She had phoned the ExEx medical room the previous afternoon, and arranged to call in this morning to have her dressing removed. If the infection had cleared up she would start exploring the scenarios straight away. The extremes were an allure to her, like the ultimate narcotic.
When Teresa left her room a few minutes later, to go to her car, one of the young men she had seen at breakfast was waiting in the corridor. She glanced at him, then let the hint of a polite smile rest on her face and went to walk past him.
But he said, 'Excuse me, ma'am? 1'd like to say hello. I'm Ken Mitchell, and I'm visiting from the USA.'
'Hello.' Teresa tried to make the word sound as non-
American as possible, not wanting to be drawn into a conversation. She added, out of politeness, 'Good to know you. I'm Teresa Simons. 1
'I'm pleased to meet you, Ms Simons. May 1 ask if you are staying in this hotel?'
'Yes.'
'OK, that's what we thought.' He glanced towards the door of the room she had just left, as if having established a significant proof 'Are you here in England with your family, your partner?'
'No, I'm staying by myself'
Who the hell was he to ask? Why did she answer? She stepped forward. He sidestepped as if casually, but none the less temporarily blocked her way.
'Ms Simons, are you planning on checking out real soon?'
'No, I'm not.'
She said it with as much of a British accent as she could muster, but he was clearly uninterested in anything about her, other than the fact of her presence.
'Right, ma'am. We'll see to that.'
'Thank you.'
lt was the only thing she could think of saying, but however inappropriate it was it gave her an exit line.
She pushed past him, picking up a faint whiff of scented soap. His skin was so clear, healthy, repellent. She went down the stairs and through the hotel to the car park. She was bristling with irritation, a familiar kind. It seemed to her that she had known people like him all her life, though she hadn't expected to run into any of them here in England. Maybe they were everywhere, these Americans whom America had once kept to itself but was apparently now exporting. They promoted a distorted version of the American way of life, one of clean, groomed, highly paid, quietly spoken and superficially polite young men and women, narrowly pursuing their careers, completely selfabsorbed and uncaring of anything or anyone else around them.
Her rental car was virtually concealed behind the bulk of the huge van in which the young Americans had arrived. One of the women was sitting in the front passenger seat with the door open, looking at a road map of southeast England spread on her lap. If she looked up as Teresa went past the gesture went unnoticed, as Teresa was intent only on getting out of the hotel as soon as possible.
She started her car, and after squeezing narrowly out from behind the van she drove it from the parking lot with a minimum of delay. She turned on to the Eastbourne Road, heading west, and almost at once found herself held up in the slowmoving crawl of traffic that seemed permanently to clog the roads during the early part of the mornings. After half a mile she took a right at a traffic signal, and headed up towards the industrial estate overlooking the town. She parked in a space at the front of what she now knew as the GunHo building.
Half an hour later, with her neck dressing replaced by a simple BandAid, she was sitting in the driver's seat of the car and looking through the road map of Sussex. She had been told she should not use the ExEx simulations for another two days, until she had finished the antibiotics and the infection on the valve incision had cleared up. Once again she had time on her hands.
The road map she had found in the rental car intrigued her. English roads spread out illogically, following no discernible pattern. The map showed features you would never see on its equivalent in America: churches, abbeys, vineyards, even individual houses. Clergy House, Old Mint House, Ashburnam House did people still live in these places? Was the fact they were marked on the map an invitation to go visit?
There was for her something solid and real about the English landscape, unlike the sensuous glimpse she had had of the California of 1950 when she briefly took over Elsa Durdle's identity. Then she had been haunted by the sense of an infinite unfolding of virtuality: nothing existed beyond her immediate awareness, but she had only to turn her head, or drive towards it, for it to spring suddenly into existence.
This English map was another intriguing code, like a programming language, a series of symbols depicting a landscape that for her was mostly imaginary, mostly unseen. The codes would turn to reality as she went towards them, the ancient England of her dreams would be there to be discovered, an endlessly unfolding panorama.
She left Bulverton on the coast road, crossed the Pevensey Levels, and after driving through several tiny villages reached the main highway between Eastbourne and London. Here she turned north towards London and let the car build up speed. She closed her window and put on a CD by Oasis, one of several records she had found in the car. She had heard of the band, but had never listened to their music. She turned the volume up loud.
Driving had always helped her think, and all the decisions she remembered having taken were made in a car. Not all were the right decisions, of course, but they were none the less memorable for that.
She and Andy had decided to get married, one day in a car going through the flat countryside of southern New Jersey while they were looking for a motel for the night. She had not only decided to apply to join the Bureau one day while driving, but had also decided to take leave of absence, again in a car, although that particular car had been parked in the drive outside her empty house in Woodbdidge, where
the windows were dark and the memories were uselessly and frustratingly of Andy alive and living there with her.
Her eyes misted as she drove, while she remembered that day and the violent events which had led up to it. They had become the basis of everything, the rationale of all her actions, or so she had supposed. That dread feeling of blankness, spreading out and around her, swamping everything but replacing nothing.
