The Great Leader by Jim Harrison Page A

truths only stories and how would my story end in the desuetude of retirement? Marion said that the computer allows people to waste endless hours on the novelty of their weaker interests. Just how is flax grown and why are there so many Russian prostitutes in Madrid? Diane’s new husband is ill and is there a chance for us to hitch up again? Doubtful. He was still the same man she left, a man whose horizons were far lower than her own. Early on he busted a college girl for five lids of pot and it ruined her life. That’s what her mother wrote him. Can the brain be swollen with loneliness? Of course. The Evangelicals largely favor enhanced torture. The years have swallowed themselves and disappeared. Through the slit of Slotkin’s book Mona was crossways on the bed, her bare butt aimed at him, a poignantly illegal butt if you weren’t in Mississippi or Costa Rica. His dick rose but his body relaxed. He slept.
    It was more dark than twilight with a bird fooling at the window and sharp raps at the door. “It’s me, Lucy,” the door voice said. He turned over looking for a clue to where he might be. The rapping continued and he yelled, “Yes.” He grabbed the wrong one of the two robes hanging from a bathrobe hook, a woman’s robe that didn’t quite close off his middle. Opening the door he glanced immediately away from Lucy’s face which was swollen with weeping as if her entire family had been wiped out in a house fire only minutes ago. In contrast she was dressed sexily in a shortish blue skirt and a white sleeveless blouse. His sleep-slowed brain computed seduction . She threw herself facedown on his bed muffling her voice.
    â€œYou had your phone turned off when I needed you.”
    â€œIt was a tough day out on the range with your dad. I needed a nap.” She looked attractive indeed but he couldn’t quite make the wires of sex and tears connect.
    â€œI have to leave early in the morning. I had this feeling you wanted me. Sadly I also had this intuition that I reminded you of your ex-wife. So it’s not me you want, is it?”
    â€œWhat am I supposed to say?” He was buying time what with being half tumescent.
    â€œNever mind. I know the answer. I can’t make love to you if I remind you of someone else.” She began crying hard.
    â€œI’m sorry.” His brain had become a knot.
    â€œAt least hold me,” she pleaded. Her voice was that of a girl, another explicit turnoff for him. Girls, unlike women, were only a turn-on at a distance, say the thirty feet between his peek hole and Mona’s bedroom window.
    So he did with her face against his neck which was soon wet and slippery. He questioned whether there were a limit to tears and if her ducts might eventually dry up making love possible but that was unlikely.
    â€œToo bad you don’t know how to lie,” she wept.
    â€œJesus Christ, Lucy!” He flung himself out of bed and went to the desk, flipping through the room service menu. He had given half of his sandwich to the Mexican kid. It was 9:00 p.m. in Michigan, well past dinnertime, and he was ravenous. There was a salad with jicama whatever the hell that was. He called in an order for two cheeseburgers, a bottle of Beaujolais that he remembered Diane liked to drink in the summer, and a full bottle of Canadian whiskey for sixty bucks, the cheapest full bottle on the menu. Maybe he could drown her tears.
    â€œWe’ve failed each other,” she wailed.
    In answer he turned on the TV to Anderson Cooper who at the moment reminded him of a chipmunk. He segued to a film with a boatload of naturalists chasing a pod of killer whales off the coast of Alaska and hoped that the beasts would turn back on the boat and have a naturalist meal. He split the last of his travel pint into two drinks and she poked her head out from under a pillow at the rattle of ice.
    When she finally walked out the door he looked at the whiskey