27

Charley checked into the Mockingbird Hilton in Dallas as Frank Arriminata. The reservation was waiting for him. Along with the room keys, the clerk handed him a large, heavy manila envelope, which had been scotch-taped at every seam. He told the room clerk that his baggage had been lost by the airline and asked where he could buy some clothes and luggage. The room clerk told him to take a cab to the Highland Park shopping center. Charley went into the coffee shop and had a real breakfast. He didn’t approve of airline food. He had never heard of anybody ever getting a good Italian meal on any airline, including Alitalia.

After ordering breakfast he opened the manila envelope. It contained a Texas driver’s license, a Mobil credit card, an AAA membership card, and an American Express card all in the name of Frank Arriminata. There was a heavy gold signet ring with the initials F.A. carved into it. He slipped the ring on his finger and stuffed the IDs into his wallet—after removing his own, putting the latter into the manila envelope, and addressing the envelope to his father in New York.

At five after ten he went out front, got a cab, and directed the driver to take him to Highland Park village. On the way out he saw that Dallas was the Brooklyn of tomorrow; the same low buildings, plenty of trees and sky; small houses with the occasional high-rise jutting up here and there, just like Bensonhurst. The people who lived here probably thought it was the greatest place in the world only because they lived here. He missed Brooklyn—known to anybody who knew anything about places as the Greatest Place in the World—and not just because he lived there.

He got out of the cab in front of the entrance to Sanger-Harris, a department store, so he went in and started buying. Using the fake credit card, he bought another suit, two shirts, some underwear and socks, a toothbrush, shaving equipment, a suitcase, and two identical cultured pearl necklaces—one for Mae and one for Mardell. He thought about the marvels of progress, how ten years before he would have had to carry a big roll of bills on him if he needed to shop like this. Progress was there to serve.

He walked around the shopping center, had some iced tea, and found a book called Lying Techniques whose cover said it had been twenty-two weeks on the bestseller list. He went into the movie house to cool off. He got back to the hotel just after three and went to bed. He woke up at four twenty and called Mardell. It was five twenty in New York.

“Mardell? Charley.”

“What can you possibly say to me, Charley?”

“Well—just for beginners—I can say that I love you.”

“Ah, Charley.”

“The note explained why we didn’t go to Marineland.”

“I talked to your father in Miami. I just talked to him again about twenty minutes ago.”

“We gotta straighten everything out, Mardell.”

“Your fiancée called me. I can’t stop thinking about that.”

“Well, stop thinking about it. She is not my fiancée. Can I help it if a woman walks around saying I’m her fiancé? I’m not engaged to her, and if she calls you again tell her I said that.”

“We’re going to have dinner tonight.”

“Who?”

“Your father and I.”

“This thing I’m doing down here—it’s going to tie me up until like the second week of November. Then I’m coming right home.”

“I just don’t know what to say to you.”

“Don’t say anything. Just say we’ll be together again very soon. Just give me a chance to straighten everything out.”

“I have to hang up now, Charley.” There was a soft sound, then the phone was dead. He couldn’t figure out whether things were better or worse than he thought. He stretched out on the bed and started to study the lying manual, but when he came to a part that said men were better liars than women, he sat up and dumped it in the wastebasket. Why didn’t they say that men who lied were better at it than women who lied? Did everybody lie? He had to watch himself.

He turned on the television and then sat in a low chair, staring at the tube but not seeing it. He let its familiar presence comfort him, his mind almost a blank in the American way that had been formed and molded by twenty-two years of television, but beyond its numbing edges he knew he was still in big trouble. He turned the sound off and let the bright, moving colors soothe him. There was a talking toilet seat commercial that was very well done, he thought.

He was to blame. He had let himself get involved with two women at the same time. He had cheated on two great women and now they were all paying for it. He felt such a wave of self-pity that he had to turn off the television and take a cold shower. He dressed in his new clothes and went down to the lobby to find out where there was an Italian restaurant.

They sent him to an Italian-type restaurant on Mockingbird behind the hotel. The pasta was out of a package and had been made with plain white flour. It lay there in lumps. The sauce was like hot ketchup. He ate the bread and the salad.

He passed a half-price bookstore on the way back to the hotel and bought a James Bond paperback; one guy who never had any problems with women. The book would get him through Saturday but he would rather have been doing his homework. In two weeks Roja-Buscando was going to be able to skunk him. She was never absent. She probably went to day high school just so she could walk into the class every night and try to make him look like a bum. When you came right down to it, she was a pretty terrific-looking head even if she was a Puerto Rican. She was like the color of the don’s almond cookies, with a great pair of eyes on her, and very smart. He sighed. She was absolutely going to skunk him. She was going straight to the head of the class and there was nothing he could do about it. God damn George F. Mallon!

He left for Tyler in the rented car at seven o’clock Sunday morning, made it across some pretty flat country, and found the Tyler airport. He called the rent-a-car place and told them where to pick up the car. A two-engine Piper was waiting for him and it flew him to New Orleans.