engagement present! Oh, sweetie, maybe that seems silly to you, but I’m crazy about the idea!”
Sonia looked like a ruffled bird with a sensual mouth. She laughed all the time. It kept things nice. The bottles came and went and for a little while Betty took my arm and put her head on my shoulder. I dragged on my Davidoff.
Toward the end I couldn’t listen to anybody anymore. I heard only a faint murmur. Everything seemed far away. The world was absurdly simple and I was smiling. I wasn’t waiting for anything. I was so plastered that I started laughing to myself.
At the stroke of one in the morning, the guy fell over without warning and broke his plate in half. It was time to go home. Sonia paid the bill by getting some cash out of the pockets of his sport coat, and we dragged him outside. It was hard, given the state we were in, but once outside he got a little life back in him, and that helped. Even so, we had to stop at each streetlight to get our wind back. We were hot. Sonia stood in front of him while we took a breather. He was wobbling on his legs-Oh baby, she said, my poor little baby. I wondered if they hadn’t parked on the other side of town.
Finally she opened the door of a hot new sedan with a ten-foot hood and we dumped her little baby inside. Sonia kissed us good night quickly, anxious to get home and put something on his head. We watched them start up. We waved. The thing took off into the night like the Loch Ness monster.
After a while we found our VW. I wanted to drive. To drive like I wanted, I needed something truly responsive-high beams by the row, a hundred miles per hour in no time flat, smooth as butter-I HAD to drive.
“You sure you’re going to make it?” Betty asked.
“I assume you’re joking. Nothing the matter with me.”
I got through town without a hitch. There weren’t many people out. It was a real joyride, except that once in a while the engine freaked out and the VW jumped forward.
The night was black. The headlights swept the road ahead and there was nothing-just the pale lights of a dancing road sign. I had to lean into the windshield to see.
“You get a load of this fog?” I said.
“I can’t see anything. What are you talking about?”
“Remind me to adjust the headlights. This is the pits.”
I followed the white line, putting the left front wheel right on it. After a while something intrigued me. I knew the road well, there wasn’t the least turn in it, no curves at all, but now, very gently, almost imperceptibly, the goddamn little white line was going off to the left, bending incomprehensibly. I opened my eyes wider and wider.
Betty screamed when I drove into the ditch. The car sank its nose into a sorry little pond. I tried to turn the motor off-the windshield wipers went on.
Betty opened the door in a rage, without a word. I asked myself what I had done wrong, how this could have happened, exactly. I got out behind her. The VW looked like a big stupid animal in its death throes. The bumpers were all smashed in.
“We’ve been attacked by martians,” I said.
By the time I turned around to look at her, she was gone, marching down the road in her high heels. I galloped after her.
“Jesus, don’t worry about the car,” I said.
She was walking fast, like she was on springs, looking straight ahead of her. I had a hell of a time keeping up.
“I couldn’t care less about that hunk of tin!” she said. “It isn’t that…”
“There’s no problem… We can’t have more than a couple of miles to go. It’ll do us good…”
“I’m thinking about Sonia,” she went on. “You remember Sonia…?”
“Yeah… you mean your girlfriend?”
“Yes, right. Don’t you think she’s lucky, my girlfriend? Don’t you think that SHE can afford to SMILE?”
“Shit, Betty, don’t start that again.”
“You see,” she went on. “Sonia and me were waitresses in the same place before I came here. We did the same job-polish the glasses, serve, sweep. At night we sat around together in our apartments and talked about what life would be like once we got out of there. Tonight I saw how she’s done since then. I think she’s found herself a nice little place in the sun…”
You could see the motel lights in the distance. We weren’t out of the woods yet, and the downward slope was getting slippery.
“You don’t agree?” she insisted.
I told myself, just keep walking, don’t pay attention to what she says-in a second she’ll forget all about it.
“Explain to me why I’m always in the same rut. Tell me what I do wrong that keeps me from climbing up the ladder a little…”
I stopped to light a cigarette and she waited for me. Her eyes went through me. I sort of shrugged, as if to say, “Search me.”
“We’ll never get a break if we stick around here,” she said.
I looked over her shoulder. She was breathing quickly.
“I don’t know…” I said.
“What do you mean you don’t know? What kind of answer is that?”