Don Winslow: While Drowning in the Desert

“Dry toast?” I asked.

“Cholesterol,” he mumbled while sucking down a strip of bacon.

“I thought you were Jewish,” I said, pointing my fork at the surviving bacon.

“I am,” Nate answered. “But not a fanatic. And order your own bacon.”

He tried to stab me with his fork.

I chewed on my blueberry muffin and worked on the image of a nice airplane jetting us to the Palm Springs airport. A quick limo ride to Palm Desert and blessed freedom.

“So?” Nathan asked.

“So what?”

“So, aren’t you going to make conversation?” he asked. “What, were you raised by apes? You just stuff your mouth and don’t talk? You’re an escort with no bazookas, the least you can do is make conversation.”

“More bacon?”

“That’s conversation?” Nathan asked, stuffing his mouth with more bacon.

Conversation… conversation. I’d never been very good at conversation. It usually required talking to people.

“Okay,” I said, after a few moments of intense concentration. “So, where do you live?”

Nathan looked at me as if I were an idiot.

Go figure, huh.

Then he said, “You’re supposed to take me home, you don’t know where it is?”

“I know where it is,” I said. “I meant, what’s it like?”

“It’s a townhouse,” he said. “Although why they call it a townhouse I don’t know because there’s no town. It’s in a resort complex right on the golf course.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“Why is that nice?”

“So you can just pop out your door and play a nice round of golf,” I said.

“I hate golf,” Nathan said.

“Then why-”

“Because that’s where they built the townhouse,” he said. “Away from the town and on the golf course. What was I supposed to do?”

“Uhhhh, buy a different townhouse?”

“Away from the golf course?”

“Yeah…”

“Then I couldn’t watch them.”

“Watch who?”

“The golfers,” Nathan said. He lit a cigarette.

My muffin was turning to sawdust in my mouth.

“But you hate golf,” I said.

“More than I hate golf,” Nathan said, “I hate golfers.”

“So?”

“So the golfers who play golf outside my townhouse?”

“Yes?”

“They stink,” he said. He took a long drag of the cigarette then spent the next thirty seconds coughing. “I love to watch them play because I hate them and they. stink. I love to watch them get red in the face, say dirty words and bang their clubs into trees. This is fun for me, I’m eighty-six.”

“I hate golf, too,” I said. “In my opinion the only thing that could improve the game of golf is snipers.”

I feel that this would really speed up the game. Instead of standing out there forever contemplating the three feet of grass between them and the cup, golfers in my version of the game would be sprinting onto the green, taking a running whack at the ball and diving for the sand trap as bullets stitched at their heels.

It would have a sartorial benefit as well: I mean, you could forget the bright pink shirts and the canary-yellow rayon slacks, right?

Nathan looked at me very seriously.

“Snipers,” he said.

“Snipers.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “You said a funny thing.”

“Thank you.”

“Who’d have thought?” Nathan asked. Then he blew a smoke ring in my face.

We finished breakfast, checked out, and took a taxi to the airport. I whipped out the old gold card, bought two tickets on the next flight and steered Nathan toward the concourse.

We sat at the gate for half an hour while he entertained me with jokes that were doubtless painted on the walls of the Lascaux caverns. After an eternity or two the flight attendant announced it was time to board.

Then Nathan said, “I’m afraid to fly.”

“It’s perfectly safe.”

“What, you never heard of a plane crashing?”

“You stand more chance of dying in a car on the way to the airport than you do in the airplane,” I said.

I’d heard this statistic from someone and it sounded right. Of course, I’d heard it in New York, where you were in more danger in even a parked car than you were in an airplane.

“It’s not the dying I’m afraid of,” he said.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s the crashing.”

“Now boarding,” the stewardess said with that polite urgency they get when you’re causing them delays.

“We’re coming,” I told her.

“Speak for yourself,” Nate said. “If God had meant man to fly, He’d have given him-”

“Airplanes,” I said. I’d describe myself as having said this through tightly clenched jaws except it might be misinterpreted as hostile.

“I’m not getting on that thing,” Nate said.

“Final call,” the stewardess warbled.

“We’ll only be in the air for an hour,” I said to Nate.

“Hopefully,” he said.

“The great majority of crashes take place on takeoff or landing,” I answered.

Which clinched it for Nate.

“I’m not getting on,” he said.

“Yes you are.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Yes or no, gentlemen?” said the stewardess.

“What are you going to do?” Nate asked me. “Make me get on the plane?”

“If necessary,” I said through tightly clenched jaws.

“Go ahead,” Nate said. “Give me a beating.”

Nate dug in, as much as an eighty-six-year-old man can be said to dig in. He stood wobbling on his feet, his cane unfirmly planted in the carpet, his watery blue eyes staring at me in defiance.

The old fart had me and he knew it. What was I going to do?

Nothing, that’s what.

I mean, I could hardly grab an old man by the lapels and drag him kicking, screaming and kvetching onto the plane. And the stewardess was looking at me with one of those “I’m about to call security to come and pound you into a pulp” glares.

“I don’t really beat him,” I said to her. “He’s joking.”

“Some joke,” she said. “Are you a relative of his?”

“No,” I answered. “If I were related to him I wouldn’t be standing here smiling through my teeth-I’d be sawing my own head off.”

“What are you to this gentleman?” she asked in a voice that indicated that she was contemplating a 911 call.

“A friend,” I said.

“Some friend,” she said.

“He’s my grandson,” Nate said.

“God forbid.”

“He’s my grandson, the ungrateful little bastard,” Nate said. “He wants I should die of fright on the airplane so he can inherit.”

“That’s ridiculous, I-”

“Well, you can forget it, because you’re out of the will!” He turned to the stewardess. “You’re my witness!”

The stewardess was down the jetway in a shot. After snake-eyes, the word witness might be the least popular word in Nevada.

Without removing his gaze from the stewardess’s rear end Nate said, “See what you did?”

“Gee, I guess we’ll drive,” I said.

“Driving is better,” Nate agreed.

Yeah right, I thought. Five hours there, two hours to get Nate settled, then another ten hours’ drive back to Austin. Oh yeah, driving is much better.

As we were walking out to get a cab back to the Mirage to pick up the car, the thought finally occurred to me.

“Mr. Silverstein?” I asked.

“Yeeess?” he warbled in the stylized tone of a burlesque top banana.

“How did you get to Las Vegas?”

“I flew,” he said.

Of course.

Then Nate said happily, “This guy with a wooden eye goes to a dance…”

The valet pulled up the Jeep and I gave him a five. He trotted around and opened the door for Nate.