at Corpus Christi. I had barely missed a better deal, and so I could take my time getting out of Idlewild.
The flight took off with less than half the seats occupied. The whole country lay mistybright, impersonal, under a summer high, and we went with the sun, making noon last a long time. The worst thing about having a hundred and eighty million people is looking down and seeing how much room there is for more. A stewardess took a special and personal interest in me. She was a little bigger than they usually are, and a little older than the norm. She was styled for abundant lactation, and her uniform blouse was not. She had a big white smile and she was mildly bovine, and I had the curious feeling I had met her before, and then I remembered where-in that valuable book by Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly, the stewardess that "Author" runs into when he is on his way out to Mayo's. My stewardess perched on the edge of the seat beside me, back arched, smiling.
"Houston is going to be wicked hot,' she said. 'I am going to get me into that motel pool as fast as I can, and come out just long enough every once in a while to get a tall cold drink.
Page 53
Some of the kids just stay in the rooms, but I think they keep them too cold. It gives me the sinus. I layover there and go out at ten tomorrow, and somehow Houston is always a drag, you know?"
The mild misty blue eyes watched me and the mouth smiled and she waited for my move. You can run into the Tiger's Perpetual Floating House Party almost anywhere. At 28,000 feet, and at the same 800 fps muzzle velocity of a.45 caliber service pistol. Nobody leaves marks on anybody. You meet indirectly, cling for a moment and glance off. Then she would be that hostess in Houston and I would be that tanned one from Florida, a small memory of chlorinated pool water, fruit juice and gin, steak raw in the middle, and hearty rhythms in the draperied twilight of the tombcool motel cubicle, riding the grounded flesh of the jet-stream Valkyrie. A harmless pleasure.
For harmless plastic people, scruff-proof, who can create the delusion of romance.
But it is a common rudeness to refuse the appetizer without at least saying it looks delicious.
"I'd settle for Houston,' I said with a manufactured wistfulness. 'But I'm ticketed through to Harlingen."
The smile did not change and the eyes became slightly absent. She made some small talk and then swayed down the aisle, smiling, offering official services. Most of them find husbands, and some of them are burst or burned in lonely fields, and some of them become compulsively, forlornly promiscuous, sky sailors between the men in every port, victims of rapid transit, each flight merely a long arc from bed to bed.
I saw her later in the Houston terminal, stilting along, laughing and chattering into the face of a big florid youngster in a nine-gallon hat.
I was in Harlingen at a little after five, the sun high and blazing, the heat as wet and thick as Florida's. I rented an air-conditioned Galaxie and found a tall glassy motel with green lawns, pool and fountains, and checked into a shadowed icy room facing the pool. I showered and changed to sport shirt and slacks. I drove around. It was a village trying to call itself a city. Pale tall buildings had been put up in unlikely places for obscure reasons.
It was linked to Brownsville by the twenty-five mile umbilicus of Route 77, The George Brell residence was at 18 Linden Way, Wentwood.
Big plots, big sweeping curves of asphalt. Architectured houses, overhangs, patios, sprinklers, driveways and turnarounds pebbled in brown, traveler palms, pepper trees, Mexican gardeners, housewives in shorts, antique wrought-iron name signs. Number eighteen was blond stone, glass, redwood, slate. Formal plantings. A black Lincoln and a white Triumph in the drive, a black poodle in a window of the house, glaring out at the world.
I went back among the common people and found a beer joint. Standard opening conversation
The flight took off with less than half the seats occupied. The whole country lay mistybright, impersonal, under a summer high, and we went with the sun, making noon last a long time. The worst thing about having a hundred and eighty million people is looking down and seeing how much room there is for more. A stewardess took a special and personal interest in me. She was a little bigger than they usually are, and a little older than the norm. She was styled for abundant lactation, and her uniform blouse was not. She had a big white smile and she was mildly bovine, and I had the curious feeling I had met her before, and then I remembered where-in that valuable book by Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly, the stewardess that "Author" runs into when he is on his way out to Mayo's. My stewardess perched on the edge of the seat beside me, back arched, smiling.
"Houston is going to be wicked hot,' she said. 'I am going to get me into that motel pool as fast as I can, and come out just long enough every once in a while to get a tall cold drink.
Page 53
Some of the kids just stay in the rooms, but I think they keep them too cold. It gives me the sinus. I layover there and go out at ten tomorrow, and somehow Houston is always a drag, you know?"
The mild misty blue eyes watched me and the mouth smiled and she waited for my move. You can run into the Tiger's Perpetual Floating House Party almost anywhere. At 28,000 feet, and at the same 800 fps muzzle velocity of a.45 caliber service pistol. Nobody leaves marks on anybody. You meet indirectly, cling for a moment and glance off. Then she would be that hostess in Houston and I would be that tanned one from Florida, a small memory of chlorinated pool water, fruit juice and gin, steak raw in the middle, and hearty rhythms in the draperied twilight of the tombcool motel cubicle, riding the grounded flesh of the jet-stream Valkyrie. A harmless pleasure.
For harmless plastic people, scruff-proof, who can create the delusion of romance.
But it is a common rudeness to refuse the appetizer without at least saying it looks delicious.
"I'd settle for Houston,' I said with a manufactured wistfulness. 'But I'm ticketed through to Harlingen."
The smile did not change and the eyes became slightly absent. She made some small talk and then swayed down the aisle, smiling, offering official services. Most of them find husbands, and some of them are burst or burned in lonely fields, and some of them become compulsively, forlornly promiscuous, sky sailors between the men in every port, victims of rapid transit, each flight merely a long arc from bed to bed.
I saw her later in the Houston terminal, stilting along, laughing and chattering into the face of a big florid youngster in a nine-gallon hat.
I was in Harlingen at a little after five, the sun high and blazing, the heat as wet and thick as Florida's. I rented an air-conditioned Galaxie and found a tall glassy motel with green lawns, pool and fountains, and checked into a shadowed icy room facing the pool. I showered and changed to sport shirt and slacks. I drove around. It was a village trying to call itself a city. Pale tall buildings had been put up in unlikely places for obscure reasons.
It was linked to Brownsville by the twenty-five mile umbilicus of Route 77, The George Brell residence was at 18 Linden Way, Wentwood.
Big plots, big sweeping curves of asphalt. Architectured houses, overhangs, patios, sprinklers, driveways and turnarounds pebbled in brown, traveler palms, pepper trees, Mexican gardeners, housewives in shorts, antique wrought-iron name signs. Number eighteen was blond stone, glass, redwood, slate. Formal plantings. A black Lincoln and a white Triumph in the drive, a black poodle in a window of the house, glaring out at the world.
I went back among the common people and found a beer joint. Standard opening conversation
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