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

But it was a brilliant stall, and anyway my spirit was at a low ebb. I let myself be conned. Sally was as silent as Stonehenge.
    From Stendhal Godwin went to Alexander Herzen, whose memoirs he had just read. From Alexander Herzen he went to literary hoaxes, and from literary hoaxes he went to the Portuguese epic. From the Portuguese epic he went to pornography and from pornography he went to Lady Murasaki. It was at Lady Murasaki that I began to suspect a con, but Godwin didn’t stop talking just because I was suspicious. From Lady Murasaki he went to Baron Corvo, from Baron Corvo he went to skaldic verse, and from skaldic verse he went to Ezra Pound. He even seemed to have read Sara Teasdale. He was only a sociologist, but the literatures ofthe world seemed to be at his fingertips. It was a virtuoso performance, two hours long. He told us all about the Angry Young Men, reviewed the life and works of John Stuart Mill and ended up discoursing on Uruguayan fiction. I admire virtuoso performances, and was an ideal audience. I listened and kept driving westward, through towns where the name of Stendhal had probably never been uttered. Sally was not so appreciative. I doubt she even realized it was a virtuoso performance, but if she had it wouldn’t have mattered. Godwin should have known better than to bore her, but he was intent on his performance. At Uruguayan fiction her gorge apparently rose.
    “Oh, shut up, Godwin,” she said. “Nobody wants to hear about all that stuff. I wish this car had a radio.”
    “It has one,” I said. “It’s just broken.”
    “Big deal,” she said. She was not in a friendly mood. Determined as I was to get rid of Godwin, I was almost grateful for him. He absorbed part of her unfriendliness.
    “Sorry, love,” he said.
    We stopped and ate in Del Rio. It was an overcast day and the barren country looked dismal. The fat carhop who served us looked dismal, and the three of us looked dismal too. None of us had cleaned up before setting out for the West. Godwin had monologued himself into a state of hoarseness.
    “I say,” he croaked, “did the three of us strike one another during the night? I believe we were all outrageously drunk. Wasn’t there some kind of row?”
    “Yeah,” Sally said. “You kissed me and Danny behaved like a horse’s ass.”
    “I just behaved like a husband,” I said. “What did you expect me to do?”
    “It was none of your business,” she said. “I always kiss people when I’m drunk.”
    “Now, now, now, now,” Godwin said. “Really, now.”
    “Have you actually read skaldic verse?” I asked.
    “I read the
Times Literary Supplement
regularly,” he said.
    “I don’t want to talk about reading,” Sally said. “You two should have got married. You both know too much about books.”
    I decided I had better remind Godwin he couldn’t go all the way with us. I didn’t want him to think I was a fool—or a marshmallow.
    “You have to get a bus back to Austin,” I said. “We can’t take you to California with us.”
    Sally looked at me as if I had said something very inhuman, but Godwin didn’t seem surprised. “You won’t abandon me here, will you?” he asked, looking out at Del Rio as if he expected to see vultures circling in the sky. I couldn’t really blame him. It was bleak country.
    “No,” I said. “You can ride with us to Junction and get a bus straight back to Austin.”
    “Righto,” he said gamely.
    But he was sly. We hadn’t driven twenty miles before he began to get sick. I knew immediately that it was just another performance, but this time it was the kind of virtuoso performance that Sally was susceptible to. Godwin was clever. He pretended he was trying to be stoic. Now and then he would groan, making it sound as if the groan had been wrenched from him inadvertently. Sally asked him what was the matter.
    “Don’t know,” he said. “Could have been the hot dog.”
    Slyly, he had eaten a hot dog, whereas Sally and I