Thomas McGuane - Nothing but Blue Skies

“Anyway,” said Lucy, “I had already come to that conclusion before the other night, and suddenly there I was with my feet on the roof of those people’s car —”

Frank felt a fever go through his face at the very thought and as billboards emerged from pastures, with skiers and swan divers and stylized silhouettes of the Big Sky on them.

“— and I realized that I simply have to ask you, as a friend, to make sure that that never happens again. People like us have a special need to look out for each other, and what we’ve been doing hasn’t been good for me.”

She’s asking me as a friend to quit fucking her!? With all that energy spent on venery, the intricate, often baffling pursuit would turn to poison. Poison! Plus, Frank thought, it’s guilt because of Gracie. We’ve descended from Heartbreak Hotel to Heartbreak Bed-and-Breakfast.

“Okay, Lucy.”

“You make it sound so flat,” said Lucy.

“Well, I don’t want it to. But I guess it makes me feel sort of flat to promise you that.” A candy-apple green Mazda went by at about a hundred. It seemed to have a sidling shudder induced by its pure speed as it mounted the long hill, then disappeared from sight.

“Why?”

“Why? Because I enjoyed it, Lu. I enjoyed you .”

“I enjoyed you too, Frank.”

Right at the interchange where two peninsulas of trailers gathered on the high banks along the highway, a girl was hitchhiking with an aluminum-frame backpack, holding up a sign that said “Madison.” Heading east — that must mean Madison, Wisconsin, not the Madison River. This was Frank’s turnoff but he was going to forget that and give this young woman a ride, this fresh-faced stranger. Frank wheeled over and gestured for her to get in, smiling, indicating that he was on the phone and therefore not able to help much. She put the pack in back and got in. He grinned, tried with shifting and grimacing to indicate he’d be off the phone in a sec.

“But if you want it that way, Lu, we can sure leave it at that.”

“I ask myself if I really want to leave it like that.”

He made out the inner curve of her thighs with sheer peripheral vision. The girl smelled like sagebrush. Brunette, long hair held together low in back with a piece of knotted blue cloth. He started to sweat. He had the tip of one finger on the rim of the abyss, but Lucy’s voice was sucking him back in.

“I guess I can’t answer that one for you, Lucy.”

“Even as I hear myself speaking, I know I’m lying.”

“You do?” How’s that for stupid.

“Yes, I do.”

“How do you mean, exactly?”

“I want you. Frank, I want you.”

“Uh- huh ,” said Frank, as if, lifting the hood to add a quart of oil, he spotted smoke coming out from under the valve covers.

“Shall I tell you how?” she asked in a numb, involuntary voice.

“Sure,” he said, absolutely confounded in his effort to bring this to a stop. She began to roll on as in a trance, overcome by the erotic power of her telephone. Frank looked over at the girl, who had raised her eyebrows in a coolish look of inquiry. To underscore his helplessness, he removed the phone from his ear and held it out. Lucy’s voice, reduced to a tiny scratchiness like a little witch doll’s, projected into the car’s interior: “… when you’re all the way in my mouth and I feel your big balls …”

“Stop the car,” shouted the brunette. She had thrust her legs out and seized the door handle as if to suggest that she would jump if he didn’t stop.

“Frank!” shouted Lucy through the phone. “Are you with someone this very minute?”

“Call you back, gotta go.” He hung up and pulled off to the side of the road, where the girl jumped out, turned and flung open the back door, hauling out her backpack.

“I’m really very sorry,” said Frank.

But she was walking already, eating up the miles with her long legs, her house on her back, free of filth. His shirt was stuck to his skin. He was furious with himself for not going to the office. Plus, why steal cars? He started backing up along the side of the road, to reach the interchange where he was supposed to have turned. He had backed up nearly a half mile when a police car came over the crown of the hill, then pulled off the road in front of him. In a moment the cop was at Frank’s window, a world-weary veteran with small features and a collection of loose wattles falling from beneath his chin.

“Miss your turn?”

“Yes,” Frank breathed, “I’m afraid I did.”

“You know you aren’t supposed to back up along the interstate like that.”

“I’m sorry,” said Frank, with such feeling the officer gave him a long look. “I know I’m guilty and I’m sorry.”

“Let me see your driver’s license.”

Frank leaned forward to free his wallet and the cop backed around the car with his clipboard to get the number on the license plate. He looked up just as he started writing, and said with considerable annoyance, “There’s one of them college hitchhikers again. That’s been illegal for ten years.” Batting the clipboard against his hip, he strided toward Frank’s window. “I’m going to let you back up and turn off. But you aren’t supposed to and I am not supposed to let you. So don’t do it again.”

Frank left and let the cop drive up and bust Miss Clean.

At Gracie’s request, he had once seen a therapist, a meeting that went very badly from the beginning. There was all sorts of persiflage about his holding or not holding the door as they entered her office, and Frank could feel a kind of electricity coming from between her shoulder blades as she moved around her desk to sit down facing him.

There was a large photograph of a crowd scene over her desk which said underneath it, “How many forms of abuse can you find?” As he looked at her, he thought of the word “pig.” Not, strangely enough, that he thought she was a pig, but he could sense that she had already decided he was one. He knew that that was the totem animal not only of ugly women but of overeaters and men of exaggerated masculinity. He had tried to work up a wussy shuffle for his arrival, but then they had the little showdown about what he was “trying to say” in holding the door for her. Everything about being here was awkward. In a conciliatory way, he told her he couldn’t help acting like a pig because he was the owner of some of the best show pigs in the state. She didn’t react. The gender thing was dialed up to where he couldn’t even figure out how to sit down. They ended up seated across the desk from each other. The window was behind her and he had to squint as he answered her questions.

“Do you drink?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been drunk?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Has it occurred to you that you may be an alcoholic?”

“No.”

“Has it occurred to you that you are in denial?”

“What’s denial?”

“Denying that you are an alcoholic?”

“No. Sometimes I forget to drink for half a year at a time.”

“Are you familiar with the term ‘dry drunk’?”

“Well, just sort of.”

“Often, if we don’t drink and at the same time fail to seek counseling, we become what are called dry drunks.”

“I’m not following. Are you a dry drunk?”

The therapist’s face flared red. “Hardly! Is it the position you are trying to take with me that any little help I may try to be of to you is simply mud you are going to sling back into my face?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am a mental health therapist and must accept, in the line of duty, a certain amount of punishment. But just so you know, if you were outside the walls of this office, what you just tried to dish out to me is a little verbal abuse. It is virtually diagnostic of denial.”