McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (7 page)

 
          
 
The minute we got in the study most of the men
sank into big shiny red chairs and waited listlessly for their brandy.

 
          
 
The only person who had actually seen me stick
the pugs was the Englishman I had too hastily taken for dead. His name was Sir
Cripps Crisp. Both his name and his powers of observation belied his manner.

 
          
 
"If you'd tried that with my Schnauzers
they'd have had your arm off at the elbow," he said, as we walked in
together.

 
          
 
A small Philippine manservant was soon
distributing brandy, under the watchful eye of Perkins. Senator Penrose trotted
around with a box of cigars, looking nervous.

 
          
 
His nervousness was evidently prompted by Jake
Ponsonby, who had settled himself in the largest, shiniest, and most centrally
located red chair. Then he carefully placed the tips of his fingers against one
another, and waited.

 
          
 
Most of the men seemed to know why he was
waiting, and made haste to snip the ends of their cigars and get
themselves
ready. Only Sir Cripps Crisp seemed indifferent
to hurry. He deliberated so long over the choice of a cigar that I thought the
Senator was going to cram one in his mouth and light it for him.
Alone among the company.
Sir Cripps seemed unaffected by the
fact that Jake Ponsonby had placed his fingertips together.

 
          
 
For his part, Ponsonby seemed equally
unaffected by Sir Cripps's prognostications over the cigars, though now and
then he made a little rippling motion movement with his fingertips, as a
pianist might loosen up a bit before addressing the keys.

 
          
 
Eventually Sir Cripps located a cigar that met
with his standards, allowed Perkins to cut and light it for him, and went off
to the most remote of the red chairs, where he resumed his impersonation of a
dead man.

 
          
 
The moment Sir Cripps's ass touched leather
John C. V. Ponsonby cleared his throat.

 
          
 
"Let us begin with the
Yemen
," he said. "I speak, of course,
of
North Yemen
.
South Yemen
is—or has been until very recently—ours. Whether the present administration has
the skill—not to mention the will—to maintain that highly desirable state of
affairs is perhaps open to question, but for now let us pass that question and
consider the more vulnerable—and, I need hardly add—the more vital north."

 
          
 
He then proceeded to consider
North Yemen
and the regions adjacent to it in a speech
of some twenty minutes duration, fetching up, finally, in the vicinity of the
Sudan
. As he spoke he tapped his fingertips ever
so gently against one another, as if he were pecking out the sentences on an
internal typewriter.

 
          
 
Each sentence came out perfect, edited as it
emerged, and ready to go straight into one of his columns. In fact, a day or
two later, glancing at one of his columns, I recognized a sentence or two,
though the column they appeared in happened to be about Korea, rather than
North Yemen.

 
          
 
If my initial respect for the sentences was
high, it was certainly no higher than that of the gentlemen who listened with
me. Ponsonby's stately periods must have been as familiar to them as their
wives’ menstrual rhythms, but— with the exception of Sir Cripps—their
attentiveness fell just short of worship. He was the orator, they were the
chorus, and they greeted his statements with big puffs of cigar smoke and
thoughtful nods of the head.

 
          
 
Occasionally some member of the chorus would
blurt out two or three sentences of response—"But Jake, there's the factor
of Sadat" was popular—during which unwanted interruption Ponsonby would
purse his lips as carefully as he placed his fingertips. When the interrupter
paused for breath Ponsonby went serenely on with his discourse.

 
          
 
When he reached the
Sudan
a rumble was heard from Sir Cripps, who
stood up and stuffed his cigar in the pocket of his dinner jacket. Fortunately
it had long since gone out.

 
          
 
"The Crown lost the
Sudan
, and now we have lost the women," he
said. "Personally, I would rather have the women, if they can be
found."

 
          
 
At that moment, as if released by some
celestial timer, the women began to pour through the door.

 
          
 
Whatever the women had been doing upstairs had
evidently refreshed them, because they were all in high, if not raucous, good
spirits when they returned.

 
          
 
The fuss they made upon entering would have
wakened the dead, but at that it was barely sufficient to awaken their menfolk.
Ponsonby's Augustan sonorities had done much to dissipate whatever tensions the
company entertained—so much, indeed, that about half the company was sound
asleep. Perkins had adroitly extracted half-spent cigars from a number of
gently snoring mouths, preventing them from either being swallowed or falling
out and burning holes in perfectly good cummerbunds.

 
          
 
Waking the gang was clearly thought to be
women's work, and the women set about it with a vengeance, emitting shrill,
drill-like peals of laughter and administering pinches, jabs, and an occasional
well-aimed kick, as the occasion required.

 
          
 
One by one the men awoke, several of them
exhibiting traces of surliness at the sight of their mates. Most of them simply
sat and blinked, trying to get their bearings.

 
          
 
While I was watching them blink, Cindy came
and stood at my elbow. She looked pleased, but it was hard to know what she was
thinking. Her healthy smell held few clues.

 
          
 
"I can't imagine why I brought you to a
respectable party," she said. "We could have just fucked."

 
          
 
We both looked at Cunny Cotswinkle, who was
going at her husband with such a vengeance that it was hard to tell whether her
intent was to wake him up or beat him to death.

 
          
 
Cotswinkle had failed into a deep
sleep—probably dreaming peacefully of
Yalta
, or the Treaty of Versailles, something
appropriate to his years and eminence; but his wife was not disposed to let him
dream in peace. To put it brutally, she was slapping the shit out of him, as
John C. V. Ponsonby looked on with what was possibly meant to be a smile.

 
          
 
"Jake's waiting for him to die,"
Cindy explained.

 
          
 
"Why?"

 
          
 
"Jake's writing his autobiography,"
she said. "It's called The Last Professional.' Actually, it's finished,
but he can't publish it while Dunny's alive, because Dunny's a professional,
too. I hope I'm around when he finally publishes it."

 
          
 
"Eager to read it,
huh?"
I said.

 
          
 
"Are you kidding?" Cindy said.
"I just wanta go to the parties. All the right people will give him
parties. They do anyway, but these will be better parties. People from
London
and
Paris
will have to fly over."

 
          
 
"Why is Mrs. Cotswinkle beating her
husband?" I asked.

 
          
 
"That's plain as a peanut," Cindy
said. "She just found out he's fucking Olivia Brown."

 
          
 
To Jake Ponsonby's evident disappointment,
Dunscombe Cotswinkle was not dead.

 
          
 
For that matter, he was not even subdued. As
the next-to-last professional, he did not take kindly to being slapped around.
When he finally got the sleep out of his eyes anger took its place. I twice saw
him try to backhand his wife, but both times Perkins caught his arm and
pretended to be stuffing it into a coat.

 
          
 
Within his limited domain, Perkins'
professionalism was equal to either Cotswinkle's or Ponsonby's.

 
          
 
If anything, Ponsonby was harder to handle.
The evening seemed to have taken a good deal out of him. He began to wobble, as
if his legs were made of rubber, and wandered off down the hall in search of
Lilah Landry.

 
          
 
Unfortunately, Lilah had just left with Eviste
Labouchere, the small French journalist. This fact surprised no one but me.

 
          
 
"Lilah's a star-fucker," Cindy said.
"Only she can't figure out who the stars are. On the whole I find her
vague.

 
          
 
"I think she's got Eviste mixed up with
Bernard Henri L6vy," Cindy added. "Can you imagine?"

 
          
 
I couldn't, since I had never heard of Bernard
Henri Levy. Naturally I didn't admit it.

 
          
 
At that point Ponsonby wobbled back in. Seeing
a tall woman, he assumed he'd found Lilah.

 
          
 
"My dear, they said you'd gone," he
bleated, staring upward toward Cindy's bosom.

 
          
 
Cindy just laughed her vigorous laugh.

 
          
 
"You got the wrong lady, Jake," she
said. "Lilah went home."

 
          
 
The news struck Ponsonby to the heart.
"It isn't time to leave. I haven't left.

 
          
 
"Premature, so premature," he added.
"The silly girl."

 
          
 
With that he turned abruptly and wobbled off
in search of a lower bosom. He promptly found one, too—it belonged to the
Guatemalan who was gathering up the brandy snifters. The maid was swifter of
foot than he was, but he trailed forlornly after her for a
while,
until she lost him completely by reversing her field and darting off toward the
kitchen.

 
          
 
"It's my impression that this means the
end of Western civilization as we know it," he said, as he came back by.

 
          
 
"Gee," I said, once he was out of
earshot. "Maybe Lilah should have stuck around."

 
          
 
Cindy wasn't worried about Western
civilization. "Let's split," she said.

 
          
 
The Penrose mansion was on N Street, while
Cindy's house was on Q, down the alphabet but up the hill.

 
          
 
It was a brisk night and we walked along
briskly, in tandem with it. Cindy seemed indignant, a state that comes
naturally to her.

 
          
 
"Pencil's had it," she said, after
half a block.

 
          
 
"Why?"

 
          
 
"She's always using me to entertain her
B—list," Cindy said. "That's why."

 
          
 
We continued along briskly until we were up
the steps and in the doorway of her house. Cindy flung her coat on a nice
French bench, not unlike the one in the Penrose hallway.

 
          
 
She had a tastefully appointed if slightly
predictable bedroom, in which only one thing really caught my eye: a white
football helmet covered with sparkles, of the sort commonly awarded homecoming
queens just as they are about to be crowned. This one sat on a walnut bureau
near Cindy's windows.

 
          
 
"Gosh," I said. "Were you a
homecoming queen?"

 
          
 
She had already shucked her dress. Before
answering she glanced at her watch and took it off, as she walked over to me.

 
          
 
"Of course," she said.
"Santa Barbara High."

 
          
 
For a daydream believer like
myself
it was the acme of something: the boy from the little
cowtown in the West, the homecoming queen from the far Pacific shore.

 
          
 
But for Cindy it was no big deal.

 
          
 
"Come on," she said. "Let's go
to bed. I gotta have my sleep."