Solidarity).
Winning Pinter’s permission to license such a product should take one afternoon, if all goes well. I happen to know that he’s under some financial strain. His thoughtful books stopped selling years ago, bumped from the shelves by his students’ shoddy quickies, and his rash investments in fringe enthusiasms such as self-cooling beverage cans and sunless tanning preparations have murdered his net worth. That he’s agreed to spend time with me at all shows some desperation, I’m afraid, but I’m not here to take advantage of him. The opposite. I’m here to glorify him.
The problem, just now, is my health. My joints are stiff and I’m coughing up sweet phlegm after a morning of hassles and distractions attributable to the overall decline of American travel services. I was leaving the parking lot in my rental car when its orange oil light flashed on. I circled back to the Maestro garage and was given a choice by the on-duty mechanic of trading down from my Volvo to a Pontiac or changing the oil myself and billing the company. The mechanic recommended a ProntoLube just a block away from Homestead Suites, where he said I could also find a drugstore.
I got back on my way, but formless Ontario, with its poorly marked surface roads and surly pedestrians, swallowed me whole. My gas gauge fell and fell. Three times I passed identical burrito stands before realizing they were the same establishment. Twice I nearly ran over a stray Great Dane trailing a leash that had snagged a plastic tricycle. At unpatrolled traffic lights, sloping muscle cars and jacked-up pickups gunned past me blaring rap. I felt like I was driving in Paraguay. In my idea of Paraguay, at least.
I’m like my mother—I stereotype. It’s faster.
Airports are often plunked down in nowhere-lands, and I navigate them by calling on my sense of which sort of businesses go along with which. Find a Red Lobster, you’ve found the Holiday Inn. But Ontario’s layout didn’t follow the rules. Its Olive Gardens were next to bleak used-car lots. Its OfficeMaxes abutted adult bookstores. I punched in Homestead’s national 800 number and had the operator patch me through to the desk clerk at the local franchise, who talked me, block by block, to the front door. When I entered the lobby, I didn’t see him anywhere, though we’d only hung up on each other moments earlier. I pushed the buzzer, waited. Ten minutes passed.
A girl opened a door marked “Pool and Fitness” and asked if she could help me.
“Where’s the clerk?”
“I am.”
“I was just talking to him.”
“Me?”
“A male. The voice was male.”
“The pool guy maybe.”
I asked if my replacement credit card had arrived that morning as promised, and it had—the girl just couldn’t remember where she’d put it. I crossed the street to the drugstore while she searched. Through the locked door I could see the teenage staff conducting inventory. I knocked and knocked. A manager came to the door and waved me off, then pushed a stack of boxes against the glass.
Back at Homestead, the girl presented me with a fax. I asked about the card. “Still gone,” she said. The fax, marked “urgent,” was almost too light to read, and consisted of copies of copies of telephone messages taken down by my grad-student assistant. Two were from Morris Dwight at Advanta, one was from Linda at the Denver Compass Club, and the fourth read “Please call sister,” but didn’t say which one.
I went to my room to return the calls, but the phone had no dial tone. I used my mobile. First, I called Kara at home. Her husband answered. She’d already left for Minnesota, he said. Had she heard from Julie? He didn’t think so. Did he know that Julie was missing? No, he said, but then he’d only come home an hour ago from a two-day hospital stay. I asked Asif what he’d been in for—a mistake. My brother-in-law’s a slow talker, a real enunciator, and it’s part of his caring nature to assume that others care equally about him. We do care, but not at his level. He’s unique. “They studied my sleep,” he said. “I wore electrodes. They taped a little sensor to my thumb to measure the chemical makeup of my blood. It dipped below ninety percent, which isn’t good. I snore. I have apnea. It’s very common, and not just among the obese. You think you’re resting, but actually you’re expending as much energy as a marathon runner. Every night.”
“I was diagnosed with apnea too, once.”
“Which treatment plan did you choose?”
“I haven’t yet. Listen, someone’s knocking. Have to run.”
“We think we know how we’re sleeping, but we don’t. They filmed me. I was all over the mattress.”
“Here’s my number in case you hear from Julie.”
At Advanta I spoke to someone under Dwight who told me he must have called me from his cell, but refused to give out that number. I pointed out that the number on Dwight’s message was the number I was calling now. “I guess this line was supposed to forward then,” the underling said. “But it didn’t, did it? Shoot.” I suggested that he call Dwight on the road and pass on my number at Homestead. Silence. “Wait—I just found a note here. Are you ready? Can’t do Thursday SeaTac breakfast. Sorry. Will be in Phoenix on Wednesday. Can you come there? Wednesday is tomorrow.”
“Thanks for the tip. I already told him I can get to Phoenix. What’s the hotel name?”
“Had it, put it down, and . . . I can get it. It’s here. You’re the
“Correct. You got the manuscript?”
“I read it. Your man in there, what exactly does he invent? I imagine he’s, like, a chemist.”
“It’s never stated.”
“Artistic. Cool. How big is his garage?”
“That’s up to you. It’s a metaphor. An image.”
“So it’s smallish, you’re saying?”
“Have you been listening? I’m saying its dimensions aren’t physical. What’s your boss’s opinion of the
