The collected stories (46 page)

'Will I see you again?'

'Perhaps,' she said. She was on her own ground: the white hotel loomed behind the palms. Now - here - it was the boy who was the stranger.

'I want to sleep with you.' It was not arrogant but imploring.

'Not now.'

Not now. It should have been no. But marriage taught you how to be perfunctory, and Milly had, as a single woman, regained a lazy sense of hope. No was the prudent answer, Not now was what she had wanted to say - so she had said it. And the next day the boy was back, peering from the beach at Milly, who lounged by the pool. In the sunlight he looked even younger, with a shyness that might have been an effect of the sun's brightness, making him hunch and avert his eyes. He did not know where to begin, she saw that.

Milly waved to him. He signaled back and like an obedient pet responding to a mistress's nod came forward, vaulted the hibiscus hedge, smiling. Instead of taking the chair next to her he crouched at her feet, seeming to hide himself.

'They won't send you away,' said Milly. 'You can say you're my guest.'

The boy shrugged. 'At night - after everyone clears out - we come here swimming.' He was silent, then he said, 'Naked.'

'How exciting,' said Milly, frowning.

Seeing that it was mockery, the boy did not reply. He got to his feet. For a moment, Milly thought he was going to bound over the hedge and leave her. But in a series of athletic motions he strode to the edge of the pool, and without pausing tipped himself into it. He swam under water and Milly followed his blue shorts to the far end of the pool where he surfaced like a hound, gasping and tossing his head. He returned, swimming powerfully, flinging his

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arms into the water. But he did not climb out of the pool; he rested his forearms on the tiles and said, 'Come in. I'll teach you how to swim.'

'I was swimming before you were born.' She wished she had not said it, she wished it was not true. She picked up a magazine from her lap and plucked at a page.

The boy was beside her, dripping.

'Take this,' she said, and handed him a towel. He buried his face in it with an energy that aroused her, then he wiped his arms and threw it aside.

'Time for lunch,' said Milly.

'Let me treat you,' said the boy.

'That's very thoughtful of you,' said Milly, 'but I'm afraid they won't let you in the dining room like that.'

'They have room service. We can have it sent up - eat on the balcony.'

'You seem to be inviting yourself to my room,' said Milly.

'No,' said the boy, 'I'm inviting you to mine.'

Milly almost laughed. She said, 'Here?'

'Sure. I've been here for about six weeks.'

'I've never seen you at breakfast.'

'I never eat breakfast,' said the boy. 'And I've only used my room a few times in the past week or so. I met a girl over on the beach - they have a house there. But my stuff is still in my room. My money, camera, passport, watch - the rest of it. I don't want it stolen.'

'It must be fearfully expensive.'

'My mother pays.'

'How very American.'

'She's on a tour - in Hong Kong,' said the boy. 'I thought we were talking about lunch/

if you're a guest at this hotel, then you must have other clothes here. I suggest you dress properly, and if there's an empty chair at my table I have no objection to your joining me.' Her voice, that fastidious tone, surprised and appalled her.

The boy's name was Mark. He told her that over lunch, but he said very little else. He was so young there was practically nothing he could say about himself beyond his name, and it was for Milly to keep the conversation going. It was not easy in her new voice. She described her trip through Indonesia, everything that had

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happened to her since leaving Ayer Hitam, but after that she was stumped. She would not speak about Lloyd or the divorce, and it angered her that it was impossible to speak about her life without discussing her marriage. Nearly twenty years had to be suppressed, and it seemed as if nothing had happened in those years that could matter to this young boy.

To his timid questions she said, 'You wouldn't understand.' She was hard on him. She knew why: she wanted him in the simplest way, and she resented wanting him. She objected to that desire in herself that would not allow her to go on alone. She did not want to look foolish - the age difference was ridicule enough -and wondered if in shrinking from an involvement she would reject him. She feared having him, she feared losing him. He told her he was nineteen and eagerly added the date of his next birthday.

Milly said, 'Time for my nap.'

'See you later, then,' said Mark. He shook her hand.

In her room, she cursed herself. It had not occurred to her that he might not be interested. But perhaps this was so. He had a girl, one of the innocent witches; but her fate was the Australian who, late at night, rattled the change in his pocket and drawled for a persuasive way to interest her. She pulled the curtains, shutting out the hot sun, and for the first time since she arrived lay down on her bed wondering not if she should go, but where.

She closed her eyes and heard a knock on the door. She got out of bed, sighed, and opened the door a crack. 'What is it?'

'Let me come in,' said Mark. 'Please.'

She stared and said nothing. Then she moved aside and let the boy swing the door open. He did this with unnecessary force, as if he had expected her to resist.

Milly had not written any letters. A few postcards, a message about the weather. Letters were an effort because letters required either candor or wit, and her solitary existence had hardened her to both. What Milly had done, almost since the hour she had left Ayer Hitam, was rehearse conversations with an imaginary friend, a woman, for whom in anecdote she would describe the pleasures of divorce. Flying alone. The looks you got in hotels. The Australian. A room of one's own. The witches and princelings on the beach. Misunderstandings. The suspicious eyes of other men's

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wives. The mystery and the aroma of sexuality a single woman carried past mute strangers.

Listen, she imagined herself saying; then she reported, assessed, justified. It was a solitary traveler's habit, one enforced by her separation from Lloyd. She saw herself leaning over a large menu, in the racket of a restaurant - flowers on the table, two napkin cones, a dish of olives - and she heard her own voice: / think a nineteen-year-old boy and a woman of - let's be frank - forty-one -I think they're perfectly matched, sexually speaking. Yes, I really do. They're at some kind of peak. That boy can have four or five orgasms in a row, but so can a middle-aged woman - given the chance. It's the middle-aged man with all his routines and apologies that makes the woman feel inadequate. Sex for a boy, granted, is usually a letdown because he's always trying himself out on a girl his age, and what could be duller? It hurts, Jim, and hurry up, and what if my parents find out? What I'm saying, and I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of, is Mark and I were well-matched, not in spite of our ages, but on the contrary, on the contrary. It was like coaching a champion. I know I was old enough to be his mother, but that's just the point. The age ratio isn't insignificant. Don't laugh - the boy of a certain age and his mother would make the best of lovers -

But lovers was all they'd make. Conversation with Mark was impossible. He would say, 'I know a guy who has a fantastic yacht in Baltimore.'

A yacht. At the age of twenty-three, when Mark was one, Milly had driven her own car to the south of France and stayed with her uncle, a famous lawyer. That handsome man had taken her on his yacht, poured her champagne, and tried to seduce her. He had failed, and angrily steered the yacht close to the rocky shore, to scare her. Later he bought her an expensive ring, and in London took her to wonderful restaurants, treating her like his mistress. He renamed his yacht M/7/y. Lloyd knew part of the story. To Mark Milly said, 'I was on a yacht once, but I was much younger then.'

For three weeks, in her room, in his, and twice on the beach, they made love. They kissed openly and made no secret of the affair. The guests at the hotel might whisper, but they never stayed longer than a few days, and they took their disapproval away with them. Milly herself wondered sometimes what would happen to

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her when Mark left, and she grew anxious when she remembered that she would have to leave eventually. She had no destination; she stayed another month: it was now November, and before Christmas she would exhaust herself of this boy. She was not calculating, but she saw nothing further for him. The affair, so complete on this bright island, would fail anywhere else.

Mark spoke of college, of books he planned to read, of jobs he'd like to have. It was all a hopeful itinerary she had traced before: she'd made that trip years ago, she'd read the books and known all the stops. She felt - listening to him telling her nothing new -as if she'd returned from a long sojourn in the world, one on which he, encumbered with ambition, was just setting out. She smiled at his innocent plans, and she gave him some encouragement; she would not disappoint him and tell him he would find nothing. He never asked for advice; he was too young to know the questions. She could tell him a great deal, but youth was ignorance in a splendid body: he wouldn't listen.

'I want to marry you,' he said one day, and it sounded to Milly like the expression of a longing that could never be fulfilled, like saying, If only I could marry you!

'I want to marry you, too,' she said in the same way.

He kissed her and said, 'We could do it here, the way the Balinese do - with a feast, music, dancing.'

Til wear flowers in my hair.'

'Right,' he said. 'We'll go up to Ubud and-'

'Oh, God,' she said, 'you're serious.'

His face fell. He said, 'Aren't you?'

'I've been married,' she said, without enthusiasm, as she had once said to him, 'I've been to Monte Carlo,' implying that the action could not possibly be repeated.

'I've got lots of money,' he said.

'Spend it wisely.' It was the closest she had ever come to giving him advice.

'It would make things easier for us.'

'This is as easy as it can ever be,' she said. 'Anyway, it's your mother's money, so stop talking this way. We can't get married and that's that.'

'You don't have to marry me,' he said. 'Come to the States -we'll live together.'

'And then what?'

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'We'll drive around.'

'What about your college - all those plans of yours?'

'They don't matter.'

'Drive around!' She laughed hard at the thought of them in a car, speeding down a road, not stopping. Could anything short of marriage itself be a more boring exertion than that? He looked quite excited by the prospect of driving in circles.

'What's wrong?'

'I'm a bit old for that sort of thing.'

'We can do anything you want - anything,' he said. 'Just live with me. No strings. Look, we can't stay here forever-'

It was true: she had nowhere to go. Milly was not fool enough to believe that it could work for any length of time, but for a month or two it might be fun. Then somewhere else, alone, to make a real start.

'We'll see,' she said.

'Smile,' he said.

She did and said, 'What would you tell your mother?'

'I've already told her.'

l No\ What did she say?'

'She wants to meet you.'

'Perhaps - one day.' But the very thought of it filled her with horror.

'Soon,' he said. 'I wrote to her in Hong Kong. She replied from Bangkok. She'll be here in a week or so.'

'Mine was so pathetic when I left him,' Milly was saying. 'I almost felt sorry for him. Now I can't stand the thought of him.'

'As time goes on,' said Maxine, 'you'll hate him more and more.' Abstractedly, she said, 'I can't bear them to touch me.'

'No,' said Milly, 'I don't think I could ever hate-'

Maxine laughed. 'I just thought of it!'

'What?'

'The position my husband suggested. It was called "The Autumn Dog." Chinese, I think. You do it backward. It was impossible, of course - and grotesque, like animals in the bushes. He accused me of not trying - and guess what he said?'

'Backward!'

'He said, "Max, it might save our marriage"!'

It struck Milly that there were only a few years - seconds in the

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life of the world - when that futile sentence had meaning. The years had coincided with her own marriage, but she had endured them and, like Maxine, earned her freedom. She had borne marriage long enough to see it disproved.

'But it didn't save it - it couldn't,' said Maxine. Her face darkened. She said, 'He was evil. He wanted Mark. But Mark wouldn't have him - he was devoted to me.'

'Mark is a nice boy.'

Maxine said, 'Mark is lovely.'

'At first I was sorry he told you about me. I was afraid to meet you. I thought you'd dislike me.'

'But you're not marrying him, are you?'

'I couldn't,' said Milly. 'Anyway, I'm through with marriage.'

'Good,' said Maxine. 'The Autumn Dog.'

'And Max,' said Milly, using the woman's name for the first time, 'I don't want you for a mother-in-law!'

'No - we'll be friends.'

'What a pity I'm leaving here.'

'Then we must leave together.'

And the other woman's replies had come so quickly that Milly heard herself agreeing to a day, a flight, a destination.

'Poor Mark,' said Milly at last.

'He's a lovely boy,' said Maxine. 'You have no idea. We go to plays together. He reads to me. I buy all his clothes. I like to be seen with him. Having a son like Mark is so much better than having a husband.'

Milly felt the woman staring at her. She dropped her eyes.

'Or a friend like you,' said Maxine. 'That's much better. He told me all about you - he's very frank. He made me jealous, but that was silly, wasn't it? I think you're a very kind person.'