Free Moving On by Larry McMurtry Page B

around I’d marry her,” Sonny said pleasantly. He squished some bourbon around in his mouth as if it were mouthwash. “If I was to get married, then you could sit around out here and read magazines for the rest of your goddamn life.”
    “I can, anyway,” Eleanor said. “As a matter of fact that’s what I’ve done most of my life. I love to sit out here and read magazines. I expect to do essentially that until I die.”
    Sonny sagged in his chair, one foot on the railing of the balcony. He looked very tired and said nothing more. Eleanor filed her nails. The exercise, the shower, and the breakfast had left her feeling good, but slightly lethargic; it was pleasant not to have to move. In a few minutes Lucy came in with Sonny’s breakfast, two large covered trays. Under each cover was a platter with a rare steak on it. There was also a bowl of green onions, some hot bread and a plate of butter, his whiskey bottle and a bowl of cracked ice.
    “You’re worth your wages, Lucy,” he said, pulling himself up to the table. Lucy was a heavy aging Negress who had done all her aging on the Guthrie ranch, most of it as Eleanor’s personal maid. She had three gold teeth, a house in town, and enough sense to get herself out of the way when her mistress was in certain moods. “Thank you, Mr. Sonny,” she said and left. In other moods, when Eleanor was gay, Lucy and Sonny enjoyed teasing each other. They were both expert at banter.
    Sonny bent to his steaks and ate silently. Eleanor looked him over in quick glances. He had probably slept in the hearse, if he had slept. There were little flecks of lint in his black hair, and even a few stuck to the hairs at his wrists. He cut the steaks quickly and skillfully with a small steak knife and ate them without lifting his eyes from the plate, now and then crunching one of the garden onions in two bites, and now and then sopping a hunk of the hot French bread in the drippings from the steaks. The flash of his teeth as he bit into the green stem of an onion caused her to look away, back at her nails.
    When he finished he poured some more bourbon into his glass, tilted back his chair, and put both boots on the railing. He grinned at her happily.
    “Hardly anything beats a good meal,” he said. His voice was fresh again. He often seemed able to shrug off fatigue, to freshen himself by some internal movement, some twist within himself.
    “Well, I’m glad we could oblige you,” she said, looking him in the eye. Sonny’s gray-blue eyes were burglers, always looking for a crack, a lock left unlocked, a tear in one’s screen. They had been lovers for fifteen years, but his look still made her feel stubborn. He crunched a piece of ice between his teeth and looked down idly at the three gardeners.
    “I got to be gettin’ to Phoenix,” he said. “Thought you might want to ride along. We ain’t been nowhere together lately.”
    For a second it was on the tip of her tongue to make a bitchy comeback, but she was suddenly touched with discouragement and instead straightened her legs beneath the table and looked down at her bare toes. She had tried to bitch him away on many occasions and had never succeeded, and anyway he was Sonny and she didn’t feel bitchy. She smiled a little wearily and raised an eyebrow.
    “Where did we ever go together except to bed, old buddy?” she said.
    Sonny squinted at the sky, then got up suddenly and went into the bedroom. He came back with a package of her cigarettes. He lit one and tossed the match onto his steak plate.
    “I took you to some dances,” he said. “And a bullfight down in May-hi-co. Them dances wasn’t much, I admit. We must have gone somewhere, we been in the papers often enough.”
    “That’s because I’m Eleanor Guthrie,” she said. “If a man so much as holds my coat we’re in the papers, at least in Texas. It’s one of the small disadvantages of being an heiress. Of course it usually flatters the man who holds my coat.