“All of it,” Alexander said.
“You can’t be allergic to all of it.”
“Well, I am.”
Macon went on into the kitchen. Muriel stood with her back to him, talking on the phone with her mother. He could tell it was her mother because of Muriel’s high, sad, querulous tone. “Aren’t you going to ask how Alexander is? Don’t you want to know about his rash? I ask after
He stepped up behind her soundlessly. “You didn’t even ask what happened with his eye doctor,” she said, “and here I was so worried about it. I swear sometimes you’d think he wasn’t your grandson! That time I sprained my ankle falling off my shoes and called to see if you’d look after him, what did you say? Said, ‘Now let me get this straight. You want me to come all the way down to your house.’ You’d think Alexander was nothing to do with you!”
Macon presented himself in front of her, holding out the pizza. “Ta-da!” he whispered. She looked up at him and gave that perky smile of hers — an ornate, Victorian V.
“Ma,” she said, “I’m going now! Macon’s here!”
It had been a long, long time since anyone made such an event of his arrival.
He went to Julian’s office on a Monday afternoon and handed over what he’d done on the U.S. guidebook. “That wraps up the Northeast,” he said. “I guess next I’ll start on the South.”
“Well, good,” Julian told him. He was bent over behind his desk, rummaging through a drawer. “Excellent. Like to show you something, Macon. Now, where in hell — ah.”
He straightened, with his face flushed. He gave Macon a tiny blue velvet box. “Your sister’s Christmas present,” he said.
Macon raised the lid. Inside, on a bed of white satin, was a diamond ring. He looked at Julian.
“What is it?” he asked.
“What
“I mean, is this a… what you would call, dinner ring? Or is it meant to be, rather…”
“It’s an engagement ring, Macon.”
“Engagement?”
“I want to marry her.”
“You want to marry Rose?”
“What’s so odd about that?”
“Well, I—” Macon said.
“If she’ll agree to it, that is.”
“What, you haven’t asked her yet?”
“I’ll ask her at Christmas, when I give her the ring. I want to do this properly. Old-fashioned. Do you think she’ll have me?”
“Well, I really couldn’t say,” Macon said. Unfortunately, he was sure she would, but he’d be damned if he’d tell Julian that.
“She’s got to,” Julian said. “I am thirty-six years old, Macon, but I tell you, I feel like a schoolboy about that woman. She’s everything those girls in my apartment building are not. She’s so… true. Want to know something? I’ve never even slept with her.”
“Well, I don’t care to hear about that,” Macon said hastily.
“I want us to have a real wedding night,” Julian told him. “I want to do everything right. I want to join a real family. God, Macon, isn’t it amazing how two separate lives can link up together? I mean two
Macon said, “It’s okay.” He looked down at it. Then he said, “It’s very nice, Julian,” and he closed the box gently and handed it back.
“Now, this is not your ordinary airplane,” Macon told Muriel. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. This is what they call a commuter plane. It’s something a businessman would take, say, to hop to the nearest city for a day and make a few sales and hop back again.”
The plane he was referring to — a little fifteen-seater that resembled a mosquito or a gnat — stood just outside the door of the commuter’s waiting room. A girl in a parka was loading it with baggage. A boy was checking something on the wings. This appeared to be an airline run by teenagers. Even the pilot was a teenager, it seemed to Macon. He entered the waiting room, carrying a clipboard. He read off a list of names. “Marshall? Noble? Albright?” One by one the passengers stepped forward — just eight or ten of them. To each the pilot said, “Hey, how you doing.” He let his eyes rest longest on Muriel. Either he found her the most attractive or else he was struck by her outfit. She wore her highest heels, black stockings spattered with black net roses, and a flippy little fuchsia dress under a short fat coat that she referred to as her “fun fur.” Her hair was caught all to one side in a great bloom of frizz, and there was a silvery dust of some kind on her eyelids. Macon knew she’d overdone it, but at the same time he liked her considering this such an occasion.
The pilot propped open the door and they followed him outside, across a stretch of concrete, and up two rickety steps into the plane. Macon had to bend almost double as he walked down the aisle. They threaded between two rows of single seats, each seat as spindly as a folding chair. They found spaces across from each other and settled in. Other passengers struggled through, puffing and bumping into things. Last came the copilot, who had round, soft, baby cheeks and carried a can of Diet Pepsi. He slammed the door shut behind him and went up front to the controls. Not so much as a curtain hid the cockpit. Macon could lean out into the aisle and see the banks of knobs and gauges, the pilot positioning his headset, the copilot taking a final swig and setting his empty can on the floor.
“Now, on a bigger plane,” Macon called to Muriel as the engines roared up, “you’d hardly feel the takeoff. But here you’d better brace yourself.”
Muriel nodded, wide-eyed, gripping the seat ahead of her. “What’s that light that’s blinking in front of the pilot?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s that little needle that keeps sweeping round and round?”
“I don’t know.”
He felt he’d disappointed her. “I’m used to jets, not these toys,” he told her. She nodded again, accepting that. It occurred to Macon that he was really a very worldly and well-traveled man.
The plane started taxiing. Every pebble on the runway jolted it; every jolt sent a series of creaks through the framework. They gathered speed. The crew, suddenly grave and professional, made complicated adjustments to their instruments. The wheels left the ground. “Oh!” Muriel said, and she turned to Macon with her face all lit up.
“We’re off,” he told her.
“I’m flying!”
They rose — with some effort, Macon felt — over the fields surrounding the airport, over a stand of trees and a grid of houses. Above-ground swimming pools dotted backyards here and there like pale blue thumbtacks. Muriel pressed so close to her window that she left a circle of mist on the glass. “Oh, look!” she said to Macon, and then she said something else that he couldn’t hear. The engines on this plane were loud and harsh, and the Pepsi can was rolling around with a clattering sound, and also the pilot was bellowing to the copilot, saying something about his refrigerator. “So I wake up in the middle of the night,” he was shouting, “damn thing’s thudding and thumping —”
Muriel said, “Wouldn’t Alexander enjoy this!”
Macon hadn’t seen Alexander enjoying anything yet, but he said dutifully, “We’ll have to bring him sometime.”
“We’ll have to take just lots of trips! France and Spain and Switzerland…”
“Well,” Macon said, “there’s the little matter of money.”
“Just America, then. California, Florida…”
California and Florida took money too, Macon should have said (and Florida wasn’t even given space in his
