Paul Theroux - My Secret History

Larry said, “Look at this wad,” and showed me a roll of bills.

“Mine’s bigger,” I said. “That’s not spinach. That’s cash.” I sandwiched the thick stack of bills into Baudelaire, because I didn’t have a pocket big enough.

“Fantabulous,” Muzzaroll said, and grinned and blinked at the money pressed into my copy of The Flowers of Evil .

Muzzaroll wore flappy trousers and black spades and sunglasses. A pack of cigarettes was folded and tucked into the short sleeve of his red Lifeguard T-shirt. He had a yellow Sicilian face and hairy ears. He shook his legs and strutted and said, “I’m hep.”

“ ‘I’m hep,’ the fuckstick says. Vinny, you are such a loser. Parent and I have real money — big bucks. You’ve got shit and you know it.”

“I’ve got nine inches, so I don’t need money,” Muzzaroll said.

We were walking down Memorial Drive toward the pool, feeling happy.

“Let’s lock the pool up and buy some beer and get drunk, because as from today I’m unemployed,” Muzzaroll said.

“You deserve to be unemployed. You’re a fucking bananaman.”

“And you take it up the ass,” Muzzaroll said in a friendly way.

“You wish you could,” Larry said. “Instead of playing pocket-pool.”

“See this nickel? I could make a phone call right now and be in the sack in about fifteen minutes. I got a broad in Orient Heights begging me for it. Sometimes I have to put my hand over her mouth I get her screaming so much.”

“You put your hand over her mouth because she’s got bad breath. I know her. I put the boots to her.”

“You wish,” Muzzaroll said. “She wouldn’t go near yous.”

Because he was speaking to both Larry and me he carefully made a plural of you .

“She’s a dog,” Larry said. “She’s got a lopsided face, like someone sat on it, and one tit’s bigger than the other. A real bow-wow.”

“She’s beautiful,” Muzzaroll said, and put a cigarette into his mouth. “Give me a match, shit-for-brains.”

“Your face and my ass,” Larry said, and punched him on the arm.

Muzzaroll stuck a finger up and said, “Rotate on this.”

They only talked like that when they were feeling pleased. It sounded terrible, but it was very casual. The more obscene and abusive they were the friendlier it was. I knew I would miss them.

“Parent’s thinking about his dick. Don’t worry, kid — give it a year or so. If it doesn’t grow you can turn queer.”

“And you can go down on him,” Muzzaroll said.

“You wish you could.”

“Fantabulous. There’s a package store. I’m going to snag some beer.”

All this odd hilarity was because the pool was closing, and we knew we probably wouldn’t be seeing each other again. There was very little malice in them. When they were afraid or uncertain they were polite, but being foulmouthed was a form of intimacy — it showed how far they could go.

I was thinking about Lucy — how I had seen her only once lately, to give her the three hundred dollars I had borrowed from Mrs. Mamalujian. I had sworn that I would never see Mrs. Mamalujian again; but I had gone back and asked her for the money. My only consolation was that she had so much money she wouldn’t miss it. But I planned to pay it all back, fifty at a time, until my debt was cleared, probably next year.

Meanwhile, I wanted to forget the mess I had made of the summer, and I tried to stop myself thinking about Lucy.

At four o’clock we blew the siren we used for suspected drownings and emergencies. The kids complained as we cleared the pool. But this was the only fun we could look forward to: the last hour of the last day.

I walked to the edge of the pool. Every evening on closing the pool I looked into the ripply water and expected to see a dark body on the bottom — a shadowy thing that had lain there dead all day as swimmers splashed back and forth above it. There was nothing, but it was always my fear.

Now we had the place to ourselves. We opened the case of beer and set up the canvas deck chairs. And as the traffic roared past the fence we pretended that we were millionaires and that this was our private pool. The sun was still high over Cambridge, across the river. We stretched out and we drank beer and listened to Arnie Ginzburg’s rock and roll show.

“I’m going bollocky, I don’t even care,” Muzzaroll said, and pulled off his bathing suit. His penis looked like a fat little otter. “They can’t fire me!”

Larry threw an inner tube into the pool and then sat in it, drinking beer and bobbing in the deep end. “They can’t fire any of us. We don’t work here anymore.” He swigged the beer. “Hey, Muzza, what are you doing this winter?”

“I don’t know. Maybe work for the state. Maybe shovel snow. My brother-in-law’s got a car wash. He’s looking for a manager. What about you?”

Larry said, “I was just thinking. I worked in a bakery last winter. It sucked. What about you, Parent?”

“College,” I said, looking up from The Flowers of Evil .

They didn’t reply just then, but after a while Larry said, “You got the right idea. Get an education.”

“One thing’s for shit-sure,” Muzzaroll said, “I ain’t going in no fucking army.”

“Anyway they don’t take faggots,” Larry said.

Muzzaroll laughed. “Know what we should do? Send out for pizzas. And just stay here until it gets dark. Then get some ginch.”

He phoned The Leaning Tower of Pizza and asked them to deliver three jumbo pizzas. While we waited for them, two girls walked by the fence on their way along the riverside path.

Larry said, “Hey, girls. Come here, want to swim? This is our pool. We rented it for the day.”

“Sure you did,” one girl said. She was laughing, but she hesitated because the pool looked so odd and still.

Muzzaroll was sitting in the inner tube now, with a can of beer in his hand, and wearing a baseball hat.

“He’s an animal,” Larry said.

“Did you guys break in?”

“She thinks we broke in! Hey, we rented it, no kidding. Ask him. He goes to college. He wouldn’t lie to you. Tell them, Andre.”

“Seriously, it’s ours for the day,” I said. “You’re welcome to join us. It’s all paid for.”

“The fat one’s yours,” Larry whispered, and in a louder voice, “We just sent out for pizza. Want a slice?”

The girls were giggling and looking interested, and then as I looked at them — they were both pretty, neither one was fat — Larry said something that sent a chill through me.

“Andy — there’s your girlfriend.”

I looked up, expecting to see Lucy and saw Mrs. Mamalujian getting out of a yellow taxi.

“So long, deadass,” Larry said. “When you come back you’re going to find me and the Bananaman planking these broads in the locker room.”

He could see that Mrs. Mamalujian was beckoning to me. I didn’t want her to come in, so I put my clothes on and hurried out.

She said, “I just happened to be passing. Want a drink?”

She had had a few already. It was the way she stood there and the sulky way she talked.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“One drink, Andrew. It’s a holiday. And I want a word with you, too. Is that too much to ask?” She had this pompous and offended way of speaking when she was half-drunk, and then after a few drinks she would slobber or weep.

Behind me, Larry and Muzzaroll were making the two girls laugh. The pool was empty, and the sun was going down. They had beer and pizza. I wanted to stay with them and have a laugh. But I had no choice, and Mrs. Mamalujian knew it. She opened the taxi door and I got in.

“Most of the bars are closed today,” she said.