All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel Read Free Page A

where I hit him straight to the ground. It was a perfect shot. He was dead before he left the branch. His beautiful brown coat had beads of dew on it when I picked him up. I know I should have left him alive, but I couldn’t have, not that morning. I’m afraid I was his fate—otherwise I couldn’t have hit him at that distance, with him running and the sun in my eyes. I hadn’t shot a gun in seven or eight years, either; but that is not to say it was a lucky shot. It was perfect, not lucky. I was frying him when Sally woke up.
    “What have you done now?” she said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, holding her clothes over her arm.
    “I can still shoot,” I said.
    Sally was horrified. “We have cereal we can eat!” she said, pointing at it. “Wheat germ is perfectly healthy. I wouldn’t have married you if I’d known you were going to kill animals.”
    She wouldn’t touch the squirrel—I had to eat it all myself. “Squirrels are in no danger of extinction,” I said. “Animalswould drive us off the earth if a few weren’t killed now and then.”
    My reasonableness didn’t placate her. I apologized several times during the day, but it did no good. There was no knowing if she would ever forgive me for killing the squirrel—or for anything else I did that she didn’t like. Forgiveness was not the kind of act Sally was prone to. By her own admission she had never been heartbroken in her life.
    She liked to eat meat, too. It just never occurs to her while she’s eating it that an animal has been killed. She looked at me all morning like I was the Butcher of Dachau. Finally it bugged me.
    “People with appetites like yours shouldn’t be so idealistic,” I said. “How would you like to live on kelp for the rest of your life?”
    Maybe my saying that was why she walked off mad, six hours later. She has delayed reactions. Sure enough, it was Mrs. Salomea who had knocked at the door.
    “Danny?” she said. I began to try to think of a defense, and also to look for an apron. It was very hot and I was only wearing my underwear.
    “Yes ma’am,” I said. I found a big dish towel. Sally didn’t have any aprons.
    “I’ll be right there,” I said. “I’m not fully dressed.”
    “I’ll let myself in,” she said. I heard the door shut. Mrs. Salomea neither wasted time nor stood on formalities.
    Somehow the dish towel I found made me look even less dressed than I was. I really felt indecent, but I knew I couldn’t stall much longer, indecent or not. Mrs. Salomea was noted all over Houston for her impatience. She was the wife of a very well-to-do decorator—I guess he could be described as locally prominent. His name was Sammy Salomea and he decorated mansions. It was generally agreed that Mrs. Salomea was eating him alive, one joint ata time. I think she had him eaten about up to the hips. She was thirty-eight or so, but very trim. In the days before I got married the Salomeas would sometimes invite me into their yard in the late afternoons to be a fourth at badminton. They were free with their liquor and I always managed to get drunk on those occasions. Those were the only times I ever got to drink good liquor. Mrs. Salomea’s first name was Jenny. She and I always teamed against Sammy and some guest or other and we always slaughtered them. We were both extremely good badminton players and could have slaughtered almost anyone we were put up against. Up to a certain point I’m a very well-coordinated drunk and I hit some terrific smashes. Sammy Salomea was slightly in awe of me, but Mrs. Salomea wasn’t in awe of me at all. I was slightly in awe of her. I always stayed as late as I could, drinking their liquor and watching her eat her husband. I told myself I was gathering material for a book I meant to write, to be called “Cannibalism in Texas,” but I was really just fascinated by Jenny Salomea. She was the scariest woman I had ever known, and God only knew what she was going to have to say