Free All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel by Larry McMurtry

drunk.”
    “I must have been deaf drunk,” I said. “Anyway, he’s not going. We’re married now. We haven’t even decided where to go.”
    “I thought we were going to California.”
    It was the only place we had really mentioned, but I didn’t think we had made a firm decision.
    “That doesn’t have a thing to do with Godwin.”
    “Sure it does. He knows people there. You don’t know a soul. He can help us get settled.”
    “We’re grown,” I said. “We can get settled ourselves. Godwin can stay in the apartment tonight. Mr. Fitzherbert won’t mind.”
    “No,” Sally said, getting angry. “You don’t know how he is when he wakes up from a drunk. He’ll be crazy at first. He loves me and if he comes to drunk and finds me gone he’ll kill himself.”
    “Let him,” I said. “You married me. He has to stop loving you sometime.”
    “He doesn’t have to stop tonight,” she said sullenly.
    “I don’t have to take him anywhere, either,” I said. “I don’t want him loving you. I love you, remember?”
    “Don’t say stupid things like that,” she said. “You’re so fucking jealous you can’t see straight.” She kept trying to get his feet in the car, but his knees wouldn’t bend. I felt feverish, as if I were getting drunk again. I remembered they had been kissing and I went over and tried to make her let go of his feet. It infuriated her and she jabbed me suddenly with her elbow and hurt my ribs. I smacked her cheek, but it had no effect on her at all except to make her stop believing in my existence again. She neither spoke nor looked at me after I hit her, but she managed to get Godwin’s feet in the car. I felt guilty and at a loss. I wasn’t mad enough to drag him out. I went back in the dark apartment and sat on my table awhile. I had begun to long to stay in the apartment. Jenny Salomea was just across the yard, in the big, empty house. I felt I ought to say goodbye to her, but I didn’t see how I could. I felt as if I were running out on her and Mr. Fitzherbert. But I had to go. After Ithought a little I stopped worrying about Godwin. There were thousands of miles of desert between us and California. I could run off and leave him at a filling station if I needed to. He had plenty of money. He wouldn’t suffer.
    Outside, it was just graying. I went out and got in the car. Sally ignored my existence.
    “You needn’t think I’m taking him all the way,” I said.
    She was completely silent. She sat combing her hair.
    As we were driving past Rice Godwin suddenly burst awake. Before I knew what was happening he was trying to claw his way out a car window. Characteristically, he was purple in the face, and he seemed to be frightened out of his mind. When he couldn’t get out the window he tried to come over the seat.
    “Bloody kidnapers,” he yelled. “Let me out! Don’t you know it’s a capital crime?”
    I had to stop in the middle of the street. For about ten seconds Godwin was demonic. “Kidnap! Kidnap!” he yelled. No one was around. Sally screamed at him and I stiff-armed him two or three times, until he fell back panting amid our clothes.
    “Fucking white slavers,” he yelled. “Why have you drugged me? Is this the Ivory Coast?”
    Sally knew how to handle him. She pressed her hands over his eyes. “Calm down, Godwin,” she said. “You’ll be all right. It’s just us.”
    He panted for a while and then grew calm. “Head’s splitting,” he said. “Frightful dream. I was in a brothel. Arabs were abusing me.”
    “We’re going to California,” Sally said.
    “You’re not,” I said to Godwin, so there would be no doubt about my position. But he was in no state to be talked to.
    “It seems an abrupt departure, if I might say so,” he said,his voice growing softer. “My dear children. Splitting head.” Then he went back to sleep.
    I drove out South Main for two or three miles and then remembered the Hortons. I couldn’t leave without telling them that