The Burnt Orange Heresy

I allowed Berenice to drive between the Fort Pierce and Yeehaw Junction rest stops, but, finding that I thought better at the wheel, persuaded her to put her head on my shoulder and go to sleep with the promise that she could drive all the next morning while I slept. Toward morning the air became nippy, but by nine AM., with Berenice driving, as we entered the long wide thoroughfare leading into downtown Valdosta, I knew that we had to stop.

If I didn't write the piece on Debierue now, while my ideas were still fresh, the article would suffer a hundred metamorphoses in my mind during the long haul to New York. I would be bone tired by then, confused, and unable to write anything. There were some references, dates, names, and so on, I would have to check in New York, but I could write the piece now and leave those spaces blank. Besides, Tom Russell would want to read the piece the moment I got into the city. I also had to paint a picture before I wrote the article. By looking at it (whatever it turned out to be), it would be a simple matter to describe the painting with it sitting in front of me, and I could tie the other paintings to it somehow.

"Berenice," I said, "we're going to stop here in Valdosta, not in a motel, but in the hotel downtown, if they have one. In a hotel we can get room service, and two rooms, one for you and-"

"Why two rooms?' Why can't I-"

"I know you mean well, sweetheart, and you're awfully quiet when I'm working, but you also know how it bugs me to have you tiptoeing around while l'm trying to write. I won't have time to talk to you while I'm working, and I won't stop, once I start, until I've got at least a good rough draft on paper. Take a long nap, a good tub bath-motels only have showers, you know-and then go to a movie this afternoon. And tonight, if I'm fairly well along with it, we can have dinner together."

"Shouldn't you sleep for a few hours first?' I had some catnaps, but you haven't closed your eyes."

"I'll take a couple of bennies. I'm afraid if I go to sleep I'll lose my ideas."

Being reasonable with Berenice worked for once. Downtown, we stopped at the tattered-awninged entrance of a six-story brick hotel, The Valdosta Arms. I asked the ancient black doorman if the hotel had a parking garage.

"Yes, sir," he said. "If you checking in, drive right aroun' the corner there and under the buildin'. I'll have a bellman waitin' there for your bags."

I reached across Berenice and handed the old man two quarters.

"If you want out here, I'll carry your car aroun' myself," he offered.

"No," I shook my head. "I like to know where my car is parked."

He was limping for the house phone beside the revolving glass doors before Berenice got the car into gear.

I wanted to know where the car was parked because I intended to return for the canvas and art materials after getting Berenice settled in. The bellman had a luggage truck waiting, and we followed him into the service elevator and up to the lobby.

"Two singles, please," I said to the desk clerk. A bored middle-aged man, his eyes didn't even light up when he looked at Berenice.

"Do you have a reservation, sir?"

"No."

"All right. I can give you connecting rooms on three, if you like."

"Fine," Berenice said.

"No." I smiled and shook my head. "You'd better separate them. I have to do some typing, and we've been driving all night and it might disturb her sleep."

"Five-ten, and Five-oh-five." He shifted his weary deadpan to address Berenice. "You'll be dreckly across the hail from him, Miss."

I signed a register card, and while Berenice was signing hers, crossed to the newsstand and looked for her favorite magazine on the rack. Unable to find it, I asked the woman behind the glass display case if she had sold out her Cosmopolitans. Setting her lips in a prim line, she reached beneath the counter and silently placed a copy on the glass top. I handed her a dollar and she rang it up (a man who buys "under the counter" magazines has to pay a little more). I joined Berenice and the bellman at the elevators and we went up to our rooms.

The first thing I did after tipping the bellman and closing the door was to change out of my jumpsuit. From the guarded but indignant looks I had received in the lobby from the newsstand woman, the bellman, and two bluesuited men with narrow ties (the desk clerk's face wouldn't have registered surprise if I had worn jockey shorts), gentlemen were not expected to wear jumpsuits in downtown Valdosta. And I didn't want people to stare at me when I went down to the basement garage for my art materials. I put on a pair of gray slacks, a white silk shirt, with a whiteon-white brocade tie, and a lime sports jacket, the only unrumpled clothes I had.