American Boy - Larry Watson [55]
I spoke into the warm hollow of her throat. “You did things with Lester Huston. Anything he wanted, you said. And you didn’t even like him.”
“Because I needed him. For a while.” She lifted her shoulder, but only slightly. It was the tiniest of gestures, but there was no misunderstanding it. This was not the twitch of a woman excited by passion, but rather that of an animal trying to rid itself of a fly.
I sat up straight. “And you don’t need me.”
“That’s right. I like you well enough, Matt. But I don’t need you. You think you and I have something in common, but when I look at you, I just see another guy who wants to tear off a chunk of me. And you know what? I don’t really need any more of your kind in my life. I don’t mind putting out, but from now on I want it to be with someone who can do me some good. More than taking me out of a crummy little apartment just to move me to a crummy little shack.”
I slid farther down the bench. “Is it Johnny? Is that who you need?”
“Oh, Matt! There is so much you don’t get. Johnny Dunbar isn’t interested in me. Not like that.”
“Is it the doctor then?”
There was a long pause. Louisa put her feet firmly back down on the floor that was pocked and punctured from the spikes of hundreds of golfers. She stood up. “He’ll come around,” she said. “Now go out in that other room. I need to take a leak.”
I walked out of the locker room and continued right out of the Merchants clubhouse.
The polished penny loafers that embarrassed me at the start of the evening now troubled me in another way. They were filling with snow, and I had barely started down the drive leading away from the golf course, trying to walk in the tire tracks of Johnny’s car. The wind was quickly erasing them.
A subzero night like this one had a smell, sharp and faintly antiseptic, and when I breathed it in my nostrils burned with cold. Somewhere far beyond this hilltop, grass grew and dirt sifted through the hand like flour. But much as I tried, it was impossible to imagine this in midwinter Minnesota. I had miles to go, my ears and feet already tingled with cold, and frostbite seemed a real possibility.
Out here everything was a shade of blue—the dark blue of the winter sky, the darker blue of tree trunks and fence posts, the pale blue of the snowfields. The moon had drifted south and risen higher, its light not much more helpful than a star’s.
The road paralleled Harp Creek, which also served as a water hazard along the fifth hole. I’d driven any number of balls into it over the years. The creek was iced over now, and because I’d walked that terrain often, I could tell how impressively the snow had drifted along the fairway.
Perhaps it was all the cold and snow that caused me to think, when I saw the white Valiant in the distance, that it was just another snowbank, mounded high by the wind alongside the road. But when I came closer and recognized the dark rectangles of its windows, I ran, or as close as I could come to a run without slipping on the packed snow or out of my shoes.
The car’s lights and engine were off. Two of its tires were on the road, and two on the shoulder. Johnny was folded over the steering wheel, passed out or simply sleeping on his own crossed arms. I rapped repeatedly on the window, and eventually he came around. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see me.
He rolled down the window. “Matt. How long ... did you ... you know? With Louisa?”
“What the hell are you doing here? Are you okay?”
“I started to drive, but I knew . . . I couldn’t.... I was fucked up. Like Lester said. Too fucked up. I was going to give you two hours and then—” He looked past me, or tried to, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. “Where’s Louisa?”
I opened the door. “Scoot over. She’s back at the clubhouse. Waiting for you to rescue her.”
“What did you—?”
I got behind the wheel and started the car. “Not a goddamn thing. Unless you count making an ass out of myself. And how the hell did you get so drunk