Still Wild by Larry McMurtry

Author:Larry McMurtry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

I was buzzed and bloated as I waddled over to Dime Vid in the blazing afternoon heat.

The woman working at Dime Vid smiled broadly at me when I walked in. I was the only one in there besides her. She was old, maybe seventy, but she wore bright, plastic little-girl barrettes in her long gray hair. “You’ve just been drinking next door,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. I handed her a buck. “Dimes, please.”

She counted me the dimes from her change belt and disappeared. I put three in Asteroids.

I didn’t do very well at Asteroids. In my first game, I lost all three ships before she returned with two beers. My score was around 2,000. You need 10,000 for a free ship.

She handed me an icy Coors, already popped open. If I had known the Dime Vid lady was giving out free beers, I would have gone there first and skipped the Bay Horse. “Thanks,” I said.

“You’re playing all wrong,” she said. “Save one asteroid on the screen and wait for the flying saucers to come out.”

She swigged her beer and shifted her dentures with a clicking sound. Her electric-pink gums and her white teeth were too perfect. They looked wrong in the middle of her weathered, roasted face. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re a doctor and you came to relieve some stress.”

“I design cement benches,” I said. “Now I design cement trash cans.” I ran my fingers through my hair to show her the cement dust. She didn’t notice.

“Out early for the holiday weekend?”

“A book of Scott Baio pictures scared me.” I took my last swig of beer. It was still cold enough to hurt my teeth. I lost my second ship then. It exploded with a dry poof at around 8,000.

“Chachi?”

I tried to explain Lou’s Love Drive, how it frightened me a little, and I forgot about the strategy that she had suggested. I blithely blasted away at all the floating asteroids on the screen. Only one saucer came out. I missed it.

“You know,” she said, “you can love all different people and things, but when you dig through it all—save that last asteroid—when you dig through it all, the love is the same.”

“Only sometimes it’s illegal,” I said.

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