When I told her I most certainly did, she got up on that stage and played me some. I guess I fell in love with her right there and then, and it’s been that way ever since. I started hangin around Earl’s and then another couple of bars she played, and we just began seein each other. Then, when the rent was up on her apartment she just moved her stuff into mine. One night when we was lying on our backs in bed, looking up at the ceilin after just having made love, she said, — You know, I think I’m gettin better, maybe growin up a little. I got a boyfriend who ain’t an asshole.
I quickly quipped, — Just add alcohol, honey, but grinnin at her through the darkness, I was thinkin, maybe it’s ol Raymond Wilson Butler here who’s the one that’s getting better. Cause sure as shit there ain’t gonna be anymore alcohol.
I was researchin the Halliday book and bangin out my screenplay of Big Noise, which took up a lot of time, but I liked to go out with Pen when she played. Some of those bars were rough dives, and although she could look after herself, I guess I worried about all sorts of things, from guys hittin on her to perverts and stalkers.
But that night she was sittin alongside me in the Land Cruiser, a little tired after the gig, maybe a little drunk after the six Pabsts and four Jack and Cokes she’d had. (I couldn’t help countin, I’m conditioned to do this now.) She said to me, — You know, if I came home with a guy like this before, I’d be all tough and bitter. Now I can be exactly as I like, in that I don’t have to think about it.
We went to bed and slept in each other’s arms. We would wait till the mornin before making love.
The next day Pen headed out to the bookstore, while I got back to Big Noise, and pretended I was a real writer. I wrote me a long list of what the problems with my first draft were. The main one, and I guess what most of the others kept comin back to, was Julia, my hard-assed Texan matriarch. Yeah, my agent Martha Crossley was right. She was thinner than a wet piece of newspaper. Problem was, I just didn’t know who she was. At first I thought of her as based on my own momma, then a twisted version of Jill, and at one stage I even considered that she just might be Martha. Every time I clicked on my laptop though, I had the feelin that I was making this thing worse instead of better. I sat until my head throbbed, then went to the DVD and watched Ditchwater Creek for the hundredth time.
I realized that it was almost lunchtime and I’d achieved nothin. I tried to call Pen to meet for some lunch but her cellphone was off again, so I called in at the store. We went to a pretty gross place in the mall, where minimum-wage kids dispensed poison to the other storeworkers and housewives present. It was good to see her comin toward me, that wild mane of hair fightin to get free from the black velvet band it was tied in, and those bangles, bracelets and rings danglin from her wrists, fingers and ears. I needed to talk to somebody, and there was nobody like her.
— You’re being too hard on yourself, honey; finish the Halliday book first, then go back to Big Noise, she implored me as we ate our club sandwiches. — Your head’s all over the place. Take the advice you always give me: one thing at a time, huh?
— I guess so, I smiled, — at least if I knock out another chapter on that this afternoon, I’ll feel that the day won’t be wasted. Maybe I’ll land that big-buck car commercial shoot, I laughed, givin up on the shit I was eatin and pushin my paper plate aside, — then at least I’d have some money and I’d have to work to the discipline of a damned schedule. Then again, hogs might just fly over the state of Texas.
Pen winked at me and made some kinda clickin noise. — You’ll get it, baby. I got a feelin about this one.
— Like you had that feelin about that Majestic Reptiles video I didn’t get?
— You were number two, honey, she grinned. — You’re gettin closer all the time.
— As close as I’m gonna get, you mean. I’m always shortlisted; the dirty ol bridesmaid who’s been round the block once too often to ever get the goddamn gig.
She stood up, and brushed some crumbs from her jeans. — Well, I gotta leave my sweet little bridesmaid and get back to work, and she bent over and kissed me, then as she went, pulled out the back of my collar and tupped down the ice she’d left in her drink.
— What the f—I yelled, then laughed as it melted down my spine and the crack of my ass.
— You know I’m a bitch, she smiled, blowing me a kiss as she scampered across the mall, her heels clickin on the polished granite floor, — but I love you!
I got up and walked out to the parkin lot, my back and ass bone dry in the bakin heat by the time I got inside the Land Cruiser. I went home and did what I suspected would be the only writing I ever could: a straight hack job on my Glen Halliday book, transcribed from the tapes I’d made talking to Yolanda.
The next day I was back out to the Halliday Ranch, or the Marston Ranch as I should have probably started callin it. It seemed ol Glen was only an occasional tenant, sleepin off his hangovers: hangin his head in between shoots and hustlin for cash. I started to imagine his life with Yolanda as more like my later life with Jill; all slammed doors and long silences, punctuated by drunken, yellin rows with a sad ‘where did we go wrong’ lament in postscript.
Yolanda greeted me with another pitcher of her homemade lemonade, and as I stepped into the cool house it sure did feel good to get some respite from the furnace outside. I immediately noticed that she seemed unsteady on her feet. Her eyes were red and she’d discarded the swimsuit for a red tank top and white pants. Although it was nice and cool here, there were beads of sweat on her face and her breathin seemed mighty labored. — This is Sparky, she explained, pointin at a stuffed cat on her window ledge. I hadn’t seen this one before. I had gotten used to old Esmeralda, but this was a mangy, mean-looking sonofabitch. — I brought him up to see you.
— Nice, I said, looking at that pouncin cat. It was as stiff as Esmeralda, but it didn’t seem nearly as placid. Then I spied a small stuffed dog, some sort of terrier, standing guard outside a restroom.—That’s Paul, she told me, — after Paul McCartney of the Beatles.
Paul looked a feisty lil ol sonofabitch. The glimmer in his glass eye and his full set of exposed teeth made me feel happy that his little butt was stuffed. — Humphrey do these?
— No, I did these ones by myself, she told me, moving across to her cocktail cabinet where she mixed herself a gin and tonic. — I wasn’t formally trained of course, but very few practicing taxidermists are. I picked lots up through helping Humphrey. Then, when I married Dennis, I kept it up, she wheezed, as she lowered herself into a chair and bade me to do the same. I did, and placed my tape recorder on the small table by her side. — He was a big hunter, an NRA man, and he got me stuffing and mounting his prey. I did a bunch for him, but I got rid of them all after he left. She pursed her lips. — I found it disagreeable to have wild creatures killed for sport. I preferred to work on the ones I loved, as a tribute, so I’d remember them for all time.
She explained to me that the two cats and the small stuffed dog were old pets of hers. Ditto the two lovebirds in a bamboo cage she pointed out to me, hangin over the entrance to the kitchen. — I couldn’t let them go, you see. I loved them so much, she said, the recall makin her a little distressed. — I was embarrassed to show you them. Do you think I’m a crazy woman, Raymond Wilson Butler?