It’s Saturday. Myrtle’s day off. I ate a quick breakfast and came back to the room. I still haven’t left the Budge In. There is no Greyhound bus station in this town. The closest one is in Houston, but I’m not going back there. The next closest ones are in Austin and San Antonio. There’s also one in Waco, Texas, where the Branch Davidian/fbi standoff is taking place…
Myrtle told me her uncle occasionally goes up to “Wacko,” as she calls it, to a cattle auction near there. She is sure he would give me a ride. Her son Turtle goes with him sometimes and he really enjoys it. I had told Myrtle that I knew somebody who lives at the Branch Davidian Compound (or at least the son of somebody who lives there) and she seemed to think it would be a good idea for me to go. I don’t know why she thinks that. But I am still waiting to see her again and find out if she talked to Uncle Bud and if or when he is going to another auction.
I called Anita to tell her where I am and that I’m okay, though she didn’t believe me. It was the day after I’d had Chinese food delivered to my room. I ordered something with “Seven Flavors,” and another dish called “The Emperor’s Choice, with fish,” ate every last morsel of it, only to see it all again four hours later when I woke up puking my guts out. Anita asked me if I was sure it was food poisoning and not something else, which annoyed me, for some reason.
Then she added insult to injury by telling me that Tunacat ran away. Roscoe moved into my apartment when I left New York, took over my rent, and she has been staying with him a lot because it’s close to her new job at Time Magazine. The weather turned warm but the radiator was still spewing out steamed heat like always, so they opened the windows then went out “just for a little while” to eat at a nearby restaurant. When they came back, Tuna was nowhere to be found.
Oh, and she’s pregnant! Actually, she said, “We’re pregnant,” which was annoying enough by itself, but she hadn’t even given me a chance to recover from the news about Tuna, so I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) muster the excitement she seemed to expect.
There was a long silence between us on the phone then she asked for an address where she could send me my mail. I told her I was going to Waco soon and would call her from there.
Maybe I’m not doing as well as I thought I was. This morning, after my shower, I found a weird thing on my back, like a hickey, but darker, or a zit, but way bigger. I spent a long time looking at it in the mirror, trying to reach it, but it is just out of reach. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just really ugly.
What does hurt is my left leg. For the past couple of days. Maybe “hurt” isn’t the right word. It’s bothering me, like I’ve been sleeping weird on it or something. Or maybe it’s from lying on my left side to watch tv and write in bed, which I have been doing a lot these past two weeks, so maybe that’s all it is.
“I gotta get out of this place,
If it’s the last thing I ever do now.”