by Paul Theroux
Larry said, “Look at this wad,” and showed me a roll of bills.
“Mine’s bigger,” I said. “That’s not spinach. That’s cash.” I sandwiched the thick stack of bills into Baudelaire, because I didn’t have a pocket big enough.
“Fantabulous,” Muzzaroll said, and grinned and blinked at the money pressed into my copy of The Flowers of Evil.
Muzzaroll wore flappy trousers and black spades and sunglasses. A pack of cigarettes was folded and tucked into the short sleeve of his red Lifeguard T-shirt. He had a yellow Sicilian face and hairy ears. He shook his legs and strutted and said, “I’m hep.”
“ ‘I’m hep,’ the fuckstick says. Vinny, you are such a loser. Parent and I have real money—big bucks. You’ve got shit and you know it.”
“I’ve got nine inches, so I don’t need money,” Muzzaroll said.
We were walking down Memorial Drive toward the pool, feeling happy.
“Let’s lock the pool up and buy some beer and get drunk, because as from today I’m unemployed,” Muzzaroll said.
“You deserve to be unemployed. You’re a fucking bananaman.”
“And you take it up the ass,” Muzzaroll said in a friendly way.
“You wish you could,” Larry said. “Instead of playing pocket-pool.”
“See this nickel? I could make a phone call right now and be in the sack in about fifteen minutes. I got a broad in Orient Heights begging me for it. Sometimes I have to put my hand over her mouth I get her screaming so much.”
“You put your hand over her mouth because she’s got bad breath. I know her. I put the boots to her.”
“You wish,” Muzzaroll said. “She wouldn’t go near yous.”
Because he was speaking to both Larry and me he carefully made a plural of you.
“She’s a dog,” Larry said. “She’s got a lopsided face, like someone sat on it, and one tit’s bigger than the other. A real bow-wow.”
“She’s beautiful,” Muzzaroll said, and put a cigarette into his mouth. “Give me a match, shit-for-brains.”
“Your face and my ass,” Larry said, and punched him on the arm.
Muzzaroll stuck a finger up and said, “Rotate on this.”
They only talked like that when they were feeling pleased. It sounded terrible, but it was very casual. The more obscene and abusive they were the friendlier it was. I knew I would miss them.
“Parent’s thinking about his dick. Don’t worry, kid—give it a year or so. If it doesn’t grow you can turn queer.”
“And you can go down on him,” Muzzaroll said.
“You wish you could.”
“Fantabulous. There’s a package store. I’m going to snag some beer.”
All this odd hilarity was because the pool was closing, and we knew we probably wouldn’t be seeing each other again. There was very little malice in them. When they were afraid or uncertain they were polite, but being foulmouthed was a form of intimacy—it showed how far they could go.
I was thinking about Lucy—how I had seen her only once lately, to give her the three hundred dollars I had borrowed from Mrs. Mamalujian. I had sworn that I would never see Mrs. Mamalujian again; but I had gone back and asked her for the money. My only consolation was that she had so much money she wouldn’t miss it. But I planned to pay it all back, fifty at a time, until my debt was cleared, probably next year.
Meanwhile, I wanted to forget the mess I had made of the summer, and I tried to stop myself thinking about Lucy.
At four o’clock we blew the siren we used for suspected drownings and emergencies. The kids complained as we cleared the pool. But this was the only fun we could look forward to: the last hour of the last day.
I walked to the edge of the pool. Every evening on closing the pool I looked into the ripply water and expected to see a dark body on the bottom—a shadowy thing that had lain there dead all day as swimmers splashed back and forth above it. There was nothing, but it was always my fear.
Now we had the place to ourselves. We opened the case of beer and set up the canvas deck chairs. And as the traffic roared past the fence we pretended that we were millionaires and that this was our private pool. The sun was still high over Cambridge, across the river. We stretched out and we drank beer and listened to Arnie Ginzburg’s rock and roll show.
“I’m going bollocky, I don’t even care,” Muzzaroll said, and pulled off his bathing suit. His penis looked like a fat little otter. “They can’t fire me!”
Larry threw an inner tube into the pool and then sat in it, drinking beer and bobbing in the deep end. “They can’t fire any of us. We don’t work here anymore.” He swigged the beer. “Hey, Muzza, what are you doing this winter?”
“I don’t know. Maybe work for the state. Maybe shovel snow. My brother-in-law’s got a car wash. He’s looking for a manager. What about you?”
Larry said, “I was just thinking. I worked in a bakery last winter. It sucked. What about you, Parent?”
“College,” I said, looking up from The Flowers of Evil.
They didn’t reply just then, but after a while Larry said, “You got the right idea. Get an education.”
“One thing’s for shit-sure,” Muzzaroll said, “I ain’t going in no fucking army.”
“Anyway they don’t take faggots,” Larry said.
Muzzaroll laughed. “Know what we should do? Send out for pizzas. And just stay here until it gets dark. Then get some ginch.”
He phoned The Leaning Tower of Pizza and asked them to deliver three jumbo pizzas. While we waited for them, two girls walked by the fence on their way along the riverside path.
Larry said, “Hey, girls. Come here, want to swim? This is our pool. We rented it for the day.”
“Sure you did,” one girl said. She was laughing, but she hesitated because the pool looked so odd and still.
Muzzaroll was sitting in the inner tube now, with a can of beer in his hand, and wearing a baseball hat.
“He’s an animal,” Larry said.
“Did you guys break in?”
“She thinks we broke in! Hey, we rented it, no kidding. Ask him. He goes to college. He wouldn’t lie to you. Tell them, Andre.”
“Seriously, it’s ours for the day,” I said. “You’re welcome to join us. It’s all paid for.”
“The fat one’s yours,” Larry whispered, and in a louder voice, “We just sent out for pizza. Want a slice?”
The girls were giggling and looking interested, and then as I looked at them—they were both pretty, neither one was fat—Larry said something that sent a chill through me.
“Andy—there’s your girlfriend.”
I looked up, expecting to see Lucy and saw Mrs. Mamalujian getting out of a yellow taxi.
“So long, deadass,” Larry said. “When you come back you’re going to find me and the Bananaman planking these broads in the locker room.”
He could see that Mrs. Mamalujian was beckoning to me. I didn’t want her to come in, so I put my clothes on and hurried out.
She said, “I just happened to be passing. Want a drink?”
She had had a few already. It was the way she stood there and the sulky way she talked.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“One drink, Andrew. It’s a holiday. And I want a word with you, too. Is that too much to ask?” She had this pompous and offended way of speaking when she was half-drunk, and then after a few drinks she would slobber or weep.
Behind me, Larry and Muzzaroll were making the two girls laugh. The pool was empty, and the sun was going down. They had beer and pizza. I wanted to stay with them and have a laugh. But I had no choice, and Mrs. Mamalujian knew it. She opened the taxi door and I got in.
“Most of the bars are closed today,” she said.
“There’s probably one open on Charles Street,” I said. I didn’t want to go too far from here. I would talk to her for a while to humor her and then hustle back to the pool.
The bar was called The Library, which annoyed me, becau
se there were only crappy books on the bookshelves—books for decoration. I ordered orange juice and Mrs. Mamalujian a double gin.
“I’ll bet you’re proud of yourself,” she said. “Is there anything wrong?”
“ ‘Is there anything wrong?’ he asks.” She might have been speaking to the waitress as she put our drinks down. She said, “You used me.”
She was wearing a big floppy-brimmed hat and sunglasses with yellow lenses. Her head looked like a wilted daisy and when she tried to look at me her hat wobbled. She was drunker than I had thought.
“You toyed with my feelings,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “I leveled with you.”
“What a clown. You kept your clothes on all night in New York. Sleeping in your clothes is batty. You said you were afraid of fires in hotels. But I know better.”
“I am afraid of fires,” I said, but I saw myself full length on the bed in my army jacket and combat boots. The thought made me cringe.
“You can’t treat me that way, Andre. No one does that to me and gets away with it.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said lamely.
“Right!” she said—too loud, and when people looked around she showed them the lipstick on her teeth.
“I’ve been very straight with you. I haven’t lied. What are you accusing me of?”
I whispered so that she would whisper back.
“I just got through telling you,” she said, shouting to defy me.
My mother always said I just got through telling you that, and I wondered whether I would forgive Mrs. Mamalujian for saying it.
“I’ll never forgive you for it,” she said.
That was another one I hated. What was going on?
A squeak, just like the lurch of a rusty hinge, seemed to come out of her hat as she bowed her head. It came again, the beginning of a sob.
“I left my husband for you,” she said. “And you don’t care.”
I said, “Look, I have to get back to work.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said, suddenly angry. “You’re not running out on me.”
“I have work to do,” I said, thinking of Larry and Muzzaroll probably frolicking with those girls, lucky dogs, while I sat here with this crazy old woman. And I knew it was my own fault.
“You never call me.”
“I called you last week.”
“Because you needed money. That’s the only time I hear from you. When you need something.”
“That’s not true,” I said. But it was partly true. After refusing all her lavish gifts I had weakened and asked her for three hundred dollars. I had been desperate. “Anyway, I’ll pay you back.”
“You bet you will,” she said, in a way that made me dislike her. People were puzzling. They contained these other people, who were strangers. I was surprised to hear that voice. It was like Lucy saying to me on the beach at Manomet You’d better find it, sonny. Whose voices were these?
Mrs. Mamalujian ordered another double gin.
“You think I’m drunk,” she said.
I denied it.
“You’re a liar,” she said. “Look at the pansy with his orange juice.”
I started to get up.
She said, “You’re not leaving.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re not going anywhere until I get my money,” she said.
I could only think of the doctor in New York who had said You’ve come to the wrong place, because I had no money. He had sent me away, and now I felt humiliated again. Mrs. Mamalujian had a mocking smile on her face, and her expression was a taunting one that said, I’ve got you.
“You’re staying with me,” she said.
It was the only hold she had on me—the money. But I had a hundred and seventy-odd dollars. I took it out and counted it onto the table, and pushed it over. “Plus a buck in change.”
“No,” she said, and put her hand over her mouth.
“Don’t move—I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m going to get the rest of it.” And before she could speak I ran out of the bar and down Charles Street towards the pool.
The four of them were at the far end, near the diving board. Muzzaroll was holding his hairy belly and demonstrating a dive. Larry saw me and trotted over to me.
“See what you’re missing? They’re nurses. It’s action. That pretty one is all over me.”
“I need some money,” I said.
“Smile, Andy. It’s not the end of the world.” He had pizza sauce on his cheeks.
“I need a hundred a quarter. I’ll pay you back.”
“I’m good for fifty.”
“What about Vinny?”
“He’s good for fifty. I’ll steal it out of his wallet.”
He got the money quickly and pushed it through the fence, apologizing for not giving me more. But he said that he too had to settle a debt.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What are friends for?”
That was perfect, and made me calm; and now I remembered where I could get the rest.
I wondered whether the place would be open. But I need not have worried. It was Labor Day, a holiday on which there were always terrible car crashes. And as the nurse said, they always needed blood. I saw Loretta, and when she smiled I rolled up my sleeve and stuck my arm out.
I had only been gone a half an hour.
Mrs. Mamalujian burst into tears when she saw me enter The Library, and she began to snatch at my hand as I counted the money onto the table. But I kept counting—Larry’s fifty, Muzzaroll’s fifty, and the twenty-five I had been paid for my pint of B-negative.
“That’s three hundred dollars,” I said. I felt weak from the loss of blood and the running back and forth.
“You completely misunderstood me.”
“Why did you say you wanted the money back?”
“You know I didn’t mean that!”
Yet it was too late. She was balling up the bills, and that was how I left her, crumpling the money like wastepaper. I wanted to stop her. I wanted to take it. But it wasn’t mine.
I couldn’t face the pool after that. I sat on a bench by the river until darkness fell at about eight o’clock; and when I couldn’t stand to see another happy hand-holding couple strolling past me I stood up and started writing in my head, the beginning of a poem, Drunk on the drooping street, watching your sad ass retreat but couldn’t go any further. On the bus home, reading Baudelaire I decided that the word that described my feeling for Lucy was spleen.
I had not avoided her. I worried; but because I felt so ignorant I did not want to think too hard about her. The day after Labor Day and then the whole week before I left for Amherst I called Miss Murphy’s and left notes at Pinckney Street. I was sure she had gone away. She hadn’t asked where the money had come from. She didn’t care. And I felt it had been that money that had ruined our love.
She called the day before I left home. My mother answered and handing me the receiver she said sourly, “It’s some girl.”
That was how little she knew. In her eyes I had spent the summer getting fresh air at the MDC pool, and had saved some money, but not enough.
She was listening, so I could not say what I wanted to Lucy, nor could I ask any leading questions. But Lucy seemed rather detached, too. She had registered at Boston University, she said. She had found a place to live on Newbury Street. She had agreed to stuff envelopes for the presidential campaign. And she finished by saying, “I’ve been out all day buying books.”
I had worried about her! I had sat on the bus and for the thousandth time that summer gone back and forth to Boston on the shuddering thing, looking at the poster that said For regularity take a lemon in water every day for thirty days. But she was all right: she had a new room, she was buying books and starting classes. And I was heading for Amherst in my army surplus clothes. I was short of money, doomed to a part-time job, and had to look for a place to live. Another summer had come and gone, and I
hadn’t written anything except some bitter poems.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said.
“What time?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to see her.
“How are you going?”
“Bus.”
After I hung up I was annoyed that I hadn’t said anything to her, and when my mother said, “What do you mean you can’t find your pen? It didn’t just walk away!” I screamed at her.
“What’s got into you?” she said.
“I wish I weren’t going back to school.”
“Where do you wish you were going?” she said, and her tone was that smug stumping one, as if I didn’t have an answer.
“California,” I said. “Or Africa.”
“With your attitude you’ll never go anywhere.”
You don’t know me, Ma, I thought. My secrets were safe.
There was only one bus to Amherst, and I was early because I had a duffel bag full of old clothes and a suitcase stuffed full of books. It was a hot Friday in mid-September and I had dragged all this luggage from Medford, bumping people on the bus. I saw other college students with suitcases, and looking happy and hopeful. I wanted to tell them I was a communist and watch their faces harden. But I didn’t believe it anymore. Maybe it was better to say nothing and just go away. But was there any point in going if no one missed you?
I got a shock when I saw Lucy standing by herself, staring at me near the ticket window, like a ghost that’s turned into a person.
“Do you have a minute?” she said.
She had always seemed pale, and I had found it attractive. But today she seemed plumper, her face a bit fuller and a little blotchy from overdoing it—pink hot-spots on her face and arms. She was wearing a yellow dress. Her sunglasses had white frames—new ones.
I realized that I was afraid of her as I was afraid of Mrs. Mamalujian.
“I’m really glad to see you,” I said.
We found an Irish-looking bar in Park Square. What a summer it had been for going into bars! The television was on—Kennedy making a speech: more promises, more rhetoric. His campaign was all promises about starting over again, doing good in the world, lots of work to do. But he was not going to roll up his sleeves and dig in—we were. He would be sailing off Hyannisport and the rest of us were going to backward countries to show them how to raise chickens.