Other People's Love Affairs

by D. Wystan Owen

  Athletes are known for philandering, you know.”

  Abigail rolled her eyes. There was no reason Bethany should

  say such a thing. No reason to discourage an interest in Archie

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  when she didn’t know the first thing about him. Harold from the

  chemist’s was a dullard, and stout.

  “He doesn’t play ball anymore. He buys lumber for fixing up

  houses.”

  “All the same, I think you’d be better off with poor Harold.”

  “I don’t like him. I’ve told you. Why don’t you go with

  him yourself.” She did not say how she’d been buying stock-

  ings for work, how she had regarded the stranger for some time

  before their eyes met, the cool nylon moving across the backs

  of her fingers, how he’d said she had the look of an actress

  about her.

  “Be nice, Abbie,” Bethany said. “Anyway, it isn’t me Harold

  fancies. It’s you.”

  Bethany was the worst kind of pretty girl: either oblivious to

  her own easy beauty and charm or, worse, pretending to be. In

  addition to that, she was a bit of a priss. She would never guess

  some of the things Abigail had done. Nobody would; not her

  parents, not even Archibald Gates. It would never be suspected,

  for instance, that she’d once let Clifford Price have a go behind the gymnasium. That would never be dreamed, though she had done

  it and had not been afraid. There had been no risk of its getting

  out, because Clifford knew it would not be believed, and anyway

  he might not have wanted it known. She had been glad of that

  then but now wished that he had spread the rumor a bit, if only

  as proof that he wasn’t ashamed.

  Clifford Price had moved away after school, as others had and

  as, at the end of summer, Bethany would. Most young people did

  not stay in Glass.

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  At half ten, Tim Garvey entered the chemist’s in search

  of an ointment to soothe a bad nail. He’d arrived in Glass some

  two days before, having bused in from Croft, and Reading before

  it. His own vehicle had been abandoned in Colby, its backseat

  strewn with chip shop receipts, pamphlets espousing the wisdom

  of term life insurance. “Peace of Mind” they said in large letters, a middle-aged couple holding hands on the front. He intended to

  stay no more than three days, after which time a town this small

  would take notice.

  He scanned the aisle for the ointment he needed: the one in

  the yellow tube, because that was the one that had proved helpful

  each time the condition recurred. The girl he’d seen yesterday was not in today, but that was only to have been expected. She was not what you would have called a good looker. You wouldn’t boast or

  show pictures to your friends at the pub. But she had the sort of

  milky complexion he liked; you could imagine lying next to her

  after, your head resting on that big, fleshy bosom, and her letting you do that, wanting you to.

  The baseball bit had been a risk, he reflected; the sort of thing

  that might be disproved. You’d be caught out, having no expertise.

  A mess then. He would never have said it except that he’d found

  himself drawn to the girl. The accent and the false name had been

  more considered, thought out and practiced well in advance.

  Archie Gates: trustworthy, vaguely exotic. In the next town he

  would be somebody else.

  At home, he would not yet be missed. Head office was mostly

  indifferent; his friends at the pub knew he traveled for work. His mother might fret when he failed to ring Sunday, though even

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  that he sometimes forgot, or skipped doing, not having the heart.

  Just as likely it would be the discovery of his car that first brought his departure to light. The police department would contact his

  mother. Perhaps they would contact Lorna as well. “What are you

  telling me for?” she would say.

  A young man stood in back of the counter. “All right?” he said

  while Tim counted his money. “Nice day out.”

  “Summer’s come,” Tim agreed. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to

  know—” But he stopped short, thinking it might raise alarm, a

  stranger in town asking after a girl.

  Bethany was on again about Harold.

  “He likes you, Abbie. What’s the harm in a date? It would be fun. You could borrow a dress from the shop.”

  “I couldn’t do that. Mrs. L wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Of course she would,” Bethany said. “She lets me wear them

  out all the time.”

  Abigail found that irksome and would have liked to say so, but

  they fell silent because they could see through the window that

  Harold was passing on his way back from lunch.

  “What’s new, H?” Bethany said. She was fond of Harold, sens-

  ing him harmless, and perhaps also because he showed only polite

  interest in her. Even now as they spoke he kept glancing at Abigail, who stood at the back of the shop folding garments and, when

  she became aware of his gaze, thumbing through catalogs of new

  summer fashions.

  “I’m trying for Next Edison now,” he said, grinning in his usual way. He always had one scheme or another, mostly to do with

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  appearing on TV. Talent contests had been one obsession, bak-

  ing competitions another. “Have you seen it? It’s one of the best

  programs out.”

  He was Abigail’s age, had known her in school, and like her

  he lived at home with his parents. His was the broad, open face

  of a child: small, dark eyes shallowly set. A bit feebly he stood in the doorway, having eaten only a salad for lunch. He had lately

  been watching his weight, ordering scanty meals at Hyde Pantry,

  objecting when Debra tried to sneak him rashers of bacon. “I won’t see you starve,” she kept saying, her voice low and clotted with

  cigarette tar. She had known him since he was a boy. Today, he’d

  eaten half of the bacon, wrapped the rest in his napkin for later.

  Abigail watched him at the edge of her vision, thinking what a

  shame and how like her luck that Harold alone should fancy her

  over Bethany. She would have preferred it be anyone else. Perhaps

  Archie Gates would prove another exception. He had liked the

  look of her right off, he’d said. “The look of an actress” were the words he had used, and she’d wanted to ask him which one he

  meant but knew that that would have made her seem vain.

  “Of course, I would think so,” Harold was saying. “Being an

  inventor myself. Not everyone can see how their minds work. But

  I can. I’d say they’re interesting folk.”

  “It’s a good idea, Harold,” Bethany said. “My dad would buy

  it. Abbie, wouldn’t your parents buy something like that, for keeping all the various wires in order? My dad is always muttering

  about the wires, tripping over them and things.”

  “They’d buy anything if it had a good ad on telly,” Abigail

  said, recalling how her mother had asked for nothing more than

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  a particularly absorbent mop for her birthday, and how, when it

  arrived, her father
in his excitement had cleaned the floors for a month, the only times in twenty-five years of marriage he had

  done so.

  “I’ve got a clever idea for an ad,” Harold said. “It looks like the head of Medusa, but instead of snakes there’s all different wires

  and cords.” He said this with a smile and a tone of satisfaction, the image being clear and very pleasing to him.

  “That is clever, Harold,” Bethany said.

  Abigail turned the page in her catalog.

  “Doing well, Abbie?” Harold presently said, his voiced raised

  because he hadn’t moved from the entrance and she was still at the rear of the shop.

  “Well enough,” she said. “Bit bored today.”

  “No offense taken,” Bethany said.

  “That older bloke, yesterday, wouldn’t leave you alone? You’d

  remember. Had a funny American accent?” He pretended not to

  know what it was she had bought, though of course he had not

  forgotten the stockings. Her legs now were obscured by the coun-

  ter, otherwise he would have looked to see if she had them on. He

  loved Abigail because there was a sadness about her. He wasn’t a

  proper chemist, hadn’t stood for exams, but still he knew about the pills she was given: a sleep aid, something for nerves; you found out about that sort of thing with his job. Harold did not take medica-tion himself but felt it was something they shared nonetheless.

  “Archie,” she said, looking up for the first time with interest.

  “That’s his name. Archibald Gates. He was a baseball hurler, you

  know.”

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  “He was back in again. In the chemist’s, I mean. Buying creams

  for a toenail fungus this time.”

  “That’s really hot stuff,” Bethany said. She laughed until she

  was red in the face. “What a dream boat, Abbie. What a catch that

  Archibald Gates would be.”

  “Just drop it, you two,” Abigail said.

  “It was probably only for his granny or someone,” Harold

  put forth, sensing her upset. A kindness, because he knew better,

  of course.

  Days passed, and Tim Garvey stayed on in Glass. He

  saw the girl again when she made change at the bank. She was

  wearing the stockings he’d seen her select. He had not gone to

  visit the shop where she worked, having faith that he would come

  upon her by chance and knowing that it would be better that way.

  Morning to night he wandered the village, the four blocks at its

  center, hills to the east, the headlands and boardwalk north by

  the shore. Meals he took at the Cavalry Inn, charged to a bill that would never be paid.

  He could not have said, if asked, what it was about her. He’d

  have put her at twenty or so, as Lorna had been when first they

  were married. In those days he’d been a security guard, ill paid and ill fed but deeply in love. Graveyard shifts under shopping mall

  light, he would sit by himself and think of his wife. She was given to chills and to frightening dreams, so she disliked his being gone through the night. It had seemed for a while at that early juncture that he might have been delivered from hardship. Days, young

  people would come to the mall. He liked to watch them interact

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  with each other. His own childhood had been spoiled by the loss

  of his father, who’d fallen to his death from a scaffold. His mother was never the same. The young people he encountered were as yet

  unblemished. Because nothing bad had happened to them, they

  seemed to feel certain that nothing ever would. It made him ten-

  derhearted toward them, hopeful that they might not be mistaken.

  Sometimes now, when he was worn down with travel, he

  would find a girl who was on the game and take up for the night.

  He would buy her coffee, or dinner if she wanted it (some of them

  didn’t), and she would sit with him in the restaurant in full view of the world; later, in his rooms, it was just as if she were a part of his life. They were almost all of them kind. They always understood it was just that he was lonely. He reminded himself that it was different with the new girl, different because she was not on the game.

  When she came out of the bank he was waiting for her, slack

  against a light post, chewing a toothpick. She smiled when she

  lifted her head. It had been a long time since anyone had been

  happy to see him.

  “I thought that was you went into the bank.”

  “It was.”

  “I’d hoped I would see you again.”

  They walked the block and a half back to Laughlin’s Gown

  Shop. She told him about Bethany, making her out as a bore,

  overstating her beauty so that it would disappoint him in person.

  “You’ve moved to Glass?” she said.

  “Only doing a bit of business. There’s cheap birch to be had.

  But I’ll be back; I’ll arrange it that way. I’ve taken a liking to the place.”

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  This seemed to please her.

  “A bit quiet, I’d have thought, for someone who has been an

  athlete.”

  “I like quiet places,” he said. “And quiet people.”

  “But I guess you’ve been all over. All the big cities.”

  “Ah, well the fact is the farm teams mostly play smaller towns.

  Memphis, Nebraska.”

  “But you’ve been in Mexico?”

  “Tried a comeback in Japan,” he said, thinking of a program he

  had watched about an ancient kind of archery. He had been taken

  with the slow manner in which the bows had been drawn. His

  mother preferred dramatic programs and sitcoms, but she would

  usually watch something else if he wanted.

  “Were you in Tokyo?” she said.

  “Yes, and then in the mountains.”

  In the years after the divorce he had wondered about things:

  when precisely Lorna had given up on him, when she had got used

  to sleeping alone. Later, when he began setting out on the road,

  she had not seemed to mind his absence at all.

  It was a pleasure now to walk down the street with the girl,

  and not only because he knew they were seen. Near the gown

  shop they paused to finish their chat, and he said he would like

  to see her again. She smiled, and over her shoulder he was able

  to catch a glimpse of the friend. It was true she seemed to be a

  prettier type, but that did not change things about Abbie. She

  had a bit of weight to her, Abigail did, but it was by no means

  unpleasant. Even though she was not on the game, you could tell

  by the way she had of looking at you that it would not have been

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  the first go-round for her. He did not mind that, either. It was

  all right.

  They agreed to meet the following evening.

  In her dreams he was there, always waiting for her.

  Against another lamppost, reclining, he smoked; in an alley, steam rose from wet pavement.

  I’d hoped to see you, he said.

  I knew you’d be here.

  In clean sheets, and smel ing of leather and soap, he was gentle.

  His hands when they touched her were coarse. He wore no rings;

  she’d noticed that as soon as she saw him. He was handsome—she

  had noticed that, too—age having lent him an elegance. He was

  a man, where Cl
ifford Price was only a boy. They both agreed it

  didn’t matter about his being older.

  She woke trembling, the familiar terrain of her bedroom slowly

  reasserting itself in her mind. A thin sweat had broken out and

  she threw back the covers. She ran her fingers over the places he’d touched in her dream.

  “There’s a room where you can try on whatever you

  like,” the lady said in the secondhand shop. He’d been rummaging

  some time through the racks of old clothes.

  It was difficult, always, to find things that fit him, being slen-

  der with jangly limbs. It wouldn’t do to wear sleeves that came

  short of the wrist, any more than it would to have grimy stains at his collar. Whatever desperate point his life might have reached, he would have to maintain certain standards. Thus far he had found

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  a brown woolen suit and a shirt checked in pink and pale blue

  with French cuffs.

  Inside his shoes he wiggled his toes. They slipped against each

  other, slickened with ointment.

  He’d left most of his own clothes behind. Not that they were

  any great shakes themselves, but it would have made things easier

  not to have had to. It had been necessary that his luggage be found with the car to create the impression of having left it in haste, or else intending to come back. He never carried valuables in his

  suitcase; if he had, he would have taken them out and strewn the

  rest of its contents about the trunk and the ground.

  In the fitting room he looked at himself in the mirror. It

  seemed to him that he ought to look older.

  Once again, he assured himself he’d done the right thing. He

  had not wanted to abandon his mother. Only he’d come to the end

  of his savings. The money from his policy would see her through

  to the end; she would never be thrown out into the streets, as she might have been if he had not left. He glanced at his wristwatch: a quarter past three. She’d be watching her hospital program. After

  that would be the one with the judge. She had been in hospital last year herself, but that had not lessened her interest in the program.

  When he was not on the road he would watch it with her, and

  sometimes she would take hold of his hand while she filled him in

  on what he had missed. “These two are having it off,” she would say.

  “About time. They were all lovey-dovey for years. And this one lost a patient last week. Prescribed the wrong dose of something or other.