The Accidental Tourist

“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 cafe 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 cafe 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