Nobody's Angel by Thomas Mcguane Read Free Book Online Page A

up a few blocks until she stopped. He parked in front of J. C. Penney’s; he saw her get out of her car and walk into the MyWay Cafe. Patrick slapped his pockets for change. The meter maid was two cars away. He had no coins and here she came.
    “I’m afraid I’m out of change.”
    “I’ll give you time,” she said.
    “That’s all right.”
    “My gosh, it’ll save you five dollars.” Her grab on the facts was evaporating. The meter itself seemed like a joke.
    “Write me up,” said Patrick, jauntily heading across the street, the meter maid staring at him with her pad of tickets. She began to write. She wrote hard and she wrote mean.
    Patrick sauntered along the MyWay front window; but then when he gave his eyes one cut to the interior, he found himself locked in gaze with Claire. He waved, then mimed may-I-join-you? As though talking to a lip reader. She just
smiled.
In we go, thought Patrick; my back is to the meter.
    The MyWay is sandwiched between the Wagon Wheel western store and Good Looks, ladies’ fashions. It’s kind of a shotgun arrangement, white inside with orange tables. It has a clock that reads twelve o’clock, three o’clock, 7-Up and nine o’clock. It has a reversible sign hanging in the door that says, OPEN , but from the customers’ view reads, SORRY , WE’RE CLOSED . It has candy in a display called Brach’s Candyland. It has a Safety and Protection on the Job poster, a dispenser for black hair-combs guaranteed for ten years and still only thirty cents. A huge box of S.O.S. says it will cut grease quicker. It’s an A.F. of L. union house and smoking is permitted. It seemed ready for a nuclear attack.
    Patrick stood next to the waitress while she finished telling Claire something. Claire cut her eyes over to him, smiled, then paid polite attention to the waitress.
    “My brother can lie his way out of anything,” she was saying, “but not
me.
I ain’t sayin I wasn’t in the wrong. My pickup was flat movin, comin around that old canyon. I’ll tell
you.
But this smoky says, ‘You wanta pull it over or drive fifty-five?’ I shoulda outrun his ass. Okey-doke, let me get this. How bout you?”
    “Black coffee,” said Patrick, and sat down.
    “How’re you-all?” Claire had eyes that shone.
    “Never better.”
    “Bite?”
    “No thanks. I came to town for grain.”
    “I was hoping you were following me.”
    “I’ll follow you next time I see you.” To the waitress: “Coffee is all.”
    “Where can you get something to eat in Deadrock?”
    “You’re eating now.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “You can feel it in your throat.”
    She chewed slowly and watched Patrick a moment before speaking again. He started to get jumpy.
    “May I share my impressions with you about Montana?”
    “Oh, but you can,” said Patrick in a tinny voice.
    “An area of high transience. But while folks are here, they are proud of it. I have seen no marches to the state flag yet, but I have noticed your extremely direct state motto: ‘
Oro y Plata.
’ I know that stands for gold and silver. It shows a real go-getter attitude.”
    “Is that good, Claire?”
    “Back where I come from, your shoe salesman strikes oil in the side lot and starts a ranch with headquarters in the Cayman Islands, then he buys a show horse, the bullthat wins the Houston Fat Stock Show and a disco.”
    “Whoever did that?”
    “My father! I’m
nouveau riche
! We’re just not old family. The foundation for old families in Oklahoma is early-day stealing, before the advent of good records.”
    Patrick changed his mind and ordered pumpkin pie. He could see upper torsos passing the front window. He could see newspaper readers at other tables, revealing only their hands, which seized either end of the newsprint and stretched it to their eyes.
    “What got you to come to Montana?” Patrick was growing tired of hearing himself ask these sap questions. Still, he couldn’t break out of it. I’m no sap, he thought.
    “Tio