Thornburg - Cutter and Bone

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Copyright 1976 by Newton Thornburg
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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First Diversion Books edition April 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62681-746-3

To Die in California
Dreamland
A Mans Game
Eves Men
Valhalla
The Lion at the Door
Beautiful Kate
Black Angus

To Karin
my wife, my love,
my life

It was not the first time Richard Bone had shaved with a Lady Remington, nor did he expect it to be the last. Nevertheless he felt a distinct breath of revulsion as he drew the instrument back and forth above his mouth, and he was not sure whether this was because he detected on it some slight residue of female armpit musk or whether the problem was simply his image in the mirror, old Golden Boy all tanned and sleek and fit. What a liar it was, this image. An honest mirror would have thrown back something more along the lines of Cutter, he felt, a figure with missing limbs and a glass eye and a smile like the rictus of a scream. Idly Bone contemplated the reaction of the shavers owner had she known a little more of the truth of him, for instance that he was not so much interested in keeping the old corpus tanned and fit as he was in merely keeping it alive, feeding and clothing it, checking its occasional vagrant impulse to swim out into the channel a tantalizing hundred yards too far or to push his senile MG around a curve a few rpms faster than it was meant to go. Wait, he kept telling himself. Have patience. Something will happen. Something will change.

Though he had finished now, he was reluctant to turn off the razor, anticipating that the woman would pick up her lament again. He still could not believe her lack of cool. In the past, when he had gone straight for the money like this, most of them simply had walked, a few had thrown him out, some even had come across. But this one preferred to hang in there and suffer.

When he put the razor away finally, there was a knock at the bedroom door, followed by the swish of her Sears robe as she got up and answered. It was room service: champagne and deep-fried fantail shrimp, an enthusiasm of hers. Coming out of the bathroom, Bone slipped into his peppermint-stripe shirt, which was going into its third straight day of wear. The Chicano roomboy, leaving, gave him a conspirators wink, probably because the woman had signed the check. Bone ignored him.

Want some shrimp? the woman asked.

Sure.

Shellfish, theyre supposed to be good for virility, arent they.

Men in my line of work, we couldnt get along without them.

I didnt say that.

Didnt you?

Im sorry, then. Its just that this thing iswell, its kind of hard on a womans vanity.

What thing?

She laughed wistfully. You dont have any idea?

Your friends, Bone said, you going to join them again?

Would you like that?

I thought maybe you would.

Not particularly.

Its up to you.

Is it really?

He shrugged. There was nothing to say, nothing that would make any difference. The woman was one of three Fargo, North Dakota high school teachers who had come here to Santa Barbara for the spring vacation. Their rationale apparently had been that if no men turned up they could fall back on touring the local historical sites or scavenging through curio and antique shops. When he had found her sunning herself alone on the beachher colleagues were late risersshe had not been at all bashful about abandoning them, taking this new room in the motel, and spending two days and a night with him so far, footing all the bills of course. He was having his troubles, he had told her. A tight period. It would pass. And she had accepted this with a fine contemporary aplomb, in fact had seemed to take an almost indecent relish in cashing her travelers checks and slipping him money under the table and sometimes over.

The trouble had begun only hours before, in bed, when she had broken their after-sex silence with some vague moist words about love and commitment and settling down. He had been swift in reply, coming back with his request for a loan. Just three or four hundred, he had suggested. Something to tide him over.

Occasionally it had worked. But not this time.

At the table, Bone lifted the lid on the chafing dish and drew out a pair of shrimp. Dipping them in sauce, he devoured them in one bite.

What will I say to them? she asked.

Who?

My friends. What will they think?

About what?

You. This thing weve had going. What do I tell them?

The truth.

And whats that?

Bone had poured the champagne. Now he reached over to give her a glass but she ignored it. He set it down. That you found out I was a loser, he said. Broke. A bum.

You dont look it.

I dont even have a room, for Christ sake. Got locked out a couple weeks ago. And the guy Im staying with now, hes two months behind in his rent. A loser too.

You dont look the part.

Well, I feel it.

She sagged into an orange vinyl chair.

Come on, eat, he told her. Its getting cold.

Im not hungry.

Suit yourself.

And I wouldnt think youd be hungry eitherall the eating youve been doing.

That made Bone look up from the table. I enjoy it, lady. Thought you did too.

Though he called her lady, he judged she was a few years younger than he, twenty-nine or thirty, not likely the dewy twenty-five she laid claim to. In the beginning she had been reasonably attractive, good company, good in bed. But the woman confronting him now was someone brand new, a stranger with a trembling mouth and long Dakota winters in her eyes. Meredith, she called herself. Meredith Saunders.

Bone ate more shrimp. Didnt figure you for a romantic, he said. You came on like a realist.

And you came on like a human being.

False representation, huh?

Something like that.

Despite his hunger, Bone was beginning to wish he had already walked out. He had hoped for a reasonably friendly parting, starting with this late evening snack together, the two of them sitting here warts and all in the crummy motel room, eating, swilling, a chance for her to adjust her vision to the reality of the situation and see it as it was and had been all along, a one- or two-night stand and nothing more. Love. Where could she have gotten such an idea?

Is it always so easy for you? she kept on. This gigolo bit? Dont you ever have any trouble rising to the occasion, so to speak?

It aint much of a bit, Im afraid. Nothing regular. I come to the beach to run and sometimes I see someone who interests me. Someone attractive, like you.

Someone to fuck. Someone to sponge off of.

He did not respond.

It never reaches you? Never bothers you?

And suddenly he was out of patience. He could feel the anger beginning in him, like the first hot breeze of a Santa Ana. Getting up, he slipped into his seedy sportcoat.

See you around, he said.

She called his name as he left, a tearful Richard! that made him slam the door behind him all the harder as he headed for the elevator at the end of the corridor.

His car was parked across Cabrillo, the beach drive, which curved west in a long graceful sweep of streetlights to the distant wharf and yacht harbor, beyond which the drilling platforms in the channel winked green and red at the rim of the sea. As he crossed the street and entered the parking lot, he could almost feel the womans eyes on his back, their cloying outrage following him every step of the way. He halfway expected her to call out his name again, but gratefully all he heard was the surf breaking lightly on the beach, that and a kind of chant rising from a group of hippies sitting on the sand in lotus position around a driftwood fire. Why couldnt they be singing? he wondered. Why couldnt it be laughter and hot dogs instead of prayer beads and theological posturing, weird amalgams of fire worship and Zen? Christ, he hated California, or at least this coastal strip of it, this crowded stage where America kept trying out the future and promptly closing it, never letting it open for long on Main Street. And yet Bone could not bring himself to leave. It was like loving the meanest, gaudiest whore in the house. You got what you deserved.