in to buy me a eight dollar harmonica for eight years now.”
It always starts out good like that, the bad moments—Nothing is gained or lost also by the fact that I insist we stop at Cody’s en route so I can pick up some clothes I left there but secretly I want Evelyn to finally come face to face with Billie—It surprises me more however to see the look of absolute fright on Cody’s face as we pour into his livingroom at midnight and I announce that Billie’s in the jeep sleeping—Evelyn is not perturbed at all and in fact says to me privately in the kitchen “I guess it was bound to happen sometime shed come here and see it but I guess it was destined to be you who’d bring her”—“What’s Cody so worried about?”—“You’re spoiling all his chance to be real secretive”—“He hasnt come and seen us for a whole week, that’s in a way what happened, he just left me stranded there: I’ve been feeling awful, too”—“Well if you want you can ask her to come in”—“Well were leaving in a minute anyway, you wanta see her at least?”—“I dont care”—Cody is sitting in the livingroom absolutely rigid, stiff, formal, with a big Irish stone in his eye: I know he’s really mad at me this time tho I dont really know why—I go out and there’s Billie alone in the car over sleeping Elliott biting her fingernail—“You wanta come in and meet Evelyn?”—“I shouldnt, she wont like that, is Cody there?”—“Yah”—So Willamine climbs out (I remember just then Evelyn telling me seriously that Cody always calls his women by their full first names, Rosemarie, Joanna, Evelyn, Willamine, he never gives them silly nicknames nor uses them).
The meeting is not eventful, of course, both girls keep their silence and hardly look at each other so it’s all me and Dave Wain carrying on with the usual boloney and I see that Cody is really very sick and tired of me bringing gangs arbitrarily to his place, running off with his mistress, getting drunk and thrown out of family plays, hundred dollars or no hundred
