Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

As a sculptor and welder of large metal pieces I was always invited to the unveilings, especially when a big company was involved as the sponsor or patron. My Bangkok gallery sold one of my pieces to a bank for its courtyard’s inaugural, and I flew there for the opening. My translator was a lovely young woman, very slender and pale. Hardworking and sleep-deprived, she was attractive to me: her weary fortitude made her seem waif-like and aroused me. Yet she was strong — stronger than me. I tended to fade in the evening while she was still alert. She was always early at the hotel in the morning to pick me up. She said, “Call me Pom. My real name too hard.”

She grew lovelier to me each day, and I found myself desiring her. In the taxis I would sit close to her. Sometimes I’d put my hand on her warm receptive hand. I asked where she lived. Far, she said. I suggested getting a room for her at my hotel. She said, “Not necessary.” What did that mean? I tried to be as polite as possible, knowing how manners are so important in Thai culture. I thought my extreme politeness might work magic on her, but it didn’t.

One day she was late. It was the only time she’d ever been late. She was apologetic but had an explanation. Her explanation took almost an hour of nonstop monologue. To summarize: after leaving me the night before, she had been accosted by two men who’d taken her in a car to a remote place and raped her, over and over. She spared me no detail, and her English was perfect, which made it all worse. It was a harrowing story of violent sexual assault.

“We must go to the police,” I said when she’d finished.

She said no. “We will say no more about this.” I could not read the expression on her face. It was not a smile. It was something so enigmatic it seemed akin to either ecstasy or anguish.

Soon after this, my sculpture was unveiled. I left Bangkok. It was only later that I realized she must have invented the story as a way of attracting me, but of course by then I was home with my wife, who is the love of my life.

Traveling around Japan, especially in the smaller provincial towns, I’d always stop in convenience stores for candy or a chocolate bar or cookies. I had a sweet tooth. Maybe it was the bland Japanese food I’d been eating that exacerbated my craving.

Invariably, the cashier at the convenience store was a girl in her late teens — slender, pale, with flawless skin, delicate hands, fine-boned, smiling, submissive, sweet, and obliging. I would linger over the transaction, often ask a question just to detain her, and if no one else was around I would ask her name, her age, and what sort of music she liked. She was always delightful. I am not talking about one or two girls like this, but twenty or more. It was like a whole social class of delightful teenage cashiers, smiling at me while they went about their dreary job. I always thought, If I were not married, I’d move to Japan and marry one of these beauties.

A year after my trip, back in my small town in Massachusetts, I wanted to have a desk built and went to a local cabinetmaker. The man, Arthur, showed me pictures of some of the work he’d done — in Japan. I got to know him better. He had lived in Japan for fifteen years.

I told him my fantasy of the cashier.

He laughed and said, “I married her.”

He had fallen in love with the very sort of girl, nineteen, beautiful, a cashier in the convenience store in a small town near Nagoya. He too had a sweet tooth.

“It was horrible almost from the beginning,” Arthur said. “Yes, she was submissive and sweet at the store, but most of these girls are the opposite privately from the way they are in public. As if to compensate for that public role of being obliging and deferential, at home they’re nagging and dominant, hypercritical, unhelpful, frigid, and unpleasant. Mean with money — mine took charge of all my money. Her mother was the same. We ended it.” He thought a moment, then said, “Maybe they’re not all like that, but…”

Our son and his wife and their small baby visited one summer. I had to put off our old friends the Butlers, saying, “If it weren’t for my son’s visit, we’d be glad to have you on the Fourth of July. Come after that — the guesthouse will be free.”

The Butlers said they’d visit the following weekend. I looked forward to their visit, because they were a happy couple and liked us and, frankly, Joe and I were going through a rough patch.

I should also add that my son and his wife were model parents, extremely attentive to their little six-month-old son, Freddy, who never gave a moment of trouble — usually slept through the night. And if he was fussed, they seemed to know it instantly, even when we were eating in the main house, kind of like parental extrasensory perception. I was amazed at how prescient they were to this infant’s needs — changes of diaper, wakefulness, teething, whatever.

I said to my husband, “That’s a lesson to us. They’re on the kid’s wavelength in a way we never were.” We were sorry to see them go.

The Butlers came. Wonderful couple, no kids, devoted to each other. Ron Butler had been the best man at our wedding, one of our oldest friends. We had felt an emptiness when our son and his family left, but the Butlers perked us up. They’d driven a long way and said they were tired. I said, “Have a nap. Everything’s informal. We have no plans. Let’s do something tomorrow.”

They went to the guesthouse and shut the door.

I poured myself a glass of wine and settled in front of the TV, but before I turned it on I heard, I told you they’re pissed off. It was Ron Butler’s voice. My husband came into the room and made a face. We heard from a corner bookshelf, You’re such an asshole. This is the last goddamned time. Did you see how they looked at us. They don’t want us here. And then the wife, Oh, shut up, you queer.

We sat, horrified, until at last we found the baby monitor my son had left behind, the apparatus under the bed, the receiver in our TV room, to hear whether the baby was crying.

That night my husband embraced me tenderly and said, “You are so precious to me.”

The Butlers were their delightful selves, but we were not surprised when they said they’d have to leave earlier than they’d expected.

“I NOW BELONG TO an incredibly exclusive club,” Ray Testa had said in his speech at his wedding reception. He savored the moment, then winked and added, “There are not many men who can say they’re older than their father-in-law.”

He was fifty-eight, his new wife, Shelby, thirty-one; his father-in-law was fifty-six and seemingly at ease with this older man marrying his daughter. He said, “She’s an old soul.”

Ray Testa was a dentist, and for seven years Shelby had been his hygienist. But “I’m thinking of leaving,” Shelby said one day. Ray urged her to stay and finally pleaded, “You can’t leave. I love you.” She didn’t smile. She swallowed air and said that she had feelings for him, too. Then, “What about Angie?”

He confessed everything to his wife, adding that he wanted to marry Shelby.

Angie took it badly, as he guessed she might, but unexpectedly she said, “Why didn’t you leave me years ago, when I might have met someone who really cared for me?”

He hadn’t imagined she’d object in this peevish way, for such a coldly practical reason, because his timing was inconvenient for her. He thought she’d tell him how she’d miss him and be miserable without him, not that she might have been better off with someone else.