The Late Child by Larry McMurtry Page B

of your life, Neddie,” Pat said, unsentimentally. “If you’d gone on and had sex with him a few times, you’d have got it out of your system and figured out what a lazy piece of shit that man really is. Now you and him have put off doing the wild thing for twenty years and you think you’re the love of one another’s life. Oh boy.”
    â€œQuit dodging,” Neddie said. “You still ain’t told us about the love of
your
life, if you can remember him.”
    â€œI won’t tell you because he’s famous and you and Harmony would blab to the newspapers,” Pat said.
    â€œHe’s several cuts above Rusty Haley, I can assure you of that.”
    â€œPat, don’t be mean,” Harmony said, wondering why she bothered to say it.
    â€œFamous for what?” Neddie asked. “You don’t mean that old boy who got famous for trying to steal two thousand drilling bits from a warehouse in Oklahoma City, do you? Is that what you call famous?”
    â€œNo, Jesse was just a criminal, and a dumb one at that, though I will say he was good-looking and a fine dancer, too,” Pat said. “But Jesse Birch don’t come nowhere near being the love of my life, Neddie.”
    â€œPat, you can tell us,” Harmony assured her. “I don’t even know the phone number of a newspaper and anyway we’re in Nevada.”
    â€œNews travels fast and far,” Pat said. “I don’t trust either one of you.”
    â€œI want to get some orange juice in case we drink vodka,” Harmony said. She got the keys back from Neddie and they drove the two blocks to the Circle K. There Jasmine was, in the parking lot of the Circle K, crying because the bottom had dropped out of her bag of groceries. Her bottle of wine had broken when it hit the cement. Two black teenagers were skateboarding around in circles in the parking lot.
    â€œThere’s Jasmine, let’s find another Circle K,” Pat said. “That woman depresses me.”
    â€œPat, she’s my neighbor, besides, her daughter was killed,” Harmony said. She went in, bought the orange juice, and persuaded the little Asian man who was managing the Circle K to come out with a broom and dustpan and sweep up Jasmine’s mess. Jasmine was so dejected by the loss of her wine that she had wandered out into the street—she was almost hit by a Dr. Pepper truck.
    â€œLife’s not for the faint-hearted,” Neddie observed.
    When they got back to the apartment Harmony still didn’t feel like going inside, so they sat in the hot car and drank more martinis.
    â€œWhat would I do if I went back to Oklahoma?” Harmony asked.
    â€œWell, you could steal Pat’s boyfriends, you’re younger and prettier,” Neddie said. Often, when she drank, Neddie developed a wicked tongue.
    â€œYeah, but she don’t know as much about sex,” Pat said. “Harmony was always an inhibited little thing,” Pat said.
    â€œInhibited—I was a showgirl, Pat,” Harmony protested.
    â€œI didn’t say you wasn’t an exhibitionist,” Pat said. “That doesn’t mean you’re any fun in bed.”
    â€œPat, drop the sex stuff, we ain’t addicts like you,” Neddie said. “The one thing Harmony could do that would be real useful is help out with Mom and Dad.”
    â€œYou got a point,” Pat said. “I’ve about had it with Mom. It’s time Harmony came home and did her part.”
    â€œIt’d give Eddie a chance to get to know his grandparents, too,” Neddie observed.
    â€œOkay, I’ll come,” Harmony said. She wanted to get it settled in her mind. The thought of not having her sisters with her made her feel total panic.
    The thought of her parents, though, just made her feel guilty. She definitely had not been a dutiful daughter—Eddie was five and had never met his grandparents; that was one example she