Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

He remembered their flesh, and he sorrowed for what they had become, parodies of those young women. They had badly neglected their teeth. He felt grateful that Shelby did not resent his being so much older, but he was never more keenly aware of their age difference.

In the ballroom, where a small band played, some couples had begun to dance. His arm around Shelby’s waist, as he steered her onto the floor, he could feel her body go heavy, resisting the music.

“How you doing?” he heard. It was Malcolm DeYoung, a high school friend. “Hey, who’s this fine lady?”

“Shelby, I want you to meet my old friend Malcolm.”

Malcolm said, “What about some food? There’s a buffet over there.”

They stood in the buffet line, and afterward they sat together at a table. Ray said, “I used to know everyone. But the only people I’ve met so far, apart from you, are those three”—Maura, Roberta, and Annie were at a nearby table. “The funny thing is, they were my girlfriends, at different times.”

Malcolm said, “You got a target on your back, man,” and he winked at Shelby.

“I really wanted to introduce Shel to my old friends.”

Malcolm put his fork down. He stood up and said, “I don’t drink these days. But let me tell you something. In a little while these people are going to get a little toasted. I don’t want to be here then. I don’t think you want to, neither.”

Then he left them. Ray didn’t speak again, nor did Shelby say anything more. She put her knife and fork on the uneaten food on her plate, and her napkin on top, like a kind of burial. Ray hugged her and said, “Ready?”

She said, “I was ready an hour ago.”

They left quickly, not making eye contact, and in the hotel lobby Ray said, “Shall we go upstairs?”

“What did you do after the prom?”

“We watched the submarine races up at the Mystic Lakes.”

“Show me.”

He drove her through the town and to the familiar turnoff, then down to the edge of the lake, where he parked, the house lights on the far shore glistening, giving life to the black water. He held Shelby’s hand, he kissed her, as he had in the first weeks of their love affair. He fumbled with her, loving the complications of her dress, delighting in the thought of her body under those silky layers slipping through his fingers, and now she seemed as eager as he was.

“Here?” he asked. “Now?”

“Why not?” She shrugged the straps from her shoulders and held her breasts, and as she presented them to him, their whiteness was illuminated by the headlights of a car, swinging past to park beside them.

“Cops,” Ray said.

Shelby gasped and covered herself, clawing at her dress, and ducked her head, while Ray rolled down his window. A bright overhead light came on inside the other car, which seemed full of passengers.

“You pig.” It was Maura Dedrick, her face silhouetted at her window, someone beside her — Annie, maybe — and someone else in the rear seat.

Ray was in such a hurry to get away, he started the car without raising the window, so he heard Maura still calling out abuse as he drove off, and the shouts were mingled with Shelby’s choked sobs that made her sound like a sorrowing child.

Back at the hotel (the reunion was still in progress — fewer people, louder music) Shelby lay in bed shivering, repeating, “That was awful.” Ray tried to soothe her, and in doing so felt useful, but when he hugged her, she said, “Not now.”

Once, in a dark hour of the night, the phone rang like an alarm. Ray snatched at it, and the voice was a shriek, the accusation of a wronged woman, which Ray felt like a snatching at his head.

“Wrong number,” he mumbled, and hung up, but was unable to get to sleep again.

In the morning Shelby said, “Show me whatever you’re going to show me,” and slid out of bed before he could touch her, “then let’s go home.”

He drove her to his old neighborhood and then slowly down the street where he had lived as a boy. The trees were gone, the wood-frame houses faded and small. Shelby sat, inattentive, as though distracted. But he urged her to get out of the car, and he walked her to the side of a garage where he’d scrawled a heart on the cinderblock with a spike, the petroglyph still visible after all these years. It was here, in the garage between two houses, that he’d kissed a girl — what was her name? — one Halloween night, crushing her against the wall, tasting the candy in her mouth, and running his hands over her body.

“Hello, stranger.”

A great fat woman with wild hair stood, almost filling the space between the garage and the nearby house. She laughed and put her hands on her hips. She wore bruised sneakers and no socks, and when she opened her mouth Ray could see gaps in her teeth, most of her molars missing. She raised her hand, clapping a cigarette to her lips, then blew smoke at him.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Is it”—he squinted to remember the name—“Louise?”

“Who else?” she said, then, “Who’s that, your daughter?” and laughed again.

Shelby said, “I’ll meet you in the car.”

“She’s scared,” Louise said triumphantly.

Ray was frightened too, but didn’t want to show it. The woman was hideous, and her sudden appearance and her weird confidence made him want to run. But he sidled away slowly, saying, “Don’t go away. I’ll be back.”

“That’s what you told me that night. I’ve been waiting ever since!”

Had he said that? Probably — he’d told any lie for the chance to touch someone. She had scared him then, she scared him now. He had the sense that she wanted to hit him, and when she took another puff of her cigarette and tossed the butt aside, he feared that she was coming for him. She was big and unkempt and reckless-looking.

“Please,” he said, and put his hands up to protect his face and ran clumsily to his car.

Louise did not follow him. She watched from the passageway beside the garage, potbellied, her feet apart, and as he started his car she shook another cigarette from the pack, fearsome in her confidence.

“I haven’t seen her for years,” Ray said. Shelby did not reply; she was mute, her arms folded, faced forward. “Imagine, she still lives there.”

“Waiting for you.”

“That’s crazy.”

But when they got home there was a further shock. Ray parked and noticed a white slip of paper thumbtacked to the front door. The idea that someone had come up the long driveway and through his gate and left this note disturbed him. And he was more disturbed when he read the note: Ray, You must of gone out. Sorry I missed you — Ellie.

“Who’s Ellie?” Shelby said.

He was thinking must of, and he knew Ellie had to have been his college girlfriend. She’d become pregnant. “I missed my period.” It had happened just about the time they were breaking up. She told her parents, who arranged for her to have an abortion in another state — it was illegal in Massachusetts then. When it was over they’d written to his parents, denouncing him, saying he’d ruined their daughter’s life. He had not seen her since. And that was who Ellie was — Ellie Bryant.

But he said, “I don’t know anyone by that name.” It was the first lie he’d told Shelby in all the time he’d known her. Shelby seemed to guess this, and smiled in triumph. Ray said, “Maybe an old patient.”

Another bad night, and in the following days, each evening he returned home with Shelby from the office, he expected Ellie to be waiting for him. Friday came. He knew something was wrong when he passed the front gate. The gate, always latched, was ajar — a small thing, but for a frightened house owner, alert to details, it had significance. And he heard on his nerves the creak of the porch swing at the side of the house.