Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

The music was loud, incomprehensible to me, but Nhu knew the lyrics and was murmuring them. Another revelation: she liked pop music. She seemed slightly drunk, but quite happy as long as she was by my side.

I monitored a few nearby conversations, all of them dishonest complaints — one bitching about the high price of real estate, another about winter storms, and one beefy-faced man was moaning that it was harder and harder for him to find parking space for his private jet at the airport. You had to be a resident here to know that all of this talk was a form of boasting.

Without warning, a woman blindsided us, and in a drunken and demanding voice said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

I had no idea who she was, but it took me only an instant to see that she was not talking to me.

Nhu blinked and said, “Miz Row.”

That might have been “Lowell”—there was such a couple at the Club. Other women circled, seeing this Lowell woman close to us, and they hovered like hyenas.

Nhu smiled at her, and she seemed confused for, really, she had no name for me that could be uttered in a public place.

“I hope this doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

All the women smiled, hoping for a devastating remark from their friend.

“That you won’t be available to do my windows.”

After that, nothing mattered. I considered hitting her, or throwing my drink into her face and howling at her. But I smiled and steered Nhu to the exit, for I had a much better plan.

Only the feeblest, the weakest, the most naïve of them tried to stop me. The shrewdest, the strongest, the wealthiest, the truly connected ones did not lift a finger against me. They were smart enough to know that they would fail, that I would break them and bankrupt the Board of Selectmen — that it was much less costly for them to go along with me, to humor me, to praise my extravagant house.

And these fat ones also knew how lawless the rich can be. I was one of them. And the ways we break the law are trivial, mere nuisances, compared to the plunder and mayhem we get away with legally. The worst of us are seldom breaking the law. The law is on our side — it ought to be; after all, we are the ones who make it.

The ones who tried to stop me sent an emissary from the Building Committee, who appeared one afternoon on my doorstep, smiling and making small talk.

I said, “Now tell me what’s really on your mind.”

“Local ordinance, as old as the town. You can’t build without permission.”

“I’m building.”

“Then you need to apply for a permit.”

“I did that.” I smiled at him. “It didn’t fly.”

“If you try to build, we’ll have to stop you.”

“How?” I was still smiling. “A lawsuit?”

He blinked at me, perhaps trying to summon the courage to speak. I knew what I was about to say would be repeated a thousand times in town and would become part of the island’s mythology, so I kept it simple and memorable.

“Sue me,” I said. “You’ll lose. I’ve got more lawyers than you. I’ve got more money than you. I could tie you up for a hundred years. I could bankrupt your board. I could destroy you. Don’t talk to me, talk to someone who knows me. People who know me would not dare to stop me. This meeting is over.”

I did not shut the door in his face. I watched him stammer and sigh and turn away. He walked self-consciously down the path to the street.

Building a house on a small island is a public event. Every aspect is visible: the arrival of the container trucks, two a day, on the morning ferry; the deployment of workers, the coming and going of carpenters, plumbers, electricians — they filled the ferries, the commuter flights, the charter boats, the barges. The disruption of the island the rest of that year was constant; it continued through the spring and into the summer, season of shortages and stress and no space, and on into the fall.

Who could find a plumber or an electrician or a painter? I had hired all the best ones. I had commandeered the stock in all the warehouses and hardware stores. Islanders were told, “We’re out of cement,” “We’re down to our last roll of cable,” “No more rebar.” Other building projects on the island were put on hold because mine was proceeding. And there was nothing that anyone could do except reflect that they had brought this on themselves.

By Labor Day the house had risen and was clearly visible from town — although it was fifteen miles away. The talk reached me: the house was ugly, I was a monster, I was a junk dealer who had made money on drugs in the Third World, I was buying up the island, I was an interloper, I had a criminal record, I had physically threatened the Building Committee, I had committed similar outrages elsewhere.

The house was finished in time for us to spend Christmas inside. The wall around it was to code — four feet high — but behind the wall I planted Leyland cypress trees that would grow to twenty feet in no time, five hundred of them, a wall of greenery.

I was the subject of the most vicious gossip. The story was that I lived alone with my Third World servant. In one version, I was a tyrant who satisfied my lusts on her. In another, she was a shrew who tormented me.

All talk. At this stage of my life I am keenly aware of the malicious innuendo and falsehoods spread about reclusive men my age. The things that people say! Just listen to the crap they talk about other people. Are they so much more scrupulous when they talk about you?

Instead of accepting that, I am writing this. I realize that what motivates most other writers in the world is the desire to have control over their obituary.

The other facts, then. We married off-island, in Las Vegas — her choice, and the day she came off the payroll, Nhu revealed a new side of herself, her love for gambling and her winner’s instinct for numbers. She won at blackjack, she knew when to double down or fold, she had a knack for remembering cards that had been played, she knew how to wait, when to collect her winnings, and when to quit. She claimed gambling was like fishing. I did not see that at all, which was probably why I was unlucky at both.

But I was lucky in having her.

She said, “I way you!”

“You might have had a long wait.”

She said that she had decided upon me early on, and that if I had not acted, she would simply have worked for me, whatever happened; no one else would do. All this was in her mind. The plan was fully formed as an intention, but she could not presume; it was for me to make the first move.

No long after that, I was diagnosed with all sorts of ailments — macular degeneration in one eye, cataract in the other, a bad knee — requiring surgery. Ringing in the ears. I was forgetful. Fishing for a box of cookies on a top shelf, I slipped off the chair and broke my collarbone. I was falling apart. Nhu was in great shape, still smoking, working every day to keep the house spotless, fishing now and then.

This is the life I dreamed of. I am ill, but bearably so. I am mild. She runs the house, she runs me. She is wiser, more experienced, shrewder. When we go fishing I steer the boat, she fishes and determines the route, the speed, the duration. I am her servant. It is what I want.

We seldom go out. We see no one. We phone for groceries now. We might take the boat for a run over to Edgartown on a calm day with a fair tide, or even to the Cape. But the rest of the time we live behind our hedge in the huge house I built for her on the Neck.

She will outlive me. She will continue in this house as the Junk Man’s widow. And I will rest easy knowing that long after I am gone, people just off the ferry will look east and, seeing our house, will make faces and say in shock, “What the hell’s that?” It is a symbol of our love.