The Accidental Tourist

When she stood in this kind of sunlight her eyes were so clear that it seemed you could see to the backs of them. He knew that from long ago. They might have been his own eyes; they were so familiar. He said, "How have you been?"

"I've been fine."

"Well. Good."

"I know that you're living with someone," she told him in a steady voice.

"Ah! Yes, actually I ... yes. I am."

She knew who it was, too, because she looked past him then at Muriel and Alexander. But all she said was, "Rose told me when she invited me."

He said, "How about you?"

"Me?"

"Are you living with anyone?"

"Not really."

Rose came over and touched their arms, which was unlike her. "We're ready now," she said. She told Macon, "Sarah's my matron of honor, did I happen to mention that?"

"No, you didn't," Macon said.

Then he and Sarah followed her to a spot beneath a tulip tree, where Julian and Dr. Grauer were waiting. There was some kind of makeshift altar there-some little table or something covered with a cloth; Macon didn't pay much attention. He stood beside the minister and fingered the ring in his pocket. Sarah stood across from him, looking gravely into his face.

It all felt so natural.

Luriel said, "I never told you this, but a while before I met you I was dating somebody else."

"Oh? Who was that?" Macon asked.

"He was a customer at the Rapid-Eze Copy Center. He brought me his divorce papers to copy and we started having this conversation and ended up going out together. His divorce was awful. Really messy. His wife had been two-timing him. He said he didn't think he could ever trust a woman again. It was months before he would spend the night, even; he didn't like going to sleep when a woman was in the same room. But bit by bit I changed all that. He relaxed. He got to be a whole different man. Moved in with me and took over the bills, paid off all I still owed Alexander's doctor. We started talking about getting married. Then he met an airline stewardess and eloped with her within the week."

"I see," Macon said.

"It was like I had, you know, cured him, just so he could elope with another woman."

"Well," he said.

"You wouldn't do anything like that, would you, Macon?"

"Who, me?"

"Would you elope with someone else? Would you see someone else behind my back?"

"Oh, Muriel, of course not," he told her.

"Would you leave me and go home to your wife?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Would you?"

"Don't be silly," he said.

She cocked her head and considered him. Her eyes were alert and bright and knowing, like the eyes of some small animal.

It was a rainy Tuesday morning and Edward, who was squeamish about rain, insisted he didn't need to go out, but Macon took him anyway. While he was waiting in the backyard beneath his umbrella, he saw a young couple walking down the alley. They caught his attention because they walked so slowly, as if they didn't realize they were getting wet. The boy was tall and frail, in ragged jeans and a soft white shirt. The girl wore a flat straw hat with ribbons down the back and a longish, limp cotton dress.

They swung hands, looking only at each other. They came upon a tricycle and they separated to walk around it; only instead of simply walking the girl did a little sort of dance step, spinning her skirt out, and the boy spun too and laughed and took her hand again.

Edward finally, finally peed, and Macon followed him back into the house.

He set his umbrella in the kitchen sink and squatted to dry Edward off with an old beach towel. He rubbed briskly at first, and then more slowly. Then he stopped but remained on the floor, the towel bunched in his hands, the tin-can smell of wet dog rising all around him.

When he'd asked Sarah whether she was living with anyone, and Sarah had said, "Not really," what exactly had she meant by that?

The rain stopped and they put Edward on his leash and went out shopping.

Muriel needed bedroom slippers with feathers on them. "Red. High-heeled.

Pointy-toed," she said.

"Goodness. Whatever for?" Macon asked her.

"I want to clop around the house in them on Sunday mornings. Can't you just see it? I wish I smoked cigarettes. I wish Alexander wasn't allergic to smoke."

Yes, he could see it, as a matter of fact. "In your black-and-gold kimono," he said.

"Exactly."

"But I don't believe they sell those feathered slippers anymore."

"In thrift shops they do."

"Oh. Right."

Lately, Macon had begun to like thrift shops himself. In the usual sea of plastic he had found, so far, a folding boxwood carpenter's rule, an ingenious wheeled cookie cutter that left no waste space between cookies, and a miniature brass level for Alexander's toolbox.

The air outside was warm and watery. Mrs. Butler was propping up the squashed geraniums that flopped in the white-washed tire in her yard.