All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel by Larry McMurtry Page A

under their skirts. None of them was attractive enough to show herself in a bathing suit.
    “She’s precious,” the fattest one said hungrily. Her girl friend took offense at the remark and went off to get more vodka, watching Sally over her shoulder. Sally dove in and got wet. The Lesbians began to drink faster and I started drinking from scratch, meaning to catch up if I could. Godwin was pacing back and forth near the diving board. Finally he came over and shook my hand.
    “You’re looking bloody well,” he said.
    “The patina of success,” Razzy said. “He rather glowswith it.” He was drinking extremely dry martinis, and his tone carried the perfect degree of chill, like his martini glass.
    “Ah yes,” Godwin said. “You sold your book. Now you have a license to steal any bloody thing you happen to want.”
    “Hopefully he’ll start with a change of linen,” Razzy said. “Do swim as soon as possible, will you? You have a body odor.”
    I drank my glass of vodka and orange juice in about three swallows. It had just hit me what a mistake it had been to come. Sally was floating on her back, her bosom and belly shining with water. The three Lesbians were watching her. Godwin seemed almost friendly, but Razzy Hutton exuded a rare quality of nastiness. He obviously meant to insult me in every way possible.
    “We’re all corporeal beings,” he said, “but very few of us allow ourselves to smell. Very few of us gulp our drinks, either. If you propose to walk among us as an equal you must begin to cultivate one or two of the more basic of the civilized graces.”
    “That’s fucking nonsense,” Godwin said. “The boy’s a frontier genius, don’t you know? The fact that he farts in public is part of his appeal.”
    “I don’t fart all that often,” I said defensively.
    “Come, don’t apologize,” Godwin said. “Genius need never apologize for itself. I didn’t even fart in private until I was thirty years old.” He said it sadly, as if it were something he had often regretted.
    “Really?” Razzy said. “What a titillating detail.”
    “Those three women you invited scare me fucking green,” Godwin said. “I think I’ll go in with Sally.”
    He went in to get his bathing suit. The three Lesbians got up and came over and Razzy introduced me to them. Hemanaged to do it without moving his lips. I felt like I was in the middle of a school of piranha fish, and I tried to look humble and unappetizing.
    “You write, or something?” one asked. Her name was Sybil. She had red hair, protruding teeth, and two large jewels.
    “Yes ma’am,” I said.
    “Do you write with a pencil or a fountain pen?” the fat one asked, handing Razzy her glass.
    “On a typewriter.”
    “Oh, like a journalist,” she said, reaching for the fresh drink Razzy had instantly provided.
    “I’ve read one or two of Daniel’s effusions,” Razzy said. “He’s far from being a master of English syntax.”
    “I can’t read the young,” the fat one said. Her name was Lorena.
    “Why not?” I asked. I was feeling a great dislike of them all. Beyond us, Godwin tiptoed out in a blue bathing suit and snuck into the pool. He went right under water, like a frogman in some kind of spy movie.
    “Oh, there’s such a crudity of sentiment in the young,” Lorena said. “They’ve known no heartbreak.”
    “Precisely,” Razzy said.
    The skinniest of the Lesbians maintained a total and very sinister silence. She had straight black hair.
    “You look like a workman,” Sybil said. “Are you salaried?” “I’m just a student,” I said. “I work on weekends for a termite exterminator. It’s simple work.”
    “Do you like Lawrence?” Lorena asked. “I knew Lawrence. I know Frieda. I knew Mabel Dodge Luhan. Dorothy Brett is a good friend of mine.”
    “I like him a lot,” I said.
    “He was a silly ass,” Razzy said. “He’s the best argumentI know against educating the working classes. He should have been kept in