The Accidental Tourist

it, there was something impervious about her, in spite of all her interest in his private life. She said, “Practice lots, ten minutes a session.”

“Ten minutes!”

“Now let’s start back.”

She led the way, her angular, sashaying walk broken by the jolt of her sharp heels. Macon and Edward followed. When they reached the house, she asked what time it was. “Eight fifty,” Macon said severely. He mistrusted women who wore no watches.

“I have to get going. That will be five dollars, please, and the four cents you owe me from yesterday.”

He gave her the money and she stuffed it in her raincoat pocket. “Next time, I’ll stay longer and talk,” she said. “That’s a promise.” She trilled her fingers at him, and then she clicked off toward a car that was parked down the street — an aged, gray, boat-like sedan polished to a high shine. When she slid in and slammed the door behind her, there was a sound like falling beer cans. The engine twanged and rattled before it took hold. Macon shook his head, and he and Edward returned to the house.

Between Wednesday and Thursday, Macon spent what seemed a lifetime struggling up and down Dempsey Road beside Edward. His armpits developed a permanent ache. There was a vertical seam of pain in his thigh. This made no sense; it should have been in the shin. He wondered if something had gone wrong — if the break had been set improperly, for instance, so that some unusual strain was being placed upon the thighbone. Maybe he’d have to go back to the hospital and get his leg rebroken, probably under general anesthesia with all its horrifying complications; and then he’d spend months in traction and perhaps walk the rest of his life with a limp. He imagined himself tilting across intersections with a grotesque, lopsided gait. Sarah, driving past, would screech to a halt. “Macon?” She would roll down her window. “Macon, what happened?”

He would raise one arm and let it flop and totter away from her.

Or tell her, “I’m surprised you care enough to inquire.”

No, just totter away.

Most likely these little spells of self-pity (an emotion he despised ordinarily) were caused by sheer physical exhaustion. How had he got himself into this? Slapping his haunch was the first problem; then summoning his balance to jerk the leash when Edward fell out of step, and staying constantly alert for any squirrel or pedestrian. “Sss!” he kept saying, and “Cluck-cluck!” and “Sss!” again. He supposed passersby must think he was crazy. Edward loped beside him, occasionally yawning, looking everywhere for bikers. Bikers were his special delight. Whenever he saw one, the hair between his shoulders stood on end and he lunged forward. Macon felt like a man on a tightrope that was suddenly set swinging.

At this uneven, lurching pace, he saw much more than he would have otherwise. He had a lengthy view of every bush and desiccated flower bed. He memorized eruptions in the sidewalk that might trip him. It was an old people’s street, and not in the best of repair. The neighbors spent their days telephoning back and forth among themselves, checking to see that no one had suffered a stroke alone on the stairs or a heart attack in the bathroom, a broken hip, blocked windpipe, dizzy spell over the stove with every burner alight. Some would set out for a walk and find themselves hours later in the middle of the street, wondering where they’d been headed. Some would start fixing a bite to eat at noon, a soft-boiled egg or a cup of tea, and by sundown would still be puttering in their kitchen, fumbling for the salt and forgetting how the toaster worked. Macon knew all this through his sister, who was called upon by neighbors in distress. “Rose, dear! Rose, dear!” they would quaver, and they’d stumble into her yard waving an overdue bill, an alarming letter, a bottle of pills with a childproof top.

In the evening, taking Edward for his last walk, Macon glanced in windows and saw people slumped in flowered armchairs, lit blue and shivery by their TV sets. The Orioles were winning the second game of the World Series, but these people seemed to be staring at their own thoughts instead. Macon imagined they were somehow dragging him down, causing him to walk heavily, to slouch, to grow short of breath. Even the dog seemed plodding and discouraged.

And when he returned to the house, the others were suffering one of their fits of indecisiveness. Was it better to lower the thermostat at night, or not? Wouldn’t the furnace have to work harder if it were lowered? Hadn’t Porter read that someplace? They debated back and forth, settling it and then beginning again. Why! Macon thought. They were not so very different from their neighbors. They were growing old themselves. He’d been putting in his own two bits (by all means, lower the thermostat), but now his voice trailed off, and he said no more.

That night, he dreamed he was parked near Lake Roland in his grandfather’s ’57 Buick. He was sitting in the dark and some girl was sitting next to him. He didn’t know her, but the bitter smell of her perfume seemed familiar, and the rustle of her skirt when she moved closer. He turned and looked at her. It was Muriel. He drew a breath to ask what she was doing here, but she put a finger to his lips and stopped him. She moved closer still. She took his keys from him and set them on the dashboard. Gazing steadily into his face, she unbuckled his belt and slipped a cool, knowing hand down inside his trousers.

He woke astonished and embarrassed, and sat bolt upright in his bed.

“Everybody always asks me, ‘What is your dog like?’ ” Muriel said. “ ‘I bet he’s a model of good behavior,’ they tell me. But you want to hear something funny? I don’t own a dog. In fact, the one time I had one around, he ran off. That was Norman’s dog, Spook. My ex-husband’s. First night we were married, Spook ran off to Norman’s mom’s. I think he hated me.”

“Oh, surely not,” Macon said.

“He hated me. I could tell.”

They were outdoors again, preparing to put Edward through his paces. By now, Macon had adjusted to the rhythm of these lessons. He waited, gripping Edward’s leash. Muriel said, “It was just like one of those Walt Disney movies. You know: where the dog walks all the way to the Yukon or something. Except Spook only walked to Timonium. Me and Norman had him downtown in our apartment, and Spook took off and traveled the whole however many miles it was back to Norman’s mom’s house in Timonium. His mom calls up: ‘When did you drop Spook off?’ ‘What’re you talking about?’ Norman asks her.”

She changed her voice to match each character. Macon heard the thin whine of Norman’s mother, the stammering boyishness of Norman himself. He remembered last night’s dream and felt embarrassed all over again. He looked at her directly, hoping for flaws, and found them in abundance — a long, narrow nose, and sallow skin, and two freckled knobs of collarbone that promised an unluxurious body.

“Seems his mom woke up in the morning,” she was saying, “and there was Spook, sitting on the doorstep. But that was the first we realized he was missing. Norman goes, ‘I don’t know what got into him. He never ran off before.’ And gives me this doubtful kind of look. I could tell he wondered if it might be my fault. Maybe he thought it was an omen or something. We were awful young to get married. I can see that now. I was seventeen. He was eighteen — an only child. His mother’s pet. Widowed mother. He had this fresh pink face like a girl’s and the shortest hair of any boy in my school and he buttoned his shirt collars all the way to the neck. Moved in from Parkville the end of junior year. Caught sight of me in my strapless sundress and goggled at me all through every class; other boys teased him but he didn’t pay any mind. He was just so… innocent, you know? He made me feel like I had powers. There he was following me around the halls with his arms full of books and I’d say, ‘Norman? You want to eat lunch with me?’ and he’d blush and say, ‘Oh, why, uh, you serious?’ He didn’t even know how to drive, but I told him if he got his license I’d go out with him. ‘We could ride to someplace quiet and talk and be alone,’ I’d say, ‘you know what I mean?’ Oh, I was bad. I don’t know what was wrong with me, back then. He got his license in no time flat and came for me in his mother’s Chevy, which incidentally she happened to have purchased from my father, who was a salesman for Ruggles Chevrolet. We found that out at the wedding. Got married the fall of senior year, he was just dying to marry me so what could I say? and at the wedding my daddy goes to Norman’s mom, ‘Why, I believe I sold you a car not long ago,’ but she was too busy crying to take much notice. That woman carried on like marriage was a fate worse than death. Then when Spook runs off to her house she tells us, ‘I suppose I’d best keep him, it’s clear as day he don’t like it there with you-all.’ With me, is what she meant. She held it against me I took her son away. She claimed I ruined his chances; she wanted him to get his diploma. But I never kept him from getting his diploma. He was the one who said he might as well drop out; said why bother staying in school when he could make a fine living on floors.”