Thomas McGuane - To Skin a Cat

“I think he’s looking for a life story.”

“No chance.”

Bobby asks Adrienne to undress and bring him some french fries. Even naked, Adrienne seems so different that the french fries acquire the status of clothes. At any rate, they soon make a tiny log jam in the tub. Bobby climbs out, scrutinizes Adrienne, touches a thing or two, and wraps himself in a towel. When they come out of the bathroom, Marianne is unclothed.

“Want to see mine?” she asks. “Bobby, you and Adrienne should go to bed together.”

“All it takes is money,” says Adrienne. Bobby is mortified by this burst of actuality. He commands Marianne to dress.

“Adrienne, look! His face is red!”

“I thought this was his idea.”

“He’s full of ideas. It’s quite lovable. He has a big inheritance, and all he wants is to be a pimp.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! I’m leaving,” says Adrienne.

At the door, Bobby and Marianne call out good night to Adrienne. Then, mute, they stare at one another.

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad idea.”

“At least it didn’t cost anything.”

Bobby says, “I felt that girl was on the cynical side.”

“Nobody knew what you had in mind.”

“No, no, no. That’s not it. What I was feeling was that you two felt I knew but that I had lost my nerve.”

“You had.”

When Bobby bursts into the hallway, he says, “We’ll see about this!” He goes off in his bathrobe.

Marianne follows him to the elevators. A bellhop is standing there, and Bobby says to him, “I want a whore!”

“This isn’t that kind of hotel, sir.”

“It isn’t? I just sent one off. Now I want another.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No.”

In the lobby, Bobby pushes through clients of the hotel to the front desk. The clerk, in uniform, has seen all of this he wants to.

“I’m in Four-eighteen and I want a whore.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Gimme that phone. This hotel needs hookers. Do you hear me?”

“Four-eighteen? You have thirty minutes to vacate Four-eighteen or I’ll see to it that New York’s finest do it for you.”

Bobby’s draining face seems to be superimposed on those of the outraged guests. Marianne has subtly blended in among them.

She asks, “Who is that young man?”

Soon Marianne sits atop the luggage outside. Bobby comes out of a phone booth. His spirits are a little droopy.

“Can’t get a room anywhere. We’re leaving this terrible city where even the smallest civilities are nonexistent.”

Bobby and Marianne sit under the vague circles of the reading lights. Rows of sleeping hands, resting upon armrests, stretch down the aisles toward the captain and crew, who cautiously adjust the 747’s triggers for the Pacific.

“When I get tired,” Bobby says, “I get scared.”

“I do too. I think about the plane falling.”

“I think we’re very tired. I’m scared and I don’t even know what of.”

“Don’t say that,” says Marianne. “I’m completely terrified.”

“What do you think it is?”

“San Francisco. I think something is waiting for us in San Francisco. And I don’t know what it is.”

Bobby imagines fog; the airplane penetrates a low ceiling to an eerie groundscape. “We’re just tired,” he says.

“That’s not the whole story. The whole story is, the attraction is getting too — I don’t know — too something.”

Bobby says, “And pretty soon the ghosts of our past will emerge.”

“How terrifying. How foul.”

“We have to wipe it all out before it kills us.”

By Nebraska, Marianne is asleep. Bobby has a reptilian restlessness the magazine rack can’t sop up. He begins to move about the aisles, staring hard at the sleeping faces, avoiding those stunned by air travel, until he catches the eye of a traveler, a man in his thirties who is wide awake.

“How you doing?”

“Fine. Kind of a long deal at night, isn’t it?”

“Sure is. Can I sit down?”

“Do, go right ahead.”

“How come you’re going to San Francisco?”

“I’m a maritime lawyer there.”

“Married?” Bobby asks. He doesn’t seem impertinent.

“Not yet.”

“I’m looking for a kind of nice hotel. Something right in the middle of things.”

“Stay at the Saint Francis. It’s on Union Square. Couldn’t be handier. You on business?”

“I just got out of one.”

“Which was?”

“Hawk sales,” says Bobby. The traveler doesn’t show his bafflement.

“Now what’re you going to do?”

“Kind of an escort service,” says Bobby.

“How do you mean?”

“Arranging for girls.”

“I see.”

“Does that offend the heck out of your sensibilities?”

The traveler goes ha-ha-ha and says, “No, I just wish you had one with you.”

Pause. “I do.”

“Oh, God.”

“You want her?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Let her figure it out. Hey! That’s what they’re for.”

“What’s it cost?”

“You be the judge. Seat Twelve-A. Wake her and tell her the deal is history. I’ll keep your place until you get back.”

The traveler rests his head in deep thought and then says, “Okay.”

The traveler gently awakens the beautiful sleeping Marianne.

“I’m Jonathan.”

“Hello.”

“I’ve been speaking to your gentleman friend.”

“And?”

“He said to tell you that we’ve come to an arrangement. May I sit down?”

Utah.

Jonathan sits and kisses Marianne full on the lips. She neither yields nor pulls away. He slides his hand up her dress.

“May I ask you what you think you’re doing?”

“I should like to interest you … in love.”

“Do you do this with all the passengers?”

“I just thought — I—”

“I know, Bobby told you he was a pimp. It’s his way of passing the evening.”

“I’m very sorry,” says the traveler, rising. “But I must tell you, you left it a little ambiguous yourself.”

“Please go back to your seat.”

Bobby sits alone, his head against the rest, tilted back, in intense thought. He thinks he can make out the lights of Salt Lake City, but his view is abruptly interrupted by a sharp, open-handed slap across his face.

“May I have my seat?” the maritime lawyer inquires.

“Of course.”

Not till the Ramada limo service does Marianne make mention of the odd event on the 747. She says, measuring her words, “Next time you do that, I’m going to go for it. So think about that.”

“I’m going to be decent or know the reason why. My ears are ringing.” Earnestness floods Bobby’s face. He could cry.

“Like how?”

“I’m going to find us a good little house with a garden and a view of the sea. I’ll get you books on Jane Austen and, for me, Ernest Hemingway. We will make war on meat byproducts by elevating our minds. There will be days when we view paintings or relax at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.”

A woman realtor named Jane Adams, who seems distinctly San Franciscan, shows them a hidden gem with a sea view above the Presidio. The city cascades at the feet of Bobby and Marianne. Jane Adams notes that it’s a little bit of heaven for a young couple. Bobby gapes at her ass.

“We’ll take it. We’ve got a couple of books to read and no telephone. Plus, we’re looking for a small business together, something with no overhead.”

Jane Adams laughs, directing her face across the city to the high seas.