Mr. Bones (24 page)

Joyce, too. His happiness gave her heart. She could not imagine the source of his happiness, nor would he ever be able to explain it to her, yet she would accept it, as she accepted most things. She heard that note in his voice.

“I'm glad it's all going well.”

Pleasure made him bold, passion made him guiltless. He did not wonder how she would manage without him. Already she was managing without him, and if she wanted to know what the future held for her, she only needed to visit her mother, as she did most weekends.

Osier's confident frame of mind made him more efficient, more observant of the routines at the plant, catching the shuttle in the morning, working on the accounts, making small talk in the cafeteria, heading back to the hotel in the shuttle with the others. Larry and Fred did not stop at the clubs anymore.

Some weeknights Osier slipped away to see Song, but that meant a late return to the hotel. Weekends, from Friday night to Sunday evening, he spent with Song at her little apartment near Siamese Nights.

One Friday at lunchtime, Fred sat heavily at Osier's table, commanding attention in the very act of seating himself—elbows on the table, arms upraised, trapping him.

“Great news. I just found out there's an awesome old church here on the river. Holy Rosary. Catholic. Services every Sunday.”

Fred said this with the same gusto as he had in the past, shouting in a strip club,
I'll mud-wrestle you for that one.

Osier said, “I had no idea.”

“They've actually got a priest. I emailed him and told him about us. The company—American company, expat staff, Catholics. He was stoked. They got a pretty diverse collection of communicants.”

Osier was not sure what Fred was saying, whether this was innocent enthusiasm or some sort of ploy. He'd winced at
clection.
He tried to think of an answer to the question he knew was about to be asked.

“So how about it? You want to come along?”

Had Fred suggested going to a market, or a concert, or an art exhibit, or even a Buddhist temple, Osier would have found it easy to say no. But a church service—Catholic—was another matter. He felt ambushed. He was the one who had been disapproving of the clubs, the one who had kept his nights a secret. He guessed that Larry and Fred had their suspicions. Why else had Larry harped on going back to the States?
You can go home too, you know.
A club would have been easy to reject, but how on earth could he turn down a Catholic Mass on a Sunday?

“Okay,” Osier said.

And now he had to explain to Song. Sunday-morning Mass meant that he could not spend Saturday night at her apartment, because that would complicate meeting Fred in the lobby at seven a.m., as he'd agreed.

“Company business,” he said, hating his lie. And sitting in Siamese Nights, he made up a story in which the boss figured.

Song listened, watching him with her smooth moonlit face. She heard what he said and nodded, but Osier knew that all her inarticulate alertness, her wordless wondering receptivity to every twitch and pulse, told her he was lying. But now it was too late for the truth. If he changed his story and honestly told her about the church service, she'd still be convinced he was lying.

She said, “When I see you then?”

“Saturday night's out. Sunday's a problem.”

“I understand.” And the way she said it, lightly, with no bitterness, he took to be a measure of her wounded pride.

Siamese Nights was quiet, the other girls gathered at one table, facing the front door for customers. Osier hugged Song to make a point. Normally he never touched her in public. She stiffened, resisting him as though violated, as though he'd touched her head.

“We can go to your place.”

“No. You busy.”

He wasn't busy. He knew this was a rebuff. And a moment later his phone rang. He had forgotten to shut it off. He looked and saw Joyce's number, and didn't answer.

Sensitized, Song noticed that too. “You don't want to talk to your friend?”

He said, “It's nothing. Nobody.”

No one was more alert to a further slight than someone who felt rejected.

“Nothing. Nobody,” she said.

And to prove it was nothing, he called Joyce back, damp and breathless with shame, Song watching, and before Joyce could speak more than a few words, he said, “I'll have to talk to you later. I'm in a meeting,” and switched off the phone. Song was wide-eyed.

“See? Nothing. Just work.”

“Nothing,” she said.

“My boss,” he said.

“I understand.”

That simple exchange made him suffer. Saturday, he called Song. She didn't answer—no
Please leave a message,
either. He tried to calm himself by sitting in the garden of a temple, sketching a Buddha, but the picture was no good, the face lopsided, the eyes cruel.

No answer from Song later that night, even after five tries, the last at midnight. Imagining the most lurid scenes—scenes he himself had enacted—he couldn't sleep. Nor did she answer in the morning. And he reflected that in all the years of being married to Joyce he had never tasted such delight or endured such anguish as in his six weeks of loving Song.

“This is Missy,” Fred said in the lobby on Sunday morning.

A woman of forty or so, freckled, in a blue dress, with kindly eyes, said, “Melissa DeFranza. I know Fred from Vancouver. I'm in sales and marketing. On my way to a workshop in Singapore.”

“I mentioned I was going to a church service and Missy jumped,” Fred said.

She said, “That's what I need. Spiritual renewal. So nice of you guys to include me.”

In the taxi, Missy said that she hoped to do some shopping and wondered if the stores in River City were open on Sunday. Fred talked loudly about his family and said that he had managed to live as an expatriate in Bangkok because he had created—
crated
—a special relationship with Jesus. He talked; Osier tuned him out.

The church, Holy Rosary, near the river, had a pencil-point steeple and arches, the whole of it faced in cream-colored stucco. Osier, no longer keeping his pictorial diary, could not break his habit of drawing such buildings in his head, and it relaxed him to see that this one would have been easy to put on the page. The church was a study in straight lines. Flowers filled the altar, which was draped in white linen, its marble supports picked out in gold. The faces on the stained-glass windows had an Asian cast.

He felt it was blasphemous to resent having to attend, yet he wanted it to be over with, so that he could see Song and resume what he now saw as his real life.

Osier knelt and prayed for things to go right for him. He asked God to understand. Yet God knew he had come under protest. Osier would not have been surprised to see the lovely domed ceiling crack to pieces and fall on his head—or something worse—for his hypocrisy.

The priest, a Thai, or perhaps an Indian, murmured the prayers, soothing Osier with their familiarity. But at one point, turning to face the mostly
farang
congregation, he hesitated in his delivery. At the same time there came a moment of traffic roar. The front door of the church had been opened and shut.

Glancing back, Osier saw Song making her way up the center aisle. When their eyes met, Song pressed her hands together in veneration, as though in a temple, and took a seat in the pew just across the aisle from him.

Osier's heart raced. He struggled to breathe. Even in her best dress, a silk shawl over her hair, and wearing high heels, Song looked out of place—the dress a bit too red, the shawl revealing her lustrous hair, the high heels noticeably too high.

“Let us pray,” the priest said.

The congregation knelt. Song followed their example, her eyes cast down. Osier was burning with shame and indecision. His hands had gone clammy. What if she stood up and screamed at him?

Utterly at peace, without a clue, Missy DeFranza, kneeling between Osier and Fred, said her prayers. Osier pretended to pray, and as he did, he lifted his head and saw that Song was staring at him. Her gaze was unreadable. Osier tried to convey his helplessness to her in a meaningful shrug, but she was unmoved. And when she sat, she seemed like a bright-feathered and flamboyant bird, conspicuous in scarlet, with silken plumage, too beautiful to be praying.

The priest mounted the pulpit and gave a sermon, full of pauses, its theme the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. And when, after that, the priest led the prayers, Osier could hear Song in a clacking voice declaiming a prayer in Thai, and it sounded like blasphemy. Osier, terrified, tried to anticipate what Song's next move might be and how he might counter it. If she lunged at him, should he wrap her in his arms and drag her from the church? If she began shouting, denouncing him, ought he to hurry away?

But he saw, almost with disbelief, that Song was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. And the priest at that moment was leading a benediction.

Had Fred seen any of this? Osier thought of making a run for it, just ducking out. But when the priest announced a hymn, and the people stood, holding hymnals, Osier looked across the aisle and saw that Song was no longer there.

This was worse. He endured the service to the end, then filed out with the others, squinting as the sun blinded him, and shielding himself, preparing to be accosted. But she had gone.

“Lunch,” Fred said.

“Not for me,” Osier said. He was choked with nausea.

“There's a great noodle place right near here on the river.”

“I'll buy,” Missy said. “I'm on expenses.”

“I could use a drink,” Osier said, and followed them, looking around for Song.

In the restaurant, digging at his noodles, Fred said, “Know where you find some awesome Christians? Korea.” Because he said
Kree
-
ah,
Osier felt it was untrue. “That Mass did me a power of good.” And, as though boasting, unashamed, he added, “I've done some terrible things in my life. Wicked things.”

“It's all good,” Missy said.

“No,” Fred said. “It's mortal sin, pure and simple.” He was looking at a ladyboy who was sitting with an older
farang.
“She's not a woman, sentimental and afraid. She's a man.”

Osier said, “What's your point?”

“She'll do what a man does,” Fred said.

Osier, not eating, sipping at a glass of lemonade, suddenly stood up and said he'd just remembered that he had something urgent to do. He hurried out and took a taxi to Song's. His knocking roused the neighbor in the next apartment. She poked her head out and made Osier understand through hand gestures that Song had gone out.

He went to Siamese Nights, almost empty in the Sunday-afternoon somnolence, a trickle of music, a few girls at tables. He sat to calm himself, then left without drinking. He walked along the hectic sidewalk in the direction of his hotel, and at a wide intersection he saw he was lost. He stood among a row of parked motorcycles and called Joyce. She did not answer. This was not surprising. It was three o'clock in the morning in Owls Head. One of the motorcyclists agreed to take him to his hotel. And so the weekend ended in silence and humiliation.

Monday was no better—repeated calls, no answer. Tuesday—no answer. And this was the week of the quarterly audit. He had never been busier, and the numbers didn't tally. On one of those nights in his hotel room, walking quickly to the door, he caught sight of a figure in the full-length mirror. He saw that it was not him in his green short-sleeved shirt but a beaky woman in a sari, hands upraised to plead, lipstick on her mouth, a slash wound on her cheek, a comb jammed into her hair, imploring him. He was startled at first, then sad, seeing this sister abandoned to ridicule. He called Song again and got no answer.

In the cafeteria, Fred and Larry sat together. Osier was sure they had been talking about him. To discourage their gossiping, he sat with them.

Larry said, “You look like you've had some bad news.”

Such bluntness always put Osier on the defensive. He began to protest.

“Just pulling your leg,” Larry said. But Osier was sure that Fred had said something.

That night, the Wednesday, Osier went to Siamese Nights. He saw Song sitting in a booth with an older man, Indian possibly, or Arab. Osier did not hesitate. He snatched Song's arm and lifted her, and before the startled man could react, he dragged her out of the club and pushed her into a taxi.

“I love you,” he said.

She sulked at the words. She said, “You a bad man. You lie to me. You take you wife to church.”

“That wasn't my wife. I love you.”

To prove it, he took her to his hotel. He had brought her there before for a drink—she even seemed to have an understanding with the doorman and the lobby staff, something in the oblique way they acknowledged her, familiarly, as an equal, not deferential. But this was a more conspicuous visit. He needed her to know that he was not ashamed.

In the bar, he ordered her a lemonade, and a beer for himself.

Song was looking over his shoulder. “That man.”

Fred, leaving the bar, his back turned, but unmistakably Fred.

“You friend,” she said.

“Not my friend.”

“You boss?”

For simplicity—how could he explain?—he said yes, and as he said it, she looked again in the direction of the door. Osier didn't dare to look. He assumed that Fred was lingering, because Song was still watching, her head moving slightly.

“Maybe you boss see you.”

“I don't care,” he said, but a catch in his throat made him think that he did care.

“I go home.”

“No. Come to my room.”

This he knew was reckless, but he was determined to show her that he was not like any other man she'd met, not like anyone else who'd said, “I love you,” and pawed her. He needed to be serious, even solemn, to reassure her. He had sworn as much to her mother.