Funny, but it didn’t really bother me none. — No, not at all. I can see why you do it. Some people have their pets buried or cremated. You’ve got their remains there, to remind you of them.
She seemed not to hear me. — I still talk to them, Raymond, she contended, still lookin right on at me, — and I swear that there are times when I can even hear them talking to me. Does that sound strange?
— Not at all, ma’am, I told her. — I reckon that sometimes we just gotta take comfort where we can, I smiled, stretchin over and laying my hand lightly on the soft, white flesh of her arm. I could tell she was more than a little drunk, and sure enough that bottle of gin by the cocktail cabinet looked far from full.
I guess some folks might have found it a little weird, but the woman was just lonely. Way I see it was she had the money and the skill and it was a hobby that gave her pleasure; something that she had shared with Humphrey, the real love of her life, and it probably made her feel a little closer to him. Yolanda struck me as just another eccentric flutterin harmlessly in the twilight, doing what helped make her feel good. This state was full of em, ol boys and girls, brains sizzled in the heat, slowly crumblin into more desert dust.
Miss Arizona.
I thought about Dennis. If Nice Guy Humphrey was husband number one and Dirty Larry number three that must have made him number two. — What happened to Dennis?
— Oh, that was one that I did end myself. She shook her head and looked almost accusingly at me. — Right after he broke my jaw.
For some reason I sort of assumed that ol Dennis was another drunk, and one of the worst kind. — So Dennis was violent in drink?
— No, the weird thing was that he seldom, if ever, took a drink. Didn’t need it to be a complete bastard. With that goofy smile and his churchgoing, sober ways, you’d’ve thought that butter wouldn’t have melted in his asshole, she slurred, the liquor now visibly taking effect on her.
I shot a tight smile back at her.
Something flared in her eyes. — Put me off sobriety for good, she spat bitterly, movin to the glass and fillin it up. — Ironically, I met him through Humphrey, she smiled, instantly becomin more whimsical at the recall. — Dennis Andersen was one of his best clients. He seemed a perfect gentleman, and I guess to the outside world, that’s exactly what he was. Then I found out he’d had two previous wives, one in Albuquerque, one right here in Phoenix, that he’d left looking like busted fruit with nothing more than a pile of hospital bills.
Unfortunately, this recollection sparked off another diatribe. The problem with this was that Yolanda was now more inebriated than I’d seen her before. She was growin mighty shrill while talking about Dennis, wailing like a tomcat in heat and highly resistant to my attempts to steer the conversation back to Glen Halliday. I started to wonder just how well they knew each other. Guess I was thinkin again about Jill and me: lovers for years, strangers at the end. And how when the love goes the stranger is the only damn thing you can ever recall.
I made my excuses and prepared to embark on that long and lonely drive back into Phoenix. It was then that Yolanda went kinda weird on me. Pulling herself up out of that old chair, she teetered toward me. — Please stay a little while longer, Raymond, she begged, — I really like talking to you…
She took a stumble forward and I had to catch her and steady her or I swear to God her ol blubbery beauty queen butt would have ended up on those cold tiles. — Hey, come on, Yolanda, you just had a little too much sauce and you’re a little tired, I smiled, tryin to make light of things. — Maybe you should lie down. I can all come back tomorrow now, y’hear?
Her face was now rodeo-assed red and her big, watery eyes not much far from the same as she looked up at me and pleaded, — You’ll bring a tape of your girlfriend singing and playing her songs?
— Sure, if that’s what you want.
— I’d like that, she said, as she steadied herself. — It’s so good that the both of you have a talent. A talent can never be allowed to go to waste…
— Well, we’re both tryin, I guess. I smiled at her and made my excuses and left.
By the time I got on to the road it had gotten plenty dark, which I didn’t mind. Just drivin in that silent night, sometimes I could feel the past fadin in my synapses, and blowin through me, like a howling ghost across that desert. It made me want to stop, so I got out for a while, just to look up at that silver moon. It settled my brain, and made me focus back on the things that were important to me; Pen, my work and specifically the Big Noise screenplay and the Halliday book, in that order. The key to it was that it had to be a book about Halliday, not about an old gal with four husbands, sitting out in exile in the middle of nowhere.
When I got to the apartment, Pen was waitin up. I was tired but she wasn’t and that gal wouldn’t say no. Then afterwards, my head was buzzin and she was soon fast asleep. — You’d best check the messages… she said as she fell into a slumber, — gonna miss you, boy bridesmaid… or is it bride…?
I looked at her, tried to shake her awake. She just turned around, eyes still shut, mouth a little open and murmured, — The voicemail… you gotta check it…
I did. To my delight and astonishment, Martha had called from LA, telling me that I’d been offered the car commercial I was being touted for! It paid big bucks, and for three weeks’ work — one recce, one filming, one post-production — it would keep me on the Halliday book for around six more months. On the downside I guess it meant that the next draft of Big Noise would have to wait just that little longer again, but nobody, least of all my agent, was holdin their breath for that one.
I thought about ol Glen Halliday, who would have laughed in their faces and talked about the integrity of the artist to some post-grads in Austin or Chapel Hill for two hundred bucks, his gas, and a couple of nights’ free minibar at the local Holiday Inn. Or so I thought. More likely he got Yolanda to supplement things by writin him out a check. I sure wasn’t going to turn into that version of Halliday. Pen worked long hours at that bookstore during the day and the gigs in those shitty bars at night and I was determined I wasn’t going to be no kept man. And this was as near as damnit a six-figure check for three weeks’ work. I wasn’t even gonna debate with myself the possibility that I might say no.
I couldn’t sleep, so I sat up and looked at my notes on Halliday. Just who in hell’s name was this sonofabitch? A Texan who loved Texas but hated what it had become: a place where Ivy Leaguers and religious nuts could wave the flag and we’d fall in behind it and fight pointless wars for their oil. Or perhaps he was just another scumbag hypocrite who used people, women, for what he could get out of them; an insecure actress whose head he fucked more than her pussy and a crazy heartbroken ol gal sitting on a gold mine in the desert.
In the mornin I said a sad goodbye to Pen and packed up for the long drive to LA. It would take me two days. I was driving out to see Yolanda first, then I’d take the interstate. En route at a gas station I picked up the newspaper and checked the terror-alert coding (orange) and the burn limit (fourteen minutes).
Passing Earl’s I saw the pool guy, Barry I think she said his name was, going in with his buddy. Something made me stop and get out and follow them inside. I checked out his pickup truck in the lot outside as I went by; an ’88 Chevy with a sticker in the rear window: ‘Ass, Gas, or Grass — Nobody Rides For Free.’