Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

I went up to the Northern Line, caught a train that had just pulled in, and made it to the conference in time for the eleven o’clock session, but the episode must have unnerved me more than I’d admitted to myself. As I stood in the lobby pinning on my registration badge, the outside door opened, letting in a blast of air.

I flinched away from it and then stood there, staring blindly at the door, until the woman at the registration table asked, “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “Have the Old Man or Elliott Templeton registered yet?”

“An old man?” the woman said, bewilderedly.

“Not an old man, the Old Man,” I said impatiently. “Arthur Birdsall.”

“The morning session’s already started,” she said, looking through the ranked badges. “Have you looked in the ballroom?”

The Old Man had never attended a session in his life.

“Mr. Templeton’s here,” she said, still looking. “No, Mr. Birdsall hasn’t registered yet.”

“Daniel Drecker’s here,” Marjorie O’Donnell said, descending on me. “You heard about his daughter, didn’t you?”

“No,” I said, scanning the room for Elliott.

“She’s in an institution,” she said. “Schizophrenia.”

I wondered if she was telling me this because she thought I was acting unbalanced, too, but she added, “So, for heaven’s sake, don’t ask him about her. And don’t ask Peter Jamieson if Leslie’s here. They’re separated.”

“I won’t,” I said and escaped to the first session. Elliott wasn’t in the audience, or at lunch. I sat down next to John McCord, who lived in London, and said, without preamble, “I was in the Tube this morning.”

“Wretched, isn’t it?” McCord said. “And so expensive. What’s a day pass now? Two pounds fifty?”

“While I was in Charing Cross Station, there was this strange wind.”

McCord nodded knowingly. “The trains cause them. When they pull out of a station, they push the air in front of them,” he said, illustrating the pushing with this hands, “and because they fill the tunnel, it creates a slight vacuum in the train’s wake, and air rushes in behind to fill the vacuum, and it creates a wind. The same thing happens in reverse as trains pull into the station.”

“I know,” I said impatiently. “But this one was like an explosion, and it smelled—”

“It’s all the dirt down there. And the beggars. They sleep in the passages, you know. Some of them even urinate on the walls. I’m afraid the Underground’s deteriorated considerably in the past few years.”

“Everything in London has,” the woman across the table said. “Did you know there’s a Disney store in Regent Street?”

“And a Gap,” McCord said.

“Mind the Gap,” I said, but they were off on the subject of the Decline and Fall of London. I said I needed to go look for Elliott.

He was nowhere to be found. The afternoon session was starting. I sat down next to John and Irene Watson.

“You haven’t seen Arthur Birdsall or Elliott Templeton, have you?” I said, scanning the ballroom.

“Elliott was here before the morning session,” John said. “Stewart’s here.”

Irene leaned across John. “You heard about his surgery, didn’t you? Colon cancer.”

“The doctors say they got it all,” John said.

“I hate coming to these things anymore,” Irene said, leaning confidingly across John again. “Everybody’s either gotten old or sick or divorced. You heard Hari Srinivasau died, didn’t you? Heart attack.”

“I see somebody over there I need to talk to,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I started up the aisle.

And ran straight into Stewart.

“Tom!” he said. “How have you been?”

“How have you been?” I said. “I heard you’ve been ill.”

“I’m fine. The doctors tell me they caught it in time, that they got it all,” he said. “It isn’t so much the cancer coming back that worries me as knowing this is the kind of thing in store for us as we get older. You heard about Paul Wurman?”

“No,” I said. “Look, I have to go make a phone call before the session starts.” And before he could fill me in on the Decline and Fall of Everybody.

I took off for the lobby. “Where have you been?” Elliott said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Where have I been?” I said, like a shipwreck victim who’d been on a raft for days. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” I said, looking happily at him. He looked just the same as ever, tall, in shape, his hairline not even receding. “Everyone else is falling apart.”

“Including you,” he said, grinning. “You look like you need a drink.”

“Is the Old Man with you?” I asked, looking around for him.

“No,” he said. “Do you have any notion where the bar is in this place?”

“In there.” I pointed.

“Lead the way,” he said. “I’ve got all sorts of things to tell you. I’ve just talked Evers and Associates into a new project. I’ll tell you all about it over a couple of pints.”

He did, and then told me about what he and Sara had been doing since the last conference.

“I thought the Old Man would be here today,” I said. “He’ll be here tonight, though?”

“I think so,” Elliott said. “Or tomorrow.”

“He’s all right, isn’t he?” I said, looking across the bar to where Stewart stood talking. “He’s not sick or anything?”

“I don’t think so,” Elliott said, looking reassuringly surprised. “He lives in Cambridge now, you know. And Sara and I won’t be there, either. Evers and Associates are taking us out to dinner to celebrate. We’ll stop by for a few minutes on our way, though. Sara insisted. She wants to see you. She’s been so excited about your visit. She’s talked of nothing else for weeks. She couldn’t wait to go shopping with Cath.” He went over to the bar and got us two more pints. “Speaking of which, Sara said I’m to tell you we’re definitely on for the play and supper Saturday. What are we going to see? Please tell me it’s not Sunset Boulevard .”

“Oh, my God!” I said. “It’s not anything. I forgot to get the tickets.” I glanced hastily at my watch. Three forty-five. “Do you think the box offices will be open now?”

He nodded.

“Good.” I snatched up my coat and started for the lobby.

“And not Cats !” Elliott called after me.

I would be lucky if I got anything, I thought, sprinting down to the tube station and pushing my way through the turnstile, including a train at this hour. The escalators were so jammed I had trouble getting the list of theaters out of my pocket. The Tempest was at the Duke of York. Leicester Square. I pulled my tube map out—Piccadilly Line.

The passage to the Piccadilly Line was even more crowded than the escalator, and slower. The elderly woman ahead of me, in a gray head scarf and an ancient brown coat, was shuffling at a snail’s pace, clutching her coat collar to her throat with a blue-veined hand, her head down and her body hunched forward as if she were struggling against a hurricane.

I tried to get around her, but the way was blocked by more teenagers with backpacks, Spanish this time, walking four abreast and discussing una visita a la Torre de Londres .

I missed the train and had to wait for the next one, checking the NEXT TRAIN 4 MIN. sign every fifteen seconds and listening to the American couple behind me bitterly arguing.

“I told you it started at four,” the woman said. “Now we’ll be late.”

“Who was the one who had to take one more picture?” the man said. “You’ve already taken five hundred pictures, but oh, no, you had to take one more.”