“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 T V. 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, wh
ich 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—”<
br />
“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?