Mr. Bones by Paul Theroux

Author:Paul Theroux
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Neither Fred nor Larry was in the lobby when the company shuttle drew up. The doorman said he hadn’t seen them. Normally they were waiting for Osier, holding cups of coffee from the urn in the lobby.

He called Fred’s cell phone number but got a recorded message. He tried Larry.

“It’s me,” Osier said when Larry answered. “Shuttle’s here.”

Larry sighed, a kind of whistling, and gasped a little, sounding like a weak child. “I’m at the hospital,” he said. “I’ll be all right. But I don’t know about Fred. He’s in tough shape.”

“What happened?”

“Couple of guys jumped us last night. They went after Fred. If I hadn’t intervened they would have killed him.”

“What, a robbery?”

“No robbery. Just”—Larry’s voice was weary, wounded— “mayhem. Screaming mayhem. The guys came at us with knives. They cut Fred real bad. You gotta call Haines. And Fred’s wife. Maybe the embassy, too.”

Osier stood in the courtyard of the hotel, the great hot city roaring around his head. The driver signaled from the van, querying with his hands, a gesture that asked, “Shall we go?”

Osier went up to his room but could not summon the nerve to break the news to Haines. To comfort himself, he called Song. “Big trouble,” he said, and he was going to say more but he didn’t trust his unsteady voice.

“No trouble,” Song said.

He had hardly started speaking when she cut him off with uncharacteristic efficiency. She knew everything—the bar, the injuries, even the name of the hospital where the men had been taken. And after this explanation, “I want see you.”

He had once thought, I can choose. People were happy who believed that. He was miserable, because he was no longer ignorant, because he knew he had no choice, and such misery seemed like a guarantee that life went on and on.

“Why did you do this?”

She hadn’t understood. She said, “Wiv my knife. Wiv my friend.”

He said, “I don’t know,” and the panic in his tremulous voice chastened him. Osier dropped his arm. He didn’t want to know how things would turn out. That was an unfair abbreviation, like knowing in advance the day of your death. He tried to be calm. He lifted the phone to his face and said it again.

“But I know,” Song said, with a steady voice of utter assurance, of insistence, taking possession of the whole matter. “Never mind. I love you.”

The manly fury in her voice was dark, even the word “love” was bloody and hellish. He was terrified by her certainty.

“I want see you,” she said.

“No.” And when he said it, he heard Song snarl into the phone. The awful noise of objection was like the crackle of a harsh hot light, exposing everything he’d ever said and done, burning away his shadow. “I’ve got to make some calls.” She made the noise again. “Okay—later. Siamese Nights. Where are you now?”

“I downstairs. Waiting you.”

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