Lying by the Pool

     “It is monstrous to write lies in a diary.”
—from Nathanael West’s The Dream Life of Balso Snell

     This is the brief story of abrupt end to the marriage of Mexican national pole-vaulter Juan Garcia Vega and dentist Tenny Celeste Vega. Juan, a winner of two national championships and an Olympic bronze medal, had never been a particularly sensitive or envious man. At the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta the American fans dubbed him J.V. after he had failed to out-vault the eventual silver medalist countryman. Juan—fully aware of the state-side connotation of using his initials in this way—embraced the title as a sign of his international recognition and a convivial part of fair play. It was just his way. He was the most earnest man anyone who met him had ever met. He had always been generous to reporters and fans, the latter of which grew in number beyond his comparative value as a sporting icon largely because of his good will and charm. Over his 12-year international career, he had become an ambassador first for Mexican sports and then for Mexico as a whole. He became famous for being the pole-vaulter people could name and who people wanted to remember. It was, then, in addition to the oddity of the whole affair, quite a shock for every reader when it was reported that he had murdered his wife and a man she had never met.
     Four days before the murders, Tenny and Juan had celebrated their fifteenth wedding anniversary. It had been an untroubled decade and a half; everything had always been so easy between them. Tenny, Juan believed, had had no idea who he was when they met, and it had never much mattered to her since. Another might have been disappointed by this, but Juan had always thought it just wonderful that this randomly freckled and slightly too-tall member of the ADA had laughed at his joke because she was lonely and was looking for anyone at all to change that situation and not because he was famous, or wealthy, or capable of providing her access to a better party than the one they were at. After he retired from competition, they moved to Corpus Christi; much of his family lived in Monterrey and staying in the states allowed her to forego relicensing. At the time of their anniversary, Juan was working as a coach for Texas A&M and a spokesperson for the International Paralympic Committee. Tenny’s practice was doing well; she had recently partnered with two other dentists and together they had just agreed to hire their fourth receptionist. They had no children. Their days were, Juan thought, pleasantly predictable. That was until one night when, while entering their bedroom from the adjoining bathroom, Juan saw Tenny furtively slipping something into her nightstand.
     Though he said nothing, Juan was certain that Tenny did not want him to see what she had done. Juan based his certainty, primarily, on the fact that her movements had sped up—barely but noticeably—when his shadow had first appeared in the doorway. He had been able to watch her for almost a full second without her seeing him. By the time he was at the bed, she was propped against her pillow, her customary before-bed paperback in hand.
     Tenny also said nothing. Not knowing he was in the bathroom when she came into the room, she had taken out the book to jot a few quick notes. She had seen Juan approaching and had indeed hurried to put away the diary before he entered. She did not know why. Perhaps it was the reemergence of her youthful mistrust of parents or a general jealousy of her privacy. Perhaps it was an association she made—automatically—between journals and secrets. She did not know. In any case, that small increase of speed was not enough to cause her death. It was aided by what Tenny decided to do later that night, as both lay in bed, face up and not touching.  
      Three days later, Tenny found Juan doing the expected. Coming home from crowning an oilman from Utah she headed directly upstairs and spotted her husband on the edge of their bed with her diary. Again, she said nothing; instead, she went back down into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of red wine and sat with it out on their back patio. In order to plan her next entry, she reviewed the one before.

July 28. I was just lying by the pool when I saw him again. A broad, blonde man with huge hands. Watched him over the top of my book until he dove into the water and I lost him behind the tot in the swimming class. But I thought of him all afternoon and dreamed of him again last night.

She had kept it short, but had been especially sneaky by erasing the two previous entries—both of which were originally about the obnoxious patient who was sure that her experience as a concert pianist had prepared her to make more accurate statements regarding her dental health than Tenny—and replacing them with the note above and the brief note below, which preceded it.

July 27. Met a real man today.

Though a part of her sensed that her new entries were immediately and personally cruel, Tenny could not but admit that she was having a lot of fun. Part of her pleasure, she told herself, came directly from the fact that it was all untrue, that she knew, even if Juan did not, that a great treat was in store for him—for both of them—later. She trusted their love implicitly. Nothing could come between them for long—certainly not a bit of petty jealousy. While her first impulse, yes, had been to teach Juan a lesson, by the third day this had ceased to motivate or dictate the direction of her writing. In short, she had become interested in the story. Through the figure of Denton Devonshire—the name that had appeared immediately in her head as the perfectly silly, soap-operatic title for her fictional beau—she had indeed begun to fantasize. Not about some squirrely uncoordinated fumbling in a safely underused hotel room, but about becoming the creator of such scenes, of fumbling, hotel rooms, of everything before and after and beyond that. As the days passed, she began to imagine that, through the narrative of his would-be enemy, she was creating the foundation for the universe in which Juan would most like to live. Should things have gone on like this, she and Juan might have discussed the difference between their experiences—her life inside as distinct from his outdoors. She might have talked to him of how aware she was of who he was, and all the dreams he had affected and encouraged, and how much she had admired him because he had made more than less of his fame by downplaying his right to it. They might have talked about the unexpectedly exhilarating pride she felt believing that Juan—who was even now constantly propositioned by men and women—wanted her attention the way she wanted his. Perhaps they might have had these conversations, or one about the trouble with speedy nightstand deposits, had Tenny’s memory been better: that is, inhuman.
     As it was, her notably prodigious recall had simply been unable to think of Denton Devonshire as real. She had imagined him—conjured him out of nowhere and brought him into being. Thus, when several weeks later Tenny heard receptionist three called off his name to dentist two during a yearly reorganization of the files, she felt a rush of heat flush through her body. Poking her head around the corner, she asked them to repeat the last name.
     “Jennifer Dickey,” said the receptionist.
     “The one before that.”
     The other dentist frowned.
     “What is it?” He had agreed to the merger on the condition that the doctors kept their own patients. The possibility of interference was irksome to his sense of propriety.
     “Denton Devonshire?” suggested the receptionist.
     As the air fell out of her chest, Tenny held her arms akimbo and shook them at the wrist. Her fingers flapped as if boneless, a tic she had seen Juan repeat hundreds of times while warming up before events.
     “What’s the matter?” said the dentist, increasingly uneasy. The practice had been going along just fine! he thought. Why did I have to be so greedy?
     “But I made him up—” said Tenny.
     The receptionist, thinking he understood, tried to agree.
     “I know, it sounds made up. We talked about this last year when we went through the files.”
     “We talked about this last year?”
     “No,” said receptionist three, “Not you and me,” he said as she pointed at receptionist one who was just then coming through the lobby door. “Me and her.”
     “What about me?” asked the first receptionist as Tenny grabbed the file, pushed past the other woman, and exited through the still open door.

     As she drove home, just as she had done the first day that Juan had read the journal, Tenny reviewed the things she had written. She and Denton had since talked, flirted, and eventually met one hot August afternoon in a seedy hotel. Rather than supplying details about the intimated sex, Tenny had included long accounts of their discussions and similar interests. With Denton she was finally able to communicate openly about her love of hashing algorithms and acute triangles. With Denton she could speak about her fantasy of eating Gouda cheese surrounded by a dozen Norwegians in tube socks without fear of recrimination. With Denton she could wear not just one set of fake moustache with glasses but two: a thing she “could not imagine” Juan ever allowing her to do. The last few weeks had been something out of a dream. It was stupendous, extraordinary, thrilling; and as soon as Denton’s pomegranate vineyard and nail salon took off, she was “outta here.”
     When Tenny arrived at home, Juan was not there. Tenny decided to wait for him, file in hand, until he arrived. She would apologize and put things straight and they would laugh about all of the bizarre coincidences. Once again, but with far less pleasure, she poured herself a glass of wine and sat out on the back patio. After an hour or so, exhausted with thought, she drifted to sleep, the folder on an iron-wicker table beside her.
     There is really no reason to dwell on and thus sensationalize what happened next; it is all rather prosaic and a bit sad. Juan did not attack them both with a spear, or even a deck umbrella, or anything else that the reporters could latch onto to make all the tropes line up. Whether he had already planned to kill his wife that night is not clear, but Vega’s lawyers are of course suggesting that it was the file that pushed him over the edge. Tenny, apparently, never saw it coming—just never woke up. Afterwards, with the necessary address in hand, Juan found and waited out the night in front of the house of the offending Denton Devonshire. In the morning, when the other man was getting into his dark green sedan, Juan Garcia Vega shot him four times in the chest. The most curious aspect of the case, in the end, was what neither the police, nor the reporters, nor Juan ever thought odd—what only you and I and Tenny might find strange—that Denton Devonshire, though short and rather pudgy, was a broad, blonde man with huge hands.

Nelson Lloyd works and lives in Bloomington, Indiana.

SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE : issue #010