Richard Ford - A Multitude of Sins

“Like lesbians,” he said. “Lesbians are good home owners.”

Frances sucked in her lower lip, squinted, scrunched her face up, then looked over at Howard. It was her Japanese imitation. “Condlo-min-lium,” she said through her teeth.

“We want buy condlo-min-lium long time,” Howard said, then they both laughed. She was funny — a side of her he hadn’t seen. “You’re great,” he said. Then he said, “You’re terrific.”

“Men sometimes velly hard please,” she said, still in the Japanese voice. “Too hard.”

“Yeah, but it’s worth it. Isn’t it? Innnit?” This was his only imitation — the harelip. People always cracked up.

“Not know,” Frances said. “Still early. Know better later.”

He moved his hand up to her firm small pointed breast, then wasn’t sure what to do next since she was driving and gave no sign she might want to stop the car and get something going. “If you pull this car over I’d fuck you right now in the front seat.” He pushed the button to un-recline his seat, as if to make good on his word.

“Not good plan now,” Frances said, still in Japanese. “Hold raging dragon. Good come to mans who wait long time. Make big promise.”

He caressed her breast, leaned closer, smelled the perfume she’d put on in Flagstaff. “Big promise, yeah, you bet,” he said, but again wasn’t sure what to do. He held her breast a few moments longer, until he began to feel self-conscious, then he re-reclined his seat and went back to staring out.

For a time afterward, maybe an hour, they were encased in silence — Frances staring ahead at the illuminated highway, Howard gazing at the border of desert, beyond which in the scrubby recesses of darkness who knew what acted out an existence? He mused for a while about what sort of house Frances might live in. He’d never seen it, of course, but assumed it was a minuscule, white-shingled, green-roof Cape with fake dormers and no garage, a place she paid the note on herself. Then he thought darkly about Ed, whom he hadn’t thought about all day, until he’d seen her phoning him. Frances was basically a solid, family-oriented person, no matter what she was doing with him on this escapade. She was a capable do-er , who took care of things, and made a good living. She just couldn’t make every thing fit exactly for Ed’s particular benefit. Fucking him, for example — that didn’t fit. Though you needed to be able to do the unusual — be married and still have it be all right. Even if you had to lie about it. There was no sense hurting people for reasons they couldn’t control, or that you couldn’t either. Just because everything didn’t always fit in the tent, you didn’t throw the tent away.

He kept a pretty clear mental picture of Ed, despite having never seen him. To him Ed was a big, shambling, unshaven man in gray clothing and unlaced shoes, who’d once been physically powerful, even intimidating, but was no longer the man he once was, and so had become sulky and capable of saying cruel and unfair things to innocent people, all because life hadn’t been perfect. As it wasn’t, of course, for anybody. The expression “block of wood” and the wounded, weathered face of the old movie actor Lon Chaney, Jr., had become linked to Ed and with the nonexistent sex Frances intimated he provided.

Whenever Howard thought about Ed, it eventually involved some imagined confrontation in which he— Howard — would be cool and collected while Ed would be seething and confused. Howard would try to be generous and friendly, but Ed inevitably would begin being cutting and sarcastic. He’d try to make Ed realize that Frances really loved him, but that sometimes other tents had to be brought in and pitched. And then it always became necessary to kick Ed’s ass, though not enough to do any real damage. Later, when both their marriages had been repaired and time had elapsed, he and Ed could become grudging friends based on a shared understanding about reality and the fact that they both cared deeply for the same woman. He imagined going to Ed’s funeral and standing solemnly at the back of a Catholic church.

Ahead in the pale headlights, the figures of a man and a woman appeared on the opposite shoulder — at first small and indistinct and then hyper-real as they came up out of the dark, walking side by side. Two Indians — dressed shabbily, heading the other direction. Both the man and the woman looked at the big red Town Car as it shot past. The man was wearing a bright turquoise shirt and a reddish headband, the woman a flimsy gray dress. In an instant they were gone.

“Those were our ancient spirits,” Frances said. She’d been silent, and her words carried unexpected gravity. “It’s a sign. But I don’t know what of. Something not good, I’d say.”

He quit thinking about Ed.

“I guess if they were going in the other direction, we could’ve given our ancient spirits a ride. Drop them off at a convenience store.”

“They were coming back from where we’re going,” Frances pronounced in a grave voice.

“The Grand Canyon?”

“It’s a completely spiritual place. I already told you the Indians thought it was the door to the underworld.”

“Maybe we’ll see Teddy Roosevelt, too.” He felt pleased with himself. “We oughta turn around and go back and ask them what else we need to see.”

“We wouldn’t find them,” Frances said. “They’d be gone.”

“Gone where?” he said. “Just disappeared into thin air?”

“Maybe.” Frances looked at him gravely now. He knew she disapproved of him. “I want to tell you something, okay?” She looked back at the streaming white center line.

Up ahead was a string of white lights — a motel, he hoped. It was long after eleven, and he was suddenly flattened. Those two Indians might’ve been phantoms of fatigue, though it was strange they’d both see them.

“If anything happens to me, you know?” Frances said, without waiting for his answer. “I mean, if I have a heart attack in the motel, or in the car, or if I just keel over dead, do you know what I expect you to do?”

“Call Ed,” Howard said. “Confess everything.”

“That’s what I don’t want,” she said, her voice edgy with certainty. Her eyes found him again in the green-lit interior. “You understand this. You just walk away. Leave it. It’d require too much explanation. Just fade away like those Indians. I mean it. I’ll be dead anyway, right?”

“What the shit,” Howard said. He could see the magic letters M-O-T-E-L. “Don’t get fucking weird on me. I don’t know what happened when you talked to Ed, but you don’t need to start planning your funeral. Jesus.” He didn’t want to talk about anything more serious than sex now. It was too late in the day. He was sorry all over again to be here.

“Promise me,” Frances said, driving, but flicking her eyes back to him.

“I won’t promise anything,” he said. “Except I’ll promise you a good time if we can get out of this hearse and find a bed.”

Obviously she was stone serious. Except he wasn’t the kind of person who walked away, and there was no use promising. His family had raised him better than that.

“You know what I’d do if you got hit by a car or struck by lightning?” Frances said.

“Let me guess.”

“You don’t need to. Some complications aren’t worth getting into. You don’t know what I mean, do you?”

The motel sign was off to the right. On the left — like a little oasis — was a bright red neon casino sign with rotating blue police lights on top, and a big red neon rattlesnake, underneath, coiled and ready to strike. Beside the snake the neon lettering said strike it rich. The casino itself was only a low, windowless cube with a single, middle door and a lot of beater cars and pickups and a couple of sheriff’s vehicles nosed into the front. “Womans some-time velly hard to prease,” Howard said in Japanese, just to break up the gloom.