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

I was leaving. Flap might think it was just part of my discipline, but Emma would be hurt. I turned around and started back.
    Sally gave me a questioning look. She was still combing her hair.
    “I forgot the Hortons,” I said. “I have to say goodbye to them.”
    Sally looked disgusted. “I don’t see why we have to go all the way back, just for them,” she said. “They won’t even be awake.”
    I decided not to answer. If she could be silent, so could I. I just drove. The streetlights were on but it was light enough that they looked odd. Rice slept under its light sheet of mist.
    “I’m not coming in,” Sally said, when I stopped at the curb in front of the Hortons’.
    I got out without looking at her and went to their door. Silence was not so hard to manage. But I felt bad in my stomach and had a hard time knocking on the door. I felt strange about leaving, again. It was not Houston I had to leave now, it was my friends. I knocked several times. Emma was hard to wake up, and Flap was harder. I could see Sally sitting in the car examining her hair. Finally Emma came to the door, a little bleary, in her white bathrobe. A troubled look came over her face when she saw me. Perhaps a troubled look was in mine.
    “Come in,” she said, holding open the screen.
    “Can’t,” I said. “Could you wake up Flap?”
    “Did someone die?” she asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “Please come in,” she said.
    I shook my head. I didn’t want to go into the kitchen. It would be harder to leave than my apartment and my table. They would try to make me eat breakfast. Emma frowned and went and got Flap. She must have impressed something on him, because he looked awake when he came to the door. His hair was down in his eyes.
    “I’m going to California,” I told them. “I’m quitting school.”
    They looked at me solemnly. I had meant to go into an explanation involving Razzy Hutton and one thing and another, but it didn’t come out. I couldn’t have stated the real reason—I felt too emotional. The Hortons were beautifully reticent. They left their questions in the same place I left my explanations. Emma’s round face changed as she watched me. Tactfully they didn’t ask me one thing. They accepted it as being a necessity of mine, something I might explain some other time.
    “Tell Sally goodbye for us,” Emma said, barely audibly. She was struggling to do her duty. They could see Sally sitting in the car.
    “Well,” Flap said. “Who will we drink with now?”
    “I decided last night,” I said, by way of explanation.
    I couldn’t think of another remark, one to leave on. As I was trying, Emma slowly started crying. Suddenly she yanked open the door and hugged me, sobbing.
    “You shouldn’t,” she said. “You can’t take care of yourself. You just look like you can.” Then she rushed back into Flap’s arms. As usual Flap looked sheepish. He rubbed Emma’s back.
    “She won’t be good to you,” Emma said, crying. “I know she won’t! She won’t be good to him—I know she won’t!”
    “I promise I’ll write you,” I said.
    At the car I waved and they waved. Sally still lookeddisgusted. I drove on out of Houston, thinking of Emma and feeling very down. I had nothing snug left. When I noticed things again we were in the gray grasslands beyond Rosenberg. Houston was somewhere behind, beneath great white banks of Gulf clouds. Sally was idly nibbling her nicely combed hair. We were both silence experts. She had always been one, and I had just become one. Godwin Lloyd-Jons’ pleasant snoring was the only human sound in the car.

6
    WHEN GODWIN woke up, one hundred and fifty miles later, he immediately began to talk about Stendhal. Unlike Sally and me, he seemed to feel wonderful. He lay back comfortably amid our clothes and talked almost without interruption for two hours. He was really conning me, like Scheherazade conned the Sultan—he knew I was itching to kick him out, and his talk was just a stall.