Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote Read Free Book Online Page B

their worries. Hulga got a job at the Miramar, but out at the trailer park I always turned away when I smelled her coming. Once she sort of whispered up beside me: “Did you know that sweet wife of yours gave thegreaser a pair of gold earrings! But his boyfriend won’t let him wear them.” I don’t know. Ivory prayed every night with me that the Lord would keep us together, healthy in spirit and body. But I noticed … Well, on those warm summer nights when Freddy Feo would be out there somewhere in the dark, singing and playing his guitar, she’d turn off the radio right in the middle of Bob Hope or Edgar Bergen or whatever, and go sit outside and listen. She said she was looking at the stars: “I bet there’s no place in the world you can see the stars like here.” But suddenly it turned out she hated Cat City and the Springs. The whole desert, the sandstorms, summers with temperatures up to a hundred thirty degrees, and nothing to do if you wasn’t rich and belonged to the Racquet Club. She just announced this one morning. She said we should pick up the trailer and plant it down anywhere where the air was cool. Wisconsin. Michigan. I felt good about the idea; it set my mind to rest as to what might be going on between her and Freddy Feo.
    “ ‘Well, I had a client there at the club, a fellow from Detroit, and he said he might be able to get me on as a masseur at the Detroit Athletic Club; nothing definite, only one of them maybe deals. But that was enough for Ivory. Twenty-three skidoo, and she’s got the trailer uprooted, fifteen years of planting strewn all over the ground, the Chevy ready to roll, and all our savings turned into traveler’s checks. Last night she scrubbed me top to bottom and shampooed my hair, and this morning we set off a little after daylight.
    “ ‘I realized something was wrong, and I’d have known what it was if I hadn’t dozed off soon as we hit the highway. She must have dumped sleeping pills in my coffee.
    “ ‘But when I woke up I smelled him. The brilliantine and the dime-store perfume. He was hiding in the trailer. Coiled back there somewhere like a snake. What I thought was: Ivory and the kid are going to kill me and leave me for the buzzards.She said, “You’re awake, George.” The way she said it, the slight fear, I could tell she knew what was going on in my head. That I’d guessed it all. I told her, Stop the car . She wanted to know what for? Because I had to take a leak. She stopped the car, and I could hear she was crying. As I got out, she said: “You been good to me, George, but I didn’t know nothing else to do. And you got a profession. There’ll always be a place for you somewhere.”
    “ ‘I got out of the car, and I really did take a leak, and while I was standing there the motor started up and she drove away. I didn’t know where I was until you came along, Mr.…?’
    “ ‘George Whitelaw.’ And I told him: ‘Jesus, that’s just like murder. Leaving a blind man helpless in the middle of nowhere. When we get to El Paso we’ll go to the police station.’
    “He said: ‘Hell, no. She’s got enough trouble without the cops. She settled on shit—leave her to it. Ivory’s the one out in nowhere. Besides, I love her. A woman can do you like that, and still you love her.’ ”
    GEORGE REFILLED HIS VODKA; she placed a small log on the fire, and the new rush of flame was only a little brighter than the furious red suddenly flushing her cheeks.
    “That women do,” she said, her tone aggressive, challenging. “Only a crazy person … Do you think I could do something like that?”
    The expression in his eyes, a certain visual silence, shocked her and made her avert her eyes, withdrawing the question. “Well, what happened to him?”
    “Mr. Schmidt?”
    “Mr. Schmidt.”
    He shrugged. “The last I saw of him he was drinking a glass of milk in a diner, a truck stop outside El Paso. I was lucky; I got a ride with a trucker all the