"I want you, I want you,/I want you so bad," Bob Dylan was wailing. "Honey, I want you."
"You're a full-body, aren't you?" Alice asked the cowboy, who was still shivering.
"Almost," he told her. You couldn't see a tattoo on him--only a relentless chill.
The cowboy was at least a decade older than William Burns would be, Jack thought; yet Jack felt an instant pang, as if his dad were shivering with cold. The old hippie, whose hands were shaking, was having trouble removing one of his cowboy boots. Jack knelt down and helped him get the boot off; the boot was so tight, the cowboy's sock came off with it. His bare foot was startlingly white. Descending below the pant leg of his jeans, the skull of a long-horned steer completely covered the cowboy's ankle; the fire-breathing flames from the skeleton's open mouth licked the top of his unmarked foot.
The cowboy made no effort to remove his other boot. (Jack surmised that the other foot was tattooed, like all the rest of him.)
"I got one thing left that's clean," the cowboy hippie said to Alice. "You're lookin' at it."
"Your hands and face are clean," Alice told the cowboy.
"I gotta keep my hands and face clean, lady, if I wanna find any interestin' work."
As Jack had done so often in the past, he just slipped away. He poured his cup of tea down the sink, edging his way to the door.
"I'll see you at home, Mom," he said softly. Jack was pretty sure that their little talk was over; he was enough of a fool to think their dance was done.
"Lie down--let's make you comfortable," Alice told the cowboy, not looking at Jack. The old hippie stretched out on the couch, where Alice covered him with a blanket.
Bob was moaning his way through the refrain again; it's a relentless song, over which Jack could nonetheless hear the cowboy's teeth chattering.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
"Take Leslie with you, dear," his mother said, as Jack was going out the door; she was still not looking at him, preferring to fuss over the old cowboy. The door was closing when Alice called after her son: "It doesn't matter anymore, Jack. I don't even care if you sleep with her!"
Jack carried his mom's little morsel of anticipation and horror with him as he walked along the south side of Queen Street until he caught a cab heading east, bringing him back to the Four Seasons. There was a small flurry of excitement among Jack's fans at the front desk when he checked out of the hotel for the second time that day. Jack didn't like chaos; it bothered him that he must have appeared disorganized, even directionless, but he had a plan.
He would move into the guest wing in what he had once thought of as Mrs. Oastler's "mansion" in Forest Hill. Jack would sleep in Emma's bedroom, of which--of the bed, in particular--he had mostly fond memories. Jack would move Emma's desk, which was a big one, into what had been his bedroom, where Mrs. Machado had molested him; that room, charged as it was with the loss of Jack's innocence, would become his office. Add his dying mother and Leslie Oastler to the package, as Alice might have put it, and he had chosen a terrific climate for completing his (or Emma's) adaptation of The Slush-Pile Reader.
The screenplay, and Emma's notes, had already been transcribed in Jack's handwriting. He'd brought the script with him--to work on. All he needed was a little more writing paper and some extra pens. As it would turn out--and this was no surprise, given what a veteran shopper she was--Leslie rushed right out and got the writing supplies for him. (She even bought him a new lamp for Emma's desk.)
Leslie was grateful to Jack for not leaving her alone with his mother, especially with Alice's changes of mood and personality.
At first, it gave Jack pause that he was alone with Mrs. Oastler for the duration of the workday. He had some anxiety that she would throw herself at him in a state of undress. After all, his mother had not only given Jack permission to sleep with Leslie--she also repeatedly encouraged Leslie to sleep with Jack. (When Mrs. Oastler was doing the dishes after dinner, for example--when Jack was listening to music in the living room, while his mom was stretched out on the couch.)
"Leslie, why don't you sleep with Jack tonight?" Alice would call out to the kitchen.
"Mom, for Christ's sake--"
"No, thank you, Alice!" Mrs. Oastler would call into the living room.
"You should try it--you might like it," Alice told them over supper one night. "You don't snore, do you, Jack? He won't keep you awake, Leslie--well, not like I do, anyway. He won't keep you awake all night, I mean."
"Please stop, Alice," Leslie said.
"How much longer do you realistically expect me to sleep with you?" Alice snapped at Mrs. Oastler. "You won't sleep with me when I'm in a coma, I hope!"
"Mom, Leslie and I don't want to sleep together," Jack said.
"Yes, you do, dear," his mother said. "Don't you want to sleep with Jack, Leslie? Well, of course you do!" she said cheerfully, before Mrs. Oastler could respond one way or another.
Jack could only imagine what a dysfunctional stew Emma would have made of their threesome--a relationship as challenging as that of a too-small slush-pile reader and a too-big porn-star screenwriter! Jack was indeed living, as he had hoped, in the perfect atmosphere in which to finish his (or Emma's) screenplay.