The Accidental Tourist

Yes, he would believe it, he could have said. But didn't.

So here they were in their same old positions, he could have said: He had won her attention only by withdrawing. He wasn't surprised when she said, "Macon? Do you . . . What's her name? The person you live with?"

"Muriel," he said.

Which she knew before she asked, he suspected.

"Do you plan on staying with Muriel forever?"

"I really couldn't say," he said.

He was noticing how oddly the name hung in this starchy, old-fashioned hotel room. Muriel. Such a peculiar sound. So unfamiliar, suddenly.

On the flight back, his seatmate was an attractive young woman in a tailored suit. She spread the contents of her briefcase on her folding tray, and she riffled through computer printout sheets with her perfectly manicured hands. Then she asked Macon if he had a pen she might borrow.

This struck him as amusing-her true colors shining out from beneath her businesslike exterior. However, his only pen was a fountain pen that he didn't like lending, so he said no. She seemed relieved; she cheerfully repacked all she'd taken from her briefcase. "I could have sworn I swiped a ballpoint from my last hotel," she said, "but maybe that was the one before this one; you know how they all run together in your mind."

"You must do a lot of traveling," Macon said politely.

"Do I! Some mornings when I wake up I have to check my hotel stationery just to find out what city I'm in."

"That's terrible."

"Oh, I like it," she said, bending to slip her briefcase under her seat.

"It's the only time I can relax anymore. When I come home I'm all nervous, can't sit still. I prefer to be a ... moving target, you could say."

Macon thought of something he'd once read about heroin: how it's not a pleasure, really, but it so completely alters the users' body chemistry that they're forced to go on once they've started.

He turned down drinks and dinner, and so did his seatmate; she rolled her suit jacket expertly into a pillow and went to sleep. Macon got out Miss Macintosh and stared at a single page for a while. The top line began with brows bristling, her hair streaked with white. He studied the words so long that he almost wondered if they were words; the whole English language seemed chunky and brittle. "Ladies and gentlemen," the loudspeaker said, "wetrwill be starting our descent . . ." and the word "descent" struck him as an invention, some new euphemism concocted by the airlines.

After they landed in Baltimore, he took a shuttle bus to the parking lot and retrieved his car. It was late evening here and the sky was pale and radiant above the city. As he drove he continued to see the words from Miss Macintosh. He continued to hear the stewardess's gliding voice: complimentary beverages and the captain has asked us and trays in an upright position. He considered switching on the radio but he didn't know what station it was set to. Maybe it was Muriel's country music station. This possibility made him feel weary; he felt he wouldn't have the strength to press the buttons, and so he drove in silence.

He came to Singleton Street and flicked his signal on but didn't turn.

After a while the signal clicked off on its own. He rode on through the city, up Charles Street, into his old neighborhood. He parked and cut the engine and sat looking at the house. The downstairs windows were dark.

The upstairs windows were softly glowing. Evidently, he had come home.

Macon and Sarah needed to buy a new couch. They set aside a Saturday for it-actually just half a Saturday, because Sarah had a class to attend in the afternoon. At breakfast, she flipped through an interior decorating book so they could get a head start on their decision. "I'm beginning to think along the lines of something flowered," she told Macon. "We've never had a flowered couch before. Or would that be too frilly?"

"Well, I don't know. I wonder about winter," Macon said.

"Winter?"

"I mean right now in the middle of June a flowered couch looks fine, but it might seem out of place in December."

"So you prefer something in a solid," Sarah said.

"Well, I don't know."

"Or maybe stripes."

"I'm not sure."

"I know you don't like plaids."

"No."

"How do you feel about tweeds?"

"Tweeds," Macon said, considering.

Sarah handed over the book and started loading the dishwasher.

Macon studied pictures of angular modern couches, cozy chintz-covered couches, and period reproduction couches covered in complex fabrics. He took the book to the living room and squinted at the spot where the couch would be sitting. The old one, which had turned out to be too waterlogged to salvage, had been carted away, along with both armchairs. Now there was just a long blank wall, with the freshly plastered ceiling glaring above it. Macon observed that a room without furniture had a utilitarian feeling, as if it were merely a container. Or a vehicle. Yes, a vehicle: He had a sense of himself speeding through the universe as he stood there.