Thomas Mcguane - Something to Be Desired

Antoinette, on the other hand, was booking them hand over fist. She really thrived on pressure. If it slacked off, she went creative, and that’s where trouble began. Now, seeing her bent grimly at her ledger, Lucien felt a flood of warmth that watching loyalty produces. He of course knew it was illusory, but what wasn’t. He leaned over and gave her a serious hug.

He checked the linen carts and occupancy list; there was a Billings car in staff parking and he had it towed. He had Shane paint out the graffiti in the bar men’s room and he checked the liquor inventory against the bartender’s sheet. The olives were down. The tar had firmed up in the parking lot, so he took down the rope and flags that cordoned it off. There were three trucks with whitewater rafts slung up in their beds waiting to park, and he waved to the drivers as they moved onto the new tar with an adhesive sound. He filled the bird-feeders and did up the wire ties on the garbage bags behind the kitchen. He ran a stick up into the mouths of the six drainspouts and dislodged leaves and sculch. Four of the six ran copious water though it was a sunny day. Seamless gutters. He threw a tarp over the log-splitter and pulled the rolling doors shut in the front of the tractor shed. He had all the fiery cheer of a man with a family business.

He skipped his dinner and worked until dark. His muscles ached and he took a long shower to feel better. That night Suzanne let him stay. The clean, painted white walls of the room made their shadows vivid; and beyond the door he could see James sound asleep on the daybed with true stories of the American West piled by his side.

“James, what are you interested in?” Lucien had the willows bent down and he was trying to dislodge James’s trout fly. James put his fly in the brush more than he put it in the water.

“A lot of things.”

“What are you best at?”

“What?”

“What do you do the best?”

“Aren’t I going to find out from you?” asked James.

The stream wound through brush in open country. There were antelope off near the limits of visibility, and rising and settling clouds of blackbirds. The pools were sandy and the trout hovered in small schools like fish in the ocean.

The next day a small thing happened which Lucien took to be a sign, a good sign. He went to town ostensibly to do some banking but really because the luncheon special at the Part Time Bar was split-pea soup, Lucien’s favorite. All municipal matters were being settled in the booths and along the counter. The poker machines had until Friday to get out of town, and most people seemed glad to see them go. Two cowboys were disputing whether or not Tom Horn really shot the kid, and withal, there was an atmosphere of time arrested for an appropriate review period or just a decorous tableau. But the sign actually was Dee, Lucien’s old squeeze, with a booth of her own. Lucien sat down. She was wearing her jeans and a pink sleeveless sweater. She was attractive. No wonder I was always sticking my dick in her, thought Lucien.

“Guess what?”

“I can’t,” said Lucien.

“I’m leaving Shit-for-Brains.”

“Hasn’t he been a good husband to you?” Lucien asked, knowing right away that it would have been darned hard to say anything sillier. He ordered the soup.

“You’ll also be delighted to hear I’m leaving town.”

“I’m not delighted to hear that.”

“We found ways of passing the time,” she said. “Me and you.”

“We certainly did.”

“My sister’s a florist in Salt Lake,” she said. “They’ve got a video dish. I can stay with them until I learn the ropes. I don’t know squat about flowers. But then, what did you know about hot springs?”

“Nothing,” agreed Lucien quickly.

“You just fucked the right murderer.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“What’s funny? With me it was a gutter salesman. But I can’t take it anymore. Wednesday he got one of these electric garage doors, and we haven’t been able to get the car out for three days. I walked downtown. So that’s it for me. I don’t care how many Mormons Salt Lake’s got. I’ve had a picture of that seagull since sixth grade and I knew someday I’d go. Also, Shit-for-Brains is about to receive news of foreclosure and I don’t want to be standing there when that one hits. It’s real simple around our place: I want to be somebody and he wants to be nobody. It’s just exactly that black and white. I’m gonna go down to Salt Lake with all those Mormons and sleep my way to the top.”

“It’s hard to think of the right thing to say, Dee.”

“Why say anything? You’ve got it made. But remember this, old Dee was there when you were walking the hoot-owl trail.”

That night Lucien played checkers with James and lost. The little boy sat in a plaid bathrobe and carpet slippers — where did children get carpet slippers these days? — and played to win; Lucien couldn’t stop him. Lucien helped Suzanne put him to bed; she’d bought him a globe during the day and he twirled it slowly as he drifted off murmuring the names of the countries. They made love and Lucien fell asleep thinking about Dee out on that highway; she probably took a few pills to get the trip behind her.

Sometime late, in the middle of the night, Suzanne got up and said she could hear the brindle dog drinking out of the pool. Lucien asked what difference it made. “I guess none,” said Suzanne. “Doesn’t anyone own him?” Lucien threw his head back on the pillow because somehow Suzanne had made it seem such a despairing question. “I thought if I chased him away from our pool he’d go home. But that doesn’t necessarily follow if he has no home.”

“Suzanne, please stop this.”

“I will. I’m going on and on, aren’t I?”

“A little.”

“Am I okay to make love with?” Suzanne asked.

“What do you think?”

“Well, you were never like this with me before. I think you want me.”

“I do,” said Lucien.

“I mean, more than before.”

“Something was the matter with me before,” said Lucien.

“That’s not the matter with you now?”

“Here’s hoping,” said Lucien.

“Here’s hoping!”

“I didn’t mean that. I just didn’t want to jinx myself. I know we’re happy, a bit at least. I’m thinking, little steps for little feet. All I’d need is some jinx now and that would about do it.”

Lucien wondered about her work. He knew that there would be a certain lingering foulness about his enquiring as to her relationship with her employer. And besides, he was briefly bored by matters of sexual envy. It was like talking endlessly about the toothed holes in people’s faces through which they passed pieces of food. Finally, enough was enough, though the variegated impulses continued to leave a ranker scent trail than the most ancient jackal. In the end, one was put off by the body itself, a virtual Kelsey, suitable for donation to some godforsaken college. One wanted the brain, a pure sensorium, flying around without weight. The poor old dick was continually fighting gravity: making trouble in resistance, falling down the wrong pant-leg in remission. Younger owners each considered his a lordly shlong; but finally it is seen for what it is, a little maniac.

There was a bedside lamp, and Lucien wrote their initials in the light covering of dust, thinking, I do in fact love this girl. When she fell asleep once more, he got up quietly and went in to look at James. It seemed to Lucien that children took up great space when they were awake and then became so small when they fell asleep. James looked completely different because he did not wear his thick glasses. The odd way in which he hovered within his own clothes was replaced by a carelessness that relieved Lucien as he looked at the boy. It was as though James could someday emerge from his frightened self and go on and be happy and maybe through some as yet undiscovered process lay claim to the years his father misused. Lucien knew perfectly well that this last thought was completely foolish; but it gave him peace and he was able to sleep immediately, as people with self-respect are said to do.