Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“Nineteen eleven,” she said. “Wait until you see the snow—”

She kept talking. It was the worst kind of snapshot monologue, giving the background of each blurred person and each indistinct object; and describing, in minute detail, things that weren’t shown in the pictures.

After a while (“There’s Patrick again—”), she said, suddenly, “What’s wrong?”

“I have to go,” Lucy said very loudly.

“I’ll come back some other time,” the lonely woman said.

But all this while I was considering in the darkness how much I liked Lucy, and when Miss Murphy had gone and I stepped out of the closet and kissed her I knew that something had happened in me. In that space of time, while I crouched beneath her dresses and she was outside murmuring, I fell in love with her.

“Not so hard!” she said, when I hugged her. But I didn’t want to let go.

No one seemed to mind that I was late for work.

“She was here again,” Muzzaroll said. “That woman. With the hat.”

I said, “I was taking a leak.”

“Who are you trying to kid?” Larry said. “You’ve probably been in the saddle.”

I hated that, and it wasn’t true; but I couldn’t tell him about Lucy, or that I’d been stuck in her closet.

When we closed the pool that day, I went over to the Mass General and up to the Blood Donor department. Seeing Loretta I wondered whether the girls I desired could be put into different categories: the Nurse, the Whore, the Child, the Cheerleader. But, no, it didn’t work, because Lucy wasn’t any of these. She was someone like me. Or was that another category: the girl who resembled me?

Loretta was nodding. She said, “B-negative, right?”

“That’s me,” I said. I wasn’t surprised that she remembered. My father, who sold shoes, knew people by their shoe size. He’s an eight e , he’d say, or sometimes using a shoe-man’s jargon, He’s an eight Eddie .

“You look great,” Loretta said. “You and Larry are so lucky to be working at the pool. You’ve got a fantastic tan. You just sit there and get the rays.”

“It’s brainless work, and there’s no money in it. Anyway, I’m trying to save for school. That’s why I’m here.”

She just smiled at me.

“I want to sell you another pint.”

“You’re a stitch!” She shook her head and was laughing as she said, “You have to wait at least six weeks before you can give it again.”

I said I didn’t know that.

“You can’t keep taking blood out of your system. You’d get anemic. You’d probably die.”

“I feel all right. I’m broke, that’s all.”

“Come back in a month or so. I could probably take you then. Gee, if I had any extra money I’d loan it to you.”

I told her that was a very nice thing to say; but even so I wouldn’t have borrowed it. What I wanted to do with it was walk into a restaurant with Lucy and order whale steaks for us both, and afterwards tell her I loved her.

When I left the hospital I became very self-conscious imagining Loretta telling the other nurses how I had come back less than a week after giving blood and said Want another pint?

It was raining, the pool was empty, and we were playing whist in the office — Vinny, Larry, and the janitor we called Speedo — this was about two days later.

I said, “I’d like to give blood again — I mean, sell it. But you can only do it every six or eight weeks.”

“What else is new?” Larry said, and put a card down. He had a cardshark’s way of snapping them onto the table. Then he said that he had heard of places where you could sell sperm — they injected it into women who wanted kids.

“Hey, I could do that,” Muzzaroll said.

Speedo grinned, thinking the same thing.

“They’d turn you assholes down,” Larry said. “They don’t want a bananaman. They want class. You gotta take tests.”

“Jerk-off tests,” Speedo said.

“Psychological tests, to make sure you’re not crazy. Intelligence tests. The whole bit. You think it’s just a hand-job. It’s not. It’s science. After you get the okay, you jerk off into a test tube and they give you about twenty bucks. You think I’m shitting you. The place is right here in Boston.”

“You can sell your body,” Muzzaroll said. “For science. For experiments and shit like that. You can get about three hundred bucks for it.”

That sounded like a fortune to me.

“Or in Speedo’s case, about thirty clams,” Larry said.

“What happens?” I said.

“Andy’s interested,” Larry said. “It’s like this. You sign something and they give you the money, and when you die they claim your bawd. Then they cut you into hamburg for their experiments.”

“Who are we talking about?” Muzzaroll said.

“Students,” Larry said. “Harvard students.”

Speedo said, “How do they know when you die?”

“They find out. See, when they give you the money they put a tattoo on the sole of your foot. It stays there. No matter when or where you die, your body gets shipped to Harvard Medical School.”

“I’d do that,” I said. And I imagined showing someone like Mimi Hardwick, or Lucy, or any girl, the tattoo on my foot that said This body is the property of Harvard Medical School. “What difference would it make? I’d be dead.”

“What if your foot got chopped off?” Speedo said. “Like you got run over or something—”

“Play the fucking game,” Muzzaroll said, scraping up the deck of cards and dealing.

Then Larry said, “Here she comes.”

It was Mrs. Mamalujian, in a big cartwheel hat and a flower-printed dress. She looked very stylish and out of place, carrying a blue umbrella and walking up the path to the MDC pool. She lifted her sunglasses and looked at me.

I had put my cards down and run out to intercept her. I didn’t want the others to hear anything.

“Where have you been hiding?”

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t have any money, and with no money I felt I did not exist.

“I’ve been here. How did you find me?”

And I walked over to the fence so that she would follow me and so that the others wouldn’t see us.

“Your mother told me,” she said. “This is my third visit, for crying out loud. I’m glad to see you. We miss you up at the Maldwyn Country Club.”

“They can come down and swim here. This is for everybody. Only they probably wouldn’t want to. It’s all maniacs here.”

There was laughter in the office. They couldn’t play whist with three people, so they were horsing around, and I could hear Speedo shouting and protesting.

Mrs. Mamalujian said, “I thought we were going out to lunch.”

“We were, but I ran out of money.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ve got lots of money.”

That made me feel sick with envy and confusion.

She said, “God, you’re funny,” and looked past me at the pool.

Vinny and Larry were carrying Speedo through the rain to the pool. Speedo was wearing his janitor’s blue overalls, and he was yelling and struggling. They propped him up at the edge of the pool, tormented him for a while, and they pushed him in.

“Who are they?”

“My colleagues,” I said.

Mrs. Mamalujian laughed. She had a good, deep, appreciative laugh that was somehow improved by her heavy smoking.

“I have to go back to work,” I said.

“Some work,” she said, sarcastically. “When’s your day off?”

“Saturday.”

“We’ll have lunch then. Do you know the Copley Plaza? Peacock Alley? I’ll meet you there Saturday at noon.”

That night after work I went back to Medford Square, not so much to buy a sub as to talk to Mr. Balinieri again.