Robert Butler - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Stories

I looked at Frank and his hands were before him, gesturing, shaping some point. He was talking about helicopter engines. I said, “He has so much energy.”

Eileen Sighed softly, in both appreciation and exasperation, it seemed. “I just wish I could get him to focus it where it’s needed.”

I wondered where that might be, but I did not ask. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps Eileen had something she needed to talk about and she was waiting for me to ask. But I did not. I have no trouble intruding on people’s lives by reading the things that they show. But I have trouble asking my way in. So I sipped my own glass of white wine and Eileen and I watched the men talking for a while longer and then she leaned forward and touched her husband on the arm and said it was time to go.

Frank turned to her and looked at his watch and said she was right. He rose and shook our hands — his hand taking mine was large and hard but surprisingly gentle — and Eileen thanked each of us and said she hoped we could speak again soon and they moved off. I watched them carefully. Frank led the way with an air almost of determination, like weaving between these tables and overstuffed chairs took the skills of an experienced tracker. Eileen followed two paces behind. Passing by, Frank bumped one of the chairs and kept on moving and Eileen paused to straighten it.

When he was clear of the lounge area, Frank stopped and turned and waited for his wife, but when she drew near him, he was looking out over our heads, back out to the sea, and she spoke a word to turn him and they walked off. They were side by side now, but they did not hold hands, though American couples often do.

Vinh and I remained in the bar for only a brief time. In the elevator, we were alone, but as the doors were closing, a young couple got into the car with us. She had one of those hairdos that looked like she’d slept standing on her head, full of wild waves and wrinkles. The man had a very thick neck and they were both wearing bathrobes. But their hair was not wet and they did not smell of suntan lotion, so I knew they’d spent the day in bed. Newlyweds. And I knew at once that they, too, were from a game. When they entered, the wife’s robe fell open at the top and showed a lot of bare cleavage, and the husband clamped it shut and looked at me and said, “She’s like that.” “So are you,” she said, slapping at his hand. “My little show-off,” he said and he tried to kiss her on the cheek. She turned her face in mock anger and then kissed him and I looked to the front of the car. “The Newlywed Game.” Unquestionably.

And I thought about Frank and Eileen, leaving the lounge. How they had moved away with a space between them and he had not taken her hand and she did not take his, for whatever reason. As Vinh and I lay beside each other that night in the dark, well before Vinh’s breathing was due to turn soft and regular with sleep, I said, “What do you think of them?”

From the few moments of silence that followed, I knew that he understood who I was talking about, even though he finally said, “Who’s that?” If he really didn’t know, then he would have asked that question immediately. Instead, he’d been trying to think what to say, or perhaps trying to understand for himself why he’d been as receptive as he had to the couple. So now he either knew the reason and didn’t want to tell me or he was as puzzled as me; I didn’t know which.

“Frank and Eileen Davies,” I said.

“Oh, them,” he said, and then there was silence again.

I waited for a while and decided not to let him off the hook.

“Well?”

“What’s that?” He forced a slur into his voice. But I knew he wasn’t really sleeping.

“You seemed to be very friendly with Frank.”

“Was I friendly exactly?”

“You ordered him a drink.”

“I couldn’t avoid that. There they were.”

“When the two of you were speaking, you leaned forward for his words. You don’t do that to just anyone.”

Vinh thrashed about with his covers. “I hate it when you do that,” he said.

Two could play his little game. I let a few moments pass and then said, “What’s that?”

“You know what I’m talking about. When you start telling me what my little gestures and looks mean. I don’t even know.”

I could hear music from somewhere. Very faint. I couldn’t control the sigh that billowed up from my chest. It was very clear, the sound of my Sigh in the dark room, but I wasn’t sure that Vinh had noticed. I wished that he had. I wished that he had my own little gifts so he could tell me why it was that I made that sound right then.

Then he said, softly enough that I could hear the music behind his words, “I’m not being critical.”

I didn’t answer. I turned my face toward the sliding doors. I’d left one of them open and the curtain moved a little in a breeze and the music was out there, out in the bay. There was a horn and there were guitars and a violin. “I don’t know,” Vinh said.

“You don’t know what?” I asked, and I truly didn’t.

“I don’t know what it is about that man.”

I found I didn’t care, for the moment. I rose and moved to the windows and listened to the music. It was a looping kind of melody, a mariachi waltz. I brushed the curtain aside and stepped out onto the balcony and far out in the dark bay was a triangle of colored lights, red and blue, and it was moving slowly and I looked harder and could see the boat, its decks flashing faintly, color wheels whirling there, and I could imagine the couples waltzing, the sweat still on them from the fast songs, and now they were holding each other close and gliding across the deck, their skin flushed with colored light.

“What is it?” Vinh’s voice came to me faintly, as if it was he who was far across the bay. I could even hear the rasp of the maracas now. And then the maracas faded, and then the strings, and the horn, and I watched until the boat disappeared down the shore. When I slipped back into bed, Vinh was asleep.

The next morning I left Vinh snoring faintly in the bed. It was pretty early. I wanted him to have at least the pleasure of sleeping late on this vacation that I’d given him, so I put on my bathing suit and eased the room door shut behind me and I went down to the pool. The lounge chairs were all upended and the Mexican boys with their white trousers rolled almost to their knees were mopping up, and one of them was skimming the surface of the water with a thin screen at the end of a pole. I stood there not wanting to go back upstairs. The morning sun felt very nice — a soft kiss on my forehead that wouldn’t stop — and finally one of the boys saw me and he bowed and put one of the chairs on its legs and motioned me over. I thanked him and stretched out there and I looked back up the facade of the hotel and tried to figure out which was our balcony. But I caught myself at this. Did I hope to see Vinh’s face looking down at me? This hope made me angry at myself for some reason. So I closed my eyes and thought of the cruise boat on the bay last night and the anger just sharpened. This surprised me and I wished I could step outside of myself and look back. Maybe I could see something that would give me a clue about what I was feeling. But all I could see was the fall of dim light-shapes in my closed eyes and then a woman said, “Can I sit beside you?”

I opened my eyes and found Eileen Davies. “Of course,” I said and I got up and helped her put a lounge chair beside mine. I sat back down and watched her take off her robe and she had a one-piece suit on, a little frumpy, though her figure was pretty good in the way that Americans like their women. That was my first impression, but as she folded her robe very carefully and put it inside the large canvas bag at her feet, I could see that her bottom was probably a little too large and the pocks that the TV ads call “unsightly cellulite” were beginning to appear on the backs of her thighs. All of this was, no doubt, a development in the last few years. When her man was in Vietnam, I was sure that her figure had been very fine indeed.