A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell by Padgett Powell Read Free Book Online Page B

younger.
    In the house she sat us in the kitchen at a redwood
table with benches. She put a tray of ice cubes and two jelly glasses
on the table and sat down opposite us, still in a
can't-believe-how-good-you-look-long-it's-been stream of talk, and
Mary poured our drinks.
    A flushing noise introduced Bruce from the bathroom,
and he came in, fiddling with his fly. When he saw us, he bent
sharply over and zipped, then walked over to his place at the table,
which was marked by another Old Milwaukee in a circle of water and an
ashtray.
    Hazel stood up and kissed him, having to hold her
glasses in place, and Bruce also had to restore his glasses high up
onto his nose with his middle finger. He held them there while he
bent down to a Styrofoam cooler on the floor and got two beers, then
looked up at us and got two more, and Mary said, "We brought our
own, thanks."
    " I'd give my eyeteeth," Hazel said, "if
I could still drink hard stuff."
    " Doctor told her it 'ud kill her," Bruce
said. Hazel kissed him again.
    The girls went into old times, which were privately
hilarious, while Bruce and I watched each other drink.
    After about twenty minutes, old times had become
current events, and they had nothing currently in common except the
visit, so Bruce and I were acknowledged.
    Hazel turned to him with yet another smacky kiss
misaligning their eyeglasses. These kisses seemed designed and
sufficient to make up for centuries of neglect. She held her lips to
his cheek while he held his glasses in place.
    "Do you know what this rascal did on our first
date?" Hazel suddenly said. "He takes me to this bar
outside town and says we're going on to another one ten miles away,
so I better go to the can."
    " Seven miles," Bruce said.
    " Yeah. So I go in, and there's this nude poster
of Burt Reynolds naked, right where you have to look when you sit down. And there's a board over his pud."
    " His what? I never heard you call it that."
Bruce sipped his Old Milwaukee, settling it back on the table in a
circling motion.
    " You're about only a foot from it, right in
front of you," Hazel said, "and the killer is, it's
big--the board is much bigger than it needs to be. I'm not moving that
board , I say, and for a long time I don't,
and then I forgot and damned if I don't. When I do, I can hear this
roar go up in the bar."
    Bruce adjusts his glasses, smiling.
    " The sonsofbitches have a red light wired up to
the board which goes on when you lift it," Hazel said.
    " Our first date. "
    " She comes out and they have it so the red light
is still on, and everybody says together, How big is it? It was
funny."
    " And do you know what else was so funny, Mary?"
    We were laughing. "What?" Mary asked.
    " They time you."
    " She had a good time. Forty seconds. The
record's five minutes on a girl that was sick first before she could
look."
    " Our first date! What a stunt. Come over here,
honey," Hazel said to Mary, patting the table. "I don't
ever get to see you." When she got Mary seated, she took her
hand and held it in both of hers and patted and held on to it on the
table. Bruce got up and came to my side of the table. Mary was
watching me. "Now listen to what I done to him on our second
date," Hazel said.
    " This was pretty good," Bruce put in. I had
the feeling they were their own full-time archivists, historians of
Old Milwaukee moments, as much as they were anything else on earth.
They were amazing. One side of Bruce's face was a giant lipstick
smudge from Hazel's endless kisses--they were completely happy,
completely happy about nothing.
    Hazel had picked up early on a thing Bruce said
during the Burt Reynolds date, and she put it to good advantage on
their second date. Bruce, when asked how it was going, was in the
habit of saying, "I'm looking pretty good this year, don't you
think?" Hazel had him take them to visit a friend of hers, and
during the normal early conversation the friend asked Bruce how he
was.
    " He don't say, I'm fine, like he ought to,"
Hazel