Irresistible… let’s go! Where we goin’? – Westward Ho!
Around one hundred fifty years after the famous battle and just a few before George W Bush land-slid into the Governor’s house, Julia visited the Alamo mission. If this fact on its own does not appear germane to the following story, it could be argued that it sets a precedent, or indeed context for her encounter with the sworn enemy of Santa Anna.
If he was not in possession of a coonskin, he was wearing a suede jacket with fringe and pair of cowboy boots, with the jeans tucked in, and dancing a kind of stomp all on his own. Later she realised he was probably up to no good, but at the time, and in her gaucherie, it simply did not occur to her probably because something about him reminded her, foolishly, of Jimmy.
“Where’s your hat?” She said.
In mid-stomp, he threw his head back, laughing. “I haven’t got a hat, but maybe you could procure me one?”
Julia was amused, but feeling at the same time a little wary, since the stomper was beginning to home in, until some people came between them and she managed to give him the slip.
She went off looking for Suzy, but she couldn’t find Suzy. Two of the uni girls they’d come with said she’d gone home complaining of a headache.
Suzy had left her cocktail. “Help yourself, hon.”
She was sipping it through the straw when the boy in the cowboy boots came and sat down beside her.
He wanted to know her name, but she decided not to tell him. “Anyway,” she said, “I didn’t catch yours.”
“Call me the Captain.”
Julia laughed. “That’s not a name. That’s a title.”
“An honorary title,” he said.
“What does the Captain do? – Let me guess, it’s a military secret.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I do like it when I get to meet English girls.”
“What’s so special about English girls?”
He looked at her, perhaps wondering if she was up for the game. “How ‘bout another dance?”
“I haven’t finished my cocktail.”
“You want another cocktail.”
“No, thank you.”
“How ‘bout Bourbon?”
“I don’t drink spirits.”
“But I reckon you are a spirited English lady.”
They flirted back and forth like this; then they left the club.
He took her to a motel and paid in cash. There was she thought (though not too hard because she’d done a line of coke with him in the club toilets) rather a lot of cash in his wallet.
They went along to a godly clean and spotless room with a glossy calendar of Humvee trucks and started fucking. It was very naughty sex, as she told Suzy afterwards (though not about the coke). “I’m going to meet him again this evening. His friends are having a barbecue. Do you want to come?”
Suzy, however, was otherwise engaged with her hunky footballer. The hunky footballer was taking her to the movies to see a horror flick but the horror flick was somehow connected to his thesis on Sartre and Notre Dame.
“In the original or nauseous version?”
Suzy smiled. “Actually,” she said, “he’s rather worried about his diet and he doesn’t drink.”
“A teetotaller. Don’t tell me he’s into karma, too. – I take it then you don’t need the Chevy?”
The numbers went up in the thousands all along the boulevard of replica houses, front lawns and porches.
When she found the address, the girl who answered the door was wearing a pair of cut offs and had a stud in her nose. She called into the room:
“Carl, that English girl you said was coming is here.”
The party had not started. Carl, aka the Captain, and his best buddy, Estefan were heavily involved in a game of chess, although it was unclear if it was some mega-galactic battle involving Star Wars figures.
Estefan threatened to move his Princess Lea. Carl picked up his Darth Vader. “Darth Vader plays a mean hand,” he said, “meaner than Death.”
“You think you’ve got me. My Jedi flashes his blade. Touché away!”
“Don’t crack me up. Is that a knight’s move? – You must be a rookie.”
The girl with the stud called from the kitchen.
“Hey, Estefan, you started the Barbie?”
“Not yet,” said Estefan. “Let me play this game. The Jedis are coming back into it.”
“Estefan, you are a useless fuck.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let me just make this move.”
“Estefan,” she shrieked.
Estefan picked up his Jedi knight as if he was about to move it. Then he stopped and started brooding over the board.
Carl looked at Julia and winked. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go outside and start that Barbie before she gets really pissed.”
They went outside and opened up the garage. Carl wheeled out the barbecue. He threw some alcohol on the coals. He took an extension lead from the garage and stood over it with a hairdryer.
“It’s an old Indian technique,” he said, as the coals blew up in ruddy blue flames.
“She’s rather hot-tempered, isn’t she?”
He chuckled. “Sissy’s got vampires.”
“Sissy’s got vampires?”
“In the end she comes round to the maverick point of view.”
“The maverick point of view?”
“You never seen that film? – It was Marilyn’s last.”
Julia laughed.
They went and got a table from the garage. Sissy brought out some salads and dips and covered them with cloths.
Estefan was still brooding over the board when Carl put on the Wall. A discussion ensued about the hard-core values of the concept album. For Carl the Wall was the best of its finger tingling kind; for Estefan it was Yes, which as far as Carl was concerned was a real no-no.
Suddenly, Estefan stood up, slapping his thighs. “Got you this time!”
Carl leaned over the board and moved Darth Vader. “Mate,” he said.
“You bastard!” said Estefan. “I don’t believe this!”
People started showing up. They scoffed bread and salad and dips. Carl threw some meat and sausages on the Barbie. Everyone was helping themselves to the punch or knocking back beers. When the steaks and sausages were ready, people stabbed them with their forks and piled them onto plastic plates. They chatted and bobbed up and down to the music.
Joints started doing the rounds. People wanted to dance. They wanted dance music. Sissy wanted dance music (not the Wall or any of that other shit you idiots listen to).
The evening went retro with Hot Gossip, Sister Sledge, Errol Brown and Donna Summer for God sake. The boys for a joke put on Paranoid by Black Sabbath. Eventually someone put on some James Brown… Living in America. Carl started stomping around her in his crazy way.
Julia began to feel ill. She went to lie down on the sofa.
People drifted in and out of the room.
“Carl, you think she’s okay only she looks kind of woozy…”
“Jesus, Carl, what did you put in that punch?”
Followed by giggles and Sissy saying:
“You idiots, can’t you see she’s going to pass out on us?”
At some point in the proceedings – when the room was really whirling and people were beginning to stare like replicas, or replicants, she tried to get up. “Where are you going, girl?” She heard.
“I have to see Jimmy,” she said.
“Who is Jimmy?”
Carl stopped her at the door. “Hey,” he said, “I don’t think you should go.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not in a fit state.”
“I have to see Jimmy,” she insisted.
She pushed past him, wandered out onto the boulevard, and got into the Chevy.
The police found Julia with her head slumped over the steering wheel of the Chevrolet and took her to a public hospital where she lay among the replicants until Robin came to fetch her home.
One day, she came to and walked out into the garden at St Ann’s. When she saw the insect hovering among the flowers, though recognizing it, she could not put a name to it, even with the dealer, Carl, whispering in her ear.