by Paul Theroux
"Can I give you a ride?"
She hesitated, actually drew back, then recognized me. "Didn't even know you had a car."
Just then a car went by, a Mercedes speeding, throwing up salt-melted slush, and a woman at the wheel talking fast into a phone, going to work. I felt envious and insignificant, until I thought: But who would I call?
"All I have to do is find it."
I had left it parked in front of the Mystic Lounge. We walked towards it and saw that already the plows had pushed a high bank of street-soiled snow against it. But it was a four-wheel-drive Pathfinder and I had no trouble bursting through the snow and onto the road.
"You work at Wellington Mall, right?"
"You got a good memory."
I said, "You mentioned something about a tattoo party."
"A like great memory," she said, nodding.
"I've never been to one. Will you take me?"
"Anyone can go, it's no problem, but OK. I'm meeting Bun-Bun after work," she said, and then with a shudder of anticipation: "I get so hyper just before these tattoo parties."
The strangeness of this sentence and the excited way she said it were all the encouragement I needed to spend the day in Medford and meet up with her and Bun-Bun later. She sat in the front seat and, as we crossed the river and traveled up the parkway, under the interstate at exit 31 to the mall, she smiled to herself the whole way, holding her hands to her heart, as though cherishing a secret.
"You're a writer," she said after a while, as though to show me that she had remembered something of me, too.
"Yeah, but today no writing—I'm going skiing."
"You can drop me here," she said, being considerate as we neared the mall, because a snowplow at the mall entrance had snarled traffic. And outside the car she said, "So where's your skis?"
"On the roof rack."
She laughed, because having left them on the roof rack I could not expect ever to see the skis again, and this was usual to her.
She said, "They ripped you off," and did not even pause to commiserate. The fault was mine.
"Bastards," I muttered, and drove farther up the parkway to a diner, where I had breakfast and read the Globe. Then I parked my car at Wellington station and took the T into Boston, and browsed in bookstores, and crossed the common and walked up Boylston to the library. I killed another hour, had lunch, and took the T to the Museum of Fine Arts, where I spent the rest of the day in a desperate stupor of contentment, looking at pictures and being grateful for the snow that had kept everyone at home. When I left the museum, the snow had stopped falling and the night was cold and clear.
Later, it seemed odd to be ducking through the rip in the chain-link fence and making my way through the fresh snow to the apartment in the projects off Mystic Avenue. But already it was like a routine, I knew the way, I had learned how to go home.
Blaine, in a baseball hat and winter coat, was sitting cross-legged on the sofa smoking a joint, watching television. He was barefoot, his ankles very white. He was staring hard at the TV screen, where a man in the crude disguise of a wig and sunglasses was talking fast and a description flashed under his face: Is Unfaithful to His Wife but Does Not Want a Divorce.
"It's the sex, sure, but it's also the thrill of it. And I need it. Hey, I love my wife..."
A woman in the audience was shouting, "If you love your wife so much, why are you catting around?"
"Ever hear anything about morals?" another woman said with indignation into a microphone that was being held by the host, a black man with a shaven head and a bow tie.
"Look, lady —no, I listened to you and now it's my turn. We tried counseling, we tried therapy, we tried videos. We tried sex toys. You heard what I said. It didn't work, nothing—"
"You are going to break up your marriage."
"It's holding my marriage together."
His confident logic made me sad.
"Now let's hear from..."
"Where's Mundo?" I asked Blaine.
"In the bar. He like lives there."
"You think he has a drinking problem?"
"No. Do you? People who get judgmental—they got a problem. You hear what I'm saying?"
"Yeah, sure."
"They got the fucking problem." And he gripped the remote and throttled it and the TV gasped and there was Nelson Mandela.
"I got such a problem with blacks," Blaine said.
"He's South African. He was in prison for twenty-seven years. I remember his trial. I was in Malawi. Central Africa. He—"
"Africa's so screwed up," Blaine said, and pressed his thumb into the remote again, and got a hockey game—men sprinting at each other like gladiators, swinging sticks. "Mundo had a breakdown, man."
The word was wonderful, because it never had to be explained. A breakdown was sudden, inconvenient, understandable, worthy of pity. No blame was attached, nothing was expected from you. A breakdown made you an invalid and won you sympathy. My struggling against it, my pride, putting on a brave face, all that had accomplished was to isolate me and leave me friendless. Or perhaps—it was just possible—I had spent a deranged twenty-four hours. My sitting in this dingy room in the Medford public housing projects on a cold evening with a druggie my son's age, watching a rerun of The Montel Williams Show and waiting to be taken by strangers to a tattoo party—perhaps this was a breakdown.
"I was messed up too," Blaine said. "I had job burnout."
He zapped the hockey game and was now watching an old John Wayne movie, Wake of the Red Witch.
"I saw that movie at the Medford Theater in Medford Square in about 1954."
It was a crucial scene. John Wayne, helpless in an old-fashioned diving suit, looking for the pearls, has his air tube severed and begins to drown, his helmet filling slowly with water.
"Does this thing suck or what? An astronaut trying to swim!" Blaine switched back to Montel Williams and the adulterers.
"I always use false names. That way I keep everything separate. My wife never..."
There were unselfconscious scuffing footsteps in the hall. Bingo began to bark furiously.
"I could make a movie," Blaine said. "I've got some incredible ideas."
Bun-Bun came in, pink and gasping from the cold and the climb up the stairs. She yanked her wool hat off her wild hair and laughed, glad to see me. She knelt and scratched Bingo and said, "We had your book! Did I tell you I work at this consignment shop in Somerville? Your book was there in the box. The other woman read it. Cheryl—she's the one who told me."
"Now you can read it," I said.
"No. We sold it. What I'm saying is, I told Cheryl your name and she knew you. She read your book in high school, and she said we actually had the book in the shop."
"They didn't like me at Medford High and now they're reading my book."
"She went to Somerville High," Bun-Bun said. "But I can relate to what you're saying. People hassle you but they won't let go." She looked at Blaine. "This guy's a famous writer."
"Ever watch this shit on acid?" Blaine said. It was auto racing. "It is so cool."
"But did Cheryl like the book?"
"Yeah. She even told me a little about it."
"The plot?"
"No, the guy. He's kind of bummed out, but he's real focused."
"Right."
"So he decides to like get away from it all. He needs to be like validated."
"With his family," I said.
"Cheryl didn't mention any family. But society the way he sees it is in denial."
"Right. America seems corrupt. So he goes to Central America."
"Is that where this pond is?" she asked.
"He's in the jungle."
"In a little cabin, right? He real, like, centered?"
I fell silent. I said, "That's Walden by Henry David Thoreau."
"Isn't that your name?"
"Pretty close," I said.
Blaine said, "I'm going to call my movie Deal With It, America."
I said to
Bun-Bun, "How about that tattoo party?"
"I'm supposed to meet Weechie at Dunkin' Donuts in a half an hour."
As we were leaving the apartment, Bun-Bun looked across the room to where Blaine lay crumpled on the sofa, his baseball hat on backwards, working the remote switch between his toes while he sucked on a joint and tapped the ashes into the small opening in the top of a can of Sprite. In a sudden reflex he swigged from the can, got ashes in his mouth, and gagged, and spat, and swore.
"He's real high maintenance," Bun-Bun said softly as she shut the door on him.
The donut shop on Mystic Avenue was bright and warm and smelled of freshly made donuts.
"You want some?" I asked.
"I never eat donuts," she said. "I never eat anything. Know how I got heavy? Apples. They're all sugar."
We went outside and watched for Weechie, but all I saw was a man in a new car in the parking lot making a telephone call from a cellular phone and gesturing in an insistent way with a cigarette. He was the sort of nasty thug that I had seen long ago in Medford, and he looked the same, the greasy slicked-back hair, the pudgy face, the dark thievish eyes. I had feared their stupidity more than their violence, and I had fled from it as soon as I was able, making my exit from Medford at seventeen and never returning until now.
"Them phones are so cool," Bun-Bun said.
The man got out of the car, cursing, still yakking on the phone. He had short legs and shiny shoes, and he slipped on the ice as he passed me and almost lost his balance.
"The fuck you lookin' at?" he said to me, regaining his balance and turning his stumble into a little strut. He pushed the door open, lifting his elbows.
I had grown up here, I had heard that question a thousand times, and after fifty years I still had no answer to it except what I said to Bun-Bun: "Let's get out of here. He doesn't like me." Because I was staring, as I had always done in Medford—standing there, seeing everything; listening, hearing everything; saying nothing.
'"Vinny Dogs' Dogano," Bun-Bun said. "He's with the Angiulo mob."
I glanced back, through the store window. He was eating a donut, and had sugar on his cheeks, but before he saw me I turned away.
"We just saw Vinny Dogs at Dunkin' Donuts," Bun-Bun said to Weechie when she arrived.
Weechie, snapping her chewing gum, looked at the little man in the bright window. She said nothing, but her expression was one of fear, awe, curiosity.
"So where's this tattoo party?" I asked.
"Riverside Avenue."
On our way, while I negotiated the icy road, Bun-Bun said, "But I never think of writers when I read books. I don't care who wrote them. Hey, like I never noticed. You gave me something to think about."
I asked, "How do you know that mobster back there?"
"We used to dance at one of his bars, Weechie and me," Bun-Bun said. "I know what you're thinking, but I wasn't heavy then. Exotic dancing."
"He owns bars?"
"Nah. He's an enforcer."
In conversations with people who asked me about my past, I always told them I came from Boston. I talked about the woods, the library, my rifle. But this was nearer to what I had known: the ignorance, the mob, the small-town fame of bullies, all this ice. It was what I had chosen to forget. The truth was always more interesting. I had come from nowhere.
Riverside Avenue was another street that had been cut in two by the interstate, but the number we went to, near Medford City Hall, was a house I had delivered Sunday newspapers to one school year, pushing a cart with big rusting wheels through the slush and the rain.
There was no bell. We went into the front room on the first floor of the wooden house, and I could see at once that except for the tattooist it was all young women and girls, fifteen or so. The tattooist was bearded and wore a blood-spattered apron. His own tattoos were elaborate Japanese designs, up and down his arms and on the back of his neck. He was sitting on the edge of a chair while a woman on a hassock was having a blown-open rose tattooed on her shoulder.
"I want one of them," Weechie said, breathing hard, so eager.
A woman approached Bun-Bun and kissed her on the mouth.
Bun-Bun said, "This is the guy I was telling you about."
The woman shook my hand and said, "So you know River Phoenix?"
"I guess so."
"Janie read your book. Hey, Janie."
A young woman in an oversize sweater approached carrying a thick paperback. And she handed it over, Presumed Innocent.
"So how about a signature?"
"I didn't write it."
"Aren't you Scott Turow?"
"No. I'm—"
"Forget it," she said sweetly. "I didn't really read it. I started it, but it kind of sucked."
"I am so pumped!" Weechie said, seeing the tattooist. She crouched and watched him work, drilling, wiping blood, drilling again.
"Get in line," he said. He looked at me and said, "You here for a tattoo?"
"I don't think so."
He smiled at me and drilled his needle gun against the woman's shoulder. He said, "You look like you just got shot out of a cannon."
It was a pleasant scene. There were women drinking and talking, passing plates of snacks, listening to music.
I said hello to a black girl.
"Do I know you?"
I shook my head no. "You from Medford?"
"West Medford," she said. "Jerome Street."
"One of my high school friends lived on Jerome Street. George Davis."
"I've heard of him," she said. "You getting a tattoo?"
"No. I'm just visiting. I came with Weechie and Bun-Bun."
"You're the guy who knows River Phoenix?"
"That's right. I used to deliver papers around here."
"What kind of papers?"
"Newspapers."
"Oh, yeah," she said. "Look, will you excuse me? I'm out of cigarettes. There's a store down the street where I can get some."
Watching her cross the room, I saw that the tattooist was kneeling before Weechie. He had finished the rose, and was prepping her. She lay limp and drooping like a pietà, her face glowing in ecstasy, Bun-Bun cradling her head while the tattooist shaved an area near the knob of her hipbone. He scraped away foam, readying her for the tattoo. Two girls watched, holding hands, and two more on the sofa were kissing. Several couples danced in the shadows at the far end of the room. Some others were grouped around the table of snacks as a girl in fur-trimmed shortie pajamas dealt snapshots for them like playing cards. "Nipple rings," she was saying.
I hurried to the door, where the black girl was putting on her gloves.
"Mind if I go with you?"
"Up to you."
Then we were outside in the snow. I said, "My name's Paul."
"I'm Peaches."
"Listen, Peaches, this used to be a deli—a really good one, called Savage's," I said as we walked along Riverside Avenue. I bought her a pack of Marlboros and, on our way back, passing behind the city hall, I said, "See up there? That's where I used to go after school in the second grade."
"I'm too stoned to climb that thing," she said.
"Take my hand," I said, and I tugged her up the path. "Over there used to be Fountain Street, and that exit sign was the Washington School."
At the shoulder of the road we sat on a log, the vandalized trunk of an old fallen tree, the traffic passing above us.
"My Uncle Hal used to live where that off-ramp curls around. It was a really old house, full of treasures, with a chimney in the middle. The story was that Paul Revere stopped there on his midnight ride. He came right down Salem Street on his horse."
"Your uncle had a horse?"
"Paul Revere," I said.
The lights of Medford Square were dim in the scorching lamps of the interstate. The river, all ice, was flat and pale. When I was seven years old, in 1948, on this spot, or very near to it, I had kissed Linda Palmer and told her I loved her.
I wanted to kiss this black girl, Peach
es. I imagined having her as a girlfriend—a Medford romance. I put my arm around her and my face near to hers. Then I sensed her whole body recoil and contract, as though getting smaller with fear, as though I were a slavering dog about to lick her face.
"No," she said.
"I just want to kiss you. Nothing serious."
"That's more serious than anything. I haven't like kissed a guy for maybe two years."
"Maybe you could get used to it."
She made a raspy little sniff of disgust and said, "Sometimes when I'm doing my girlfriend her husband watches, but we don't let him touch us. Anyway, he doesn't care."
She lit a cigarette. She said she was cold.
"Now I remember what this used to be, before the road went through."
"Yeah?"
And I saw it, the slate stones, all of them chipped, some of them ancient, and incised with names and dates and simple skulls at the top. They were the first gravestones I had ever seen, on my way home from school right here on the bluff above the tracks—where the railway tracks used to be, and the tadpoles in the ditches, where exit 32. now led off the interstate. I was seven or eight, holding Linda Palmer by the hand, and for a long time after that had thought all gravestones were flat gray slabs carved with grinning skulls.
"A graveyard."
She screamed and said, "I know what you're trying to do to me—just quit it!"
She was hysterical. I could not calm her. She would not let me touch her. She hurried away, walking in the street, which was clear of snow, heading back to the tattoo party. I was afraid to follow her, afraid that this misunderstanding would mean they would confront me. They might be very angry. But this was Medford, my old home, and they did not know me. No one knew me.
Better just to leave, to slip away. I got into my car and drove down Riverside Avenue, then changed my mind and headed to the on-ramp of the interstate. It was so easy to leave Medford now. In seconds, it seemed, I was out of there. Within minutes I was in Boston, and Medford was darkness and a few blurred lights in the rearview mirror.
FIFTEEN
The Queen's Touch
1
TAKING THE SHORT CUT through Boston that night was a mistake—I could not drive fast enough to escape my feeling of failure. Winter tramps and homeless veterans lurking in these narrow back streets looked like Arctic explorers in old engravings and blurred photographs—overdressed, shrouded in lumpy clothes, frostbitten and doomed. They walked stiff-legged like homemade monsters. It was face-freezing weather, and the plowed streets were lined with barriers of dumped snow. The sidewalks glittered with crystals of black frost. I was in a car, yet I was one of these men. Failure is a sort of funeral, and a person fleeing a collapsed marriage is both the corpse and the mourner.
