All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel (27 page)

“Tell Dorsey I’d love to play tennis sometime,” I said to Mrs. Ebbins. I said it with the last of me. I was plummeting.

“I’ll tell him, he’ll just be thrilled,” Mrs. Ebbins said. “It’ll be a little while before he’s up to much exercise, but we’re hoping to have him back in circulation just as soon as we can. He still talks about finishing his degree. I wish you just a wonderful success. We’re all just as proud of you as we can be.”

She wrapped my book in her raincoat and hurried out, little and fat. I quaffed champagne. I had never wanted to be drunk worse. I think in five minutes I was drunk. The blue-eyed teen-ager watched appalled. Mr. Stay was as bad as me. It was long past the time when he was usually drunk. We went through the four bottles of champagne in less than an hour. The pile of books wavered in front of me. Two other people came in, but neither of them bought my book. One bought a cookbook and the other just wandered vaguely through the store and then walked out.

I asked Mr. Stay if he still wrote sonnets. I don’t remember what he said. I got very vague. I sat behind my pile of books, drinking. I began to hate the pile. I wanted to carry it out and dump it in the first puddle that was big enough to hold twenty-five books. I was very glad no one else came in to get an autographed book. There was no telling what I might have written. The party waned, Mr. Stay and I dull. The champagne was gone. The phone rang. A lady asked Mr. Stay how many copies of my book we had. He said fifty. She said I was to sign them and he was to send them to the first fifty people in the Houston phone book. He didn’t believe it. I followed the conversation vaguely, through my drunkenness. It was a beautiful bookshop, with excellent books in it. Mr. Stay had very good taste. Part of him was an art-for-art’s-sake poet and the rest of him was an old-time self-educated bread-for-the-masses-IWW type Communist. He kept good books on his shelves and no one bought them. Dimly I realized that some lady had just
bought fifty copies of my book over the phone. When it dawned on me what was happening I knew who it was. It was the only rich lady I knew who liked me. I got up and took the phone. Mr. Stay was glad to let me have it—the whole experience had bewildered him.

“Hi,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.’

“You’re drunk,” Jenny said. “I better come and get you. If I don’t you’ll marry some new slut and get put in jail for bigamy.”

“I’m stone sober,” I said. “Can you afford that kind of gesture?”

“Of course I can,” she said. “Get on over here.”

“I have to go to the hospital first,” I said. “Then I have to see a friend. Don’t wait up. Just leave a door unlocked, so I can get in. I’ll be there eventually.”

“Promise me you won’t marry anyone,” she said. “I know how dumb you are. Just don’t marry anyone at all.”

“I promise,” I said.

Mr. Stay and I shook hands very emotionally. It was probably the strangest autograph party he had ever hosted. He had bought a copy of my book too. I wrote the same thing in it I had written in Dorsey’s. My ability to think up inscriptions was very weak. We shook hands five or six times. He was an emotional old Communist sonneteer.

“You write them, son. I’ll sell them,” he said. “It’s all I’m fit for. You need a job, just come to me. I’d be proud to have a real writer working for me.”

I sloshed away. I hated to be called a real writer, especially by nice old failed writers who had never got to think of themselves as real writers at all.

Only the year before I had wanted nothing more in life than to be a real writer. It had seemed worth any effort. Something had happened. Mr. Stay couldn’t get his sonnets published. The high point of his career was getting one
published in the
New Republic
, in the thirties. For all I knew Mr. Stay was as good as Petrarch. But I knew that Mr. Stay would always feel that he had missed it, because he wasn’t a real writer. Almost everybody seemed to miss it. I probably
was
a real writer. If I kept at it I could probably write as good as anybody but the geniuses. I could be better than average. I could probably even be minor. With great luck I might, by accident mostly, write something fine, sometime in my life, particularly if I kept myself in shape by writing books that were decently good for twenty years or so. But probably I’d miss it too. I felt like I was already missing it. My life was no life. It was sort of a long confused drive. I would have given all my talent to Mr. Stay in a second, if it would make him happy. Or to Dorsey Ebbins. I drove straight to the Methodist Hospital, feeling a great desire to give my talent to someone who would be made happy by it.

Mr. and Mrs. Bynum were there. Sally’s parents. It was one of the many times when it would have been better for me not to be drunk. Unfortunately I had no choice. We spotted one another in the lobby of the Methodist Hospital, immediately after I walked in. I guess they had seen the picture of me on my book. I knew them because they were frightening. They were both tall, taller than Sally. Their faces blotched with anger the minute they saw me and they both got up from their seats and came toward me. Their looks were every bit as hot and insolent as Sally’s had been that afternoon. She had her mother’s cheekbones. Her father had hands like small hams. When I held out my hand to shake with them Mrs. Bynum glared down at me.

“We won’t shake your filthy hand,” she said. “You’re hog drunk, for everybody to see.”

“Boy, you been in a whorehouse all afternoon or where
you been?” Mr. Bynum asked. He leaned over me threateningly.

“Is Sally here?” I asked. I was needing all my strength just to face them. I had no immediate strength available with which to argue.

“She’s named Lorena, after my momma,” Mr. Bynum said. “We’ll see the last name’s changed. Two hours old, precious little baby girl. That’s all you’ll ever need to know about her. You just get back to your whores. Me and Mrs. Bynum have had a gutful of you.”

“She was right about him, Lloyd,” Mrs. Bynum said. “Look at that hair.”

“I see it,” Mr. Bynum said. “He don’t even have a decent suit of clothes. He’s just a goddamn young whoremonger.”

I was trying to dig in, but the hospital floor was awfully slick. They were ugly people. They couldn’t have my daughter. They could have Sally, but not my daughter. I had to fight my way up. I couldn’t see one good quality in their ugly, angry faces. Mrs. Bynum looked like the kind of woman who would tear off a dead foe’s genitals after a battle. Mr. Bynum kept leaning over me. Their knuckles were white with the need to hit.

“I want to see my child,” I said.

“Don’t call it yours, you little sonofabitch,” Mrs. Bynum said, in a guttural voice. “My daughter had it. You ruined her name. You and your goddamn book talk. My daddy was alive he’d have seen you dead by now.”

It was blood fury in her face. Mr. Bynum was the same.

“I married her decently,” I said.

“We know all about you,” Mr. Bynum said. “We know about your Hollywood whore. Tried to drown our daughter. I oughta lay you out, right here in this hospital.”

I wasn’t going to be able to hold against them. Not then. They had been waiting, building up fury, and I had stumbled
in, unprepared. I was slipping on the floor. I would have to retreat, back away, take a fresh run at them some other day.

I quit talking. I turned and left. They followed me, arguing about whether or not to have me arrested.

“Get the police, Lloyd,” Mrs. Bynum said. “They’re apt to never find him if we let him get away now. His filthy friends will hide him out.”

“Naw. It’d get in the papers if I do,” Mr. Bynum said. They were three steps behind me on the hospital sidewalk, too furious to let me out of their sight. It was drizzling rain.

“He ever comes near that little child I’ll fix him myself,” he said. He had a thick, slurred East Texas voice, made raw and ugly with anger. Finally his voice burned me too deeply. I didn’t want to fight, really. I just didn’t want to hear either of their voices again. I was pretty tired. I stopped and faced them.

“If you two awful people don’t stop following me I’ll have
you
arrested,” I said. I knew it was a vain boast, but it shut them up for five seconds.

“What’s that?” Mr. Bynum said.

“I don’t want you following me,” I said. “I don’t like you. No wonder Sally’s so cheap. I feel sorry for her. Maybe that’s why I married her. You two shouldn’t be allowed to raise chickens, much less children.”

Mr. Bynum couldn’t believe his ears, but Mrs. Bynum believed hers. Her face contorted with anger. It had been ugly enough before it contorted. “Hit him, Lloyd!” she said. “Hit the little sonofabitch.”

He certainly hit me. I saw his arm move, but I didn’t feel anything. It knocked me into the wet grass. I didn’t feel my left ear until it really began to hurt, about an hour later. As soon as I realized I was down I sat up, holding my ringing
head. The Bynums stood over me. For a moment things were almost comic.

“You’re calling
our
daughter cheap?” Mrs. Bynum said. “You! The way you look?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said. “She’s pretty cheap. You ought to meet some of her acquaintances.”

Mr. Bynum was dying to hit me again. He was clenching and unclenching his fists, waiting for me to get up. Mrs. Bynum waited too.

“Yank him up from there, Lloyd,” she said. “He’s too big a coward to stand up and fight.”

I was ready to fight them, all right. The comedy of it all had worn off. But then it occurred to me I shouldn’t. Probably I would have to make peace with them sooner or later, if I was ever to see the baby that had just been born. I looked at the vast hospital and tried to imagine the tiny creature in it. She was a girl. She might need me. I had better try discretion, for the sake of whatever future there was. Without speaking I scooted back on the grass and got to my feet. I tried to walk away in the squishy grass but Mr. Bynum was immediately after me and hit me again, this time from behind, on the neck. It wasn’t a square hit, but it put me off my feet again. I was very wet and muddy. I sat up again. Mrs. Bynum had followed us onto the wet grass, hoping to see more of the massacre. I looked at Mr. Bynum and saw it was no use. He still had his fists clenched. He would probably knock me down three or four more times before I could get to my car.

“Ruined our daughter for life,” Mr. Bynum said heavily. Maybe he really believed it. If he hadn’t been so awful I might have felt sorry for him. But I couldn’t feel sorry for him.

“Cunt and prick and fuck and shit,” I said, looking at Mrs. Bynum.

It startled her. “What’s that?” Mr. Bynum said. He leaned over me, fists doubled up.

“Vagina, fallopian tube, penis, scrotum,” I said.

It took them both aback. I meant for it to.

“That ain’t what you said,” Mr. Bynum said. But I had him slightly off guard.

“No sir,” I said. “What I said to Mrs. Bynum was cunt and prick and fuck and shit.” I pronounced each word very distinctly. The Bynums were silent. The encounter had taken a bewildering turn. I gave them no time to regroup.

“I’m telling you all my favorite words,” I said. “Anus, penis, semen, nipple, clitoris, pubic hair. I can say them louder,” I said. “I can say them faster. Fuck screw ball. Fuck—screw—ball. Fuck screw ball fuck screw ball.”

I got to my knees. I spoke louder. “Lick suck lick suck lick suck,” I said. The Bynums were staring. My hair was wild, I was wet and muddy, I was rising from the grass chanting terrible words. I rose, I chanted.

“Titillate, masturbate, cunnilingus,” I said. “Cunt prick fuck shit.”

I got a little louder as I walked toward Mrs. Bynum. “Cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt,” I said. I turned toward Mr. Bynum. “Nipple nipple nipple nipple,” I said. I was chanting. I was getting louder. They looked scared. I had them backing up.

“You maniac!” Mrs. Bynum said. Her voice wasn’t steady anymore. “I want to go in, Lloyd.”

They turned and left, but I didn’t stop. I followed them up the sidewalk, weaving from side to side and chanting “Cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt” as if it were a football cheer. Mr. Bynum took Mrs. Bynum’s arm and hurried her on. They stopped at the hospital door and looked back at me with expressions of complete confusion on their faces. We looked at one another. I stopped the obscenities.
“Sexual intercourse,” I said quietly. They knew my weapons. They merely stared. Finally they went inside.

It had worked. For maybe a minute it had been fun. For maybe a minute I felt some little triumph in it. I enjoyed the expressions on their faces. They could not believe what they were hearing. But my sense of triumph vanished quickly. By the time I got back to El Chevy the triumph was gone, and I was desperately depressed. It had been a cheap victory, and I was aware of it. I should have chosen the expensive victory, which would have been to let Mr. Bynum knock me down three or four times. As it was I had really beaten myself. I looked at the windows of the big hospital and felt more hopeless than I had ever felt. I could barely find the hope to start the car. Probably now they could convince anybody that I was a maniac. I couldn’t imagine the baby as my daughter. I didn’t know what father and daughter meant, for us. But I could imagine her as a tiny creature and I knew I had probably just failed her in some major way. How many years would it take me to fight my way to her now? It might not even be possible, or good for her even if it was possible. I had no idea. I sat for a moment, wondering if there was any way I could sneak in past the Bynums and get a look at her. If I could see her I might have more of an idea what to do. But I didn’t try. I knew I was too tired. I had no strength left for subterfuge. Hope was draining out of me too fast. I had to get a tourniquet somewhere. I knew I had to. I couldn’t afford to lose too much more hope.

A kind of emergency had come, after all. My head rang and the rest of me felt numb. I drove to Emma’s and managed to walk up her driveway. She was there. She opened the door. She didn’t rush out and hug me, as she might have in former days. I was not returning in triumph. I was limping home.

Emma was still round. Her face was a little thinner, but the rest of her was still chubby. I was really at a loss for introductory words, and I don’t think Emma was prepared for me to look the way I looked.