The Accidental Tourist

three

Sarah telephoned Macon and asked if she could come get the navy blue rug from the dining room.

“Navy blue rug,” Macon repeated. (He was stalling for time.)

“I wouldn’t mention it except you never liked it,” Sarah told him. “You said it was a mistake to have a rug where people were eating.”

Yes, he had said that. A crumb catcher, he’d said. Unsanitary. Then why did he feel this sudden, wrenching need to keep the rug for himself?

“Macon, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“So would you mind if I came and got it?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Oh, good. My apartment has these bare floors and you’ve no idea how—”

She would stop by for the rug and he’d invite her in. He’d offer her a glass of sherry. They would sit on the couch with their sherry and he would say, “Sarah, have you missed me?” Or no, he’d say, “I’ve missed you, Sarah.”

She would say…

She said, “I thought I’d drop over Saturday morning, if that’s convenient.”

But people don’t drink sherry in the morning.

And besides: He wouldn’t even be here then. “I leave for England tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“Oh, is it time for England again?”

“Maybe you could come this evening.”

“No, my car’s in the shop.”

“Your car? What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, I was driving along and… you know that little red light on the lefthand side of the dash?”

“What, the oil pressure light?”

“Yes, and so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll be late for the dentist if I stop and see to it now and anyway, the car does seem to be running all right, so—’ ”

“Wait. Are you saying the light lit up? And then you went on driving?”

“Well, nothing sounded any different and nothing acted any different, so I figured—”

“Jesus, Sarah.”

“What’s so terrible about that?”

“You’ve probably ruined the engine.”

“No, I did not ruin the engine, for your information. I just need this single, simple repair job but unfortunately it’s going to take a few days to do it. Well, never mind. I’ve got a house key. I’ll just let myself in on Saturday.”

“Maybe I could bring the rug over.”

“I’ll wait till Saturday.”

“That way I could see your apartment,” Macon said. “I’ve never been inside, you know.”

“No, it’s not fixed up yet.”

“I don’t care if it’s fixed up.”

“It’s a disaster. Nothing’s been done.”

“How could nothing be done? You’ve been living there over a month.”

“Well, I’m not so wonderfully perfectly efficient as you are, Macon.”

“You wouldn’t have to be efficient to—”

“Some days,” Sarah said, “I can’t even make it out of my bathrobe.”

Macon was silent.

“I should have agreed to teach summer school,” Sarah said. “Something to give some shape to things. I open my eyes in the morning and think, ‘Why bother getting up?’ ”

“Me too,” Macon said.

“Why bother eating? Why bother breathing?”

“Me too, sweetheart.”

“Macon, do you suppose that person has any idea? I want to go see him in prison, Macon. I want to sit on the other side of the grid or the screen or whatever they have and I’ll say, ‘Look at me. Look. Look at what you did. You didn’t just kill the people you shot; you killed other people besides. What you did goes on and on forever. You didn’t just kill my son; you killed me; you killed my husband. I mean I can’t even manage to put up my curtains; do you understand what you did?’ Then when I’m sure that he does understand, that he really does realize, that he feels just terrible, I’m going to open my purse and pull out a gun and shoot him between the eyes.”

“Oh, well, sweetheart—”

“You think I’m just raving, don’t you. But Macon, I swear, I can feel that little kick against my palm when I fire the gun. I’ve never fired a gun in my life — Lord, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gun. Isn’t it odd? Ethan’s seen one; Ethan’s had an experience you and I have no notion of. But sometimes I hold my hand out with the thumb cocked like when kids play cowboy, and I fold my trigger finger and feel what a satisfaction it would be.”

“Sarah, it’s bad for you to talk like this.”

“Oh? How am I supposed to talk?”

“I mean if you let yourself get angry you’ll be… consumed. You’ll burn up. It’s not productive.”

“Oh, productive! Well, goodness, no, let’s not waste our time on anything unproductive.”

Macon massaged his forehead. He said, “Sarah, I just feel we can’t afford to have these thoughts.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“No, it is not easy for me to say, dammit—”

“Just shut the door, Macon. Just walk away. Just pretend it never happened. Go rearrange your tools, why don’t you; line up your wrenches from biggest to smallest instead of from smallest to biggest; that’s always fun.”

“Goddammit, Sarah—”

“Don’t you curse at me, Macon Leary!”

They paused.

Macon said, “Well.”

Sarah said, “Well, anyhow.”

“So I guess you’ll come by while I’m gone,” he said.

“If that’s all right.”

“Yes, certainly,” he said.

Although he felt a curious uneasiness when he hung up, as if he were letting a stranger come. As if she might walk off with more than just the dining room rug.

For his trip to England, he dressed in his most comfortable suit. One suit is plenty, he counseled in his guidebooks, if you take along some travel-size packets of spot remover. (Macon knew every item that came in travel-size packets, from deodorant to shoe polish.) The suit should be a medium gray. Gray not only hides the dirt; it’s handy for sudden funerals and other formal events. At the same time, it isn’t too somber for everyday.

He packed a minimum of clothes and a shaving kit. A copy of his most recent guide to England. A novel to read on the plane.

Bring only what fits in a carry-on bag. Checking your luggage is asking for trouble. Add several travel-size packets of detergent so you won’t fall into the hands of foreign laundries.

When he’d finished packing, he sat on the couch to rest. Or not to rest, exactly, but to collect himself — like a man taking several deep breaths before diving into a river.

The furniture was all straight lines and soothing curves. Dust motes hung in a slant of sunlight. What a peaceful life he led here! If this were any other day he’d be making some instant coffee. He would drop the spoon in the sink and stand sipping from his mug while the cat wove between his feet. Then maybe he’d open the mail. Those acts seemed dear and gentle now. How could he have complained of boredom? At home he had everything set up around him so he hardly needed to think. On trips even the smallest task required effort and decisions.

When it was two hours till takeoff, he stood up. The airport was a thirty-minute drive at the most, but he hated feeling rushed. He made a final tour of the house, stopping off at the downstairs bathroom — the last real bathroom (was how he thought of it) that he’d see for the next week. He whistled for the dog. He picked up his bag and stepped out the front door. The heat slammed into him like something solid.

The dog was going with him only as far as the vet’s. If he’d known that, he never would have jumped into the car. He sat next to Macon, panting enthusiastically, his keg-shaped body alert with expectation. Macon talked to him in what he hoped was an un-alarming tone. “Hot, isn’t it, Edward. You want the air conditioner on?” He adjusted the controls. “There now. Feeling better?” He heard something unctuous in his voice. Maybe Edward did, too, for he stopped panting and gave Macon a sudden suspicious look. Macon decided to say no more.

They rolled through the neighborhood, down streets roofed over with trees. They turned into a sunnier section full of stores and service stations. As they neared Murray Avenue, Edward started whimpering. In the parking lot of the Murray Avenue Veterinary Hospital, he somehow became a much smaller animal.

Macon got out of the car and walked around to open the door. When he took hold of Edward’s collar, Edward dug his toenails into the upholstery. He had to be dragged all the way to the building, scritching across the hot concrete.

The waiting room was empty. A goldfish tank bubbled in one corner, with a full-color poster above it illustrating the life cycle of the heartworm. There was a girl on a stool behind the counter, a waifish little person in a halter top.

“I’ve brought my dog for boarding,” Macon said. He had to raise his voice to be heard above Edward’s moans.

Chewing her gum steadily, the girl handed him a printed form and a pencil. “Ever been here before?” she asked.

“Yes, often.”

“What’s the last name?”

“Leary.”

“Leary. Leary,” she said, riffling through a box of index cards. Macon started filling out the form. Edward was standing upright now and clinging to Macon’s knees, like a toddler scared of nursery school.

“Whoa,” the girl said.

She frowned at the card she’d pulled.

“Edward?” she said. “On Rayford Road?”

“That’s right.”

“We can’t accept him.”

“What?”

“Says here he bit an attendant. Says, ‘Bit Barry in the ankle, do not readmit.’ ”

“Nobody told me that.”

“Well, they should have.”

“Nobody said a word! I left him in June when we went to the beach; I came back and they handed him over.”

The girl blinked at him, expressionless.

“Look,” Macon said. “I’m on my way to the airport, right this minute. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“I’m only following orders,” the girl said.

“And what set him off, anyhow?” Macon asked. “Did anyone think to wonder? Maybe Edward had good reason!”

The girl blinked again. Edward had dropped to all fours by now and was gazing upward with interest, as if following the conversation.

“Ah, the hell with it,” Macon said. “Come on, Edward.”

He didn’t have to take hold of Edward’s collar when they left. Edward galloped ahead of him all the way across the parking lot.

In that short time, the car had turned into an oven. Macon opened his window and sat there with the motor idling. What now? He considered going to his sister’s, but she probably wouldn’t want Edward either. To tell the truth, this wasn’t the first time there had been complaints. Last week, for instance, Macon’s brother Charles had stopped by to borrow a router, and Edward had darted in a complete circle around his feet, taking furious little nibbles of his trouser cuffs. Charles was so astonished that he just turned his head slowly, gaping down. “What’s got into him?” he asked. “He never used to do this.” Then when Macon grabbed his collar, Edward had snarled. He’d curled his upper lip and snarled. Could a dog have a nervous breakdown?

Macon wasn’t very familiar with dogs. He preferred cats. He liked the way cats kept their own counsel. It was only lately that he’d given Edward any thought at all. Now that he was alone so much he had taken to talking out loud to him, or sometimes he just sat studying him. He admired Edward’s intelligent brown eyes and his foxy little face. He appreciated the honey-colored whorls that radiated so symmetrically from the bridge of his nose. And his walk! Ethan used to say that Edward walked as if he had sand in his bathing suit. His rear end waddled busily; his stubby legs seemed hinged by some more primitive mechanism than the legs of taller dogs.

Macon was driving toward home now, for lack of any better idea. He wondered what would happen if he left Edward in the house the way he left the cat, with plenty of food and water. No. Or could Sarah come see to him, two or three times a day? He recoiled from that; it meant asking her. It meant dialing that number he’d never used and asking her for a favor.

MEOW-BOW ANIMAL HOSPITAL, a sign across the street read. Macon braked and Edward lurched forward. “Sorry,” Macon told him. He made a left turn into the parking lot.

The waiting room at the Meow-Bow smelled strongly of disinfectant. Behind the counter stood a thin young woman in a ruffled peasant blouse. She had aggressively frizzy black hair that burgeoned to her shoulders like an Arab headdress. “Hi, there,” she said to Macon.

Macon said, “Do you board dogs?”

“Sure.”

“I’d like to board Edward, here.”

She leaned over the counter to look at Edward. Edward panted up at her cheerfully. It was clear he hadn’t yet realized what kind of place this was.

“You have a reservation?” the woman asked Macon.

“Reservation! No.”

“Most people reserve.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“Especially in the summer.”

“Couldn’t you make an exception?”

She thought it over, frowning down at Edward. Her eyes were very small, like caraway seeds, and her face was sharp and colorless.

“Please,” Macon said. “I’m about to catch a plane. I’m leaving for a week, and I don’t have a soul to look after him. I’m desperate, I tell you.”

From the glance she shot at him, he sensed he had surprised her in some way. “Can’t you leave him home with your wife?” she asked.

He wondered how on earth her mind worked.

“If I could do that,” he said, “why would I be standing here?”

“Oh,” she said. “You’re not married?”

“Well, I am, but she’s… living elsewhere. They don’t allow pets.”

“Oh.”

She came out from behind the counter. She was wearing very short red shorts; her legs were like sticks. “I’m a divorsy myself,” she said. “I know what you’re going through.”

“And see,” Macon said, “there’s this place I usually board him but they suddenly claim he bites. Claim he bit an attendant and they can’t admit him anymore.”

“Edward? Do you bite?” the woman said.

Macon realized he should not have mentioned that, but she seemed to take it in stride. “How could you do such a thing?” she asked Edward. Edward grinned up at her and folded his ears back, inviting a pat. She bent and stroked his head.

“So will you keep him?” Macon said.

“Oh, I guess,” she said, straightening. “If you’re desperate.” She stressed the word — fixing Macon with those small brown eyes — as if giving it more weight than he had intended. “Fill this out,” she told him, and she handed him a form from a stack on the counter. “Your name and address and when you’ll be back. Don’t forget to put when you’ll be back.”

Macon nodded, uncapping his fountain pen.

“I’ll most likely see you again when you come to pick him up,” she said. “I mean if you put the time of day to expect you. My name’s Muriel.”

“Is this place open evenings?” Macon asked.

“Every evening but Sundays. Till eight.”

“Oh, good.”

“Muriel Pritchett,” she said.

Macon filled out the form while the woman knelt to unbuckle Edward’s collar. Edward licked her cheekbone; he must have thought she was just being friendly. So when Macon had finished, he didn’t say good-bye. He left the form on the counter and walked out very quickly, keeping a hand in his pocket to silence his keys.

On the flight to New York, he sat next to a foreign-looking man with a mustache. Clamped to the man’s ears was a headset for one of those miniature tape recorders. Perfect: no danger of conversation. Macon leaned back in his seat contentedly.

He approved of planes. When the weather was calm, you couldn’t even tell you were moving. You could pretend you were sitting safe at home. The view from the window was always the same — air and more air — and the interior of the plane was practically interchangeable with the interior of any other.

He accepted nothing from the beverage cart, but the man beside him took off his headset to order a Bloody Mary. A tinny, intricate, Middle Eastern melody came whispering out of the pink sponge earplugs. Macon stared down at the little machine and wondered if he should buy one. Not for the music, heaven knows — there was far too much noise in the world already — but for insulation. He could plug himself into it and no one would disturb him. He could play a blank tape: thirty full minutes of silence. Turn the tape over and play thirty minutes more.

They landed at Kennedy and he took a shuttle bus to his connecting flight, which wasn’t due to leave till evening. Once settled in the terminal, he began filling out a crossword puzzle that he’d saved for this occasion from last Sunday’s New York Times. He sat inside a kind of barricade — his bag on one chair, his suit coat on another. People milled around him but he kept his eyes on the page, progressing smoothly to the acrostic as soon as he’d finished the crossword. By the time he’d solved both puzzles, they were beginning to board the plane.

His seatmate was a gray-haired woman with glasses. She had brought her own knitted afghan. This was not a good sign, Macon felt, but he could handle it. First he bustled about, loosening his tie and taking off his shoes and removing a book from his bag. Then he opened the book and ostentatiously started reading.

The name of his book was Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, and it was 1,198 pages long. (Always bring a book, as protection against strangers. Magazines don’t last. Newspapers from home will make you homesick, and newspapers from elsewhere will remind you you don’t belong. You know how alien another paper’s typeface seems.) He’d been lugging around Miss MacIntosh for years. It had the advantage of being plotless, as far as he could tell, but invariably interesting, so he could dip into it at random. Any time he raised his eyes, he was careful to mark a paragraph with his finger and to keep a bemused expression on his face.

There was the usual mellifluous murmur from the loudspeaker about seatbelts, emergency exits, oxygen masks. He wondered why stewardesses accented such unlikely words. “On our flight this evening we will be offering…” The woman next to him asked if he wanted a Lifesaver. “No, thank you,” Macon said, and he went on with his book. She rustled some little bit of paper, and shortly afterward the smell of spearmint drifted over to him.

He refused a cocktail and he refused a supper tray, although he did accept the milk that was offered with it. He ate an apple and a little box of raisins from his bag, drank the milk, and went off to the lavatory to floss and brush his teeth. When he returned, the plane was darker, dotted here and there with reading lamps. Some of the passengers were already asleep. His seatmate had rolled her hair into little O’s and X-ed them over with bobby pins. Macon found it amazing that people could be so unselfconscious on airplanes. He’d seen men in whole suits of pajamas; he’d seen women slathered in face cream. You would think they felt no need to be on guard.

He angled his book beneath a slender shaft of light and turned a page. The engines had a weary, dogged sound. It was the period he thought of as the long haul — the gulf between supper and breakfast when they were suspended over the ocean, waiting for that lightening of the sky that was supposed to be morning although, of course, it was nowhere near morning back home. In Macon’s opinion, morning in other time zones was like something staged — a curtain painted with a rising sun, superimposed upon the real dark.

He let his head tip back against the seat and closed his eyes. A stewardess’s voice, somewhere near the front of the plane, threaded in and out of the droning of the engines. “We just sat and sat and there wasn’t a thing to do and all we had was the Wednesday paper and you know how news just never seems to happen on a Wednesday…”

Macon heard a man speaking levelly in his ear. “Macon.” But he didn’t even turn his head. By now he knew these tricks of sound on planes at night. He saw behind his eyelids the soap dish on the kitchen sink at home — another trick, this concreteness of vision. It was an oval china soap dish painted with yellow roses, containing a worn-down sliver of soap and Sarah’s rings, her engagement ring and her wedding band, just as she had left them when she walked out.

“I got the tickets,” he heard Ethan say. “And they’re opening the doors in five minutes.”

“All right,” Macon told him, “let’s plan our strategy.”

“Strategy?”

“Where we’re going to sit.”

“Why would we need strategy for that?”

“It’s you who asked to see this movie, Ethan. I would think you’d take an interest in where you’re sitting. Now, here’s my plan. You go around to that line on the left. Count the little kids. I’ll count the line on the right.”

“Aw, Dad—”

“Do you want to sit next to some noisy little kid?”

“Well, no.”

“And which do you prefer: an aisle seat?”

“I don’t care.”

“Aisle, Ethan? Or middle of the row? You must have some opinion.”

“Not really.”

“Middle of the row?”

“It doesn’t make any difference.”

“Ethan. It makes a great deal of difference. Aisle, you can get out quicker. So if you plan to buy a snack or go to the restroom, you’ll want to sit on the aisle. On the other hand, everyone’ll be squeezing past you there. So if you don’t think you’ll be leaving your seat, then I suggest—”

“Aw, Dad, for Christ’s sake!” Ethan said.

“Well,” Macon said. “If that’s the tone you’re going to take, we’ll just sit any damn place we happen to end up.”

“Fine,” Ethan said.

“Fine,” Macon said.

Now he did turn his head; he rocked it from side to side. But he kept his eyes tightly closed, and in time the voices stopped, and he found himself in that edgy twilight that passes for sleep when you’re traveling.

At dawn he accepted a cup of coffee, and he swallowed a vitamin pill from his bag. The other passengers looked frowsy and pale. His seatmate dragged an entire small suitcase off to the lavatory and returned all combed, but her face was puffy. Macon believed that travel causes retention of fluids. When he put his shoes on, they felt too tight, and when he went to shave he found unfamiliar pillows of flesh beneath his eyes. He was better off than most people, though, because he hadn’t touched salted food or drunk any alcohol. Alcohol was definitely retained. Drink alcohol on a plane and you’d feel befuddled for days, Macon believed.

The stewardess announced what time it was in London, and there was a stir as people reset their watches. Macon adjusted the digital alarm clock in his shaving kit. The watch on his wrist — which was not digital but real time, circular — he left as it was.

They landed abruptly. It was like being recalled to the hard facts — all that friction suddenly, the gritty runway, the roaring and braking. The loudspeaker came on, purring courteous reminders. The woman next to Macon folded her afghan. “I’m so excited,” she said. “I’m going to see my grandchild for the very first time.” Macon smiled and told her he hoped it went well. Now that he didn’t have to fear being trapped, he found her quite pleasant. Besides, she was so American-looking.

At Heathrow, there was the usual sense of some recent disaster. People rushed about distractedly, other people stood like refugees surrounded by trunks and parcels, and uniformed authorities were trying to deal with a clamor of questions. Since he didn’t have to wait for his luggage, Macon sailed through the red tape far ahead of the others. Then he exchanged his currency and boarded the Underground. I recommend the Underground for everyone except those afraid of heights, and even for them if they will avoid the following stations, which have exceptionally steep escalators.

While the train racketed along, he sorted his currency into envelopes that he’d brought from home — each envelope clearly marked with a different denomination. (No fumbling with unfamiliar coins, no peering at misleading imprints, if you separate and classify foreign money ahead of time.) Across from him a row of faces watched. People looked different here, although he couldn’t say just how. He thought they were both finer and unhealthier. A woman with a fretful baby kept saying, “Hush now, love. Hush now, love,” in that clear, floating, effortless English voice. It was hot, and her forehead had a pallid shine. So did Macon’s, no doubt. He slid the envelopes into his breast pocket. The train stopped and more people got on. They stood above him, clinging not to straps but to bulbs attached to flexible sticks, which Macon on his first visit had taken for some kind of microphone.

He was based in London, as usual. From there he would make brief forays into other cities, never listing more than a handful of hotels, a handful of restaurants within a tiny, easily accessible radius in each place; for his guidebooks were anything but all-inclusive. (“Plenty of other books say how to see as much of the city as possible,” his boss had told him. “You should say how to see as little.”) The name of Macon’s hotel was the Jones Terrace. He would have preferred one of the American chain hotels, but those cost too much. The Jones Terrace was all right, though — small and well kept. He swung into action at once to make his room his own, stripping off the ugly bedspread and stuffing it into a closet, unpacking his belongings and hiding his bag. He changed clothes, rinsed the ones he’d worn and hung them in the shower stall. Then, after a wistful glance at the bed, he went out for breakfast. It was nowhere near morning back home, but breakfast was the meal that businessmen most often had to manage for themselves. He made a point of researching it thoroughly wherever he went.

He walked to the Yankee Delight, where he ordered scrambled eggs and coffee. The service here was excellent. Coffee came at once, and his cup was kept constantly filled. The eggs didn’t taste like eggs at home, but then, they never did. What was it about restaurant eggs? They had no character, no backbone. Still, he opened his guidebook and put a checkmark next to the Yankee Delight. By the end of the week, these pages would be barely legible. He’d have scratched out some names, inserted others, and scrawled notes across the margins. He always revisited past entries — every hotel and restaurant. It was tedious but his boss insisted. “Just think how it would look,” Julian said, “if a reader walked into some café you’d recommended and found it taken over by vegetarians.”

When he’d paid his bill, he went down the street to the New America, where he ordered more eggs and more coffee. “Decaffeinated,” he added. (He was a jangle of nerves by now.) The waiter said they didn’t have decaffeinated. “Oh, you don’t,” Macon said. After the waiter had left, Macon made a note in his guidebook.

His third stop was a restaurant called the U.S. Open, where the sausages were so dry that they might have been baked on a rooftop. It figured: The U.S. Open had been recommended by a reader. Oh, the places that readers wrote in to suggest! Macon had once (before he’d grown wiser) reserved a motel room purely on the strength of such a suggestion — somewhere in Detroit or was it Pittsburgh, some city or other, for Accidental Tourist in America. He had checked out again at first sight of the linens and fled across the street to a Hilton, where the doorman had rushed to meet him and seized his bag with a cry of pity as if Macon had just staggered in from the desert. Never again, Macon had vowed. He left the sausages on his plate and called for his bill.

In the afternoon (so to speak), he visited hotels. He spoke with various managers and inspected sample rooms where he tested the beds, flushed the toilets, squinted at the showerheads. Most were maintaining their standards, more or less, but something had happened to the Royal Prince. The fact was that it seemed… well, foreign. Dark, handsome men in slim silk suits murmured in the lobby while little brown children chased each other around the spittoons. Macon had the feeling he’d got even more hopelessly lost than usual and ended up in Cairo. Cone-shaped ladies in long black veils packed the revolving doors, spinning in from the street with shopping bags full of… what? He tried to imagine their purchasing stone-washed denim shorts and thigh-high boots of pink mesh — the merchandise he’d seen in most shop windows. “Er…” he said to the manager. How to put this? He hated to sound narrow-minded, but his readers did avoid the exotic. “Has the hotel, ah, changed ownership?” he asked. The manager seemed unusually sensitive. He drew himself up and said the Royal Prince was owned by a corporation, always had been and always would be, always the same corporation. “I see,” Macon said. He left feeling dislocated.

At suppertime, he should have tried someplace formal. He had to list at least one formal restaurant in every city for entertaining clients. But tonight he wasn’t up to it. Instead, he went to a café he liked called My American Cousin. The diners there had American accents, and so did some of the staff, and the hostess handed out tickets at the door with numbers on them. If your number was called on the loudspeaker you could win a free TV, or at least a framed color print of the restaurant.

Macon ordered a comforting supper of plain boiled vegetables and two lamb chops in white paper bobby socks, along with a glass of milk. The man at the next table was also on his own. He was eating a nice pork pie, and when the waitress offered him dessert he said, “Oh, now, let me see, maybe I will try some at that,” in the slow, pleased, coax-me drawl of someone whose womenfolks have all his life encouraged him to put a little meat on his bones. Macon himself had the gingerbread. It came with cream, just the way it used to at his grandmother’s house.

By eight o’clock, according to his wristwatch, he was in bed. It was much too early, of course, but he could stretch the day only so far; the English thought it was midnight. Tomorrow he would start his whirlwind dashes through other cities. He’d pick out a few token hotels, sample a few token breakfasts. Coffee with caffeine and coffee without caffeine. Bacon underdone and overdone. Orange juice fresh and canned and frozen. More showerheads, more mattresses. Hair dryers supplied on request? 110-volt switches for electric shavers? When he fell asleep, he thought anonymous rooms were revolving past on a merry-go-round. He thought webbed canvas suitcase stands, ceiling sprinklers, and laminated lists of fire regulations approached and slid away and approached again, over and over all the rest of his days. He thought Ethan was riding a plaster camel and calling, “Catch me!” and falling, but Macon couldn’t get there in time and when he reached his arms out, Ethan was gone.

It was one of Macon’s bad habits to start itching to go home too early. No matter how short a stay he’d planned, partway through he would decide that he ought to leave, that he’d allowed himself far too much time, that everything truly necessary had already been accomplished — or almost everything, almost accomplished. Then the rest of his visit was spent in phone calls to travel agents and fruitless trips to airline offices and standby waits that came to nothing, so that he was forced to return to the hotel he’d just checked out of. He always promised himself this wouldn’t happen again, but somehow it always did. In England, it happened on his fourth afternoon. What more was there to do? he started wondering. Hadn’t he got the gist of the place?

Well, be honest: It was Saturday. He chanced to notice, entering the date in his expense book, that at home it was Saturday morning. Sarah would be stopping by the house for the rug.

She would open the front door and smell home. She would pass through the rooms where she’d been so happy all these years. (Hadn’t she been happy?) She would find the cat stretched out on the couch, long and lazy and languid, and she’d settle on the cushion next to her and think, How could I have left?

Unfortunately, it was summer, and the airlines were overbooked. He spent two days tracking down faint possibilities that evaporated the instant he drew close. “Anything! Get me anything! I don’t have to go to New York; I’ll go to Dulles. I’ll go to Montreal! Chicago! Shoot, I’ll go to Paris or Berlin and see if they have flights. Are there ships? How long do ships take, nowadays? What if this were an emergency? I mean my mother on her deathbed or something? Are you saying there’s just no way out of this place?”

The people he dealt with were unfailingly courteous and full of chirpy good humor — really, if not for the strain of travel he believed he might actually have liked the English — but they couldn’t solve his problem. In the end he had to stay on. He spent the rest of the week huddled in his room watching TV, chewing a knuckle, subsisting on nonperishable groceries and lukewarm soft drinks because he couldn’t face another restaurant.

So he was first in line, naturally, at the check-in counter on the day of his departure. He had his pick of seats: window, nonsmoking. Next to him was a very young couple completely absorbed in each other, so he didn’t need Miss MacIntosh but sat staring out at the clouds all the long, dull afternoon.

Afternoon was never his favorite time; that was the worst of these homeward flights. It was afternoon for hours and hours, through drinks and lunch and drinks again — all of which he waved away. It was afternoon when they showed the movie; the passengers had to pull their shades down. An orange light filled the plane, burdensome and thick.

Once when he’d been away on an unusually difficult trip — to Japan, where you couldn’t even memorize the signs in order to find your way back to a place — Sarah had met his plane in New York. It was their fifteenth anniversary and she had wanted to surprise him. She called Becky at the travel agency to ask his flight number and then she left Ethan with her mother and flew to Kennedy, bringing with her a picnic hamper of wine and cheeses which they shared in the terminal while waiting for their plane home. Every detail of that meal remained in Macon’s memory: the cheeses set out on a marble slab, the wine in stemmed crystal glasses that had somehow survived the trip. He could still taste the satiny Brie. He could still see Sarah’s small, shapely hand resolutely slicing the bread.

But she didn’t meet him in New York today.

She didn’t even meet him in Baltimore.

He collected his car from the lot and drove into the city through a glowering twilight that seemed to promise something — a thunder-storm or heat lightning, something dramatic. Could she be waiting at home? In her striped caftan that he was so fond of? With a cool summer supper laid out on the patio table?

Careful not to take anything for granted, he stopped at a Seven-Eleven for milk. He drove to the vet’s to pick up Edward. He arrived at the Meow-Bow minutes before closing time; somehow, he’d managed to lose his way. There was no one at the counter. He had to ring the service bell. A girl with a ponytail poked her head through a door, letting in a jumble of animal sounds that rose at all different pitches like an orchestra tuning up. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m here for my dog.”

She came forward to open a folder that lay on the counter. “Your last name?”

“Leary.”

“Oh,” she said. “Just a minute.”

Macon wondered what Edward had done wrong this time.

The girl disappeared, and a moment later the other one came out, the frizzy one. This evening she wore a V-necked black dress splashed with big pink flowers, its shoulders padded and its skirt too skimpy; and preposterously high-heeled sandals. “Well, hi there!” she said brightly. “How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was… where’s Edward? Isn’t he all right?”

“Sure, he’s all right. He was so good and sweet and friendly!”

“Well, fine,” Macon said.

“We just got on like a house afire. Seems he took a shine to me, I couldn’t say why.”

“Wonderful,” Macon said. He cleared his throat. “So could I have him back, please?”

“Caroline will bring him.”

“Ah.”

There was a silence. The woman waited, facing him and wearing a perky smile, with her fingers laced together on the counter. She had painted her nails dark red, Macon saw, and put on a blackish lipstick that showed her mouth to be an unusually complicated shape — angular, like certain kinds of apples.

“Um,” Macon said finally. “Maybe I could pay.”

“Oh, yes.”

She stopped smiling and peered down at the open folder. “That’ll be forty-two dollars,” she said.

Macon gave her a credit card. She had trouble working the embossing machine; everything had to be done with the flats of her hands, to spare her nails. She filled in the blanks in a jerky scrawl and then turned the bill in his direction. “Signature and phone,” she said. She leaned over the counter to watch what he wrote. “Is that your home phone, or your business?”

“It’s both. Why? What difference does it make?” he asked.

“I was just wondering,” she told him. She tore off his copy, in that splay-fingered style of hers, and put the rest of the bill in a drawer. “I don’t know if I mentioned before that it so happens I train dogs.”

“Is that right,” Macon said.

He looked toward the door where the first girl had disappeared. It always made him nervous when they took too long bringing Edward. What were they doing back there — getting rid of some evidence?

“My speciality is dogs that bite,” the woman said.

“Specialty.”

“Pardon?”

“Webster prefers ‘specialty.’ ”

She gave him a blank look.

“That must be a dangerous job,” Macon said politely.

“Oh, not for me! I’m not scared of a thing in this world.”

There was a scuffling sound at the door behind her. Edward burst through, followed by the girl with the ponytail. Edward was giving sharp yelps and flinging himself about so joyfully that when Macon bent to pat him, he couldn’t really connect.

“Now, stop that,” the girl told Edward. She was trying to buckle his collar. Meanwhile, the woman behind the counter was saying, “Biters, barkers, deaf dogs, timid dogs, dogs that haven’t been treated right, dogs that have learned bad habits, dogs that grew up in pet shops and don’t trust human beings. I can handle all of those.”

“Well, good,” Macon said.

“Not that he would bite me, of course,” the woman said. “He just fell in love with me, like I think I was telling you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Macon said.

“But I could train him in no time not to bite other people. You think it over and call me. Muriel, remember? Muriel Pritchett. Let me give you my card.”

She handed him a salmon-pink business card that she seemed to have pulled out of nowhere. He had to fight his way around Edward to accept it. “I studied with a man who used to train attack dogs,” she said. “This is not some amateur you’re looking at.”

“Well, I’ll bear that in mind,” Macon said. “Thank you very much.”

“Or just call for no reason! Call and talk.”

“Talk?”

“Sure! Talk about Edward, his problems, talk about… anything! Pick up the phone and just talk. Don’t you ever get the urge to do that?”

“Not really,” Macon said.

Then Edward gave a particularly piercing yelp, and the two of them rushed home.

Well, of course she wasn’t there. He knew it the instant he stepped inside the house, when he smelled that stale hot air and heard the muffled denseness of a place with every window shut. Really he’d known it all along. He’d been fooling himself. He’d been making up fairy tales.

The cat streaked past him and escaped out the door, yowling accusingly. The dog hurtled into the dining room to roll about on the rug and get rid of the scent of the kennel. But there was no rug — only bare, linty floor, and Edward stopped short, looking foolish. Macon knew just how he felt.

He put away the milk and went upstairs to unpack. He took a shower, treading the day’s dirty clothes underfoot, and prepared for bed. When he turned off the light in the bathroom, the sight of his laundry dripping over the tub reminded him of travel. Where was the real difference? Accidental Tourist at Home, he thought, and he slid wearily into his body bag.