Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

At such times Sonny could hardly keep from wishing that Duane and perhaps Ruth too were out of the picture. Jacy was everything he wanted. She had always seemed infinitely more desirable than Charlene or the other girls, but she had also begun to seem cool and simple and lovely in contrast to Ruth, who had begun to disturb him a good deal. Once Ruth found pleasure her need for him rapidly increased and her sensual appetite had become, if anything, stronger than his own. At first he had found it delightful—he had never imagined that he would ever in his life have as much sex as he wanted. By the time he had visited Ruth almost daily for a month he was forced to admit to himself that it might even be possible to have more than he wanted. Ruth lost all caution, all concern for what the townspeople might think. All she wanted was Sonny, and he began to feel strangely washed out and restless. He ceased to eat particularly much, or to sleep particularly well. Despite almost daily sex he had erotic dreams at night and would often wake up to find himself painfully engorged.

As he grew more tired and less certain of himself, Ruth seemed to grow fresher, more self-possessed, and more lovely, though it was only at odd, oblique moments, lying beside her or coming into her room, that he noticed that she was lovely. Instead of drooping about the house as she had once done she acquired grace and animation and moved about as active and lithe as a girl. She even repapered the bedroom, much to the coach's disgust.

Sonny found he could not keep a consistent feeling about her two days or even two hours in a row. At one moment, during lovemaking, seeing her become avid, sweaty, almost frenzied, he felt as he had the first day with her in the car, as if he were being pulled by some force stronger than his own. A few moments later, an hour later, he would see her, her face calmed, lit from within, her eyes wide and soft, and feel completely happy with her. He simply could not understand what had happened to her. When she touched him, drew him into her, it was not that she was trying to have him exactly—she was insisting that he have her. She was not saying "You're mine," she was saying "I'm yours," and that was almost more troubling. She was completely focused on him; the rest of her life had ceased to matter.

Her hair had grown longer, and he loved to smooth tendrils of it back behind her ears. But he wasn't sure that he wanted any person to be his: it made him too responsible.

"You're my love, I can't help it," she would say, if he brought the matter up. And she would go on brushing her hair, completely at peace with herself because of him.

One night he almost gave way to an impulse and spoke of Ruth to Jacy, but he didn't because he realized just in - time that it would mean the end of his talks with Jacy. She wanted to talk about her problems, not his. Because of their talks she began to fill his fantasies again, and the fantasies made a fitful background to his afternoons with Ruth. Somehow he was sure that passion with Jacy would be more intense and yet less strained than it sometimes was with Ruth. With Jacy things would be sharper and better timed, and would never be blunted by anxiety or bad balance or anything.

To Ruth, that period of her life later seemed a little insane, but insane in a good way. She remembered little about it, just Sonny's person. Occasionally it occurred to her that people were probably talking, or that she ought to go to the store or somewhere, but none of those things seemed immediate. Sonny was the only thing immediate.

Later, when time was passing much more slowly, she told herself that she had not planned well-she had not thought to save anything. She had held nothing back for the morrow, but it was because she did not suppose she could afford to think about the morrow.

It was not until an evening in early May that the fact of a future was brought home to her. Sonny had come that afternoon, and all had gone well. Three hours later, while Herman was finishing his supper, Ruth went out into the backyard and began to take some clothes off the line. It was just dusk, a soft spring dusk, and as she was unpinning Herman's stiff, unironed khakis a car went by on the street. Idly curious, she glanced around to see who was passing and saw Sonny and Jacy, on their way to play practice in Jacy's convertible.

She only glimpsed them as the car passed between her house and the next, and all she saw really was the glint of spring sunset on Jacy's gold hair. She did not even see Sonny's face, did not know whether he looked happy or glum to be with Jacy, but the glimpse ruined her content. For a moment or two she had to hold onto the clothesline -it was as if she had been struck a numbing blow across her thighs. Her legs felt so unsteady that she could hardly move down the line to the next stiff pair of pants. Sonny had never mentioned Jacy to her: she had glimpsed the very beginning of something. Duane and Jacy might have broken up. As she dragged the sheets off the line she felt a sudden panic, silly but nonetheless terrifying. She was sure that Sonny was in love with Jacy and would never come to her house again. She would have wept, but the dread that seized her was too dry. It was as if she had suddenly been faced with her own end, an end too dry and commonplace to cry about. When all the clothes were piled in the basket she stood in the yard a minute, under the empty lines, her only comfort the soft evening air. She could not stand the thought of going into the tight, hot kitchen, where Herman was eating black-eyed peas, but the next moment a thought came to her and she grabbed the clothes basket and hurried in. Herman had finished the peas and was eating a bowlful of yellow canned peaches, one of his favorite desserts.

"Herman," she asked, "have Duane and Jacy broken up? I thought I saw her go by just now with someone else in the car."

The coach looked up with mild interest. "Hope so," he said. "Nothin' I'd like better than to see them two bust up. I might get a couple of good baseball games out of Duane if they would."

Ruth took heart and took out the ironing board and sprinkler bottle. Life came back into her legs; she decided the spasm of dread had been irrational. Even so, considering it calmly, it was clear that in time she was bound to be hurt, and badly so. She was twenty years older than him, and he would not keep wanting her forever. Sooner or later he would leave and she would have to get over him, but she was so relieved to know that it was going to be later—not for a week, at least, and perhaps not for a month or even a year—that she resolved not to care. As she ironed she indulged herself in the pleasant fantasy that she was in Sonny's room, doing the ironing for him. She nursed a strong secret wish to go to his room sometime, to be with him where he lived rather than where Herman lived.

The coach finished his peaches and lay on the couch for a couple of hours, watching television—while Ruth finished ironing. When the late news came on he turned the set off: news bored him. He straggled lazily into the bedroom to undress, and found that Ruth was there ahead of him, sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing hand lotion into her hands. She had her shoes off and was barefooted. It seemed to the coach that she looked younger than a woman her age ought to look: her ankles were slim, and even her face looked young. He didn't know it, but she had managed to sustain her favorite fantasy all the way to the bedroom and was pretending to herself that she was undressing in Sonny's room. All the coach knew was that she irritated him. She went to the closet to hang up her dress and even the lightness of her walk irritated him. He sat down in the rocker to pull off his sweaty socks, remembering that she had mentioned Jacy and Duane.

"Who was it you seen with Jacy?" he asked, stirred by his dislike of the girl.