The Accidental Tourist

seventeen

Muriel said, “I never told you this, but a while before I met you I was dating somebody else.”

“Oh? Who was that?” Macon asked.

“He was a customer at the Rapid-Eze Copy Center. He brought me his divorce papers to copy and we started having this conversation and ended up going out together. His divorce was awful. Really messy. His wife had been two-timing him. He said he didn’t think he could ever trust a woman again. It was months before he would spend the night, even; he didn’t like going to sleep when a woman was in the same room. But bit by bit I changed all that. He relaxed. He got to be a whole different man. Moved in with me and took over the bills, paid off all I still owed. Alexander’s doctor. We started talking about getting married. Then he met an airline stewardess and eloped with her within the week.”

“I see,” Macon said.

“It was like I had, you know, cured him, just so he could elope with another woman.”

“Well,” he said.

“You wouldn’t do anything like that, would you, Macon?”

“Who, me?”

“Would you elope with someone else? Would you see someone else behind my back?”

“Oh, Muriel, of course not,” he told her.

“Would you leave me and go home to your wife?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Would you?”

“Don’t be silly,” he said.

She cocked her head and considered him. Her eyes were alert and bright and knowing, like the eyes of some small animal.

It was a rainy Tuesday morning and Edward, who was squeamish about rain, insisted he didn’t need to go out, but Macon took him anyway. While he was waiting in the backyard beneath his umbrella, he saw a young couple walking down the alley. They caught his attention because they walked so slowly, as if they didn’t realize they were getting wet. The boy was tall and frail, in ragged jeans and a soft white shirt. The girl wore a flat straw hat with ribbons down the back and a longish limp cotton dress. They swung hands, looking only at each other. They came upon a tricycle and they separated to walk around it; only instead of simply walking the girl did a little sort of dance step, spinning her skirt out, and the boy spun too and laughed and took her hand again.

Edward finally, finally peed, and Macon followed him back into the house. He set his umbrella in the kitchen sink and squatted to dry Edward off with an old beach towel. He rubbed briskly at first, and then more slowly. Then he stopped but remained on the floor, the towel bunched in his hands, the tin-can smell of wet dog rising all around him.

When he’d asked Sarah whether she was living with anyone, and Sarah had said, “Not really,” what exactly had she meant by that?

The rain stopped and they put Edward on his leash and went out shopping. Muriel needed bedroom slippers with feathers on them. “Red. High-heeled. Pointy-toed,” she said.

“Goodness. Whatever for?” Macon asked her.

“I want to clop around the house in them on Sunday mornings. Can’t you just see it? I wish I smoked cigarettes. I wish Alexander wasn’t allergic to smoke.”

Yes, he could see it, as a matter of fact. “In your black-and-gold kimono,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“But I don’t believe they sell those feathered slippers anymore.”

“In thrift shops they do.”

“Oh. Right.”

Lately, Macon had begun to like thrift shops himself. In the usual sea of plastic he had found, so far, a folding boxwood carpenter’s rule, an ingenious wheeled cookie cutter that left no waste space between cookies, and a miniature brass level for Alexander’s toolbox.

The air outside was warm and watery. Mrs. Butler was propping up the squashed geraniums that flopped in the white-washed tire in her yard. Mrs. Patel — out of her luminous sari for once, clumsy and unromantic in tight, bulgy Calvin Klein jeans — was sweeping the puddles off her front steps. And Mrs. Saddler stood in front of the hardware store waiting for it to open. “I don’t guess you’d have seen Dominick,” she said to Muriel.

“Not lately.”

“Last night he never came home,” Mrs. Saddler said. “That boy just worries the daylights out of me. He’s not what you would call bad,” she told Macon, “but he’s worrisome, know what I mean? When he’s at home he’s so much at home, those big noisy boots all over the place, but then when he’s away he’s so much away. You wouldn’t believe how the house feels; just empty. Just echoing.”

“He’ll be back,” Muriel said. “Tonight’s his turn to have the car.”

“Oh, and when he’s out with the car it’s worst of all,” Mrs. Saddler said. “Then every siren I hear, I wonder if it’s Dommie. I know how he screeches round corners! I know those fast girls he goes out with!”

They left her still standing there, distractedly fingering her coin purse, although the hardware-store owner had unlocked his door by now and was cranking down his awnings.

Outside a shop called Re-Runs, they ordered Edward to stay. He obeyed, looking put upon, while they went in. Muriel sifted through stacks of curled, brittle shoes that had hardened into the shapes of other people’s feet. She shucked off her own shoes and stepped into a pair of silver evening sandals. “What do you think?” she asked Macon.

“I thought you were looking for slippers.”

“But what do you think of these?”

“I can live without them,” he said.

He was feeling bored because Re-Runs carried nothing but clothes.

Muriel abandoned the shoes and they went next door to Garage Sale Incorporated. Macon tried to invent a need for a rusty metal Rolodex file he found in a heap of tire chains. Could he use it for his guidebooks in some way? And make it tax-deductible. Muriel picked up a tan vinyl suitcase with rounded edges; it reminded Macon of a partly sucked caramel. “Should I get this?” she asked.

“I thought you wanted slippers.”

“But for travel.”

“Since when do you travel?”

“I know where you’re going next,” she said. She came closer to him, both hands clutching the suitcase handle. She looked like a very young girl at a bus stop, say, or out hitching a ride on the highway. “I wanted to ask if I could come with you.”

“To Canada.”

“I mean the next place after that. France.”

He set down the Rolodex. (Mention of France always depressed him.)

“Julian said!” she reminded him. “He said it’s getting to be time to go to France again.”

“You know I can’t afford to bring you.”

Muriel replaced the suitcase and they left the shop. “But just this once,” she said, hurrying along beside him. “It wouldn’t cost much!”

Macon retrieved Edward’s leash and motioned him up. “It would cost a mint,” he said, “not to mention that you’d have to miss work.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’ve quit.”

He looked over at her. “Quit?”

“Well, at the Meow-Bow. Then things like George and the dog training I’ll just rearrange; if I was to travel I could just—”

“You quit the Meow-Bow?”

“So what?”

He couldn’t explain the sudden weight that fell on him.

“It’s not like it really paid much,” Muriel said. “And you do buy most of the groceries now and help me with the rent and all; it’s not like I needed the money. Besides, it took so much time! Time I could spend with you and Alexander! Why, I was coming home nights literally dead with exhaustion, Macon.”

They passed Methylene’s Beauty Salon, an insurance agency, a paint-stripping shop. Edward gave an interested glance at a large, jowly tomcat basking on the hood of a pickup.

“Figuratively,” Macon said.

“Huh?”

“You were figuratively dead with exhaustion. Jesus, Muriel, you’re so imprecise. You’re so sloppy. And how could you quit your job like that? How could you just assume like that? You never even warned me!”

“Oh, don’t make such a big deal about it,” Muriel said.

They arrived at her favorite shop — a nameless little hole in the wall with a tumble of dusty hats in the window. Muriel started through the door but Macon stayed where he was. “Aren’t you coming in?” she asked him.

“I’ll wait here.”

“But it’s the place with all the gadgets!”

He said nothing. She sighed and disappeared.

Seeing her go was like shucking off a great, dragging burden.

He squatted to scratch behind Edward’s ears, and then he rose and studied a sun-bleached election poster as if it held some fascinating coded message. Two black women passed him, pulling wire carts full of laundry. “It was just as warm as this selfsame day I’m speaking to you but she wore a very very fur coat…”

“May-con.”

He turned toward the door of the shop.

“Oh, Maay-con!”

He saw a mitten, one of those children’s mittens designed to look like a puppet. The palm was a red felt mouth that widened to squeak, “Macon, please don’t be angry with Muriel.”

Macon groaned.

“Come into this nice store with her,” the puppet urged.

“Muriel, I think Edward’s getting restless now.”

“There’s lots of things to buy here! Pliers and wrenches and T-squares… There’s a silent hammer.”

“What?”

“A hammer that doesn’t make a sound. You can pound in nails in the dead of night.”

“Listen—” Macon said.

“There’s a magnifying glass all cracked and broken, and when you look at broken things through the lens you’d swear they’d turned whole again.”

“Really, Muriel.”

“I’m not Muriel! I’m Mitchell Mitten! Macon, don’t you know Muriel can always take care of herself?” the puppet asked him. “Don’t you know she could find another job tomorrow, if she wanted? So come inside! Come along! There’s a pocket-knife here with its own whetstone blade.”

“Oh, for Lord’s sake,” Macon said.

But he gave a grudging little laugh.

And went on inside.

Over the next few days she kept bringing up France again and again. She sent him an anonymous letter pasted together from magazine print: Don’t FoRget tO BUY plANe Ticket for MuRiel. (And the telltale magazine — with little blocks clipped out of its pages — still lay on the kitchen table.) She asked him to get her her keys from her purse and when he opened her purse he found photographs, two slick colored squares on thin paper showing Muriel’s eyes at half mast. Passport photos, plainly. She must have meant for him to see them; she was watching him so intently. But all he did was drop her keys in her palm without comment.

He had to admire her. Had he ever known such a fighter? He went grocery shopping with her unusually late one evening, and just as they were crossing a shadowed area a boy stepped forth from a doorway. “Give over all what you have in your purse,” he told Muriel. Macon was caught off guard; the boy was hardly more than a child. He froze, hugging the sack of groceries. But Muriel said, “The hell I will!” and swung her purse around by its strap and clipped the boy in the jaw. He lifted a hand to his face. “You get on home this instant or you’ll be sorry you were ever born,” Muriel told him. He slunk away, looking back at her with a puzzled expression.

When Macon had caught his breath again, he told Muriel she was a fool. “He might have had a gun, for all you knew,” he said. “Anything might have happened! Kids show less mercy than grownups; you can see that any day in the papers.”

“Well, it turned out fine, didn’t it?” Muriel asked. “What are you so mad at?”

He wasn’t sure. He supposed he might be mad at himself. He had done nothing to protect her, nothing strong or chivalrous. He hadn’t thought as fast as she had or thought at all, in fact. While Muriel… why, Muriel hadn’t even seemed surprised. She might have strolled down that street expecting a neighbor here, a stray dog there, a holdup just beyond — all equally part of life. He felt awed by her, and diminished. Muriel just walked on, humming “Great Speckled Bird” as if nothing particular had happened.

“I don’t think Alexander’s getting a proper education,” he said to her one evening.

“Oh, he’s okay.”

“I asked him to figure what change they’d give back when we bought the milk today, and he didn’t have the faintest idea. He didn’t even know he’d have to subtract.”

“Well, he’s only in second grade,” Muriel said.

“I think he ought to switch to a private school.”

“Private schools cost money.”

“So? I’ll pay.”

She stopped flipping the bacon and looked over at him. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“What are you saying, Macon? Are you saying you’re committed?”

Macon cleared his throat. He said, “Committed.”

“Alexander’s got ten more years of school ahead of him. Are you saying you’ll be around for all ten years?”

“Um…”

“I can’t just put him in a school and take him out again with every passing whim of yours.”

He was silent.

“Just tell me this much,” she said. “Do you picture us getting married sometime? I mean when your divorce comes through?”

He said, “Oh, well, marriage, Muriel…”

“You don’t, do you. You don’t know what you want. One minute you like me and the next you don’t. One minute you’re ashamed to be seen with me and the next you think I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”

He stared at her. He had never guessed that she read him so clearly.

“You think you can just drift along like this, day by day, no plans,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll be here, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll just go on back to Sarah. Oh yes! I saw you at Rose’s wedding. Don’t think I didn’t see how you and Sarah looked at each other.”

Macon said, “All I’m saying is—”

“All I’m saying,” Muriel told him, “is take care what you promise my son. Don’t go making him promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“But I just want him to learn to subtract!” he said.

She didn’t answer, and so the last word rang in the air for moments afterward. Subtract. A flat, sharp, empty sound that dampened Macon’s spirits.

At supper she was too quiet; even Alexander was quiet, and excused himself the minute he’d finished his BLT. Macon, though, hung around the kitchen. Muriel was running a sinkful of water. He said, “Shall I dry?” Without any sort of warning, she whirled and flung a wet sponge in his face. Macon said, “Muriel?”

“Just get out!” she shouted, tears spiking her lashes, and she turned away again and plunged her hands into water so hot that it steamed. Macon retreated. He went into the living room where Alexander was watching TV, and Alexander moved over on the couch to give him space. He didn’t say anything, but Macon could tell he’d heard from the way he tensed at each clatter in the kitchen. After a while the clatters died down. Macon and Alexander looked at each other. There was a silence; a single murmuring voice. Macon rose and returned to the kitchen, walking more quietly than usual and keeping a weather eye out, the way a cat creeps back after it’s been dumped from someone’s lap.

Muriel was talking on the phone with her mother. Her voice was gay and chirpy but just a shade thicker than usual, as if she were recovering from a cold. “So anyhow,” she said, “I asked what kind of trouble her dog is giving her and the lady’s like, ‘Oh, no trouble,’ so I ask her, ‘Well, what’s his problem, then?’ and the lady’s like, ‘No real problem.’ I say, ‘Ma’am. You must have called me here for some reason.’ She says, ‘Oh. Well. That.’ She says, ‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I was wondering about when he makes.’ I say, ‘Makes?’ She says, ‘Yes, when he makes number one. He makes like little girl dogs do, he doesn’t lift his leg.’ I say to her, ‘Now let me see if I’ve got this straight. You have called me here to teach your dog to lift his leg when he tinkles.’ ”

Her free hand kept flying out while she talked, as if she imagined her mother could see her. Macon came up behind her and put his arms around her, and she leaned back against him. “Oh, there’s never a dull moment, I tell you,” she said into the phone.

That night he dreamed he was traveling in a foreign country, only it seemed to be a medley of all the countries he’d ever been to and even some he hadn’t. The sterile vast spaces of Charles de Gaulle airport chittered with those tiny birds he’d seen inside the terminal at Brussels; and when he stepped outdoors he was in Julian’s green map of Hawaii with native dancers, oversized, swaying near the dots that marked various tourist attractions. Meanwhile his own voice, neutral and monotonous, murmured steadily: In Germany the commercial traveler must be punctual for all appointments,in Switzerland he should be five minutes early, in Italy delays of several hours are not uncommon…

He woke. It was pitch dark, but through the open window he heard distant laughter, a strain of music, faint cheers as if some sort of game were going on. He squinted at the clock radio: three thirty. Who would be playing a game at this hour? And on this street — this worn, sad street where nothing went right for anyone, where the men had dead-end jobs or none at all and the women were running to fat and the children were turning out badly. But another cheer went up, and someone sang a line from a song. Macon found himself smiling. He turned toward Muriel and closed his eyes; he slept dreamlessly the rest of the night.

The mailman rang the doorbell and presented a long, tube-shaped package addressed to Macon. “What’s this?” Macon asked. He returned to the living room, frowning down at the label. Muriel was reading a paperback book called Beauty Tips from the Stars. She glanced up and said, “Why not open it and find out.”

“Oh? Is this some of your doing?”

She only turned a page.

Another plea for the France trip, he supposed. He pulled off the tape on one end and shook the package till a cylinder of glossy paper slid out. When he unrolled it, he found a full-color photo of two puppies in a basket, with DR. MACK’S PETVITES above it and a calendar for January below it.

“I don’t understand,” he said to Muriel.

She turned another page.

“Why would you send me a calendar for a year that’s half gone?”

“Maybe there’s something written on it,” she told him.

He flipped through February, March, April. Nothing there. May. Then June: a scribble of red ink across a Saturday, “Wedding,” he read out. “Wedding? Whose wedding?”

“Ours?” she asked him.

“Oh, Muriel…”

“You’ll be separated a year then, Macon. You’ll be able to get your divorce.”

“But, Muriel—”

“I always did want to have a June wedding.”

“Muriel, please, I’m not ready for this! I don’t think I ever will be. I mean I don’t think marriage ought to be as common as it is; I really believe it ought to be the exception to the rule; oh, perfect couples could marry, maybe, but who’s a perfect couple?”

“You and Sarah, I suppose,” Muriel said.

The name brought Sarah’s calm face, round as a daisy.

“No, no…” he said weakly.

“You’re so selfish!” Muriel shouted. “You’re so self-centered! You’ve got all these fancy reasons for never doing a single thing I want!”

Then she flung down her book and ran upstairs.

Macon heard the cautious, mouselike sounds of Alexander as he tiptoed around the kitchen fixing himself a snack.

Muriel’s sister Claire arrived on the doorstep with a suitcase spilling clothes and her eyes pink with tears. “I’m never speaking to Ma again,” she told them. She pushed past them into the house. “You want to know what happened? Well, I’ve been dating this guy, see: Claude McEwen. Only I didn’t let on to Ma, you know how she’s scared I’ll turn out like Muriel did, and so last night when he came for me I jumped into his car and she happened to catch sight of me from the window, noticed he had a bumper sticker reading EDGEWOOD. That’s because he used to go to a high school called Edgewood Prep in Delaware, but Ma thought it was Edgewood Arsenal and therefore he must be an Army man. So anyhow, this morning I get up and there she is fit to be tied, says, ‘I know what you’ve been up to! Out all hours last night with the General!’ and I say, ‘Who? The what?’ but there’s never any stopping her once she gets started. She tells me I’m grounded for life and can’t ever see the General again or she’ll have him hauled up for court-martial and all his stars ripped off his uniform, so quick as a wink I packed up my clothes…”

Macon, listening absently while Edward sighed at his feet, had a sudden view of his life as rich and full and astonishing. He would have liked to show it off to someone. He wanted to sweep out an arm and say, “See?”

But the person he would have liked to show it to was Sarah.

Rose and Julian were back from their honeymoon; they were giving a family supper and Macon and Muriel were invited. Macon bought a bottle of very good wine as a hostess gift. He set the bottle on the counter, and Muriel came along and said, “What’s this?”

“It’s wine for Rose and Julian.”

“Thirty-six dollars and ninety-nine cents!” she said, examining the sticker.

“Yes, well, it’s French.”

“I didn’t know a wine could cost thirty-six ninety-nine.”

“I figured since, you know, this’ll be our first visit to their apartment…”

“You sure do think a lot of your family,” Muriel said.

“Yes, of course.”

“You never bought me any wine.”

“I didn’t know you wanted any; you told me it makes your teeth feel rough.”

She didn’t argue with that.

Later that day he happened to notice that the bottle had been moved. And was opened. And was half emptied. The cork lay beside it, still impaled on the corkscrew. A cloudy little juice glass gave off the smell of grapes. Macon called, “Muriel?”

“What,” she answered from the living room.

He went to the living room doorway. She was watching a ball game with Alexander. He said, “Muriel, have you been drinking that wine I bought?”

“Yes.”

He said, “Why, Muriel?”

“Oh, I just had this irresistible urge to try it out,” she said.

Then she looked at him with slitted eyes, tilting her chin. He felt she was challenging him to take some action, but he said nothing. He picked up his car keys and went out to buy another bottle.

Macon felt shy about attending this dinner, as if Rose had turned into a stranger. He took longer than usual dressing, unable to decide between two shirts, and Muriel seemed to be having some trouble too. She kept putting on outfits and taking them off; brightly colored fabrics began to mount on the bed and on the floor all around it. “Oh, Lord, I wish I was just a totally nother person,” she sighed. Macon, concentrating on tying his tie, said nothing. Her baby photo grinned out at him from the frame of the mirror. He happened to notice the date on the border: AUG 60. Nineteen sixty.

When Muriel was two years old, Macon and Sarah were already engaged to be married.

Downstairs, Dominick Saddler was sitting on the couch with Alexander. “Now this here is your paste wax,” he was saying. He held up a can. “You never want to polish a car with anything but paste wax. And here we have a diaper. Diapers make real good rags because they don’t shed hardly no lint. I generally buy a dozen at a time from Sears and Roebuck. And chamois skins: well, you know chamois skins. So what you do is, you get yourself these here supplies and a case of good beer and a girl, and you head on out to Loch Raven. Then you park in the sun and you take off your shirt and you and the girl start to polishing. Ain’t no sweeter way that I know of to use up a spring afternoon.”

Dominick’s version of a bedtime story, Macon supposed. He was baby-sitting tonight. (The Butler twins had dates, and Claire was out with the General. As everybody referred to him now.) In payment, Muriel’s car would be Dominick’s to use for a week; mere money would never have persuaded him. He slouched next to Alexander with the diaper spread over one knee, muscles bulging under a T-shirt that read WEEKEND WARRIOR. A Greek sailor cap was tipped back on his head with a Judas Priest button pinned above the visor. Alexander looked enthralled.

Muriel came tapping down the stairs; she arrived craning her neck to see if her slip showed. “Is this outfit okay?” she asked Macon.

“It’s very nice,” he said, which was true, although it was also totally unlike her. Evidently, she had decided to take Rose for her model. She had pulled her hair back in a low bun and she wore a slim gray dress with shoulder pads. Only her spike-heeled sandals seemed her own; probably she didn’t possess any shoes so sensible as Rose’s schoolgirl flats. “I want you to tell me if there’s anything not right,” she said to Macon. “Anything you think is tacky.”

“Not a thing,” Macon assured her.

She kissed Alexander, leaving a dark red mark on his cheek. She made one last survey in the mirror beside the front door, meanwhile calling, “Don’t let him stay up too late now, Dommie; don’t let him watch anything scary on TV—”

Macon said, “Muriel.”

“I look like the wrath of God.”

Macon? Do youto believe that when an invitation involved a meal, the guests should arrive exactly on time. Never mind that they often caught their hostess in curlers; they went on doing what they were taught. So Macon pressed the buzzer in the lobby at precisely six twenty-seven, and Porter and Charles joined them in front of the elevator. They both told Muriel it was nice to see her. Then they rode upward in a gloomy silence, eyes fixed on the numbers over the door. Charles carried a potted jade tree, Porter another bottle of wine.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Muriel said. “We’re their first invited guests.”

“At home now we’d be watching the CBS Evening News,” Charles told her.

Muriel couldn’t seem to think of any answer to that.

By six thirty sharp they were ringing the doorbell, standing in a hushed corridor carpeted in off-white. Rose opened the door and called, “They’re here!” and set her face lightly against each of theirs. She wore Grandmother Leary’s lace-trimmed company apron and she smelled of lavender soap, the same as always.

But there was a strip of peeling sunburn across the bridge of her nose.

Julian, natty and casual in a navy turtleneck and white slacks (when it wasn’t yet Memorial Day), fixed the drinks while Rose retreated to the kitchen. This was one of those ultra-modern apartments where the rooms all swam into each other, so they could see her flitting back and forth. Julian passed around snapshots of Hawaii. Either he had used inferior film or else Hawaii was a very different place from Baltimore, because some of the colors were wrong. The trees appeared to be blue. In most of the photos Rose stood in front of flower beds or flowering shrubs, wearing a white sleeveless dress Macon had never seen before, hugging her arms and smiling too broadly so that she looked older than she was. “I tell Rose you’d think she went on our honeymoon by herself,” Julian said. “I’m the one who took the pictures because Rose never did learn how to work my camera.”

“She didn’t?” Macon asked.

“It was one of those German models with all the buttons.”

“She couldn’t figure out the buttons?”

“I tell her, ‘People will think I wasn’t even there.’ ”

“Why, Rose could have taken that camera apart and put it together twice over,” Macon said.

“No, this was one of those German models with—”

“It wasn’t very logically constructed,” Rose called from the kitchen.

“Ah,” Macon said, sitting back.

She entered the room with a tray and placed it on the glass coffee table. Then she knelt and began to spread pâté on little crackers. There was some change in the way she moved, Macon noticed. She was more graceful, but also more self-conscious. She offered the pâté first to Muriel, then to each of her brothers, last to Julian. “In Hawaii I started learning to sail,” she said. She pronounced the two i’s in “Hawaii” separately; Macon thought it sounded affected. “Now I’m going to practice out on the Bay.”

“She’s trying to find her sea legs,” Julian said. “She tends to feel motion-sick.”

Macon bit into his cracker. The pâté was something familiar. It was rough in texture but delicate in taste; there was a kind of melting flavor that he believed came from adding a great amount of butter. The recipe was Sarah’s. He sat very still, not chewing. He was flooded by a subtle blend of tarragon and cream and home.

“Oh, I know just what you’re going through,” Muriel said to Rose. “All I have to do is look at a boat and I get nauseous.”

Macon swallowed and gazed down at the carpet between his feet. He waited for someone to correct her, but nobody did. That was even worse.

In bed she said, “You wouldn’t ever leave me, would you? Would you ever think of leaving me? You won’t be like the others, will you? Will you promise not to leave me?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, floating in and out of dreams.

“You do take me seriously, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“Oh, Muriel, for pity’s sake…” he said.

But later, when she turned in her sleep and moved away from him, his feet followed hers of their own accord to the other side of the bed.