Write me a Letter

come on, Sara,” Marlon said. ”Don’t be like that. I told you she wasn’t well.”
    ”Did you?” she said. ”You could have fooled me. When was that, anyway, last night when you spent so much time dancing with Tits McGurk, whatever her name was?”
    ”Who knows what her name was,” he said. ”So I danced with her once, look, I’ll never see her again, will I?”
    ”You sure saw enough of her last night,” the poor twerp said out of the side of her mouth. ‘All the way down to her curlies. I’m surprised your eyeballs didn’t fall in. ‘Oooh, I just love your hair!’ ” she mimicked. ”I’ve seen better-looking hair in my soup.”
    And so it went. Of course I felt sorry for Sara but what was I supposed to say—”It was bound to happen sooner or later anyway, kid,” or ”Suffering is the food and drink of the poetic soul”? I did lower the temperature slightly by telling them they each had five hundred bucks bonus coming as soon as we got back to L.A. , but otherwise I shut up and kept shut up. She simmered down enough to let him peck her cheek in the lobby before we headed out the back way to the car and he out the front supposedly to catch a train to Quebec City . But I did not have the gayest of companions during the drive back to Dorval , in fact she uttered nary one word to me the whole time although she did swear a lot under her breath when she wasn’t grinding and gnashing her molars in ire. Occasionally she scribbled fiercely in a notebook or diary or whatever it was.
    Even without a copilot to navigate and translate, I managed to find the airport in plenty of time. I returned the car to Avis, paid the bill in used American hundred-dollar bills, which did not particularly please Avis, for some reason, then got us seat reservations at the check-in counter. As the guy at Canadian customs was waving us through, he asked in a friendly fashion, ”Enjoy your stay, folks?”
    ”It was the pits,” the twerp mumbled, but luckily not loud enough for anyone but me to hear. I pushed her on ahead.
    ”Very much so, eh, Inspector,” I said, and I wasn’t only thinking of capital gains. ”The people were great, Montreal was great, your beer was great, the smoked pastrami meat unbelievable, and Les Habitants won the night I was there. I’ve made my last moose joke, I can tell you that.”
    He laughed. I wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck and hurried after the unhappy little nerd. I meant what I said about Canada , too, but I did have my fingers crossed behind my back when I made that promise about le moose.

12

    ”Take away the moose,” I declaimed theatrically, ”and what is left?”
    Sara opened one eye, glared at me out of it, then shut it again. We were in an airplane somewhere over Kentucky . High over Kentucky . I went back to what I was doing and had been doing for the last two hours and when Sara found out what it was, she’d spring a gusset. I, V. (for Victor) Daniel, was writing a poem for a change, in the hope it might cheer her up a bit. I’d already tried losing to her on purpose at cards, not an easy task for this competitive big fella, and that hadn’t worked, but at least she’d said something occasionally, even if it was only ”Gin, dummy,” or ”Read ’em and weep, stoopid.” The rest was pretty much silence, except for the time she suddenly blurted out, ”I saw that conniving bowlegged moose-faced dog flirting with him. I may be dumb but I ain’t blind yet.”
    For a moment my heart stopped.
    ”What dog was that, dear?” I asked cautiously.
    ”The dog at the dance, where else,” she muttered. ”And I saw his flirting right back with knobs on it.”
    ”Oh, that dog,” I said with relief. ”Miss McGurk, I believe you said her name was. Hell, she was probably only giving him the name of some new herbal shampoo. Anyway, actors flirt all the time just to keep in practice, they don’t mean anything by it. So do girls, come on.”
    ”Oh yeah?” she said. ”Well, this girl doesn’t. And how would you know, anyway?”
    ”How would I know? I know more about girls than you ever will, that’s how.”
    She gave a little smirk.
    I smirked back. ”All right, Miss Clever Boots,” I said, ”who’s dated more girls, me or you? Who’s danced with more girls, necked with more girls, been stood up by more girls, dreamed about more girls? Not you, I bet.” She sighed deeply and turned her back pointedly on me. Poor old twerp. Poor old Marlon, too; what a