The Accidental Tourist

twenty

The plane to New York was a little bird of a thing, but the plane to Paris was a monster, more like a building. Inside, great crowds were cramming coats and bags into overhead compartments, stuffing suitcases under seats, arguing, calling for stewardesses. Babies were crying and mothers were snapping at children. Steerage could not have been worse than this, Macon felt.

He took his place next to a window and was joined almost immediately by an elderly couple speaking French. The man sat next to Macon and gave him a deep, unsmiling nod. Then he said something to his wife, who passed him a canvas bag. He unzipped it and sorted through its contents. Playing cards, an entire tin of Band-aids, a stapler, a hammer, a lightbulb… Macon was fascinated. He kept sliding his eyes to the right to try and see more. When a wooden mousetrap tumbled out, he began to wonder if the man might be some sort of lunatic; but of course even a mousetrap could be explained, given a little thought. Yes, what he was witnessing, Macon decided, was just one answer to the traveler’s eternal choice: Which was better? Take all you own, and struggle to carry it? Or travel light, and spend half your trip combing the shops for what you’ve left behind? Either way had its drawbacks.

He glanced up the aisle, where more passengers were arriving. A Japanese man festooned with cameras, a nun, a young girl in braids. A woman with a little red vanity kit, her hair a dark tent, her face a thin triangle.

Muriel.

First he felt a kind of flush sweep through him — that flood of warmth that comes when someone familiar steps forth from a mass of strangers. And then: Oh, my God, he thought, and he actually looked around for some means of escape.

She walked toward him in a graceful, picky way, watching her feet, and then when she was next to him she raised her eyes and he saw that she’d known all along he was there. She wore a white suit that turned her into one of those black-white-and-red women he used to admire on movie screens as a child.

“I’m going to France,” she told him.

“But you can’t!” he said.

The French couple peered at him curiously, the wife sitting slightly forward so as to see him better.

More passengers arrived behind Muriel. They muttered and craned around her, trying to edge past. She stood in the aisle and said, “I’m going to walk along the Seine.”

The wife made a little O with her mouth.

Then Muriel noticed the people behind her and moved on.

Macon wasn’t even sure it was possible to walk along the Seine.

As soon as the aisle was cleared he half stood and peered over the back of his seat, but she had vanished. The French couple turned to him, eyes expectant. Macon settled down again.

Sarah would find out about this. She would just somehow know. She had always said he had no feelings and this would confirm it — that he could tell her good-bye so fondly and then fly off to Paris with Muriel.

Well, it was none of his doing and he’d be damned if he’d assume the blame.

By the time it was dark they were airborne, and some kind of order had emerged inside the plane. It was one of those flights as fully programmed as a day in kindergarten. Safety film, drinks, headphones, dinner, movie. Macon turned down all he was offered and studied Julian’s file folder instead. Most of the material was ridiculous. Sam’n’Joe’s Hotel, indeed! He wondered if Julian had made it up to tease him.

A woman passed wearing white and he glanced at her surreptitiously, but it was no one he knew.

Just before the end of the movie, he got out his shaving kit and went to use one of the lavatories near the rear. Unfortunately other people had had the same idea. Both doors were locked, and he was forced to wait in the aisle. He felt someone arrive at his side. He looked and there was Muriel.

He said, “Muriel, what in—”

“You don’t own this plane!” she told him.

Heads turned.

“And you don’t own Paris, either,” she said.

She was standing very close to him, face to face. She gave off a scent that barely eluded him; it was not just her perfume, no, but her house; yes, that was it — the smell inside her closet, the tantalizing unsettling smell of other people’s belongings. Macon pressed his left temple. He said, “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t see how you knew which flight to take, even.”

“I called your travel agent.”

“Becky? You called Becky? What must she have thought?”

“She thought I was your editorial assistant.”

“And how could you afford the fare?”

“Oh, some I borrowed from Bernice and then some from my sister, she had this money she earned at… and I did everything economy-style, I took a train to New York instead of a plane—”

“Well, that wasn’t smart,” Macon said. “It probably cost you the same, in the long run, or maybe even more.”

“No, what I did was—”

“But the point is, why, Muriel? Why are you doing this?”

She lifted her chin. (Her chin could get so sharp, sometimes.) “Because I felt like it,” she said.

“You felt like spending five days alone in a Paris hotel? That’s what it will be, Muriel.”

“You need to have me around,” she said.

“Need you!”

“You were falling to pieces before you had me.”

A latch clicked and a man stepped out of one of the lavatories. Macon stepped inside and locked the door quickly behind him.

He wished he could just vanish. If there had been a window, he believed he would have pried it open and jumped — not because he wanted to commit any act so definite as suicide but because he wanted to erase it all; oh, Lord, just go back and erase all the untidy, unthinking things he’d been responsible for in his life.

If she had read even one of his guidebooks, she’d have known not to travel in white.

When he emerged, she was gone. He went back to his seat. The French couple drew in their knees to let him slide past; they were transfixed by the movie screen, where a blonde wearing nothing but a bath towel was pounding on a front door. Macon got out Miss MacIntosh just for something to pin his mind to. It didn’t work, though. Words flowed across his vision in a thin, transparent stream, meaningless. He was conscious only of Muriel somewhere behind him. He felt wired to her. He caught himself wondering what she made of this — the darkened plane, the invisible ocean beneath her, the murmur of half-real voices all around her. When he turned off his reading light and shut his eyes, he imagined he could sense that she was still awake. It was a feeling in the air — something alert, tense, almost vibrating.

By morning he was resolved. He used a different lavatory, toward the front. For once he was glad to be in such a large crowd. When they landed he was almost the first one off, and he cleared Immigration quickly and darted through the airport. The airport was Charles de Gaulle, with its space-age pods of seats. Muriel would be thoroughly lost. He exchanged his money in haste. Muriel must still be at Baggage Claims. He knew she would carry lots of baggage.

There was no question of waiting for a bus. He hailed a cab and sped off, feeling wonderfully lightweight all of a sudden. The tangle of silvery highways struck him as actually pleasant. The city of Paris, when he entered, was as wide and pale and luminous as a cool gray stare, and he admired the haze that hung over it. His cab raced down misty boulevards, turned onto a cobbled street, lurched to a stop. Macon sifted through his envelopes of money.

Not till he was entering his hotel did he recall that his travel agent knew exactly where he was staying.

It wasn’t a very luxurious hotel — a small brown place where mechanical things tended to go wrong, as Macon had discovered on past visits. This time, according to a sign in the lobby, one of the two elevators was not marching. The bellman led him into the other, then up to the third floor and down a carpeted corridor. He flung open a door, loudly exclaiming in French as if overcome by such magnificence. (A bed, a bureau, a chair, an antique TV.) Macon burrowed into one of his envelopes. “Thank you,” he said, offering his tip.

Once he was alone, he unpacked and he hung up his suit coat, then he went to the window. He stood looking out over the roof-tops; the dust on the glass made them seem removed in time, part of some other age.

How would she manage alone in such an unaccustomed place?

He thought of the way she navigated a row of thrift shops — the way she cruised a street, deft and purposeful, greeting passersby by name. And the errands she took the neighbors on: chauffeuring Mr. Manion to the reflexologist who dissolved his kidney stones by massaging his toes; Mr. Runkle to the astrologer who told him when he’d win the million-dollar lottery; Mrs. Carpaccio to a certain tiny grocery near Johns Hopkins where the sausages hung from the ceiling like strips of flypaper. The places Muriel knew!

But she didn’t know Paris. And she was entirely on her own. She didn’t even have a credit card, probably carried very little money, might not have known to change what she did carry into francs. Might be wandering helpless, penniless, unable to speak a word of the language.

By the time he heard her knock, he was so relieved that he rushed to open the door.

“Your room is bigger than mine is,” she said. She walked past him to the window. “I have a better view, though. Just think, we’re really in Paris! The bus driver said it might rain but I told him I didn’t care. Rain or shine, it’s Paris.”

“How did you know what bus to take?” he asked her.

“I brought along your guidebook.”

She patted her pocket.

“Want to go to Chez Billy for breakfast?” she asked. “That’s what your book recommends.”

“No, I don’t. I can’t,” he said. “You’d better leave, Muriel.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said. She left.

Sometimes she would do that. She’d press in till he felt trapped, then suddenly draw back. It was like a tug of war where the other person all at once drops the rope, Macon thought. You fall flat on the ground; you’re so unprepared. You’re so empty-feeling.

He decided to call Sarah. At home it was barely dawn, but it seemed important to get in touch with her. He went over to the phone on the bureau and picked up the receiver. It was dead. He pressed the button a few times. Typical. He dropped his key in his pocket and went down to the lobby.

The lobby telephone was housed in an ancient wooden booth, very genteel. There was a red leather bench to sit on. Macon hunched over and listened to the ringing at the other end, far away. “Hello?” Sarah said.

“Sarah?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Macon.”

“Macon?”

She took a moment to absorb that. “Macon, where are you?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. I just felt like talking to you.”

“What? What time is it?”

“I know it’s early and I’m sorry I woke you but I wanted to hear your voice.”

“There’s some kind of static on the line,” she said.

“It’s clear at this end.”

“You sound so thin.”

“That’s because it’s an overseas call,” he said. “How’s the weather there?”

“How’s who?”

“The weather! Is it sunny?”

“I don’t know. All the shades are down. I don’t think it’s even light yet.”

“Will you be gardening today?”

“What?”

“Gardening!”

“Well, I hadn’t thought. It depends on whether it’s sunny, I guess.”

“I wish I were there,” he said. “I could help you.”

“You hate to garden!”

“Yes, but…”

“Macon, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” he said.

“How was the flight over?”

“Oh, the flight, well, goodness! Well, I don’t know; I guess I was so busy reading that I didn’t really notice,” he said.

“Reading?” she said. Then she said, “Maybe you’ve got jet lag.”

“Yes, maybe I do,” he told her.

Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, omelets. He walked blindly down the sidewalk, scribbling in the margins of his guidebook. He did not go near Chez Billy. It’s puzzling, he wrote, how the French are so tender in preparing their food but so rough in serving it. In the window of a restaurant, a black cat closed her eyes at him. She seemed to be gloating. She was so much at home, so sure of her place.

Displays of crushed velvet, scattered with solid gold chains and watches no thicker than poker chips. Women dressed as if for the stage: elaborate hairdos, brilliant makeup, strangely shaped trousers that had nothing to do with the human anatomy. Old ladies in little-girl ruffles and white tights and Mary Janes. Macon descended the steps to the Métro; he ostentatiously dropped his canceled ticket into a tiny receptacle marked PAPIERS. Then he turned to glare at all the others who flung their tickets on the floor, and as he turned he thought he saw Muriel, her white face glimmering in the crowd, but he must have been mistaken.

In the evening he returned to his hotel — footsore, leg muscles aching — and collapsed on his bed. Not two minutes later he heard a knock. He groaned and rose to open the door. Muriel stood there with her arms full of clothes. “Look,” she said, pushing past him. “See what-all I bought.” She dumped the clothes on the bed. She held them up one by one: a shiny black cape, a pair of brown jodhpurs, a bouffant red net evening dress sprinkled with different-sized disks of glass like the reflectors on bicycles. “Have you lost your senses?” Macon asked. “What must all this have cost?”

“Nothing! Or next to nothing,” she said. “I found a place that’s like the granddaddy of all garage sales. A whole city of garage sales! This French girl was telling me about it where I went to have my breakfast. I complimented her hat and she told me where she got it. I took a subway train to find it; your book’s really helpful about the subways; and sure enough there’s everything there. Tools and gadgets too, Macon. Old car batteries, fuse boxes… and if you say something’s too expensive, they’ll bring the price down till it’s cheap enough. I saw this leather coat I would have killed for but that never did get cheap enough; the man wanted thirty-five francs.”

“Thirty-five francs!” Macon said. “I don’t know how you could get any cheaper than that. Thirty-five francs is four dollars or so.”

“Oh, really? I thought francs and dollars were about the same.”

“Lord, no.”

“Well, then these things were super bargains,” Muriel said. “Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“But how will you get all this stuff on the plane?”

“Oh, I’ll figure out some way. Now let me take it back to my room so we can go eat.”

He stiffened. He said, “No, I can’t.”

“What harm would it do to eat supper with me, Macon? I’m someone from home! You’ve run into me in Paris! Can’t we have a bite together?”

When she put it that way, it seemed so simple.

They went to the Burger King on the Champs-Elysées; Macon wanted to recheck the place anyhow. He ordered two ‘Woppaires.’ “Careful,” he warned Muriel, “these are not the Whoppers you’re used to. You’ll want to scrape the extra pickle and onion off.” But Muriel, after trying hers, said she liked it the way it was. She sat next to him on a hard little seat and licked her fingers. Her shoulders touched his. He was amazed, all at once, that she really was here.

“Who’s looking after Alexander?” he asked her.

“Oh, different people.”

“What different people? I hope you haven’t just parked him, Muriel. You know how insecure a child that age can—”

“Relax. He’s fine. Claire has him in the daytime and then Bernice comes in and cooks supper and any time Claire has a date with the General the twins will keep him or if the twins can’t do it then the General says Alexander can…”

Singleton Street rose up in front of Macon’s eyes, all its color and confusion.

After supper Muriel suggested they take a walk, but Macon said he was tired. He was exhausted, in fact. They returned to their hotel. In the elevator Muriel asked, “Can I come to your room a while? My TV set only gets snow.”

“We’d better say good night,” he told her.

“Can’t I just come in and keep you company?”

“No, Muriel.”

“We wouldn’t have to do anything,” she said.

The elevator stopped at his floor. He said, “Muriel. Don’t you understand my position? I’ve been married to her forever. Longer than you’ve been alive, almost. I can’t change now. Don’t you see?”

She just stood in her corner of the elevator with her eyes on his face. All her makeup had worn off and she looked young and sad and defenseless.

“Good night,” he said.

He got out, and the elevator door slid shut.

He went to bed immediately but couldn’t sleep after all, and ended up switching on the TV. They were showing an American western, dubbed. Rangy cowboys spoke a fluid, intricate French. Disaster followed disaster — tornadoes, Indians, droughts, stampedes. The hero stuck in there, though. Macon had long ago noticed that all adventure movies had the same moral: Perseverance pays. Just once he’d like to see a hero like himself — not a quitter, but a man who did face facts and give up gracefully when pushing onward was foolish.

He rose and switched the set off again. He tossed and turned a long time before he slept.

Large hotels, small hotels, dingy hotels with their wallpaper flaking, streamlined hotels with king-sized American beds and Formica-topped American bureaus. Dim café windows with the proprietors displayed like mannequins, clasping their hands behind their backs and rocking from heel to toe. Don’t fall for prix fixe. It’s like a mother saying, “Eat, eat”—all those courses forced on you.

In the late afternoon Macon headed wearily back to his own hotel. He was crossing the final intersection when he saw Muriel up ahead. Her arms were full of parcels, her hair was flying out, and her spike-heeled shoes were clipping along. “Muriel!” he called. She turned and he ran to catch up with her.

“Oh, Macon, I’ve had the nicest day,” she said. “I met these people from Dijon and we ended up eating lunch together and they told me about… Here, can you take some of these? I think I overbought.”

He accepted several of her parcels — crumpled, used-looking bags stuffed with fabrics. He helped her carry them into the hotel and up to her room, which seemed even smaller than it was because of the piles of clothing everywhere. She dumped her burdens on the bed and said, “Let me show you, now, where is it…”

“What’s this?” Macon asked. He was referring to an oddly shaped soft drink bottle on the bureau.

“Oh, I found that in the fridge,” she said. “They have this little fridge in the bathroom, Macon, and it’s just full of soft drinks, and wine and liquor too.”

“Muriel, don’t you know those cost an arm and a leg? They’ll put it on your bill, don’t you know that? Now, that fridge is called a mini-bar, and here’s what you use it for: In the morning, when they wheel in the continental breakfast, they bring a pitcher of hot milk for some strange reason and you just take that pitcher and stick it in the mini-bar so later you can have a glass of milk. Otherwise, Lord knows how you’d get your calcium in this country. And don’t eat the rolls; you know that, don’t you? Don’t start your day with carbohydrates, especially under the strain of travel. You’re better off taking the trouble to go to some café for eggs.”

“Eggs, ugh,” Muriel said. She was stepping out of her skirt and trying on another — one she’d just bought, with long fringes at the hem. “I like the rolls,” she said. “And I like the soft drinks, too.”

“Well, I don’t know how you can say that,” he said. He picked up the bottle. “Just look at the brand name: Pschitt. If that’s not the most suspicious-sounding… and there’s another kind called Yukkie, Yukkery, something like that—”

“That’s my favorite. I already finished those off,” Muriel said. She was pinning her hair on top of her head. “Where we having dinner tonight?”

“Well, I don’t know. I guess it’s time to try someplace fancy.”

“Oh, goody!”

He moved what appeared to be an antique satin bedjacket and sat down to watch her put her lipstick on.

They went to a restaurant lit with candles, although it wasn’t quite dark yet, and were seated next to a tall, curtained window. The only other customers were American — four American business types, plainly enjoying themselves over four large platters of snails. (Sometimes Macon wondered if there really was any call for his books.)

“Now, what do I want?” Muriel said, studying the menu. “If I ask them what something is in English, do you think they’ll be able to tell me?”

“Oh, you don’t have to bother doing that,” Macon said. “Just order Salade Niçoise.”

“Order what?”

“I thought you said you’d read my guide. Salade Niçoise. It’s the one safe dish. I’ve been all through France eating nothing but, day in and day out.”

“Well, that sounds kind of monotonous,” Muriel said.

“No, no. Some places put green beans in it, some don’t. And at least it’s low-cholesterol, which is more than you can say for—”

“I think I’ll just ask the waiter,” Muriel told him. She laid her menu aside. “Do you suppose they call them French windows in France?”

“What? I wouldn’t have the slightest idea,” he said. He looked toward the window, which was paned with deep, greenish glass. Outside, in an overgrown courtyard, a pitted stone cherub was cavorting in a fountain.

The waiter spoke more English than Macon had expected. He directed Muriel toward a cream of sorrel soup and a special kind of fish. Macon decided to go for the soup as well, rather than sit idle while Muriel had hers. “There,” Muriel said. “Wasn’t he nice?”

“That was a rare exception,” Macon said.

She batted at the hem of her skirt. “Durn fringe! I keep thinking something’s crawling up my leg,” she said. “Where you going tomorrow, Macon?”

“Out of Paris altogether. Tomorrow I start on the other cities.”

“You’re leaving me here alone?”

“This is high-speed travel, Muriel. Not fun. I’m waking up at crack of dawn.”

“Take me anyway.”

“I can’t.”

“I haven’t been sleeping so good,” she said. “I get bad dreams.”

“Well, then you certainly don’t want to go gallivanting off to more new places.”

“Last night I dreamed about Dominick,” she said. She leaned toward him across the table, two spots of color high on her cheek-bones. “I dreamed he was mad at me.”

“Mad?”

“He wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t look at me. Kept kicking something on the sidewalk. Turned out he was mad because I wouldn’t let him use the car anymore. I said, ‘Dommie, you’re dead. You can’t use the car. I’d let you if I could, believe me.’ ”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Macon said. “It was just a travel dream.”

“I’m scared it means he’s mad for real. Off wherever he’s at.”

“He’s not,” Macon told her. “He wouldn’t be mad.”

“I’m scared he is.”

“He’s happy as a lark.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure! He’s up there in some kind of motor heaven, polishing a car all his own. And it’s always spring and the sun is always shining and there’s always some blonde in a halter top to help him with the buffing.”

“You really think that might be true?” Muriel asked.

“Yes, I do,” he said. And the funny thing was that he did, just at that moment. He had a vivid image of Dominick in a sunlit meadow, a chamois skin in his hand and a big, pleased, cocky grin on his face.

She said at the end of the evening that she wished he would come to her room — couldn’t he? to guard against bad dreams? — and he said no and told her good night. And then he felt how she drew at him, pulling deep strings from inside him, when the elevator creaked away with her.

In his sleep he conceived a plan to take her along tomorrow. What harm would it do? It was only a day trip. Over and over in his scattered, fitful sleep he picked up his phone and dialed her room. It was a surprise when he woke in the morning, to find he hadn’t invited her yet.

He sat up and reached for the phone and remembered only then — with the numb receiver pressed to his ear — that the phone was out of order and he’d forgotten to report it. He wondered if it were something he could repair himself, a cord unplugged or something. He rose and peered behind the bureau. He stooped to hunt for a jack of some kind.

And his back went out.

No doubt about it — that little twang! in a muscle to the left of his spine. The pain was so sharp it snagged his breath. Then it faded. Maybe it was gone for good. He straightened, a minimal movement. But it was enough to bring the pain zinging in again.

He lowered himself to the bed inch by inch. The hard part was getting his feet up, but he set his face and accomplished that too. Then he lay pondering what to do next.

Once he had had this happen and the pain had vanished in five minutes and not returned. It had been only a freaky thing like a foot cramp.

But then, once he’d stayed flat in bed for two weeks and crept around like a very old man for another month after that.

He lay rearranging his agenda in his mind. If he canceled one trip, postponed another. Yes, possibly what he’d planned for the next three days could be squeezed into two instead. If only he were able to get around by tomorrow.

He must have gone back to sleep. He didn’t know for how long. He woke to a knock and thought it was breakfast, though he’d left instructions for none to be brought today. But then he heard Muriel. “Macon? You in there?” She was hoping he hadn’t left Paris yet; she was here to beg again to go with him. He knew that as clearly as if she’d announced it. He was grateful now for the spasm that gripped him as he turned away from her voice. Somehow that short sleep had cleared his head, and he saw that he’d come perilously close to falling in with her again. Falling in: That was the way he put it to himself. What luck that his back had stopped him. Another minute — another few seconds — and he might have been lost.

He dropped into sleep so suddenly that he didn’t even hear her walk away.

When he woke again it was much later, he felt, although he didn’t want to go through the contortions necessary to look at his watch. A wheeled cart was passing his room and he heard voices — hotel employees, probably — laughing in the corridor. They must be so comfortable here; they must all know each other so well. There was a knock on his door, then a jingle of keys. A small, pale chambermaid poked her face in and said, “Pardon, monsieur.” She started to retreat but then stopped and asked him something in French, and he gestured toward his back and winced. “Ah,” she said, entering, and she said something else very rapidly. (She would be telling him about her back.) He said, “If you would just help me up, please,” for he had decided he had no choice but to go call Julian. She seemed to understand what he meant and came over to the bed. He turned onto his stomach and then struggled up on one arm — the only way he could manage to rise without excruciating pain. The chambermaid took his other arm and braced herself beneath his weight as he stood. She was much shorter than he, and pretty in a fragile, meek way. He was conscious of his unshaven face and his rumpled pajamas. “My jacket,” he told her, and they proceeded haltingly to the chair where his suit jacket hung. She draped it around his shoulders. Then he said, “Downstairs? To the telephone?” She looked over at the phone on the bureau, but he made a negative movement with the flat of his hand — a gesture that cost him. He grimaced. She clucked her tongue and led him out into the corridor.

Walking was not particularly difficult; he felt hardly a twinge. But the elevator jerked agonizingly and there was no way he could predict it. The chambermaid uttered soft sounds of sympathy. When they arrived in the lobby she led him to the telephone booth and started to seat him, but he said, “No, no, standing’s easier. Thanks.” She backed out and left him there. He saw her talking to the clerk at the desk, shaking her head in pity; the clerk shook his head, too.

Macon worried Julian wouldn’t be in his office yet, and he didn’t know his home number. But the phone was answered on the very first ring. “Businessman’s Press.” A woman’s voice, confusingly familiar, threading beneath the hiss of long distance.

“Um—” he said. “This is Macon Leary. To whom am I—”

“Oh, Macon.”

“Rose?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I work here now.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I’m putting things in order. You wouldn’t believe the state this place is in.”

“Rose, my back has gone out on me,” Macon said.

“Oh, no, of all times! Are you still in Paris?”

“Yes, but I was just about to start my day trips and there are all these plans I have to change — appointments, travel reservations — and no telephone in my room. So I was wondering if Julian could do it from his end. Maybe he could get the reservations from Becky and—”

“I’ll take care of it myself,” Rose said. “Don’t you bother with a thing.”

“I don’t know when I’m going to get to the other cities, tell him. I don’t have any idea when I’ll be—”

“We’ll work it out. Have you seen a doctor?”

“Doctors don’t help. Just bed rest.”

“Well, rest then, Macon.”

He gave her the name of his hotel, and she repeated it briskly and then told him to get on back to bed.

When he emerged from the phone booth the chambermaid had a bellboy there to help him, and between the two of them he made it to his room without much trouble. They were very solicitous. They seemed anxious about leaving him alone, but he assured them he would be all right.

All that afternoon he lay in bed, rising twice to go to the bathroom and once to get some milk from the mini-bar. He wasn’t really hungry. He watched the brown flowers on the wallpaper; he thought he had never known a hotel room so intimately. The side of the bureau next to the bed had a streak in the woodgrain that looked like a bony man in a hat.

At suppertime he took a small bottle of wine from the mini-bar and inched himself into the armchair to drink it. Even the motion of raising the bottle to his lips caused him pain, but he thought the wine would help him sleep. While he was sitting there the chambermaid knocked and let herself in. She asked him, evidently, whether he wanted anything to eat, but he thanked her and said no. She must have been on her way home; she carried a battered little pocketbook.

Later there was another knock, after he had dragged himself back to bed, and Muriel said, “Macon? Macon?” He kept absolutely silent. She went away.

The air grew fuzzy and then dark. The man on the side of the bureau faded. Footsteps crossed the floor above him.

He had often wondered how many people died in hotels. The law of averages said some would, right? And some who had no close relatives — say one of his readers, a salesman without a family — well, what was done about such people? Was there some kind of potters’ field for unknown travelers?

He could lie in only two positions — on his left side or on his back — and switching from one to the other meant waking up, consciously deciding to undertake the ordeal, plotting his strategy. Then he returned to a fretful, semi-consciousness.

He dreamed he was seated on an airplane next to a woman dressed all in gray, a very narrow, starched, thin-lipped woman, and he tried to hold perfectly still because he sensed she disapproved of movement. It was a rule of hers; he knew that somehow. But he grew more and more uncomfortable, and so he decided to confront her. He said, “Ma’am?” She turned her eyes on him, mild, mournful eyes under finely arched brows. “Miss MacIntosh!” he said. He woke in a spasm of pain. He felt as if a tiny, cruel hand had snatched up part of his back and wrung it out.

When the waiter brought his breakfast in the morning, the chambermaid came along. She must keep grueling hours, Macon thought. But he was glad to see her. She and the waiter fussed over him, mixing his hot milk and coffee, and the waiter helped him into the bathroom while the chambermaid changed his sheets. He thanked them over and over; “Merci,” he said clumsily. He wished he knew the French for “I don’t know why you’re being so kind.” After they left he ate all of his rolls, which the chambermaid had thoughtfully buttered and spread with strawberry jam. Then he turned on the TV for company and got back in bed.

He was sorry about the TV when he heard the knock on the door, because he thought it was Muriel and she would hear. But it seemed early for Muriel to be awake. And then a key turned in the lock, and in walked Sarah.

He said, “Sarah?”

She wore a beige suit, and she carried two pieces of matched luggage, and she brought a kind of breeze of efficiency with her. “Now, everything’s taken care of,” she told him. “I’m going to make your day trips for you.” She set down her suitcases, kissed his forehead, and picked up a glass from his breakfast table. As she went off to the bathroom she said, “We’ve rescheduled the other cities and I start on them tomorrow.”

“But how did you get here so soon?” he asked.

She came out of the bathroom; the glass was full of water. “You have Rose to thank for that,” she said, switching off the TV. “Rose is just a wizard. She’s revamped that entire office. Here’s a pill from Dr. Levitt.”

“You know I don’t take pills,” he said.

“This time you do,” she told him. She helped him rise up on one elbow. “You’re going to sleep as much as you can, so your back has a chance to heal. Swallow.”

The pill was tiny and very bitter. He could taste it even after he’d lain down again.

“Is the pain bad?” she asked him.

“Kind of.”

“How’ve you been getting your meals?”

“Well, breakfast comes anyway, of course. That’s about it.”

“I’ll ask about room service,” she told him, picking up the phone. “Since I’ll be gone so. What’s the matter with the telephone?”

“It’s dead.”

“I’ll go tell the desk. Can I bring you anything while I’m out?”

“No, thank you.”

When she left, he almost wondered if he’d imagined her. Except that her suitcases sat next to his bed, sleek and creamy — the same ones she kept on the closet shelf at home.

He thought about Muriel, about what would happen if she were to knock now. Then he thought about two nights ago, or was it three, when she had strolled in with all her purchases. He wondered if she’d left any traces. A belt lost under the bed, a glass disk fallen off her cocktail dress? He began to worry about it seriously. It seemed to him almost inevitable; of course she’d left something. The only question was, what. And where.

Groaning, he rolled over and pushed himself upright. He struggled off the bed and then sagged to his knees to peer beneath it. There didn’t seem to be anything there. He got to his feet and tilted over the armchair to feel around the edges of the cushion. Nothing there either. Actually she hadn’t gone anywhere near the armchair, to his recollection; nor had she gone to the bureau, but even so he slid out the drawers one by one to make sure. His own belongings — just a handful — occupied one drawer. The others were empty, but the second one down had a sprinkling of pink face powder. It wasn’t Muriel’s, of course, but it looked like hers. He decided to get rid of it. He tottered into the bathroom, dampened a towel, and came back to swab the drawer clean. Then he saw that the towel had developed a large pink smear, as if a woman wearing too much makeup had wiped her face with it. He folded the towel so the smear was concealed and laid it in the back of the drawer. No, too incriminating. He took it out again and hid it beneath the armchair cushion. That didn’t seem right either. Finally he went into the bathroom and washed the towel by hand, scrubbing it with a bar of soap till the spot was completely gone. The pain in his back was constant, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. At some point he decided he was acting very peculiar; in fact it must be the pill; and he dropped the wet towel in a heap on the floor and crawled back into bed. He fell asleep at once. It wasn’t a normal sleep; it was a kind of burial.

He knew Sarah came in but he couldn’t wake up to greet her. And he knew she left again. He heard someone knock, he heard lunch being brought, he heard the chambermaid whisper, “Monsieur?” He remained in his stupor. The pain was muffled but still present — just covered up, he thought; the pill worked like those inferior room sprays in advertisements, the ones that only mask offending odors. Then Sarah came back for the second time and he opened his eyes. She was standing over the bed with a glass of water. “How do you feel?” she asked him.

“Okay,” he said.

“Here’s your next pill.”

“Sarah, those things are deadly.”

“They help, don’t they?”

“They knock me out,” he said. But he took the pill.

She sat down on the edge of the mattress, careful not to jar him. She still wore her suit and looked freshly groomed, although she must be bushed by now. “Macon,” she said quietly.

“Hmm.”

“I saw that woman friend of yours.”

He tensed. His back seized up.

“She saw me, too,” she said. “She seemed very surprised.”

“Sarah, this is not the way it looks,” he told her.

“What is it then, Macon? I’d like to hear.”

“She came over on her own. I didn’t even know till just before the plane took off, I swear it! She followed me. I told her I didn’t want her along. I told her it was no use.”

She kept looking at him. “You didn’t know till just before the plane took off,” she said.

“I swear it,” he said.

He wished he hadn’t taken the pill. He felt he wasn’t in full possession of his faculties.

“Do you believe me?” he asked her.

“Yes, I believe you,” she said, and then she got up and started uncovering his lunch dishes.

He spent the afternoon in another stupor, but he was aware of the chambermaid’s checking on him twice, and he was almost fully awake when Sarah came in with a bag of groceries. “I thought I’d make you supper myself,” she told him. “Fresh fruit and things; you always complain you don’t get enough fresh fruit when you travel.”

“That’s very nice of you, Sarah.”

He worked himself around till he was half sitting, propped against a pillow. Sarah was unwrapping cheeses. “The phone’s fixed,” she said. “You’ll be able to call for your meals and all while I’m out. Then I was thinking: After I’ve finished the trips, if your back is better, maybe we could do a little sightseeing on our own. Take some time for ourselves, since we’re here. Visit a few museums and such.”

“Fine,” he said.

“Have a second honeymoon, sort of.”

“Wonderful.”

He watched her set the cheeses on a flattened paper bag. “We’ll change your plane ticket for a later date,” she said. “You’re reserved to leave tomorrow morning; no chance you could manage that. I left my own ticket open-ended. Julian said I should. Did I tell you where Julian is living?”

“No, where?”

“He’s moved in with Rose and your brothers.”

“He’s what?”

“I took Edward over to Rose’s to stay while I was gone, and there was Julian. He sleeps in Rose’s bedroom; he’s started playing Vaccination every night after supper.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Macon said.

“Have some cheese.”

He accepted a slice, changing position as little as possible.

“Funny, sometimes Rose reminds me of a flounder,” Sarah said. “Not in looks, of course. She’s lain on the ocean floor so long, one eye has moved to the other side of her head.”

He stopped chewing and stared at her. She was pouring two glasses of cloudy brown liquid. “Apple cider,” she told him. “I figured you shouldn’t drink wine with those pills.”

“Oh. Right,” he said.

She passed him a glass. “A toast to our second honeymoon,” she said.

“Our second honeymoon,” he echoed.

“Twenty-one more years together.”

“Twenty-one!” he said. It sounded like such a lot.

“Or would you say twenty.”

“No, it’s twenty-one, all right. We were married in nineteen—”

“I mean because we skipped this past year.”

“Oh,” he said. “No, it would still be twenty-one.”

“You think so?”

“I consider last year just another stage in our marriage,” he said. “Don’t worry: It’s twenty-one.”

She clinked her glass against his.

Their main dish was a potted meat that she spread on French bread, and their dessert was fruit. She washed the fruit in the bathroom, returning with handfuls of peaches and strawberries; and meanwhile she kept up a cozy patter that made him feel he was home again. “Did I mention we had a letter from the Averys? They might be passing through Baltimore later this summer. Oh, and the termite man came.”

“Ah.”

“He couldn’t find anything wrong, he said.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“And I’ve almost finished my sculpture and Mr. Armistead says it’s the best thing I’ve done.”

“Good for you,” Macon said.

“Oh,” she said, folding the last paper bag, “I know you don’t think my sculptures are important, but—”

“Who says I don’t?” he asked.

“I know you think I’m just this middle-aged lady playing artist—”

“Who says?”

“Oh, I know what you think! You don’t have to pretend with me.”

Macon started to slump against his pillow, but was brought up short by a muscle spasm.

She cut a peach into sections, and then she sat on the bed and passed him one of the sections. She said, “Macon. Just tell me this. Was the little boy the attraction?”

“Huh?”

“Was the fact that she had a child what attracted you to that woman?”

He said, “Sarah, I swear to you, I had no idea she was planning to follow me over here.”

“Yes, I realize that,” she said, “but I was wondering about the child question.”

“What child question?”

“I was remembering the time you said we should have another baby.”

“Oh, well, that was just — I don’t know what that was,” he said. He handed her back the peach; he wasn’t hungry anymore.

“I was thinking maybe you were right,” Sarah said.

“What? No, Sarah; Lord, that was a terrible idea.”

“Oh, I know it’s scary,” she told him. “I admit I’d be scared to have another.”

“Exactly,” Macon said. “We’re too old.”

“No, I’m talking about the, you know, the world we’d be bringing him into. So much evil and danger. I admit it: I’d be frantic any time we let him out on the street.”

Macon saw Singleton Street in his mind, small and distant like Julian’s little green map of Hawaii and full of gaily drawn people scrubbing their stoops, tinkering with their cars, splashing under fire hydrants.

“Oh, well, you’re right,” he said. “Though really it’s kind of… heartening, isn’t it? How most human beings do try. How they try to be as responsible and kind as they can manage.”

“Are you saying yes, we can have a baby?” Sarah asked.

Macon swallowed. He said, “Well, no. It seems to me we’re past the time for that, Sarah.”

“So,” she said, “her little boy wasn’t the reason.”

“Look, it’s over with. Can’t we close the lid on it? I don’t cross-examine you, do I?”

“But I don’t have someone following me to Paris!” she said.

“And what if you did? Do you think I’d hold you to blame if someone just climbed on a plane without your knowing?”

“Before it left the ground,” she said.

“Pardon? Well, I should hope so!”

“Before it left the ground, you saw her. You could have walked up to her and said, ‘No. Get off. Go this minute. I want nothing more to do with you and I never want to see you again.’ ”

“You think I own the airline, Sarah?”

“You could have stopped her if you’d really wanted,” Sarah said. “You could have taken steps.”

And then she rose and began to clear away their supper.

She gave him his next pill, but he let it stay in his fist for a while because he didn’t want to risk moving. He lay with his eyes closed, listening to Sarah undress. She ran water in the bathroom, slipped the chain on the door, turned off the lights. When she got into bed it stabbed his back, even though she settled carefully, but he gave no sign. He heard her breathing soften almost at once. She must have been exhausted.

He reflected that he had not taken steps very often in his life, come to think of it. Really never. His marriage, his two jobs, his time with Muriel, his return to Sarah — all seemed to have simply befallen him. He couldn’t think of a single major act he had managed of his own accord.

Was it too late now to begin?

Was there any way he could learn to do things differently?

He opened his hand and let the pill fall among the bedclothes. It was going to be a restless, uncomfortable night, but anything was better than floating off on that stupor again.

In the morning, he negotiated the journey out of bed and into the bathroom. He shaved and dressed, spending long minutes on each task. Creeping around laboriously, he packed his bag. The heaviest thing he packed was Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, and after thinking that over a while, he took it out again and set it on the bureau.

Sarah said, “Macon?”

“Sarah. I’m glad you’re awake,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m packing to leave.”

She sat up. Her face was creased down one side.

“But what about your back?” she asked. “And I’ve got all those appointments! And we were going to take a second honeymoon!”

“Sweetheart,” he said. He lowered himself cautiously till he was sitting on the bed. He picked up her hand. It stayed lifeless while she watched his face.

“You’re going back to that woman,” she said.

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“Why, Macon?”

“I just decided, Sarah. I thought about it most of last night. It wasn’t easy. It’s not the easy way out, believe me.”

She sat staring at him. She wore no expression.

“Well, I don’t want to miss the plane,” he said.

He inched to a standing position and hobbled into the bathroom for his shaving kit.

“You know what this is? It’s all due to that pill!” Sarah called after him. “You said yourself it knocks you out!”

“I didn’t take the pill.”

There was a silence.

She said, “Macon? Are you just trying to get even with me for the time I left you?”

He returned with the shaving kit and said, “No, sweetheart.”

“I suppose you realize what your life is going to be like,” she said. She climbed out of bed. She stood next to him in her nightgown, hugging her bare arms. “You’ll be one of those mismatched couples no one invites to parties. No one will know what to make of you. People will wonder whenever they meet you, ‘My God, what does he see in her? Why choose someone so inappropriate? It’s grotesque, how does he put up with her?’ And her friends will no doubt be asking the same about you.”

“That’s probably true,” Macon said. He felt a mild stirring of interest; he saw now how such couples evolved. They were not, as he’d always supposed, the result of some ludicrous lack of perception, but had come together for reasons that the rest of the world would never guess.

He zipped his overnight bag.

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t want to decide this,” he said.

He put his arm around her painfully, and after a pause she let her head rest against his shoulder. It struck him that even this moment was just another stage in their marriage. There would probably be still other stages in their thirtieth year, fortieth year — forever, no matter what separate paths they chose to travel.

He didn’t take the elevator; he felt he couldn’t bear the willynilliness of it. He went down the stairs instead. He managed the front door by backing through it, stiffly.

Out on the street he found the usual bustle of a weekday morning — shopgirls hurrying past, men with briefcases. No taxis in sight. He set off for the next block, where his chances were better. Walking was fairly easy but carrying his bag was torture. Lightweight though it was, it twisted his back out of line. He tried it in his left hand, then his right. And after all, what was inside it? Pajamas, a change of underwear, emergency supplies he never used. He stepped over to a building, a bank or office building with a low stone curb running around its base. He set the bag on the curb and hurried on.

Up ahead he saw a taxi with a boy just stepping out of it, but he discovered too late that hailing it was going to be a problem. Raising either arm was impossible. So he was forced to run in an absurd, scuttling fashion while shouting bits of French he’d never said aloud before: “Attendez! Attendez, monsieur!”

The taxi was already moving off and the boy was just slipping his wallet back into his jeans, but then he looked up and saw Macon. He acted fast; he spun and called out something and the taxi braked. “Merci beaucoup,” Macon panted and the boy, who had a sweet, pure face and shaggy yellow hair, opened the taxi door for him and gently assisted him in. “Oof!” Macon said, seized by a spasm. The boy shut the door and then, to Macon’s surprise, lifted a hand in a formal good-bye. The taxi moved off. Macon told the driver where he was going and sank back into his seat. He patted his inside pocket, checking passport, plane ticket. He unfolded his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

Evidently his sense of direction had failed him, as usual. The driver was making a U-turn, heading back where Macon had just come from. They passed the boy once again. He had a jaunty, stiff-legged way of walking that seemed familiar.

If Ethan hadn’t died, Macon thought, wouldn’t he have grown into such a person?

He would have turned to give the boy another look, except that he couldn’t manage the movement.

The taxi bounced over the cobblestones. The driver whistled a tune between his teeth. Macon found that bracing himself on one arm protected his back somewhat from the jolts. Every now and then, though, a pothole caught him off guard.

And if dead people aged, wouldn’t it be a comfort? To think of Ethan growing up in heaven — fourteen years old now instead of twelve — eased the grief a little. Oh, it was their immunity to time that made the dead so heartbreaking. (Look at the husband who dies young, the wife aging on without him; how sad to imagine the husband coming back to find her so changed.) Macon gazed out the cab window, considering the notion in his mind. He felt a kind of inner rush, a racing forward. The real adventure, he thought, is the flow of time; it’s as much adventure as anyone could wish. And if he pictured Ethan still part of that flow — in some other place, however unreachable — he believed he might be able to bear it after all.

The taxi passed Macon’s hotel — brown and tidy, strangely home-like. A man was just emerging with a small anxious dog on his arm. And there on the curb stood Muriel, surrounded by suitcases and string-handled shopping bags and cardboard cartons overflowing with red velvet. She was frantically waving down taxis — first one ahead, then Macon’s own. “Arrêtez!” Macon cried to the driver. The taxi lurched to a halt. A sudden flash of sunlight hit the windshield, and spangles flew across the glass. The spangles were old water spots, or maybe the markings of leaves, but for a moment Macon thought they were something else. They were so bright and festive, for a moment he thought they were confetti.