vulgarism on my part. What I offer is more than merchandise.
Men have paid plenty for my sexual gifts and proclivities. But my mystery isn't for sale.'
'Stop the car.'
He slowed down and pulled over to the side. I grabbed my suitcase and got out. And then, a delighted child reciting a rhyme, a child remembering word for word some old lesson or torn bit of lore, he leaned toward the window and said victoriously:
'Good little boys do not accept rides from strangers.'
A deaf-mute couple took me the next forty miles. They looked enough alike to be twins. I sat in the back seat next to a guitar. Then I rode a short stretch with a man who sold rat poison and had once been a delegate to a political convention. A former stripteaser picked me up then and took me into Midland. She used to play gin rummy with the Duke of Windsor. I got a room, shaved, showered, checked out and rented a car. I drove all night, northeast, and once again I felt it was literature I had been confronting these past days, the archetypes of the dismal mystery, sons and daughters of the archetypes, images that could not be certain which of two confusions held less terror, their own or what their own might become if it ever faced the truth. I drove at insane speeds.
In the morning I headed west along Main Street in downtown Dallas. I turned right at Houston Street, turned left onto Elm and pressed my hand against the horn. I kept it there as I drove past the School Book Depository, through Dealey Plaza and beneath the triple underpass. I kept blowing the horn all along Stemmons Freeway and out past Parkland Hospital. At Love Field I turned in the car and bought a gift for Merry. Then, with my American Express credit card, I booked a seat on the first flight to New York. Ten minutes after we were airborne a woman asked for my autograph.
