The Road Narrows As You Go (7 page)

What about
Doonesbury
? said Frank, gamely. Not that I'm interested in politics or satire but it
is
popular. Can we crush its popularity somehow?

Trudeau slaps few sticks, she agreed. Maybe the violence in
Doonesbury
is the satire? I kind of revere
Doonesbury
, but history will show there's lots of exceptions to my theory, because it's just a theory, but think about it, most of the strips lacking violence time has forgotten.

And so what about
Strays
? Where's its violence?

Ping-Pong. Violent games of Ping-Pong.

Of course. Frank moved in closer to her. Love the Ping-Pong.

They whack each other really hard with those little white balls.

Wendy, I feel this terrible desire to kiss you right now, said Frank as he put his tumbler down on the carpet and heaved towards her that very moment as if to.

You mean me?

Would you let me? Celebrate with me, Wendy. We're on the cusp of something. I feel—

What about your high school sweetheart?

Who?

Don't you think your wife would mind if you kissed me? Wendy touched the wedding band on his finger as his left hand travelled up her thigh.

Who told you? Was it Gabrielle?

Well
?

He did not but almost touched his hair. I thought we were in San Francisco. Heart of the free love movement. My wife was raised here, she's her own woman, he said. She went to college in Berkeley. Her English profs taught her all about free love. Lately our friends think we should try swinging, like they all do. Key parties. Saunas. I never. Susan—my wife— never went for any of it either, except to witness the debauched as fodder for her creative writing assignments, and she told me if I ever did swing not to tell her. So I won't.

He set his palm on the side of her face and dragged his ring down her cheek. A siren going by outside the open window made it sound like he
was ripping a police car out of her face. I've never done this before. I'm happily married. I just want to kiss you right now.

So you keep secrets?

Secrets are my job, said Frank without hesitation. He kissed her once. Don't you keep secrets, Wendy?

She pulled back to inspect her feelings. Sure, want to know one of mine? I'll tell you two. Wendy isn't even my real name (she kissed him), a friend gave it to me, a very dear friend, so I kept it. And I'm not from around here. You're going to have to get me a green card (she kissed him). Gabby's paid me in cash all this time. I told her I hate banks, don't trust them. Might be why she thought I would be so tough to convince of this deal, come to think of it …

When she put some distance between them this time, moving her hips on the loveseat made the whole room temporarily expand.

Frank dismissed her confessions with words almost breathless with lust, and once more he closed the gap: You're not the first client I have in this situation, not a citizen, with a criminal record, these are pretty common problems in business. Never mind a work visa, taken care of. I'll have one for you in a month or two. This deal we struck tonight means a lot more to me, to my future, than tiny details like a pseudonym. And a record can be wiped clean if it makes you feel any better. I've done a lot of deals with dicier people than you, a lot dicier, but this deal makes me more excited than any other because it's going to help someone creative make a lot of money—that's
you
, Wendy. And in this moment, kissing you feels right, on such a special night for us, and honestly I find you irresistible.

Gabby said we met once before but I don't remember. Where did we meet?

One hint: Blue squares.

That opening at Justine's? Drowsy art, so much free wine. That night is a blur. I went with Hick and left alone. What did we talk about?

You told me I had the kind of face you wanted to kiss.

You
are
a salesman. She moved in closer and pressed herself hard against him.

Ow! Frank sat upright and touched the flesh over his heart where he'd been stabbed.

She pulled the Rapidograph out of her bra. Force of habit, she said and underhanded the pen across the room towards her purse.

Wendy knew this would happen the moment Gabby said his name.
Sometimes you hear sex before you see sex
. Tensions at the name,
Frank Fleecen
, pulling her towards these kisses.

Want to know something about me? she asked.

Of course he did, he said he did as he kissed her neck and chest.

I have ideas, she said.

Yes, like what? Tell me. As he fondled her.

I want more than a Christmas special, she said.

Like what?

A hot-air balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

A hot-air balloon? That is a must. Of course. Absolutely. I'll arrange for it.

Breathless undressing. More lips than fingers.

I'd love to win the Reuben Award. She shivered at his caresses.

The what? What's that?

Oh, I dunno, it's only the big award they give out for the best comic strip of the year.

I'll look into this Reuben. I will, Frank whispered to her under the drum and bass of his heartbeat. His temperature rising, face pinkening, he undid his collar, then the rest of the buttons.

I want to meet the president, Frank.

Me, too. Me, too. I must sit down with him. Business to discuss, deregulation and so on. We'll make it happen, Wendy. Together.

Really? Let's make that promise right now.

I promise.

Frank was Popeye, she was Olive Oyl, and right away it was arms and legs flying this way and that and a thick fragrant fog of perspiration in the middle where their bodies connected. It was after midnight when they moved from making out, kissing hard and feeling each other up on the loveseat to the bed, where he took off her blue blazer, pulled away her riding boots, down went her blouse and tight black denim pants— they're naked on the sheets and life stood still, timeout, as they had sex for an hour or more. At one point while on top of him she saw his cellular phone out of the corner of her eye, he left it on the bedside table next to the rotary, it was so conspicuous, the size of Ignatz mouse's brick—so she picked it up and knocked him upside the head with it.

Ow! what was that for?

Temptations, she said and hit him again. And the rug stayed on the whole time.

That unstoppable rug. Sweat and rough sexplay mussed the rug to its limits but that was not enough to break the glue and dislodge it and no, no, no, he said he wouldn't let her touch, grope, pull, tear. No matter how hard she strove to make the rug fall off on its own accord, the thing stayed put, loyal to its master. She wanted to see him balder than Daddy Warbucks. Mr. Pinstripes. Mr. Zabaglione. Sex with Frank Fleecen was abrupt at first, as if his prick was a time machine and in less than a minute she was back in high school, that's how easy he was for Wendy to please. Maybe he wasn't lying when he said this was his first betrayal. Lucky for him she was feisty, she got him up and going again in no time. He was excitable and ejaculatory and fondled her until she was numb. He went longer with each subsequent go, like high school, he wanted to go as deep as possible into her, the dear boy, he wanted a lot of time with her breasts in his hands, nipples in his mouth, stirring him much like the mystery of the rug turned her on. Her breasts were natural and responded to his touch, his toupée was unnatural and untouchable and responded indirectly to her body language. His fake hair was vain but in its way
honest. The toupée meant Frank thought he had flaws. All she had to do was lean on him to make him come. His success in business didn't translate right away to the bed, and despite their difference in age and his boiling over with ambition, she had the confidence and sex appeal here. Isn't this exactly the reason a girl from a frigid city moves to San Francisco? Yes, damn it all, it was. He kept praising her figure top to bottom and said how amazed he was by her. He wanted more and more. His whole face turned bright pink and ruddy like a dog's tongue. At one point he pulled out of her to swallow a glass of water. The rug was the shape of an animal, a fictitious predator, a druid's pet, she would make it
her
pet, since it was the absurd hairy image of their betrayal. It's all mine now, she growled and she clawed the air around his head as he swatted her away from the fakery glued to his scalp. At one point when she was rolling on top of and beneath the wave of her pheromones, surfing high on the deepest undertow, the reality of this affair sank in and made her shudder from the toes up. And then with a long sigh like water on fire she collapsed breasts-first onto his face. This was wrong, so obviously wrong, however much her bruised apple of a heart needed it, the compensation that sex temporarily offered her sorrow.
I'm hooked
, he said and kissed her once more before they fell soundly asleep for a minute or two. Sounds of horns, car stereos, and sirens blowing to distraction down on Post Street, and pedestrian drunks shouting misnomers; in the distance, shots fired, sirens bouncing off concrete buildings. The sound of a late-night liquor store's metal grille slammed shut and padlocked became a prison door in a dream Wendy had of solitary confinement that, when she inspected her cell, turned out to be a life sentence at the top of a sparsely treed and uninhabited mountain of gravel; this was not a sleeping dream of the unconscious but a lucid picture of her future.

Room service.

She opened her eyes to find herself alone in 707 and a maid knocking on the door, daylight flooding in through open curtains. The last of the
joint they'd smoked lay stinking like a small shit on the table beside her; she swept that into the drawer on top of the Gideon Bible.
Come back later, please.
Every last thing that happened to her in the previous twenty-four hours swam in front of her eyes: bursting out of a thick lagoon of wine-red mucus came the rotting and scaly creature of Hick Elmdales with bloated gills and webbed armpits. Then the six-eyed cannibal fish of her latest fuck swam face to face with Hick and she wanted to throw up.

I should never have left Hick's side, Wendy told us. I shouldn't have gone downtown to meet Gabby or Frank. I got a dumb-luck deal the day he died. I feel like those men from Disney. I stole my big chance out from under the mattress of a dying genius.

Last thing she saw before she left the hotel room was a note on top of the television set written with her Rapidograph.

It's five in the morning and I

know you'll understand if I

don't wake you as we return

to our regularly scheduled programming …

What a deal! & what a night!!

Someday you're going to have to

tell me all about yourself …

~FF

7

STRAYS

Come Sunday all Hick's friends had arrived at No Manors save one. No sign of Jonjay. Hick's first roommate and his best friend. Inspiration for Peter in his comic—Jonjay should be here. The wake was by now swamped. So many cartoonists that at one point we climbed out a window and sat on the lilypad of shingled rooftop to get some fresh air, burping and throwing empties into a rosebush below us as we watched newcomers wiggle and worm their way inside through the packed entranceway. A lot of big fish were here, Wendy kept reminding us. Pros. The rooms were jammed with
local spot illustrators for
The Face
,
Dynamite
,
Time
, and
Life
, commercial artists with clients like Budweiser or Super 8 Motels or K-tel and local mattress stores. Assistants on
Garfield, Li'l Abner
, and
Spider-Man
gossiping over the warts of their bosses with lush Hanna-Barbera animators airing out gripes of their own. And so on throughout the many rooms inside the quincunx-shaped No Manors. And we wondered of ourselves,
Could these tadpoles frog?

Buzzkaabuzzkabuzzkaa, or something. That quacking sibilant door buzzer went off again and again over the next forty-eight hours as more and more guests arrived straight from the airport or off the highway. Not all the cartoonists of California lived in California, it turned out. And it turned out to be the single most eventful weekend of our mere lives so far. Most of the people we met that weekend, we would never remember their names, but plenty of the guests, we knew their work by heart already. The instructions for a wake are clear, to stay awake overnight together with the body and to not leave before dawn. Of the hundreds who came for a night, many stayed for two. Our third night in the manor was by far the busiest so far, and the entire day Wendy spent asleep in her room with the door locked and plugs in her ears and a sore throat and so Rachael put us to work. Mark and Twyla bused dishes, Patrick ran out for more food rations and beverages, and Rachael cleaned up after messes and crashes, repaired damage, and protected the stereo from the debauched.

A hundred more cartoonists and friends were seated at the longtable drinking and drawing, smoking and talking. The mood was elastic, sentimental and brusque, as professional decorum and genuine emotion quickly sunk into fiery gossip and rude mime then climbed out of trash again for a moment of silence here and there, a toast to the genius, a pause to remember better days. The topics that weekend ranged from comics to toys to nuclear conflagration. A nuclear arms race, who can build atomic bombs faster, America or the Soviet Union, who can ready and arm atomic warheads sooner, hide missiles in more places around
the globe, and point them at more strategic locations, a race in which a first strike was the best defence against total annihilation—this was discussed heatedly in the same conversation as the neofatalistic popcorn movie
Escape from New York
, Henry Kissinger's bowel movements or lack thereof, and the prescience of J.G. Ballard.