William Boyd - On the Yankee Station - Stories

Every winter I leave the house, board it up and switch off the water and electricity. I spend the winter months in a small resort town a few miles up the coast from San Luis Obispo in northern California. I get all my magazine subscriptions forwarded there. It’s a quiet life, but cheap and necessary for my health. Over the years I’ve got to know most of the inhabitants, but they’re not very sociable folk and I find that few of them have much to say for themselves.

This last winter had been a bad one for me. My budget, due to the failure of one of my projects, was lower than ever and my life-style was correspondingly reduced. I had been chronically depressed through most of January and February and if it hadn’t been for the regular arrival of my magazines with their laughing happy people in their primary-colored world, I’m sure I would have done something drastic. However, as spring approached, my spirits rallied and I began to feel a little better.

Then she arrived — a modern primavera —and the sleepy resort town seemed to respond to her exciting presence. I began to think of her possessively as “my girl.” She was definitely my kind of girl. My girl in skintight jeans, I called her. It was merely a fancy of mine; I never actually plucked up the courage to introduce myself. I saw her regularly every day from my room and soon grew to feel that somehow I had come to know her, got to grips with what I believe is a rare, remarkable personality.

She’s beautiful too. Shaggy, clean blond hair, a short, crisp white T-shirt leaving a gap of navel-dimpled caramel belly between its hem and her dark, tight navy jeans. Those long-legged, tapered blue jeans.

It makes me feel good to think of her as my girl. For some reason she always wears the same outfit every day — but it’s always fresh and well laundered. She’s the most truly at-ease person I’ve ever come across: there’s an astonishing serenity that beams out of her eyes. I have noticed, too, that she never wears a brassiere, and the thin material of her T-shirt is molded closely to her breasts.

My room is small but I keep it tidy. There’s an electric ring and a sink in the corner but I don’t do much cooking because I hate the smell it leaves. My room is on the top floor of an old building on the seafront. It has two windows and from one of them I can get a good view of the ocean and the coast. In this town only two cafés stay open through the winter season and I divide my meals more or less equally between them; I don’t wish to seem particular and have no desire to give offense. In fact I prefer the Del Mar, but I don’t want to alienate old Luke who runs Luke ‘n’ Loretta’s. He’s nearly blind, but we talk a lot and I kind of like the old guy. I’m unwilling to tell him but, as his sight’s got worse, so has his place. Nowadays he leaves nearly everything up to his sister, Loretta. She’s an overweight, red-rinsed whore who lives in a camping truck out in back. For five dollars she’ll give you a quick time out there. Believe me, it isn’t worth it For some reason though, she’s taken a shine to me — asked me around for a drink after closing a couple of times. But since the girl in skintight jeans arrived I’ve stayed away. Then Loretta cut me dead in the street yesterday so I thought I’d better go back, just to keep the peace.

There was the first spring-quickening in the air this morning as I walked to Luke’s for breakfast. A watery sun warmed the sea breeze; the day was mild with a light-blue sky up above. However, any elation I felt was dissipated when I got to Luke’s. There was no sign of the old man and the place was a real toilet. I sat at my usual table and waited for Loretta to come and clear it up. It was swimming with spilled coffee, the ashtray was full of butts and someone had ground out a cigar in a half-eaten plate of pancakes and syrup. Loretta wore a loose Hawaiian blouse and stretch slacks in honor of the clement weather. She sat down and chatted and offered me one of the menthol cigarettes she chain-smokes, so I guessed I must have been forgiven. Then she leaned right over in front of me while she cleared the table so I could get a good look down her front at her heavy breasts. I ordered a hot tea, no milk, with a slice of lemon.

It may have been warmer outside but Loretta wasn’t taking any chances. All the windows were tight shut and their film of condensation and grease obscured any view of the beach.

I heard a car pull up. I wiped the window and peered out. It was a battered convertible and there were three guys inside. They got out and stretched, rubbing their buttocks and looking around. They were young, two whites and a Hispanic. There was a thin one with a pimp’s moustachio and a thick-lipped, black-haired guy with oddly white tattooed arms. They were wearing worn-out sharpie clothes.

This is a quite little town we live in and I hoped they’d just move on through. But just then the sun came out from behind some clouds, and in the corner of my eye, I caught its flash on the girl’s white T-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen her that day and I wiped the window some more to get a better look. But they saw her, too, and they glanced at one another and laughed in that shifty, teeth-baring way men in a group have. One of them bent his arm and did something with his fingers while the thick-lipped guy cupped his hands over his crotch and groaned. They all laughed again.

I felt my face flush and a pulse beat at my temples. When I put my cup down in its saucer there was a rattle of china. They disgust me, this kind of filth. City scum degenerates, just drifting up the coast in a hot car looking for cheap kicks.

I spent the rest of the day in my room reading my magazines. Later I tried to sleep but I had developed a bad headache. In the afternoon I had a long shower. That made me feel a little better.

At dusk I went to a small supermarket that I sometimes buy provisions at when I don’t feel like going out to eat. I was reaching for a can of clam chowder when I saw the girl through the window. I was a little surprised. Usually I never managed to see her this late and I always wondered where she went. But tonight it was obvious. Her eyes were gazing out to sea; her easy stride would carry her determinedly down to the beach.

The clam chowder tasted like earth. I couldn’t clear my mouth of it, so I drank a glass or two of rye. I opened the window that gives me a sea view and sat on the sill looking out at the darkening waters. Quite a way along the beach I could see the glimmer of a campfire burning and I knew at once that was where the girl would be — out there alone. Maybe she had cooked something and was enjoying the peace and absolute solitude. Then I could imagine her stripping off her clothes, her tan body with white bikini patches maybe, paler in the gloom, the breeze tensing her nut-brown nipples, the cool of the water as the waves broke against her golden thighs.…

But then I was distracted by the noise of raucous laughter in the street below. The three youths, half bombed, spilling out of the liquor store clutching six-packs and a bottle of wine. With a bizarre sense of mounting premonition I watched them laughing and joshing for a while in the street. Then one of them said, “Hey, look. A fire.” And with whistles and whoops they went running down the boardwalk, all heroic with beer, jumping gleefully onto the sand and heading up the beach toward my girl.

For an instant I heard my heart booming in my skull and my eyeballs seemed to bulge rhythmically to its beat. With a forefinger I wiped beads of perspiration from my upper lip. Bastards! SCUM TRASH BASTARDS! I saw stubby stained fingers fondling corn-yellow hair, spectral tattooed arms circling her slim brown body, probing tongue between thick dabbing lips, young beards on soft skin. She’d come dripping from the surf, wading quietly out of the green sea, her body dim and mysterious, to find a leering drunken horror waiting around her fire.