“No, it didn’t feel like it.” I drank the rest of my coffee, which was cold. The creamer had formed a skin across the top that stuck to my lip in a wrinkled little sac that I picked off and set on a napkin. Horrible.
“Let’s go to my place,” said Ultra. “Let’s keep this rolling. Drop some Molly. Drink a little wine.”
“I’m broke,” I said.
“This is friends. This isn’t business. This is two adult individuals in Billings who don’t keep normal hours or have relationships and may as well pass out together, not alone.”
“Romantic,” I said.
“I think it’s romantic. I think it’s about as romantic as it gets.”
Years later, when I was living in Las Vegas flying Grand Canyon tours for a nice salary that could have supported a family if I’d had one, I thought back to that line and realized she was right.
When Crush reappeared a week later, a Friday night, his eyebrows were completely gone. He looked like a man who’d been sleeping in his clothes and eating out of a microwave, sporadically. His earlobes were badly sunburned, which seemed strange, since Billings had been cold and overcast, and his fingernails were different lengths, the ones on his right hand trimmed, the left ones long. I asked him where he’d been, what he’d been up to, but he busied himself with his orders and blew me off. Oasis was crazy that night, a pizza jam, as though there was no other source of food in Billings. Coming and going with our deliveries, we repeatedly missed each other in the shop, and not until five or so did business slow down enough for me to try to question him again.
This time he answered. “Tarpon Springs,” he said. “A Greek sponge-fishing village on the Gulf Coast. Except now there aren’t many sponges left. Fished out.”
“You went to Greece?”
“It’s in Florida.” He bit his left thumbnail down to match his right one as Ray ghosted by with his haul from the night’s frenzy, headed for the Magic Diamond, jazzed. The machines had been good to him lately, but still no cheese. He’d learned to count on us to handle that part.
“Florida,” I echoed once Ray was gone. I’d never visited and didn’t plan to. My dad had lived there, near Pensacola. Florida is the state we stage our wars from. Florida and Texas. Consistent weather.
Crush brought out his phone, a new model, extra wide. He typed with his left hand, with his long nails. It made a bony clicking sound, so ghastly. I recognized the website when it popped up. First, there was a tiny pink heart, which beat, grew larger.
“You should see this,” he said. “It’s what happened to our love. It’s what happens to love in general now.”
“That’s okay,” I responded quickly, but Crush went on ahead. I’m sure that he’d heard me, but he was being hateful. And he knew it was late enough that I’d look at anything — the garbage hour, when your mind is empty and people like us hardly care what fills it up.
She wasn’t okay. That was clear from the first frame. Was it live or a recording? Like I’d ask him. She lay facedown on the bed under the poster, her naked legs tight together, mermaid style. Her hair was Ronald McDonald red. A wig? I knew it wasn’t a still shot because a meter was clicking away in the corner of the screen, racking up the charges for our visit. I waited for her to move. I got my hopes up. She didn’t move. Her bear was at her side. It looked cuter than last time, fluffier, less crumpled. I concentrated on its little paws, or at least I tried to. It was late. The brain goes wherever it wants at that hour, seeking energy, seeking a target, seeking heat.
“I’m sorry I’m making you watch this,” Crush said, sighing.
“It’s okay,” I replied.
And it was in a way, I’ve decided, since we weren’t there.
Motherlode
by Thomas McGuane
Jordan
Looking in the hotel mirror, David Jenkins adjusted the Stetson he disliked and pulled on a windbreaker with a cattle-vaccine logo. He worked for a syndicate of cattle geneticists in Oklahoma, though he’d never met his employers — he had earned his credentials through an online agricultural portal, much the way that people became ministers. He was still in his twenties, a very bright young man, but astonishingly uneducated in every other way. He had spent the night in Jordan at the Garfield Hotel, which was an ideal location for meeting his ranch clients in the area. He had woken early enough to be the first customer at the café. On the front step, an old dog slept with a canceled first-class stamp stuck to its butt. By the time David had ordered breakfast, older ranchers occupied several of the tables, waving to him familiarly. Then a man from Utah, whom he’d met at the hotel, appeared in the doorway and stopped, looking around the room. The man, who’d told David that he’d come to Jordan to watch the comets, was small and intense, middle-aged, wearing pants with an elastic waistband and flashy sneakers. Several of the ranchers were staring at him. David had asked the hotel desk clerk, an elderly man, about the comets. The clerk said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about and I’ve lived here all my life. He doesn’t even have a car.” David studied the menu to keep from being noticed, but it was too late. The man was at his table, laughing, his eyes shrinking to points and his gums showing. “Stop worrying! I’ll get my own table,” he said, drumming his fingers on the back of David’s chair. David felt that in some odd way he was being assessed.
The door to the café, which had annoying bells on a string, kept clattering open and shut to admit a broad sample of the community. David enjoyed all the comradely greetings and gentle needling from the ranchers, and felt himself to be connected to the scene, if lightly. Only the fellow from Utah, sitting alone, seemed entirely apart. The cook pushed dish after dish across her tall counter while the waitress sped to keep up. She had a lot to do, but it lent her a star quality among the diners, who teased her with mock personal questions or air-pinched as her bottom went past.
David made notes about this and that on a pad he took from his shirt pocket, until the waitress, a yellow pencil stuck in her chignon, arrived with his bacon and eggs. He turned a welcoming smile to her, hoping that when he looked back the man would be gone, but he was still at his table, giving David an odd military salute and then holding his nose. David didn’t understand these gestures and was disquieted by the implication that he knew the man. He ate quickly, then went to the counter to pay. The waitress came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth, looked the cash register up and down, and said, “Everything okay, Dave?”
“Yes, very good, thanks.”
“Put it away in an awful hurry. Out to Larsen’s?”
“No, I was there yesterday. Bred heifers. They held everything back.”
“They’re big on next year. I wonder if it’ll do them any good.”
“They’re still here, ain’t they? I’m headed for Jorgensen’s. Big day.”
Two of the ranchers had finished eating and, Stetsons on the back of their heads, chairs tilted, they picked their teeth with the corners of their menus. As David put his wallet in his pocket and headed for the door, he realized he was being followed. He didn’t turn until he was halfway across the parking lot. When he did, the gun was in his stomach and his new friend was smiling at him. “Name’s Ray. Where’s your outfit?”
Ray had a long, narrow face and tightly marcelled dirty-blond hair that fell low on his forehead.
“Are you robbing me?”
“I need a ride.”
Ray got in the front seat of David’s car, tucked the gun in his pants, and pulled his shirt over the top of it, a blue terry-cloth shirt with a large breast pocket that contained a pocket liner and a number of ballpoint pens. The flap of the pocket liner said, Powell Savings, Modesto, CA.