A waiter peers at Bobby from the doorway.
The Silver Cloud cruises from Iver Heath. Do-wop millions, in relatively stable pounds, pay the freight.
“I don’t think you ever took the trouble to get Mummy’s point of view.”
“Mummy has a problem,” says Marianne to her fiancé.
“Which is?”
“She’s an absolute pill.”
“Oh, God.”
“That’s my point of view.”
“See over there? Next to the Hogarth Laundry? That’s where the engraver Hogarth lived.”
“Got a plaque?”
“Yes, Marianne. The house is history, Marianne. Therefore the plaque.”
“Then I want a plaque for us.”
British Airways flashes in the window of the Silver Cloud.
“So, that’s how it is.”
At the desk in Blake’s, Marianne tells Hildegarde she would like to leave the American a message.
“What did you do with that chicken?”
Marianne requests of the Dutch girl that she not be impertinent. They once were friends. Now Marianne stares at her and concludes: a real cluck. Hildegarde.
“I told you once, Hildegarde. I ate it.”
One room of the British Museum contains a Norse ship whose swept dragon-shaped prow dominates the venerable space. Bobby and Marianne, together at last, are in its dusty shadow.
Bobby says, “Look at it, Marianne. I always come to see the Viking stuff. Can you imagine building a boat like that and then invading England, kicking their rotten little monasteries into the Atlantic?”
A glass case holds a Viking skull, splendid in a winged helmet. Bobby is in rapture.
“Now there’s who I want to be.”
A peregrine scatters larks in a vivid diorama.
“Falcons take splash baths in clear water about ten times a day. If they get mites and little parasites other birds take for granted, they lose their edge and can no longer win the game of survival. If they lose one percent of their pure efficiency in killing, they are the ones to die.”
An illuminated Bible from the Middle Ages catches his eye for bright colors. Bobby is explaining everything.
“The only people in the world like Vikings and falcons are pimps. They prey on the world. Look at that God damned Bible. That’s the book that put Joe Blow in the driver’s seat. It’s a regular operation manual.”
“I want something to eat.”
“A pimp doesn’t care if he ever eats again.”
“If we find the right restaurant we can make beautiful music together. What do pimps have to do with it?”
It was an awful restaurant. Both Bobby and Marianne ordered so as not to upset the waiter. Then the waiter was rude. But they were scared of him.
“How did you meet the Englishman?”
“He was in their trade commission. Now he’s a music producer with a specialty in do-wop.”
“What did you lobby for?”
“Meat byproducts.”
“Women have the hearts of assassins.”
“These big statements, Bobby! We’ve got some difficult eating ahead of us.” The waiter brings their ghastly platters, gratuity in the price.
The rakish de Havilland jet has Arabic writing on the fuselage. Bobby leads Marianne aboard. All is luxury-thick aluminum.
“Marianne, meet Abdul. He bombed a kibbutz and can really cook.” Abdul is the first pilot Marianne has seen in a fez. He has twinkling eyes.
The jet heads out over the Atlantic. The navigator serves drinks to Bobby and Marianne. They are keen on the upholstery. Later, Bobby attempts to seduce Marianne by putting his hand up her dress and fiddling awkwardly with her underthings as though he were trying to retrieve a letter through a mail slot. After a good deal of this, he spots America through the window. He also notices Abdul and the navigator watching to see if he’s going to get his thing into Marianne.
When he closes the door to the cockpit, he says, “Watch where you’re going or you’ll ram America.”
Then Bobby does something strange. He pulls a gun on Marianne and yells for her to undress. When she is naked she lies on the floor with her feet on either side of the aisle. Bobby mounts her as the airplane sinks into the atmosphere of America. The wings make an eerie chiming as they angle toward the coast.
In the taxicab, New York goes unnoticed. Bobby and Marianne are discussing her rape.
Marianne says, “If it hadn’t been for the peering Arabs, the airplane would have been a good place to make love.”
“What about when I pulled the gun?”
“I thought it was pretentious.”
At last they take a room at the Pierre. Though the room has a handsome view, they have thus far avoided looking at New York. Only after two orange juices have been delivered does Bobby go to the window.
“There are some very remarkable hawks that live on the tops of those buildings,” he says, “and they bang into the shit-heel pigeons for dinner.”
“I thought we were going to Deadrock, Montana. Even the cur took me to the country.”
“To Mummy’s place, so he could bop you in his old playroom.”
“That’s enough.”
“Spreading yourself thin.”
“Bobby, you’re jealous. How very nice.” Marianne beams without guile, two thousand miles from the chicken.
Then rather strangely, Bobby says, “I don’t know why we came here.”
“I don’t either.”
“I thought coming back to America would give us a sense of starting over.”
“I don’t want to start over. I want to have a nice time.”
“We have to find a place to live, a place with the atmosphere of home. But before that, let’s send out for a whore.”
“For what?”
“Inspirational chats.”
Marianne gazes at him with serene gray eyes.
“Let me ask you this, do you have a mother?”
“Yes, I do,” says Bobby.
“And where does she live?”
“She recently moved to the Carlyle.”
“From where?”
“Deadrock, Montana.”
“Are we going to see her? Is that why we’re here?”
“Yes, one reason.”
“Is it to get money?”
“There is that.”
At the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, Bobby says, “That is it, the best oyster stew in America. Little wonder Lillian Hellman chose this for the site of her soiree. Did she have it at Twenty-one? No, she had it at the Oyster Bar because she knew the city and she knew her oysters.”
“Bobby?”
“What?”
“May we order?”
After Bobby has gone on and on about hookers and they are now in a corridor of the Carlyle Hotel, Marianne states the following in no uncertain terms:
“What you would do with a hooker is your own problem. I have no interest in hookers. And what does that have to do with your mother? Let’s see her first, and please may we get off the subject of hookers. I am increasingly suspicious that you are treating me like one.”
The door swings open and there stands Emily Decatur, Bobby’s mother. She has neatly arrayed silver hair and wears a Dale Evans cowgirl suit.
She says, “Howdy, Bob. And who might this be?”
“Marianne, a sport from Duluth. Mother is a cowgirl from New York, Deadrock, and Santa Barbara.”
“Come in. How do you do. Come right in.”
Amid the French walnut furniture are barbed-wire collections, western bronzes, and mounted arrowhead collections. Leaning against a fine old armoire are a couple of wagon wheels.
“How broke are you, Bob?”
“Fairly broke. It wouldn’t be so bad but I have plans.”
“So, something new.”
“It’s been on the back burner,” says Bobby. “But I’d be in motion, I think, if I had the wherewithal.”