Love Among the Cannibals by Wright Morris

Author:Wright Morris [Morris, Wright]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0263-5
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2017-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

V

At a quarter to ten we picked up Billie Harcum in a Bullock’s Wilshire version of the femme fatal. Also five pieces of aluminum luggage, roughly the size of two steamer trunks, one of them so heavy Mac could hardly carry it to the car. You have to draw the line somewhere, so I said:

“Billie, dahlin’—there’s a luggage limit at the border. Two bags per bag. Which two do you pick?”

About forty minutes later we had those five bags packed into two. I managed to get her to leave about forty pounds of toothpaste, cold cream, shampoo, and skin food. Somebody had told her there were no white women in Mexico.

Purely as a matter of sentiment I drove down Sunset to the UCLA campus, then across the campus to the comer where I had first picked her up. All I wanted to do, I suppose, was reassure myself. See with my own eyes the spot that marked the scene of the accident. You won’t believe it when I tell you, but Mac saw her first. He simply said Wow, not particularly forceful, but the way it escapes you when you mean it. Up ahead, all alone on that comer, was my Greek. It looked to me like the purest coincidence. She had a sort of striped beach bag with her, nothing else, and I didn’t even swing the car over toward her. I just made the stop I had to for the STOP sign, then we sat there and watched her walk around to my side. I think she saw that I couldn’t speak, so she said:

“My mother is sick.”

“Who?” I said, then, “She is? For how long?”

“She’s going to be sick for just a week,” she replied.

“A week,” I repeated. So she had wangled a week. But nothing really registered until she said, “But if there isn’t room?” and looked at the two beside me in the seat. That did it. I turned to Mac and said, “You kids mind moving into the rear?”

“Christ no!” barked Mac, meaning every word of it, and started to climb over the back before he remembered Billie. He slid back and let himself out the door, the normal way. But when Billie stepped out, I wasn’t sure at all she would climb back in. But she had bought all that luggage, all those tropical rags, and she had probably told her friends what a dream she was living. So she decided to live it. The girls were never officially introduced. If you’ve ever noticed the way a big show dog will get into a car with a ficey small one, you’ve got the picture. It’s not one to take at the start of a trip.

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