The Accidental Tourist

Macon and Julian had met some dozen years ago, when Macon was still at the bottle-cap factory. He’d been casting about for other occupations at the time. He’d begun to believe he might like to work on a newspaper. But he’d had no training, not a single journalism course. So he started the only way he could think of: He contributed a freelance article to a neighborhood weekly. His subject was a crafts fair over in Washington. Getting there is difficult, he wrote, because the freeway is so blank you start feeling all lost and sad. And once you’ve arrived, it’s worse. The streets are not like ours and don’t even run at right angles. He went on to evaluate some food he’d sampled at an outdoor booth, but found it contained a spice he wasn’t used to, something sort of cold and yellow I would almost describe as foreign, and settled instead for a hot dog from a vendor across the street who wasn’t even part of the fair. The hot dog I can recommend, he wrote, though it made me a little regretfulbecause Sarah, my wife, uses the same kind of chili sauce and I thought of home the minute I smelled it. He also recommended the patchwork quilts, one of which had a starburst pattern like the quilt in his grandmother’s room. He suggested that his readers leave the fair no later than three thirty, since you’ll be driving into Baltimoreright past Lexington Market and will want to pick up your crabs before it closes .

His article was published beneath a headline reading CRAFTS FAIR DELIGHTS, INSTRUCTS. There was a subhead under that. Or, it read, I Feel So Broke-Up, I Want to Go Home. Until he saw the subhead, Macon hadn’t realized what tone he’d given his piece. Then he felt silly.

But Julian Edge thought it was perfect. Julian phoned him. “You the fellow who wrote that hot dog thing in the Watchbird?”

“Well, yes.”

“Ha!”

“Well, I don’t see what’s so funny,” Macon said stiffly.

“Who said it was funny? It’s perfect. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

They met at the Old Bay Restaurant, where Macon’s grandparents used to take the four children on their birthdays. “I can personally guarantee the crab soup,” Macon said. “They haven’t done a thing to it since I was nine.” Julian said, “Ha!” again and rocked back in his chair. He was wearing a polo shirt and white duck trousers, and his nose was a bright shade of pink. It was summer, or maybe spring. At any rate, his boat was in the water.

“Now, here’s my plan,” he said over the soup. “I own this little company called the Businessman’s Press. Well, little: I say little. Actually we sell coast to coast. Nothing fancy, but useful, you know? Appointment pads, expense account booklets, compound interest charts, currency conversion wheels. And now I want to put out a guidebook for commercial travelers. Just the U.S., to begin with; maybe other countries later. We’d call it something catchy, I don’t know: Reluctant Tourist. And you’re the fellow to write it.”

“Me?”

“I knew the minute I read your hot dog piece.”

“But I hate to travel.”

“I kind of guessed that,” Julian said. “So do businessmen. I mean, these folks are not running around the country for the hell of it, Macon. They’d rather be home in their living rooms. So you’ll be helping them pretend that’s where they are.”

Then he pulled a square of paper from his breast pocket and said, “What do you think?”

It was a steel engraving of an overstuffed chair. Attached to the chair’s back were giant, feathered wings such as you would see on seraphim in antique Bibles. Macon blinked.

“Your logo,” Julian explained. “Get it?”

“Um. ”

“While armchair travelers dream of going places,” Julian said, “traveling armchairs dream of staying put. I thought we’d use this on the cover.”

“Ah!” Macon said brightly. Then he said, “But would I actually have to travel myself?”

“Well, yes.”

“Oh.”

“But just briefly. I’m not looking for anything encyclopedic, I’m looking for the opposite of encyclopedic. And think of the pay.”

“It pays?”

“It pays a bundle.”