Read Online All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel by Larry McMurtry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Larry McMurtry
Ads: Link
apartment and I had seemed to belong together, from the first, but I’m that way about all the places I stay. Without meaning to, I begin to love them, and then I sort of adhere to them, physically. Leaving is like tearing off skin—also it jumbled my insides. I felt like feeling snug, and I no longer felt snug. I couldn’t remember why I had decided to leave, but we were already half-packed. We didn’t own very much. Sally had gone to sleep on the floor, reading her annual. I wrapped my typewriterin a quilt and put it in the trunk of the car. If Godwin hadn’t been in the back seat I might have fitted the table in, but I didn’t feel up to dragging him out.
I put a pillow under Sally’s head and managed to make all my paperbacks fit neatly into two boxes. There were fourteen library books that had to be taken back. I took off my party clothes and put on my Levi’s and sneakers and went over to the library to return the books. It was about two o’clock in the morning and the man with the golf ball wasn’t in the parking lot.
Petey Ximenes was waxing the main reference room, under the watchful eye of the two white supervisors. He looked sulky and his ducktail was unkempt. On the fifth floor he could wax at his own pace, but apparently someone had decided his pace wasn’t fast enough. They brought him down where they could watch him. I had never seen him in such a foul humor—I think he was contemplating charging the two men with his waxer. I told him I was leaving, but I don’t think my words registered. He shook my hand absently when I told him goodbye. He didn’t even look at me. I couldn’t find Henry, so I left my library key on the circulation desk.
It was odd, going out the door and knowing I couldn’t just turn and go back in, if I thought of a book I wanted to read. The door clicked and I was really out. I could see Petey through the big window, still waxing. The quadrangle was full of soft, mushy summer mist. Somewhere above the mist I could hear an airplane. I walked over to Main Street and sat on the curb for a while, watching cars go by. The mist made the streetlights look faintly orange. I didn’t feel one bit drunk, anymore. I got up and walked eight or ten blocks down the orange, misty street and turned off into the darker streets and walked another hour or so.
Houston was my companion on the walk. She had beenmy mistress, but after a thousand nights together, just the two of us, we were calling it off. It was a warm, moist, mushy, smelly night, the way her best nights were. The things most people hated about her were the things I loved: her heat, her dampness, her sumpy smells. She wasn’t beautiful, but neither was I. I liked her heat and her looseness and her smells. Those things were her substance, and if she had been cool and dry and odorless I wouldn’t have cared to live with her three years. We were calling it off, but I could still love her. She still reached me, when I went walking with her. Her mists were always a little sexy. I felt, in leaving her, the kind of fond gentleness you’re supposed to feel after passion. It was the kind of gentleness I never got to feel with Sally. Its expression might be stroking a shoulder, or something. I had had such good of Houston, she had dealt so generously with me, always, that I walked and stroked her shoulder for an hour or two, in the night. Then, when she was really sleeping, I went home. I wanted to be gone when she woke up.
Almost at once Sally and I got into it. We finished packing in no time. She just had two suitcases full, and I had about as much. When I turned out the lights and shut the door to the apartment I noticed her trying to stuff Godwin’s feet inside the car.
“Where’s he staying?” I asked. “We can drop him off.”
“He’s going with us,” she said. “Didn’t you hear him at dinner? That was all he talked about.”
“I didn’t hear him say a word about it.”
“So what? You were blind
I put a pillow under Sally’s head and managed to make all my paperbacks fit neatly into two boxes. There were fourteen library books that had to be taken back. I took off my party clothes and put on my Levi’s and sneakers and went over to the library to return the books. It was about two o’clock in the morning and the man with the golf ball wasn’t in the parking lot.
Petey Ximenes was waxing the main reference room, under the watchful eye of the two white supervisors. He looked sulky and his ducktail was unkempt. On the fifth floor he could wax at his own pace, but apparently someone had decided his pace wasn’t fast enough. They brought him down where they could watch him. I had never seen him in such a foul humor—I think he was contemplating charging the two men with his waxer. I told him I was leaving, but I don’t think my words registered. He shook my hand absently when I told him goodbye. He didn’t even look at me. I couldn’t find Henry, so I left my library key on the circulation desk.
It was odd, going out the door and knowing I couldn’t just turn and go back in, if I thought of a book I wanted to read. The door clicked and I was really out. I could see Petey through the big window, still waxing. The quadrangle was full of soft, mushy summer mist. Somewhere above the mist I could hear an airplane. I walked over to Main Street and sat on the curb for a while, watching cars go by. The mist made the streetlights look faintly orange. I didn’t feel one bit drunk, anymore. I got up and walked eight or ten blocks down the orange, misty street and turned off into the darker streets and walked another hour or so.
Houston was my companion on the walk. She had beenmy mistress, but after a thousand nights together, just the two of us, we were calling it off. It was a warm, moist, mushy, smelly night, the way her best nights were. The things most people hated about her were the things I loved: her heat, her dampness, her sumpy smells. She wasn’t beautiful, but neither was I. I liked her heat and her looseness and her smells. Those things were her substance, and if she had been cool and dry and odorless I wouldn’t have cared to live with her three years. We were calling it off, but I could still love her. She still reached me, when I went walking with her. Her mists were always a little sexy. I felt, in leaving her, the kind of fond gentleness you’re supposed to feel after passion. It was the kind of gentleness I never got to feel with Sally. Its expression might be stroking a shoulder, or something. I had had such good of Houston, she had dealt so generously with me, always, that I walked and stroked her shoulder for an hour or two, in the night. Then, when she was really sleeping, I went home. I wanted to be gone when she woke up.
Almost at once Sally and I got into it. We finished packing in no time. She just had two suitcases full, and I had about as much. When I turned out the lights and shut the door to the apartment I noticed her trying to stuff Godwin’s feet inside the car.
“Where’s he staying?” I asked. “We can drop him off.”
“He’s going with us,” she said. “Didn’t you hear him at dinner? That was all he talked about.”
“I didn’t hear him say a word about it.”
“So what? You were blind
Similar Books
