Americana

"Anyway it was good to hear a familiar voice."

"I agree with you. I listened to it myself. Cheered me up considerably."

"I don't get you, Warren."

"It was on tape. I've been taping for the last three or four months. Doing it live was too much strain."

"I should have known," I said. "I really should have guessed. We're all on tape. All on tape. All of us."

"Sorry, Tab, if I upset that delicate circuitry of yours. But it's really more practical this way. I can tape a couple of shows at a time and take a day off now and then."

"It was better the other way, Warren."

"Only in the ontological sense. But I have to admit I haven't had one good night of solid sleep since I went over to tape. I think that's my wife's fault more than anything else. The first four were insomniacs. Consequently I slept like a baby all those years. My metabolism is based on subtle polarities. But the current bitch is always in the sack. She's like a serpent asleep in warm water. I'm helpless against this kind of power. And when I finally doze off for a few minutes I get the tapeworm dream, which I haven't had in years. Listen, Tab, come on over and have a couple of bloody marys with me. We'll sit by the bed and watch her sleep. She does a certain amount of finger-diddling every morning about this time. If you get over here real fast you'll be able to see it."

"Warren, I'm not home. I'm in goddamn Texas."

"When did this happen?"

"I don't know," I said. "I left about five weeks ago. I don't even have a job anymore."

"Look, she's starting."

"Goodbye," I said.

I went outside and Clevenger introduced me to two white men named Lump and Dowd. He said he'd get the women as soon as Peewee showed up. We went around to the garage. A small dump truck stood in the center of the concrete floor and dozens of tires were stacked against the wall. All over the place were weighing and measuring devices, rags, jacks, tire-irons, carburetors, rims, hubcaps, exhaust pipes. Lump carried in two cases of quart bottles of beer; he carried them one on each hip, a hand gripping the far edge of each wood and iron case. He and Dowd sat on a tire. Clevenger sat on a fender of the dump truck. I leaned against a bare section of wall. We started drinking. It was seven o'clock in the morning.

We drank straight from the bottles. The beer tasted awful at that hour of day but I said nothing and kept drinking. The others were drinking about twice as fast as I was. Dowd chugged half a quart and then said he'd best be getting outside for a kingsize piss and everybody laughed. We drank beer for about an hour, each of us in turn drawing laughter by standing in the huge square of the open garage door and pissing onto the gravel outside. When my turn came, there was both laughter and applause as if by this act I had joined them in some mythic union. I found myself pleased with their benedictions. Peewee showed up with a fifth of bourbon and we started passing the bottle around. Through a window I could see the cars and trucks circling the track, headlights off now. Clevenger went to the wall phone and spoke very softly and evenly for no more than ten seconds before hanging up. Dowd lowered the garage door.

The women arrived half an hour later. There were three of them, all Mexican. The young one wanted to know where Da