“Like what?”
“Like… tell her you know a girl whose ears dropped off.”
“She’d never go for that.”
“Make it scientific. Say if you puncture cartilage, it will wither right away.”
“Hmm,” the driver said. He honked his horn at a produce truck.
“ ‘Imagine how you’d feel,’ tell her, ‘having to wear the same hairstyle forever. Covering up your withered ears.’ ”
“Think she’d believe me?”
“Why not?” Macon asked. And then, after a pause, “In fact, it may be true. Do you suppose I could have read it someplace?”
“Well, now, maybe you did,” the driver said. “There’s this sort of familiar ring to it.”
“I might even have seen a photograph,” Macon said. “Somebody’s ears, shriveled. All shrunken.”
“Wrinkly, like,” the driver agreed.
Macon said, “Like two dried apricots.”
“Christ! I’ll tell her.”
The taxi stopped in front of Macon’s hotel. Macon paid the fare and said, as he slid out, “I hope it works.”
“Sure it will,” the driver said, “till next time. Till she wants a nose ring or something.”
“Noses are cartilage too, remember! Noses can wither too!”
The driver waved and pulled into traffic again.
After Macon had claimed his room, he took a subway to the Buford Hotel. An electronics salesman had written to suggest it; the Buford rented small apartments, by the day or the week, to businessmen. The manager, a Mr. Aggers, turned out to be a short, round man who walked with a limp exactly like Macon’s. Macon thought they must look very odd together, crossing the lobby to the elevators. “Most of our apartments are owned by corporations,” Mr. Aggers said. He pressed the “Up” button. “Companies who send their men to the city regularly will often find it cheaper to buy their own places. Then those weeks the apartments are empty, they look to me to find other tenants, help defray the costs.”
Macon made a note of this in the margin of his guidebook. Using an infinitesimal script, he also noted the decor of the lobby, which reminded him of some old-fashioned men’s club. On the massive, claw-footed table between the two elevators stood a yard-high naked lady in brass, trailing brass draperies and standing on brass clouds, holding aloft a small, dusty light bulb with a frayed electric cord dangling from it. The elevator, when it arrived, had dim floral carpeting and paneled walls.
“May I ask,” Mr. Aggers said, “whether you personally write the Accidental Tourist series?”
“Yes, I do,” Macon told him.
“Well!” Mr. Aggers said. “This is a real honor, then. We keep your books in the lobby for our guests. But I don’t know, I somehow pictured you looking a little different.”
“How did you think I would look?” Macon asked.
“Well, maybe not quite so tall. Maybe a bit, well, heavier. More… upholstered.”
“I see,” Macon said.
The elevator had stopped by now but it took its time sliding open. Then Mr. Aggers led Macon down a hall. A woman with a laundry cart stood aside to let them pass. “Here we are,” Mr. Aggers said. He unlocked a door and turned on a light.
Macon walked into an apartment that could have come straight from the 1950s. There was a square sofa with metallic threads in its fabric, a chrome-trimmed dinette set, and in the bedroom a double bed whose headboard was quilted in cream-colored vinyl. He tested the mattress. He took off his shoes, lay down, and thought a while. Mr. Aggers stood above him with his fingers laced. “Hmm,” Macon said. He sat up and put his shoes back on. Then he went into the bathroom, where the toilet bore a white strip reading SANITIZED. “I’ve never understood these things,” he said. “Why should it reassure me to know they’ve glued a paper band across my toilet seat?” Mr. Aggers made a helpless gesture with both hands. Macon drew aside a shower curtain printed with pink and blue fish, and he inspected the tub. It looked clean enough, although there was a rust stain leading down from the faucet.
In the kitchenette he found a single saucepan, two faded plastic plates and mugs, and an entire shelf of highball glasses. “Usually our guests don’t cook much,” Mr. Aggers explained, “but they might have their associates in for drinks.” Macon nodded. He was faced with a familiar problem, here: the narrow line between “comfortable” and “tacky.” In fact, sometimes comfortable
“You have to admit it’s well stocked,” Mr. Aggers said. “See? An apron in the kitchen drawer. My wife’s idea. Protects their suits.”
“Yes, very nice,” Macon said.
“It’s just like home away from home; that’s how I like to think of it.”
“Oh, well, home,” Macon said. “Nothing’s
“Why? What’s missing?” Mr. Aggers asked. He had very pale, fine-grained skin that took on a shine when he was anxious. “What more would you like to see added?”
“To tell the truth,” Macon said, “I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals.”
“Animals?”
“I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?”
“Yes, but — well, I don’t see how I could — there are surely health regulations or something… complications, paperwork, feeding all those different… and allergies, of course, many guests have—”
“Oh, I understand, I understand,” Macon said. In the margin of his guidebook he was noting the number of wastebaskets: four. Excellent. “No,” he said, “it doesn’t seem that people ever take me up on that.”
“Will you recommend us anyway?”
“Certainly,” Macon said, and he closed his guidebook and asked for a list of the rates.
The rest of the afternoon he spent in hotels that he’d covered before. He visited managers in their offices, took brief guided tours to see that nothing had slid into ruin, and listened to talk of rising costs and remodeling plans and new, improved conference settings. Then he returned to his room and switched on the evening news. The world was doing poorly; but watching this unfamiliar TV set, propping his aching leg and braced in this chair that seemed designed for someone else’s body, Macon had the feeling that none of the wars and famines he saw were real. They were more like, oh, staged. He turned off the set and went downstairs to hail a cab.
At Julian’s suggestion, he was dining on the very top of an impossibly tall building. (Julian had a fondness for restaurants with gimmicks, Macon had noticed. He wasn’t happy unless a place revolved, or floated, or could be reached only by catwalk.) “Imagine,” Julian had said, “the effect on your out-of-town client. Yes, he’d have to be from out of town; I don’t suppose a native New Yorker…” Macon had snorted. Now the cabdriver snorted, too. “Cup of coffee there will cost you five bucks,” he told Macon.
“It figures.”
“You’re better off at one of those little Frenchy places.”
“That’s for tomorrow.
The taxi coasted down streets that grew darker and more silent, leading away from the crowds. Macon peered out of his window. He saw a lone man huddled in a doorway, wrapped in a long coat. Wisps of steam drifted up from manhole covers. All the shops were locked behind iron grilles.
At the end of the darkest street of all, the taxi stopped. The driver gave another snort, and Macon paid his fare and stepped out. He wasn’t prepared for the wind, which rushed up against him like a great flat sheet of something. He hurried across the sidewalk, or was propelled, while his trousers twisted and flapped about his legs. Just before entering the building, he thought to look up. He looked up and up and up, and finally he saw a faint white pinnacle dwindling into a deep, black, starless sky eerily far away. He thought of once long ago when Ethan, visiting the zoo as a toddler, had paused in front of an elephant and raised his face in astonishment and fallen over backwards.
