Moving On by Larry McMurtry Page A

breathing.
    “Uh, yes ma’am, it’s kinda racy,” he said.
    “Patsy. Not ma’am.”
    “Oh,” he said. “Patsy.”
    She felt cramped and sat with her back against her door, her legs on the seat, the soles of her feet pressed against Jim’s leg. There was nothing to do but watch the distances, gray and wavery with heat, and so endless.
    “God,” she said. “I had forgotten this desert. Couldn’t I just fly from El Paso and meet you gentlemen in Phoenix?”
    “Sure,” Jim said. “No problem about that. We can drop you at the airport as we go through. You’ll have to change clothes, though. We’ll find a station.”
    But when they arrived in El Paso three hours later and Jim asked her if she still wanted to fly, she shook her head. She did not like to do things alone, and it made her feel a little low to think that Jim was so obligingly going to let her fly. Another four hundred miles of desert with Jim and Peewee was a lot better than a pointless night alone in some motel in Phoenix.
    “You would just put me on a plane, wouldn’t you?” she said.
    “Why not? You’re grown. You have a right to fly to Phoenix if you’d rather. I know it’s boring poking along in this car.”
    “You’re just glad to get rid of me because my rest room habits aren’t to your liking,” she said sulkily, looking at the bare brown mountains behind the town. “Somehow I’ve been offended. Probably if I went on a plane you and Peewee would scoot right over to Juárez and carry on with women of the night. I know your types. Marriage vows mean nothing to you.”
    Peewee listened open-mouthed, amazed. She looked back at him sternly and he shut his mouth. He decided he had made some horrible mistake. He should not have let her see him reading that book. Clearly she had figured out that he had had a hard-on.
    Jim was in traffic, an annoyance after the open desert, and he was not at all impressed with Patsy’s shift of mood. “Oh, for shit’s sake,” he said. “You’re ridiculous. You brought up the airplane. I wouldn’t go to Juárez and you know it.” But it had crossed his mind that if Patsy flew, he and Peewee might make Juárez for an hour, to rest themselves from the road.
    Late afternoon depression fell on Patsy like a hot quilt and she felt ready to cry. “Don’t say things like that to me,” she said. “I’m sure they embarrass Peewee. You don’t love me. All you do is yell excretory words at me. I was pretty once, until you robbed me of my youth.” Tears ran out from under her sunglasses and she wiped them on her palms.
    “If you don’t go to Juárez it’s because you’re chicken,” she said. “Any man in his right mind would dash right to Juárez the minute he got rid of me. You’re both men of no spirit. Stop at that drugstore.”
    She grabbed her purse and went running into the drugstore crying, and Jim sat nervously at the wheel and tried to explain to Peewee that it was probably nothing serious, just one of Patsy’s little fits of depression. Peewee was terribly worried and nervous and had already decided never to accept another blind ride involving a wife. He racked his brain for some excuse that would allow him to get out and hitchhike to Phoenix. Patsy was beautiful but altogether too scary.
    “Don’t look so worried,” Jim said. “She does this sort of thing all the time. She’ll calm down.”
    “What’s gonna happen to us before she calms down?” Peewee said. “That’s what’s got me worried.”
    Patsy came striding back out of the drugstore carrying a number of boxes of Kleenex in her arms. She dumped them on top of the paperbacks, glowered briefly at Peewee, and sat down.
    “Drive on, you wretch,” she said. “I’ve decided to accompany you, even though I’m not wanted. Wither thou goest I might as well go. At least I’ve got some Kleenex now. I intend to cry a lot.”
    “You’ll go, but you’ll bitch about it,” Jim said, driving on.
    “I’ll bitch if I feel like