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XV
Lady Marian
Shortly after I had become friends with Richard, Gatz and Marian
Hjortsberg got divorced. They are both good people, so seeing the and
their kids get hurt wasn't pleasant. But after Gatz left, Marian stayed in
the big old Victorian house next to Richard's place with her son Max (also
my younger son's name) and her daughter, Lorca. Though she had (has) a
close friend in Becky Fonda and her sister Ros, she probably saw more of
Richard than most other people around her--when he was staying at his
house. Richard and I went to Marian's just about every time I visited him,
and she was home. I like to smoke trout behind my house in an old
refrigerator (which Richard gloomily called Auschwitz), so I would bring
Marian smoked fish whenever I had extras.
I remember one wild evening when Richard, Marian, and I went to a party
being put on at the ex governor, Tom Judge's place. There were a lot of
wealthy people there from up and down Paradise Valley and Richard was
getting pretty feisty with them. If there's one stereotype Richard
disliked, it was that of the yuppie. He had watched them destroy San
Francisco by driving people out of their homes to be converted to town
houses. He sneered and mumbled as we ate BBQ beef and beans then wandered
around the heavily stocked trout ponds. As we left, he said, "Well, at
Least I've made MY mark," obviously put off by the brandishing of wealth
at the party. When we got to the Emigrant Bar on the main highway, the
three of us went in, and there was one of the wealthiest, most egotistical
people we had seen at the party. he sat at our table, pretty obviously
flaunting his acquaintance with Richard. Several cosmic cowboys were at
the bar behind us when Richard decided to change the tone of things, took
out his Buck pocket knife, opened it, and started stabbing away at our
table. He then dropped the knife in Mr. Upwardly Mobile"s whisky. The
whole bar took a big breath, and I wished that I was back in Richard's
kitchen eating beany weenies. But Marian saved the day. She daintily
plucked the knife from the whisky glass, licked the blade, folded it up
and put the knife down. The general breath was exhaled, unheard applause
went around the bar, and things calmed down. But Marian must have
contracted some kind of psychological venom from that blade because before
the evening was over, she stumbled outside and passed out in a ditch where
we had to find her before we could take her home.
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
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