William Boyd - Stars and bars

By the time he had driven home, collected his suitcase, and then driven uptown to Melissa’s apartment, the steely blue car had lost the glass from a tail light, acquired a scratch running the length of one side and received a dent in the left hand front wing. Furthermore, on the course of his journey he had been described as a cunt, a fuckhead, a jiveass honky, a ‘sackashit’ and a ‘muthafuck-ah’ by the other snarling drivers he had fouled up or interfered with in some way or other. Pedestrians — meek, timid creatures in Britain — had kicked his tyres and thumped the bodywork with their fists. One particularly irate jaywalker went so far as to gob — greenily and with astonishing volume — on his windscreen. He managed to park not too far from Melissa’s door but sat still in his car for five minutes or so (windscreen wipers going) trying to regain his composure.

♦

Melissa welcomed him at the door, Candice yapping in her armpit.

“Hello, darling.” Their cheeks touched, he felt her hair sharp on his face.

“Candice, don’t shout at Henderson.”

They went through into the main room. Gervase joined in the shrill noise. He thought: if we ever get married again, those dogs are out — pronto.

“She’s just packing her things. Won’t be a second.” Melissa sat down beside him on the enormous sofa and took his hand.

“Are you OK, baby? You look tired.”

Henderson told her of his troubled night — post-mugging — of the garbage men and their matutinal seminar group. Melissa looked genuinely sympathetic. She put her hand on the back of his neck and scratched his nape gently. It was an automatic gesture; Henderson recalled it from their early days; it brought him out in a warm rush of affectionate goose-pimples.

“The sooner we get you installed here the better,” she said.

He felt grateful and secure. Melissa had things under control. He was suddenly certain he would be happy with her. He put his hand on her shoulder: so thin, so neat. The silk of the eau-de-nil blouse was cool under his palm. He felt the thin strap of her bra. It would be silk too, he knew: crisp and clean on that day, with a discreet and pretty edging of lace.

“I can’t wait,” he said, with a slight tremble of sincerity in his voice, and touched her neck with his lips. This was a mistake, he realized at once, remembering how she sprayed her neck liberally with perfume. He sat up, his mouth full of a sour foreign taste. Bryant came in.

“Could I have a drink of something?” he asked, swallowing acrid saliva. “Coke? Seven-Up?”

“Bryant, honey, can you get Henderson a Coke?”

“Why can’t he get it himself?”

“ Bryant? ”

“It’s all right,” Henderson said. “No problem. I’ll go.”

He drank some water in the brilliant kitchen. When he came back, Melissa had gone somewhere, and Bryant was standing alone in the room.

“Well,” he said. “Yes, whe…well.”

Bryant looked at him as if he were slightly mad. She was wearing blue striped trousers that stopped at mid-calf, a very old faded grey T — shirt and an expensive looking leather jacket, all pockets, flaps and buckles. Her hair was tousled and uncombed.

Spoilt brat, he thought. Those dogs wouldn’t be the only inhabitants of the Wax household to get a rude awakening when he moved in. He put his hands in his pockets and looked around the room as if he were seeing it for the first time. This is absurd, he thought. She is a fourteen-year-old girl and I am a thirty-nine-year-old man. So why do I feel nervous? He stopped himself just in time from whistling ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’. Bryant looked at him, apparently quite relaxed. It’s true, he reflected, she is very cool and mature for a teenager. He thought of himself at her age; his awkward, boiling adolescence. His freezing fearful schooldays, the chasms of timidity, the deserts of anguish he had daily to traverse. No points of comparison there. What had been wrong with his education, his environment, his family? Think what torments he would have avoided if he had been like Bryant.

“Where’s Irving?” he said, with a gasp of relief, finally thinking of something to say.

“Don’t know.”

“Ah.” Henderson nodded vigorously, spun round on his heel, slapped his pockets as if searching for a missing wallet. This was some travelling companion Melissa had foisted on him: he’d have more fun with a Trappist monk. He resolved to drive south with the greatest possible urgency.

Melissa came in with the two dogs and they prepared to leave. Bryant crouched down and embraced the animals.

“Bye, Candice. Bye, Gervase. Be good, I’ll see you soon,” she said in a fake-sad voice. For an instant Henderson saw the young girl in her.

“Phone me,” Melissa said, hugging her daughter. “Lots. And you too,” she whispered in Henderson’s ear as she kissed his cheek. She glanced down. “Gervase, stop it! ”

Henderson had imagined that the pressure on his lower leg had been caused by contact with the sofa edge, but looking down saw Gervase trying to fuck his ankle with slant-eyed, panting ferocity.

“Agh! Get off!” He sprang to one side stamping the animal free from his leg. For the second time that day he wished he had his sabre. Fleche attack: Pekingese kebab.

“I’ll be back next week,” Henderson said, turning back to Melissa. “I’ll see you the— Jesus Christ! ” The mutt had somehow gained the arm of the sofa and was trying to bury its head in Henderson’s groin.

“What’s wrong with that dog?” he demanded. “Shouldn’t you have it seen to? Spayed or whatever?”

“Come on, Gervase. Don’t be a naughty boy.”

Bloody dogs! he swore to himself, picking up Bryant’s case and backing out of the door.

“Bye, Gervase! Bye, Candice! Bye, Mom!”

“Say goodbye, Gervase, Candice. Say goodbye to Bryant and Henderson.”

The most sensible women could be reduced to idiots when it came to animals, Henderson thought, contenting himself with a brief wave. There was not the slightest possibility of him actually vocalizing a farewell to those dogs, he vowed. He’d never be able to meet his eyes in the mirror again.

They hummed down in the lift, the faint barking soon lost to earshot, and with little fuss installed themselves in the car.

“Well,” Henderson said, hands on the wheel. “Here we are. Go South, young lady.” He looked round to see if she had caught the allusion, but Bryant was too preoccupied searching her multitude of pockets for something. She found it, and turned to face him, blowing hair out of her eyes.

“Smoke?” she said, offering him a squashed pack of cigarettes.

The Holland Tunnel plunged them beneath the Hudson River. They emerged on the far bank to drive through Union City to the mighty overlapping clover leafs of junction seventeen of the New Jersey Turnpike. Bryant was on to her third cigarette and Henderson saw the road ahead through a thin grey mist. His eyes smarted and his nose itched with incipient sneezes. Bryant sat with her legs folded beneath her, her head propped on a fist, looking emptily at the shabby cityscape passing by.

They motored south among a surge of large, surprisingly dusty and battered cars and truly enormous lorries, all changing lanes and shifting about the road — as fidgety and illogical as a school of fish. As Henderson became used to the eccentric driving conditions (so different from the impeccable lane-adherence on British motorways) his initial tension was slowly replaced by irritation. Why hadn’t he simply refused to take Bryant? Said it was impossible? It was typical, he saw, of his own particular weakness. He was too easily manipulated and put upon; too decent and obliging for his own good. He did everything Melissa asked of him and here was his reward: a rude, taciturn, chain-smoking ingrate as his travelling companion for the next two days. He was tempted to drive through the night to Richmond (home of the Wax grandparents) just to get rid of her. He felt a tear crawl from his left eye and squinted round to see Bryant lighting her fourth cigarette from the dashboard lighter. She lit the cigarette with the unreflecting professional ease of the habitual smoker, applying the little glowing hotplate to the end with barely a glance, inhaling and puffing smoke from the corner of her mouth until the tobacco caught.