Free The Desert Rose by Larry McMurtry Page A

wasn’t too sure what she thought about was lately she had been acting very maternal. It was a little like having two mothers, it meant basically two people you had to dodge instead of one, although it was no big deal dodging her real mother, maybe she saw her for ten minutes at breakfast and sometimes on Sunday. She spent a lot more time with Madonna, five afternoons a week at least and usually Saturday and Sunday too. Madonna said if you want to dance you dance every day, then if you have the energy to do other things, fine. But dance first. Even when Pepper first started with her, at five years old, she made it real clear that if you wanted to get anywhere with her you had to give up some other stuff.
    That was okay, Pepper did love the dancing, besides she could do whatever she wanted to at night, movies or dates or whatever. It was just that lately Madonna had gotten kind of possessive, and one thing that was clear was that she didn’t care for Buddy. Usually when the lesson was over Buddy would be waiting for her in the little Cadillac his father had bought his mother for her birthday. So far as Pepper could tell it must be a funny marriage Buddy’s parents had, his mother was usually in San Francisco and his father either in New York or L.A., they didn’t hang around town a lot. Of course Buddy had a Mustang they had bought him to go to college in but as he said, why drive a Mustang when you can drive a Cadillac. The thing he didn’t do was drive his father’s Mercedes. His father wouldprobably have killed him on the spot if he had even so much as scratched it—Victor was lenient about a lot of things but not about that car. According to Buddy his father had managed to talk his mother out of divorcing him because he didn’t want to give up half his millions, but the price was she could stay gone as much as she liked and fuck whoever she wanted to, although Buddy said that probably just meant nobody. One morning standing outside their bedroom he had heard her tell Victor that she had had about enough of penises and didn’t particularly want to ever see another one. Buddy had been kind of startled, he thought he was real cool where sex was concerned but hearing his mother say that had disturbed him or something, plus the remark had upset Victor so much he left and went all the way to Spain to think matters over.
    So for about the next month Buddy was paranoid about whether she was suddenly going to stop wanting to fuck him. He worried about it so much that she was about in the mood to do just that, tell him the deal was off, so long it’s been good to know you, it was exactly what he was expecting anyway although he tried to act like Mr. Confident.
    Madonna had never said anything against Buddy, but then she had never said anything nice about him either, and Madonna was usually quick to comment if she thought a boy was unusually good-looking. Pepper thought Buddy was great-looking and kept waiting for Madonna to maybe slip in a compliment but she never did, she ignored Buddy and once in a while asked about a boy Pepper had dated for a while named Woods Weeks, a total genius with computers and video games but nothing to compare with Buddy in the looks department. Buddy after all had been a model too, that was where they met, at a session out at Neiman’s. Buddy didn’t need the money, it was just that Victor knew the owner of the store socially and the manhad seen Buddy by the pool one day and suggested it, which pleased Buddy, he was pretty vain and proud of the fact that he photographed so well.
    That was how it all started with Mel. One of the other male models was gay and told Buddy about a rich guy he knew who liked to make home movies, it might involve getting naked but it wouldn’t involve any real action. The guy was grossly rich and if he liked your looks and the way you moved he would pay really well for just making a little movie of you walking around or standing on his diving board or something,