Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

"Why don't you go back to Mexico," she said once. "I guess girls are just easier to please down there."

"Just go with me once more," he kept saying. "Just one more time. You can at least see me."

He was convinced that if he were actually in her presence for a few minutes all her craziness would go away and they could be in love again.

Jacy knew how he felt, and repeatedly refused to see him. The whole town knew he was desperate to get her back, which suited her fine. After a month had gone by she put a stop to the calls.

"You find somebody else to pester," she said. "I've got a new boy friend now and I can't be talking to you."

"Who?" Duane asked, confused. The blow was unexpected.

"Lester Marlow," Jacy said. "I guess I've just been wanting to go with Lester all along and didn't realize it." Duane hung up, went downstairs, and threw three pool balls against the back wall of the building as hard as he could, knocking out three big hunks of plaster and scaring Old Man Parsons almost to death. Old Man Parsons was a retired hardware salesman who looked after the poolhall during the day.

That night Duane told Sonny that he was leaving town—he had already packed his suitcase.

"There's not a goddamn thing to stay for," he said. "I'm goin' to Midland. All the roughnecks say you can get a job out there anytime. Jacy's goin' with Lester, why not leave?"

Sonny had no answer. Late that night he and Duane and Genevieve had coffee and pie together and Duane caught the three o'clock bus out. The prospect of setting out into the world had already taken Duane's mind off his problem. He was speculating about what sort of wages he could draw in Midland. Sonny felt okay about it, figuring to see Duane back in Thalia as soon as Jacy got off to college. When they walked Duane to the bus in the warm summer night they all felt good. Sonny and Genevieve stood on the curb in front of the café and watched the bus pull out. Soon all they could see of it were the red tail-lights, far out beyond the city limits sign.

"Wouldn't mind goin' someplace myself," Sonny said. "Well, Uncle Sam will see you get your chance," Genevieve said, stretching her arms.

Abilene's Mercury was perked in front of the poolhall. Sonny was ready to go home, but he hated to go through the poolhall while Abilene was practicing. Finally he went in and had another cup of coffee with Genevieve, waiting to hear the Mercury roar away.

When Jacy heard about Duane leaving town she was a little bit upset. His calls had not been all that annoying—sometimes when she was bored the calls picked her up a little. It was true that she had started going with Lester more or less officially, but it was certainly no deep love affair. She was getting ready to be deeply in love with Bobby Sheen, and she regarded Lester as a necessary stepping-stone. Only by going with someone in Bobby's circle could she keep herself constantly before his eyes, and she knew that if she kept herself constantly before his eyes he would soon realize that she was more beautiful than Annie-Annie. Jacy knew quite well that she was prettier than Annie-Annie, but at the same time it worried her a little that Annie-Annie always managed to look extremely sexy. The only thing Jacy could figure was that the sexy look was something Annie-Annie had acquired with experience, and there was certainly no reason why she couldn't get just as much experience as Annie-Annie had. Lester Marlow was exactly suitable for such a purpose: he adored Jacy and was completely manageable. She still thought red pubic hair was a little ridiculous, but some things had to be accepted if one was to become a woman of the world.

The Wichita kids called sexual intercourse "screwing," so Jacy took to calling it that too. Lester's parents were in Colorado for the summer, so she and Lester could screw whenever they wanted to—Lester was always willing and usually more or less able. In a week or so Jacy managed to become completely unshy about the whole business, and even worked out a sort of routine. She slept until noon, got up, ate some peanut butter, called Lester to see if he was home, put on shorts, sandals, a blouse, and her new sunglasses, and drove to Wichita. The drive always made her sweat a little and it was pleasant to walk into Lester's big cool house. Lester would always be there, looking slightly nervous.

"Hi," Jacy would say. "Want to screw?" That was the favored approach among the Bobby Sheen set. Lester wouldn't have dared not to want to, so Jacy would go up to his parent's bedroom, the room with the biggest, most comfortable bed. There she would peel off her clothes and wait for Lester to peel off his. The screwing itself was pretty athletic—Jacy had never been very big on athletics, but she knew good and well she could learn to screw if she put her mind to it. Fortunately, Lester had a good attitude: he would do exactly as directed. When they were finished they usually drove over to the country club and lay around the pool with Bobby Sheen and Annie-Annie and all the other kids, most of whom had been screwing too. One day Bobby Sheen offered to rub suntan oil on Jacy's back and legs and she knew she was making progress. He rubbed the oil on in a very sexy way, she thought.

From time to time it occurred to her that she had really run Duane off too soon. He wasn't quite as manageable as Lester, but he was really a good bit sexier, and she discovered that some of the girls thought there was something pretty romantic about sleeping with roughnecks. She could probably have got another month or so of good out of Duane, but that she hadn't didn't really worry her: Bobby Sheen was the main objective, and if for prestige reasons it became necessary to have a roughneck in love with her there was always Sonny. He was very available, and just as nice as Duane.

Once, just to show that she wasn't snobbish, she called Sonny up and invited him to have a hamburger with her. It was a pleasant summer evening in early July and they decided to drive to Wichita and eat. Jacy drove, her hair blowing across her face. She had on a white silk blouse with the ends tied together in a knot across her stomach-an inch or two of her midriff showed between blouse and shorts.

"Do you ever hear from Duane?" she asked, sighing. "I really feel bad about that."

"I had a postcard," Sonny said. "He's makin' three-twenty a month. Said he bought a car."

"Well, I guess I'll always be a little bit in love with Duane," Jacy said. "We just had too much against us. It wasn't easy having to be the one to break up."

Talking about it made Sonny uneasy. In fact, just riding with Jacy made him feel a little disloyal. He still thought of her as Duane's girl.

They ate hamburgers, drank milk shakes, and rode slowly back to Thalia, looking at the millions of summer stars.

Jacy let Sonny out at the poolhall and went on home, realizing only after she got there that she had enjoyed the evening. Dating no one but Lester Marlow was really tiresome. Except for not being rich, Sonny was more her type of boy. The thought of screwing Lester one more time was utterly boring, but she didn't really feel like she could push things with Bobby Sheen. She decided that in a day or two she would call Sonny again and perhaps go to the lake with him to find out if she liked to kiss him. It would be nice once more to go with somebody she liked to kiss.

The very next day, Bobby Sheen seduced her. Annie-Annie had gone to Dallas to buy her college wardrobe, and Jacy had skipped Lester and gone straight to the club to swim. Bobby asked her if she wanted to go to his house to play some records and that was it. They spread towels over the seats of his MG and wore their wet bathing suits to the house. As soon as they were inside Bobby slipped her straps down so he could play with her breasts. Jacy tried to concentrate and do everything right but it was actually pretty arousing, screwing Bobby Sheen, and she couldn't keep her head clear. He was about five times as athletic as Lester and when she thought it over later she was pretty sure she came, which was what one was supposed to do. At any rate, she went to sleep and didn't wake up until six o'clock. She found Bobby downstairs. He had on Bermuda shorts and was eating a peanut butter sandwich while he watched the news on TV.