Paul Theroux - My Secret History

At the end of the day, Muzzaroll said sharply, We close in half an hour. All swimmers should leave the pool immediately. This means you—

They had specific rules that everyone had to follow. It was not like the Maldwyn Country Club, where no one knew the rules and people did whatever they wanted, because they had money.

That day I climbed down from the lifeguard’s chair, feeling relaxed from an afternoon of reading.

“Hello.”

She said it in a friendly singsong way: it was the pale girl I had seen near the telephone.

“We’re closing pretty soon,” I said.

“I know. I’m going.”

But she wasn’t going. She was standing in front of me.

“You were really mad,” she said, smiling. “I’ve never heard anyone say those things in real life. I thought people just yelled like that in movies.”

“I wasn’t yelling. I was being coldly abusive, reducing that guy to a physical wreck.”

“It was nice,” she said.

“Where do you live?”

“Pinckney Street,” she said. “Just over there.”

I liked her for not saying Beacon Hill.

“I’m walking that way,” I said. “I could walk you home.”

“Sounds good,” she said.

I went to change and by the time I had locked up she was outside waiting. I was glad that neither Larry nor Vinny had seen her: I wanted her to be my secret. We crossed the street, and I thought: If I had some money I could take her to Harvard Gardens and have a few beers. She said she worked in a bookstore on Charles Street, but this was her day off. I could tell from her accent that she was from the South Shore. She went to BU, she was an English major; she was renting a room here for the summer. I told her my name. She said hers was Lucy.

“Want to come in?” she said, as we turned into Pinckney Street. “The thing is, if you do you have to be careful. The landlady’s deaf but she’s got very good eyesight. If you’re quick she won’t see you.”

“I’ll be very quick.”

She turned her key and eased the front door open, and listened; then she nodded and I followed her to the end of the hall. Her room was only half a room, just a bed and a closet and a narrow space. There was nowhere to sit except on the bed.

“She didn’t see us!” She seemed very pleased that we had outwitted her landlady.

I sat next to her and she leaned against me.

“So we’re perfectly safe,” I said.

“Sure. As long as we don’t leave. If we stay right here, we’re fine.”

In that tiny room, with the window shut, and the shades drawn, and the closet door closed, sitting side by side on the bed.

“Then why don’t we stay right here?”

I put my arm around her and she drew nearer to me. Then I leaned over and kissed her and she put her mouth on my lips and licked them. I reached under her blouse and ran my hand over her breasts and let my fingers graze her nipples. She didn’t stop me, and so I did it again. She sighed, and her sigh was the sweetest kind of encouragement. I put my other hand between her thighs. She moved her legs to accommodate me. And then I jammed myself against her and pleaded for her to let me in. I thought she was resisting, but she was pleading for me to begin.

It all happened quickly, and a few minutes later we were panting in the dusty heat of the small room, our skin stuck together. The tension had left me. I did not know what to say. I felt somewhat awkward to be here with her, and the air stifled me. I wanted to get away so that I could think about it — walk down to the bus, buy an ice cream and head home; and maybe see her tomorrow and do it again. But I stayed where I was, stuck to her, out of politeness.

She said, “That was nice. I was thinking about that today.”

“When?”

“At the pool — looking at you.”

“You were thinking about that?”

She laughed and said, “Yes!”

I was slightly shocked that a girl would sit down and stare and think about screwing; but I was glad, too.

I said, “It’s hot in here, Lucy.”

“I’ll open the window,” she said.

“That’s okay. I have to go pretty soon.”

She didn’t object. She just said, “And I have to eat.”

Amazing. We had just made love passionately and furiously — and in a few minutes she would be eating spaghetti or something and I would be on the bus to Medford Square, as if nothing had happened.

I said, “As soon as I get some money we can go out to eat. I know a few places. I’d like to see you again and have some fun.”

She said, “Sure.”

I thought: I don’t want anything more than this. And then I was walking down Pinckney Street alone, and whistling. The sun was behind the houses and the air was cool.

I kept glancing up from my book, expecting to see her in her blue bathing suit. But she didn’t turn up that day, nor the day after, which was July Fourth. We always worked on holidays. Kennedy came to Boston, and Larry and Vinny ducked out to see him. They were very grateful to me for taking over, but it was no sacrifice. Kennedy was a bad Catholic and a millionaire. I had grown up with the sense that the rich were dishonest.

At about eleven o’clock Larry and Vinny came back saying that they had seen him and that he had class.

“What’s Jackie Kennedy like?”

“I’d fuck her,” Vinny said in a praising way.

A little later I was looking for Lucy and saw a man staring at me.

“Excuse me — you got a minute?”

I had always found that a forbidding question.

He was skinny, with very short hair and piercing eyes that were two different colors — one gray, the other blue. That made me think he had been hit very hard on the side of his head. His mouth hung open, making him seem both thoughtful and stupid. He breathed through his mouth in a laborious way that suggested he had low intelligence. His bathing suit was too tight, and I began to wonder whether men who wore very tight bathing suits were strange.

He said, “Does it bother you that we’re sending tractors to Cuba, I mean actually shipping them to that dictator Fidel Castro?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I said no, it didn’t bother me; and I looked around the pool for Lucy. “I wrote him a letter. I called him names.”

“Castro? Did he write back?”

“Would you write back if someone called you names?”

I could only think of my letter to Kaloostian, which was actually a letter to the entire Maldwyn Country Club. Was there anal symbolism in shoving potatoes into their exhaust pipes?

“Then I wrote to the President,” the skinny man said. “Of the United States. ‘Ike,’ I says. ‘How can you be so stupid?’ That’s all.”

“Any reply?” I was still glancing around.

He laughed. “I was telling him something!”

I saw Larry tapping his watch: lunchtime.

“I have to go, pal.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“You already did. I think it’s very interesting that you wrote to Fidel Castro. Maybe next time you should write in Spanish.”

“See, the thing is,” he said, not listening to me. “I’ve got one of these tiny little cameras. Japanese. I can take pictures of anything.”

I thought I was walking away from him, but he was following. I could hear the air going into his mouth.

“I want to take your picture. I mean with your clothes off. You’d probably be too shy, huh?”

When I stopped and turned he bumped into me. He was apologizing as I said, “You like it here, pal?”

“My name’s Norman. You can call me Norm, or Norman. I’m here for my nerves. I can’t work. It’s my nerves. The doctor told me to swim.”

“If you want to swim here, then swim. But don’t make strange requests. Understand?”