Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“I have to go, Julian.”

“Why? Why do you have to go?”

“My thumbs hurt.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Is it something usual? What can we do for them?”

“I've made a mistake. I've been negligent. I haven't exercised. I have to hitchhike a little bit every day, no matter what. It's like a musician practicing his scales. When I don't practice, my timing gets off, my thumbs get stiff and sore.”

To that, Julian could not respond. Sissy Hankshaw was one of those mysteries that drop onto Earth unasked, and perhaps undeserved, like grace — like clockworks. His ancestors might have known what to do with her, but Julian Gitche did not. All of a sudden her presence seemed completely outside his frame of reference. His apartment was no longer static when she moved about it; tall, jump-suited, globs of air orbiting her like planets of musical roses. She caused sculptures to sway on their pedestals. The bedroom birdies came alive and flitted in their cage. It was incomprehensible to Julian that he had presumed to be her consoling daddy a few short hours before.

Julian had a poodle named Butterfinger, named for the candy bar that F. Scott Fitzgerald was eating when he fell dead of a coronary surprise. Julian called him Butty for short.

Butty had every fault known to dog. He was a face-licker and crotch-sniffer, a hair-shedder and corner-crapper, a shoe-chewer and guest-nipper, a garden-digger and cat-intimidator, a nylon-snagger and chair-muddyer, a scrap-begger and lap-crawler, a car-chaser and shrub-defiler, a bath-hater and air-polluter, a garbage-raider and leg-humper and, moreover, a yapper in that shrill, spoiled, obnoxious yap-style to which poodles alone may lay claim.

(Sissy, unlike most humans who travel on foot — subject to the bites and barks of canine fancy — was not a dog-hater per se; the wild dingo of Australia had her sincerest respect.)

Butty was yapping as Sissy left Julian's apartment. For once, it may have been a tolerable sound. Because of the yapping, Julian could not hear her hurrying, almost sprinting, down the stairs; Sissy could not hear the wheeze that struggled out of Julian's lungs like a wimpy wind that blew between their worlds.

The magic caught up with her on Fourteenth Street as she headed for the George Washington Bridge.

27.

THE COUNTESS WAS PRACTICING DENTAL KARATE. Chop chop chop. His Princess telephone was in imminent danger of being incapacitated by a blow from the teeth.

“So she left town,” he said — chop chop. “Well, that shouldn't surprise you. Leaving town is what Sissy is all about. But tell me, how did she strike you?”

“Extraordinary!”

“She's obviously that. Jesus! Which would you rather have, a million dollars or one of Sissy's thumbs full of pennies?”

“Oh you! I'm not talking about her hands. They're difficult to ignore, I confess, but I'm speaking of her whole being. Her whole being is extraordinary. The way she talks, for example. She's so articulate .”

“It's high time you realized, honey babe, that a woman doesn't have to give the best years of her life to Radcliffe or Smith in order to speak the English language. What's more, those intellectual college girls have got the odor as bad as any others. Worse, I suspect. One healthy waitress probably uses more Yoni Yum each week than the entire dean's list at Wellesley.” Chop!

Julian sighed. “I wouldn't know about that,” he said. “But she is extraordinary. I don't understand her in the least, yet I'm helplessly attracted. Countess, I'm really in a dither. She's turned my head.”

“Ninety degrees to the left, I hope.” Chop clack click. “How does she feel about you?”

Another wheezy sigh. “I think she's disappointed that I'm not more, ah, sort of atavistic. She's got some naíve, sentimental notions about Indians. I'm sure she liked me, though; she gave me many indications that she liked me. But. . then she left town.”

“She always leaves town, you dummy. That doesn't mean anything. What about in bed? Does she like it in bed?”

Evel Knievel's motorcycle could not have jumped over the pause that followed. Finally, Julian asked, “How did she like what in bed?”

“Like what? ” Chop!! Clack!! “What do you think?”

“Well. . er. .”

“Shit O dear, Julian. Do you mean to tell me you spent three days together and you didn't get it on?”

“Oh, we got it on. But you might say we didn't get it all the way on.”

“Whose fault was that?”

“I suppose it was mine. Yes, it definitely was my fault.”

“In a way I'm relieved it wasn't hers. I've been worried about her psychological virginity. Only now I'm concerned about you . What do they do to you boys in those Ivy League schools, anyway? Strap you down and pump the Nature out of you? That's what they do, all right. They can even press the last drop of Nature out of a Mohawk buck. Why, send a shaman or a cannibal to Yale for four years and all he'd be fit for would be a desk in the military-industrial complex and a seat in the third row at a Neil Simon comedy. Jesus H. M. S. Christ! If Harvard or Princeton could get hold of the Chink for a couple of semesters they'd turn him into a candidate for the Bow Tie Wing of the Hall of Wimps. Oogie boogie.”

“You needn't stoop to reverse snobbism just because Ol' Miss was the only university in the nation that would take you in. If we Ivy Leaguers aren't earthy enough to suit you hillbillies, at least we don't go around indulging in racist terms such as 'Chink.' Next thing I know, you'll be calling me 'chief.'”

“'Chink' is the guy's name, for Christ's sake.”

“What guy?”

“Aw, he's some old fart who lives in the hills out West. Gives my ranch the creeps, and the willies, too. But though he be old and dirty, he's alive, I'll bet, clear down to his toes. They don't have his juice in a jar in New Haven. That prissy alma mater of yours could pluck the hair off a werewolf. Better Sissy keep her virginity than lose it to the strains of 'The Whiffenpoof Song.'”

“Sex isn't everything, just because it keeps you in business. And speaking of your business, you'd better be concerned. Because that mysterious model of yours has got me too upset to paint.”

“You'll paint, all right, sweetie-poo. You'll paint because you're under contract to paint. Moreover, you'll paint better than you've ever painted before. Nothing like a little suffering to put some backbone into art. Has she got you smoking and drinking? Good! Creativity feeds on poisons. All great artists have been depraved. Look at me! As sure as Raoul Dufy is peeing over the side of Eternity's sailboat, this little affaire is going to inspire the finest watercolors of your career. Now, tell that goddamned poodle of yours to quit whimpering and you get in there and paint!”

“That's not the poodle.”

“Oh,” said the Countess. “Well shit O dear. Just hold on, you hear. Don't go getting asthmatic. We can write her a letter, if you'd like. Send copies to Taos, LaConner, Pine Ridge, Pleasant Point, Cherokee and that other place. I'll pick up some Ripple and come right over.”

The eyes of the sky's potato have seldom looked down on such a frantic epistolary collaboration as occurred that night.

28.

THE CHINCK IS RIGHT: life is essentially playful.

Of course, it plays a bit rough at times.

Maybe life is like a baby gorilla. It doesn't know its own strength.

Life was mashing the big fat drops out of Julian Gitche and Sissy Hankshaw. They had chipmunk festivals inside their stomachs and the fillings in their teeth were picking up signals from sentimental radio. Life is forever pulling this number on men and women, and then acting surprised and innocent, as it it didn't realize it was hurting anybody.