Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

"Yes, but this is right here, and I feel like smelling good right now. Do you ever feel like doing anything right now?" She wet her palms and fingertips with perfume and placed her hands against her throat, then touched her fingers behind her ears. The cool scent was delicious. She dampened her hands again, touched her shoulders, and then stooped and ran her palms down the calves of her legs.

"That's lovely," she said. Almost at once the perfume made her feel less depressed, and when she looked at Jacy again she noticed how young she was. Jacy's hair was pulled back by a headband, and her face, clean of makeup, was so clearly a girl's face that Lois ceased to feel angry with her.

"This is the first time in months I've seen your eyelids," she said. "You should leave your face just like that-it would win you more. Makeup is just sort of a custom you've adopted. All you really need right now is an eyebrow pencil." Jacy looked blank and sleepy and Lois knew her advice was wasted.

"Okay," she said. "I'll let you alone. I probably confused you tonight and I do hope so. If I could just confuse you it would be a start. The only really important thing I came in to tell you was that life is very monotonous. Things happen the same way over and over again. I think it's more monotonous in this part of the country than it is in other places, but I don't really know that-it may be monotonous everywhere. I'm sick of it, myself. Everything gets old if you do it often enough. I don't particularly care who you marry, but if you want to find out about monotony real quick just marry Duane."

With that she left and walked down the thickly carpeted hall to her bedroom. As she walked through the door she heard her husband snoring; the only light in the room was the tiny orange glow of the electric blanket control. Lois sat down on the bed and rubbed her calves wearily. To kill the morning she had gone to Wichita Falls and spent $150; to kill the afternoon she had had three drinks and several rubbers of bridge at the country club. It seemed unjust that after all that work she should still have the problem of how to kill the night. She got up and went out in the hall, where she could see her wristwatch. It was only a little after ten.

After considering a moment she went to the kitchen and got a whiskey glass out of the cabinet. Bourbon was her night drink. She picked up the wall phone and dialed the poolhall and Sam the Lion answered.

"Hi, friend," she said. "How are you?"

"Hi, honey," Sam said. "I'm winterin' fairly well. How about you?"

"Oh, I won't complain," Lois said. "I wish you'd come and see me sometime. Has your number one customer left for the night?"

"No, he's here shootin'," Sam said. "I'll let you talk to him as soon as he finishes his run. You come and see me, you got a car."

In a minute or so Abilene took the phone. "Yeah," he said.

"Hey. Feel like a night off?"

"Depends on the salary," he replied.

"Well, drill hard," she said. "You're better at oil wells anyway."

She took her bourbon into the den and switched the TV on. A Claudette Colbert movie was just starting. She pulled her bathrobe around her and settled back in Gene's big leather chair to watch. From time to time she rubbed her calves. When the third commercial came on she went back to the kitchen and refilled her whiskey glass.

chapter six

After Civics class Tuesday morning Coach Popper stopped Sonny in the hall. There had been an assembly that morning and the coach had on a necktie, an article of dress he seldom wore.

"Like your tie, Coach," Sonny said jokingly. It was a bright orange necktie and it stuck out from under the coach's shirt collar in the back.

"Purty, ain't it," the coach said distractedly. "Need you to do somethin' for me. Ruth's been sick the last couple of days and needs somebody to drive her to Olney to the doctor. She's afraid they might drug her or something so she wouldn't be able to drive home. If you'll drive her down and back I'll get you out of your afternoon classes."

Sonny immediately accepted the offer. He was for anything that would get him out of algebra class. The Poppers' house was only a couple of blocks from school and as soon as he finished lunch he walked over. He looked through the doorpanes before he knocked and saw that Mrs. Popper was ready to go. She was sitting in the living room, her purse in her lap.

"Oh hello, Sonny, what do you want?" she asked, when she came to the door.

"Coach said you needed a driver," he said. "I thought he told you I was coming."

Mrs. Popper looked disappointed but she tried hard to hide it. "No, he didn't mention it," she said. "I thought he was going to drive me himself. I guess he just couldn't get off."

She handed Sonny the keychain and he went and got the car out of their garage. It was a black '53 Chevy. When Mrs. Popper got in she had a Kleenex in her hand and was daubing at her eyes with it. Sonny felt like he ought to say something to cheer her up, but he couldn't think of anything. The Chevy didn't have much pickup but it ran smoothly once they got on the road. The wind was rust ling dust in the dry bar ditches beside the highway.

"I'm sorry to be all this trouble," Mrs. Popper said. "You're very nice to drive me."

"It sure beats sittin' through algebra," he said.

Mrs. Popper smiled, but neither of them spoke again, all the way to Olney. Sonny watched the road, only glancing at her occasionally; she was looking out the window at the gray pastures. Her hair was brown with just a few traces of gray, and she wore it long, almost shoulder length. There was something about her that was really pretty. She was a little too thin, and her skin was too fair for the country she lived in: wind and sun freckled her on her cheekbones and beneath her eyes. Just before they got to the clinic she opened her purse and got out her lipstick, but she just held it a minute and put it back in her purse without using any.

While she was with the doctor Sonn!Psat in the waiting room of the clinic, reading magazines. There were lots of copies of Outdoor Life around, with good hunting stories in them. The only trouble was that the people in the waiting room made him so gloomy he could hardly read. A shaky old man sat next to him on the green waiting-room couch. He had had his voicebox taken out and had a little screen where it ought to be; every-third breath he wheezed so loud that Sonny couldn't concentrate on his reading. Then a little boy came over and spat his bubble gum in the pot of a rubber plant next to Sonny. It was a pink, wet hunk of bubble gum and Sonny kept wanting to cover it with dirt. Across the room from him there was a farmer and his wife with an old old lady between them. They were very nervous, and Sonny knew why because he had seen them there several times before: if they had to wait too long the old lady would start going to the bathroom right in her chair. It was very embarrassing, but then something about the waiting room was always embarrassing. When his father had still been getting regular shots Sonny had had to wait there often, and it hadn't changed a bit.

Finally the wheezing and the bubble gum and the old old lady got on his nerves so much that he went out and waited in the car. The coach was too tight to have a radio put in the car, so there was nothing to do but sit and look out the long empty street toward the west. Someone in a passing car threw out an empty ice-cream carton and the wind skittered it across the street to the far curb.

When Mrs. Popper finally came out she was walking so stiffly that Sonny thought they must have given her the drug after all; then when she got close he saw that she walked that way because she was crying. The wind blew her hair across her face and a few strands stuck to her wet cheek. She tried awkwardly to brush them back. Sonny got out and opened the door for her, wondering what he ought to do. He knew nothing at all about crying women.