Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

When Sonny came out of the crapper, Gunner was sitting at the table with the broads, gesturing a lot. Sonny thought maybe he ought to go over, but he sat down at his own table instead and drank what was left of his beer. The combo came out to start the next set, and after another few minutes Gunner returned to the table.

“What happened?” Sonny asked.

“They’re married,” Gunner announced.

“No shit? Where’s their husbands?”

“Night shift at Allison’s.”

“Oh, brother.”

Those were the kind of guys who would beat the shit out of you if they caught you messing around with their women.

Gunner ordered another round for him and Sonny.

Sonny felt bloated and sticky from the beer, his throat burned from the whiskey shots, and the music made a rhythmic ache in his head. It would have made sense to give up the idea of getting any pussy and go home to bed, but the quest seemed even more urgent, more all-consuming now. The thing about hunting for pussy was that once you started you couldn’t give up trying until you passed out or something. No matter how many things fell through and how late it got, it became all the more important to do it then, that very night. The future didn’t count.

Gunner popped his fingers. “I got it,” he said.

“Yeh?”

“Maybe. If she’s still around. Broad I picked up in this neighborhood once. She dropped out of Tech and was working at Curtis-Wright.”

A factory girl! That was almost as good as a nurse, or so they said. Gunner made his way through the tables to the one telephone. It was on the wall, without any booth. Gunner looked a long time through the phone book, and then Sonny saw him put a coin in. The combo was going like crazy, and it must have been hard as hell to hear anything. But Gunner came back grinning.

“We can pick her up in fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Does she have a friend?”

“She must have,” Gunner said.

Gunner bought a pint of whiskey off the bartender, and they drove to this seedy old apartment house not far from the bar. There was a figure in the shadow of the doorway. Gunner whistled, and this girl came flouncing out. She was wearing tight black toreadors and high heels and had on a tight, low-cut blouse. A little gold cross dangled in the start of the crevice between her tits. Gunner got out of the car and the girl got in.

“Terry, this is my buddy George,” Gunner said.

“Glad to meet you, Terry.”

“Likewise,” she said without looking at him.

“Let’s take a little drive,” Gunner said.

“Hey, what is this?” Terry asked. “You said we was havin’ a date, Ron.”

She thought Gunner’s name was Ron. That was for safety, so if you ever knocked up one of those broads, they couldn’t track you down. That’s why Gunner introduced Sonny as “George.”

“Yeh, well, we are,” Gunner said.

“Two fellas and one girl ain’t my kind of date,” she said huffily.

“Sure, but you gotta friend, don’t you? A friend for George?”

She looked at Sonny and a pink bubble appeared on her mouth, expanded to the size of an egg, then burst. “Maybe,” she said.

“Well, let’s go get her,” Gunner said.

Terry wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said, “I’d have to call and see.”

“O.K. Listen. We’ll go back to the Tropics and you can call.”

She blew another bubble, and Sonny started the car. They were having the last call for drinks at the Tropics, and Terry said she wanted a Singapore sling.

“O.K., we’ll order it for you,” Gunner promised. “You call your friend.”

Her friend said it was too late, but she would be happy to go some other time. Sonny and Gunner downed their last boilermaker and Terry chugged her Singapore sling and then gulped the fruit. When they got in the car, Gunner offered her a swig from the pint, but she wouldn’t take it. Gunner took one and passed it to Sonny.

“Hey,” Terry complained, “this ain’t no real date. You take me home.”

Gunner put his arm around her, and his hand dangled down onto her left tit.

“You’re lookin’ real great, Terry.”

“Don’t give me none of your bullshit, Ron.”

“Whatya mean, bullshit? I’m telling you, you look like a million.”

“Keep your hands to yourself, you North Side cocksucker. This ain’t a real date, and I’m goin’ home.”

Sonny started the motor. He drove real slow, and Gunner did his best to warm her up, but she wasn’t having any.

“O.K.,” he said when they got to her place, “I’ll give you a call, and you get your friend, right, and we’ll have a real date.”

“Yeh, and I mean a real date, like a movie and all. Not just fartin’ around in a car.”

“Sure, sure,” Gunner said, “that’s what I mean.”

She primped at her hair, straightened her blouse, and said, “O.K., when is it?”

“Huh?”

“The date?”

“Oh, well, real soon,” Gunner said. “Look, I’ll call in the next couple days.”

“Yeh, and my Aunt Minnie is the Queen of Spain.”

“No shit, I mean it,” Gunner said.

“Seein’s believin’.”

“You’ll see.”

“Lemme outa this heap.”

Gunner got out and Terry switched her tail up to the apartment, her heels clicking on the sidewalk. The door slammed, and she was gone, like they had only imagined her. She really was sexy-looking, though, and Sonny was perspiring as he thought of fucking her while she yelled a lot of dirty stuff at him. Gunner took a gulp from the pint and passed it to Sonny. He took one too, and it scorched his raw, churning stomach.

“Well, we can always take Terry and her friend,” Gunner said. “They put out, but you gotta treat ’em right first.”

“Yeh,” Sonny said, but it wasn’t much consolation for the moment. Even a sure thing for the future didn’t help the need right then, it was only a dream, bringing no immediate relief.

They finished off the pint and then went to the Toddle House for breakfast. It was glary and noisy, and Sonny’s head was throbbing. Gunner had a stack with sausage and Sonny had a piece of icebox chocolate pie and a Coke. Gunner was still hungry and he ordered a pecan waffle. In the middle of it, he put down his fork and clutched at his head. Sonny thought maybe he was sick. In a way he was, but not in the stomach.

“This isn’t it, man,” Gunner said. “Chasing tail and boozing ourselves blind. Shit, this just isn’t it.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean,” Gunner said emphatically, “there’s got to be more in life than pussy.”

“Yeh, I guess you’re right,” Sonny said.

Gunner finished off his waffle with a vengeance, like a man inspired and determined. Sonny felt better too, like maybe it was one of those points in life when things were going to change, going to begin. Finally. When they got outside, Gunner stretched and pointed at the pink streaks in the eastern sky.

“Fuckin dawn,” he said.

Sonny took it as an omen. “Right,” he said. “A new fuckin day.”

As part of Gunner’s plan to find more in life than pussy, he announced to Sonny they were going down to the Herron Art Museum and look at the art. Sonny had never been to the Herron before—never been inside, anyway, even though he had passed it thousands of times driving home from downtown. It was a gray, square building that reminded Sonny of a mausoleum, maybe because it looked like one or maybe that was secretly how he felt about museums. Housing for the dead. It had never occurred to him to go inside the place, nor had he imagined that anyone except art students who studied at the Herron school had any reason for going inside.