Friend of My Youth

was a type she had seen before. Glitz on the surface and catastrophe underneath. A mistake to get too chummy with her, she told Averill, but she remained fairly chummy herself. She told Jeanine stories that Averill had heard before.
    She told about Averill’s father, whom she did not describe as a jerk or an admirer but as a cautious old bugger. Old to her way of thinking—in his forties. He was a doctor, in New York. Bugs was living there; she was a young singer trying to get her start. She went to him for a sore throat, sore throats being the bugbear of her life.
    “Eye, ear, nose, and throat man,” Bugs said. “How was I to know he wouldn’t stop there?”
    He had a family. Of course. He came to Toronto, once, to a medical conference. He saw Averill.
    “She was standing up in her crib, and when she saw him she howled like a banshee. I said to him, Do you think she’s got my voice? But he was not in the mood for jokes. She scared him off. Such a cautious old bugger. I think he only slipped up the once.
    “I’ve always used bad language,” Bugs said. “I like it. I liked it long before it got to be so popular. When Averill had just started to school, the teacher phoned and asked me to come in for a talk. She said she was concerned about some words that Averill was using. When Averill broke her pencil or anything, she said, Oh, shit. Or maybe, Oh, fuck. She said whatever she was used to hearing me say at home. I never warned her. I just thought she’d realize. And how could she? Poor Averill. I was a rotten mother. And that’s not the worst part. Do you think I owned up to that teacher and said she got it from me? Indeed not! I behaved like a lady. Oh dear. Oh, I do appreciate you telling me. Oh dear. I’m an awful person. Averill always knew it. Didn’t you, Averill?”
    Averill said yes.
    On the fourth day, Bugs stopped going down to the dining room for dinner.
    “I notice I’m getting a bit gray around the gills by that time,” she said. “I don’t want to turn the professor off. He may not be so stuck on older women as he lets on.”
    She said she ate enough at breakfast and lunch. “Breakfast was always my best meal. And here I eat a huge breakfast.”
    Averill came back from dinner with rolls and fruit.
    “Lovely,” said Bugs. “Later.”
    She had to sleep propped up.
    “Maybe the nurse has oxygen,” Averill said. There was no doctor on the ship, but there was a nurse. Bugs did not want to see her. She did not want oxygen.
    “These are not bad,” she said of her coughing fits. “They are not as bad as they sound. Just little spasms. I’ve been figuringout—what they are punishment for. Seeing I never smoked. I thought maybe—singing in church and not believing? But no. I think—
Sound of Music
. Maria. God hates it.”
    Averill and Jeanine played poker in the evenings with the artist and the Norwegian first mate. Averill always went back to the boat deck a few times to check on Bugs. Bugs would be asleep or pretending to be asleep, the fruit and buns by her bed untouched. Averill pulled out of the game early. She did not go to bed immediately, though she had made a great point of being so sleepy that she could not keep her eyes open. She slipped into the cabin to retrieve the uneaten buns, then went out on deck. She sat on the bench beneath the window. The window was always wide open on the warm, still night. Averill sat there and ate the buns as quietly as she could, biting with care through the crisp, delicious crust. The sea air made her just as hungry as it was supposed to do. Or else it was having somebody in love with her—the tension. Under those circumstances she usually gained weight.
    She could listen to Bugs’ breathing. Little flurries and halts, ragged accelerations, some snags, snores, and achieved straight runs. She could hear Bugs half-wake, and shift and struggle and prop herself higher up in the bed. And she could watch the captain, when he came out for his walk. She didn’t know if he saw her. He never indicated. He never looked her way. He looked straight ahead. He was getting his exercise, at night, when there would be the least chance of having to be sociable. Back and forth, back and forth, close to the rail. Averill stayed still—she felt like a fox in the brush. A night animal, watching him. But she didn’t think he would be startled if she should move or call out. He was alert to everything on the ship, surely. He knew she was there but could