tomorrow.”
“Jim. I should go back to painting alone.”
“Okay.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been missing something,” she said.
And then I started sleeping in again. I went to the Blumont that weekend and got drunk alone. I went walking, and ended up underneath the clinking flagpole at the Center of the Universe, where I found encampments of all types of white kids smoking pot, telling legends under the June night about Hitler, and Wu-Tang, and the CIA. Nobody offered me anything, to partake or to buy. I thought I recognized a few faces, maybe just types. Anyway, I was too nervous, and walked back to my car with my hands in my pockets.
I had lost control of the summer. I had interruptedmy self-imposed study program to pursue Adrienne, and now all my dreams and random thoughts went feeling towards her. I sprawled on my parents’ carpet and thought about the cool poured concrete of the studio.
“I’m painting,” she said.
“I can call back later.” My heart raced, just to have her on the line.
“I painted something I will want to show you.”
“I can come over now—”
“No—I have to figure some things out, Jim.”
“I was going to ask you to go to Stars again.” I cast my eyes down. I had asked.
“I’ve got to wait a minute. I’ll call you later this week.”
“Should I—”
“No.”
I sank to my knees. The blood had gone out of my head, and I needed to lay my face in the carpet to rest.
4
I heard through Edith: Adrienne had invited me to come on a weekend to Bartlesville. What Adrienne imagined this would be like is, in retrospect, unclear. Edith called up out of the blue, chiding me for neglect, for spending all my time with Adrienne only—when I hadn’t seen Adrienne in a week. “She said maybe you could give me and Cam a ride to Bartlesville.” I pretended I knew what Bartlesville meant: beyond that it was a small city thirty minutes to the north, the home of Phillips Petroleum. I packed a shirt and tie, my sleeping bag, and even a swimsuit.
Bartlesville meant Albert Dooney’s cabin. His family, like so many of Oklahoma’s smaller oil families in the 1920s, had built vacation homes in the long-backed hills of Osage County. We were actually ten minutes west of Bartlesville itself, by the shores of a tiny lake. Albert had added a small recording studio to the fishing getaway his grandfather had built, and he regularly invited Chase’sfriends to come out for a weekend, to record. Albert was the type of man who in middle age finds comfort in the young and is happy to live with their bluster and their self-pity, the kind of man who feels fulfilled reaching his finger out, from time to time, to correct them.
Driving up, with Edith explaining some of this to me and Cam smoking and the radio on, we decided to take surface roads—I was in no hurry to arrive. The landscape reminded me of my Boy Scout excursions, a blanched summer forest up close, overgrown over miles and miles of tumbledown wire fencing. We stopped at a gas station that I even thought I remembered: the parakeets the owner kept out by the pumps. One bought beer now, instead of candy, and I traveled not with a vanload of adolescent boys but with two girls. Even better that they were lesbians.
And then we had to arrive. I always hate it when the engine switches off and you have to find yourself where you actually are, bereft of the enveloping hum of an automobile. We had been playing a complicated form of twenty questions. The designated letter was
L
: “Are you Michael Jackson’s alleged long-distance girlfriend?” Cam asked. I had to think. “No, I am not Lisa Marie Presley.” “Did you play Romeo opposite Claire Danes?” But I refused to continue, now that we had stepped out of the car.
Albert’s lake house was drab, made out of brown shingles, a big saltbox with squat four-pane windows on the second floor. We walked past an ashy grill and entered through the kitchen. Our host was just sitting there, like
“Jim. I should go back to painting alone.”
“Okay.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been missing something,” she said.
And then I started sleeping in again. I went to the Blumont that weekend and got drunk alone. I went walking, and ended up underneath the clinking flagpole at the Center of the Universe, where I found encampments of all types of white kids smoking pot, telling legends under the June night about Hitler, and Wu-Tang, and the CIA. Nobody offered me anything, to partake or to buy. I thought I recognized a few faces, maybe just types. Anyway, I was too nervous, and walked back to my car with my hands in my pockets.
I had lost control of the summer. I had interruptedmy self-imposed study program to pursue Adrienne, and now all my dreams and random thoughts went feeling towards her. I sprawled on my parents’ carpet and thought about the cool poured concrete of the studio.
“I’m painting,” she said.
“I can call back later.” My heart raced, just to have her on the line.
“I painted something I will want to show you.”
“I can come over now—”
“No—I have to figure some things out, Jim.”
“I was going to ask you to go to Stars again.” I cast my eyes down. I had asked.
“I’ve got to wait a minute. I’ll call you later this week.”
“Should I—”
“No.”
I sank to my knees. The blood had gone out of my head, and I needed to lay my face in the carpet to rest.
4
I heard through Edith: Adrienne had invited me to come on a weekend to Bartlesville. What Adrienne imagined this would be like is, in retrospect, unclear. Edith called up out of the blue, chiding me for neglect, for spending all my time with Adrienne only—when I hadn’t seen Adrienne in a week. “She said maybe you could give me and Cam a ride to Bartlesville.” I pretended I knew what Bartlesville meant: beyond that it was a small city thirty minutes to the north, the home of Phillips Petroleum. I packed a shirt and tie, my sleeping bag, and even a swimsuit.
Bartlesville meant Albert Dooney’s cabin. His family, like so many of Oklahoma’s smaller oil families in the 1920s, had built vacation homes in the long-backed hills of Osage County. We were actually ten minutes west of Bartlesville itself, by the shores of a tiny lake. Albert had added a small recording studio to the fishing getaway his grandfather had built, and he regularly invited Chase’sfriends to come out for a weekend, to record. Albert was the type of man who in middle age finds comfort in the young and is happy to live with their bluster and their self-pity, the kind of man who feels fulfilled reaching his finger out, from time to time, to correct them.
Driving up, with Edith explaining some of this to me and Cam smoking and the radio on, we decided to take surface roads—I was in no hurry to arrive. The landscape reminded me of my Boy Scout excursions, a blanched summer forest up close, overgrown over miles and miles of tumbledown wire fencing. We stopped at a gas station that I even thought I remembered: the parakeets the owner kept out by the pumps. One bought beer now, instead of candy, and I traveled not with a vanload of adolescent boys but with two girls. Even better that they were lesbians.
And then we had to arrive. I always hate it when the engine switches off and you have to find yourself where you actually are, bereft of the enveloping hum of an automobile. We had been playing a complicated form of twenty questions. The designated letter was
L
: “Are you Michael Jackson’s alleged long-distance girlfriend?” Cam asked. I had to think. “No, I am not Lisa Marie Presley.” “Did you play Romeo opposite Claire Danes?” But I refused to continue, now that we had stepped out of the car.
Albert’s lake house was drab, made out of brown shingles, a big saltbox with squat four-pane windows on the second floor. We walked past an ashy grill and entered through the kitchen. Our host was just sitting there, like
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