Joe pulled up in front of the glass doors of the sheriff’s office. They could look through the windshield, through the door, and see law officers. It would be an easy thing to honk on the horn. Joe tapped it lightly; two officers glanced out and he waved them off as though he had bumped the horn accidentally.
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” Joe said bitterly. “If you’ll admit being in that war you’ve got nothing to hide. Now, do you want to walk, or shall I? I don’t care, this is a rental car anyway.”
“I’ll walk, thanks. But just take me pretty serious here. It’s important. Ellen and I haven’t given up. And we have a sweet little girl that’s worth any sacrifice we might make.”
20
“And B,” said Astrid, “it’s time you potty-trained your mind. Especially as relates to me and my activities.”
He didn’t dare ask what A was. She was drinking and had been drinking. Nevertheless, she looked quite attractive with her dark hair still wet from the shower, its ends soaking the light blue dress at its shoulders. It was very rare for Astrid to drink too much. This was just fascinating. Everything she did fascinated Joe.
“I don’t know much about your activities,” said Joe coldly.
“Did you see the little chiquita?” Astrid inquired. Joe couldn’t understand why in this age women in the throes of jealousy always used these ghastly diminutives on one another. The chiquita, the cutie, the little woman, the wifette.
“You know, I missed her. Isn’t that a shame?”
“I think it is a shame,” Astrid wailed, “that you can’t have everything you want every minute of the day. You once employed all your arty bullshit to make me feel that I fulfilled something in you.”
“We grow.”
“You grow. I don’t.”
“Careful now. We want to avoid the emetic side of boozy self-pity.”
She gave him the finger with one hand and raised her glass to her lips with the other. “Joe Blow,” she said with a smile, “the man in translation.”
“My God! We throw nothing away! We never know when we might need it!”
“You lost that round, dopey. Go make some dinner. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut, or whatever they say out here.”
At first he didn’t think he would cook, because she suggested it. He then decided that that in itself indicated lack of independence and went to the kitchen to begin. As he cooked, he watched to see if she would make herself another drink. She didn’t. She watched the news (excitement about medium-range missiles). She was looking out into the world. He was looking into the sink. It had just gotten real slow. The terrible slowness was coming over him. He lifted his face to the doorway and there she was, fast-forwarding world news facts into her skull with the television. It didn’t seem to matter that she was drunk; it wouldn’t make any real difference. It wouldn’t turn medium-range missiles into long-range missiles. It wouldn’t sober her up unless the actual TV blew up in her actual face.
“What are you cooking?” she called.
“Couple of omelets. Not too much stuff in the fridge.”
“No rat poison, please!”
He chopped up some bell peppers and crookneck squash and scallions. He made everything astonishingly uniform. While he beat the eggs, Astrid came in and refilled her drink. She watched him cook. As he heated the skillet, she said, “No, you don’t want sex with me just now. You were too busy jacking off while I tried to make friends with your dog.” She went back into the living room and fell into her chair. Joe overcame his inertia and finished cooking. He finally got things on the kitchen table and called Astrid. She came and sat down. “I have just seen something very interesting on television,” she said, avidly eating her omelet. “This is good.”
“What did you see?”
“A report on grizzly bear attacks. It’s so exciting here in Montana! The victims tend to be menstruating women!”
“That’s not so hard to understand.”
“Ha ha ha. He tips his hand.”
“I didn’t mean it as a joke,” he said.
He couldn’t eat. His omelet was a folded yellow fright. His hands were sweating. The glare on the kitchen windows was such that you wouldn’t necessarily know if someone was looking in. A shining drop of water hung on the faucet without falling.
“Here’s my exit,” she intoned. “I get my period. I go hiking in Glacier National Park.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
She started laughing hard and loud. She stopped. Her chin dropped to her chest. A guffaw burst through her nose. She covered her mouth and twisted her face off to one side. “I’m so sorry—” She threw up on the kitchen floor.
“That’s enough for me,” said Joe and got to his feet.
“Don’t put any more miles on that rent-a-car,” she shouted as he went out the door. Immediately, he could hear her crying.
“The things alcohol makes us do,” he thought, walking across the yard. “Leading cause of hospitalization, leading cause of incarceration”—he began marching to this meter—“leading cause of broken families, leading cause of absenteeism, leading cause of half-masters, leading cause of fascination with inappropriate orifices, leading cause of tooth decay, leading cause of communism, leading cause of Christian fundamentalism, leading cause of hair loss, leading cause of dry loins, leading cause of ulcerated chickens, leading cause of styrofoam. Ah, mother and father,” he wheezed, out of breath. “Time to arise. Time to buck some bales up onto the stack.” Moonlight dropped upon him. He walked out into the prairie whose humming had stopped at sundown. A fall of frost had begun and the grassy hummocks were starred with ice. The gleam of canine eyes caught the moonlight.
21
Joe spent the following day with the state brand inspector, trying to organize all his cattle receipts. When he got home, Astrid was in bed. She was running a high fever and had sunk into a glumly witty state of disassociated illness. She looked so helpless, so dependent, so unlike anything he’d ever seen before in Astrid that he felt an abounding sweetness well up within. He was sorry that it seemed so inappropriate to mention his declining fortunes. He was under a momentary spell of amicability. People at full strength were better able to sustain their loathing, and avoid these vague and undrained states.
“My darling,” said Joe.
“Do you know who’s been just swell?” she asked, propping herself up in bed. She looked like a pretty nun without makeup and with her hair pulled back.
“Who?”
“Smitty.”
“Smitty? How do you know Smitty?”
“He’s been by. And I mean swell.”
“That’s quite strange.”
“He seems so concerned! He’s concerned with everything. He just trains this concern on things. What concern is shown by Smitty!”
“What about Lureen? She been by?”
“She was here too. Now that one isn’t sure about me. But Smitty is so lovely. He thought he might be able to get me some insurance.”
“You didn’t go for it, did you?”
“No, but I gave him fifty bucks for some kind of filing fee.”
“I know that filing fee. It’s called Old Mr. Boston Dry Gin.”
“I couldn’t say. I went for his story. It charmed me. I’m already bored. I wish I was back in Florida, fucking and using drugs. It’s easy to grow nostalgic in a situation like this.”
“Oh, darling, just stop,” he said, annoyed by his own reaction. He thought of vigorous, robust Ellen, ranch girl, heartening the next generation with teaching. Difficult to imagine her saying in the middle of lovemaking, as Astrid once did, “Now I’d like it up my ass.” He had prevaricated, he recalled, then ultimately brooded about the prospects of a second chance.