Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

“I wanted to have something to remember our vacation by,” she said bitterly. “Our happy, happy vacation.”

The train came in, and I mashed my way on and grabbed a pole and then stood there, squashed, reading my list. The Wyndham was near Leicester Square, too. What was at the Wyndham?

Cats .

No good. But Death of a Salesman was at the Prince Edward, which was only a few blocks over. And there was a whole row of theaters on Shaftesbury.

“Leicester Square,” the automated voice said, and I forced my way off the train, down the passage, and up the escalators and into Leicester Square.

The traffic up top was even worse, and it took me nearly twenty minutes to get to the Duke of York, only to find that its box office was closed until six. The Prince Edward was open, but it only had two sets of single seats fifteen rows apart for Death of a Salesman . “The soonest I can get you five seats all together,” the black-lipsticked girl said, tapping keys on a computer, “is March fifteenth.”

The Ides of March, I thought. How fitting, since Cath would kill me if I came home without the tickets.

“Where’s the nearest ticket agent?” I asked the girl.

“There’s one on Cannon Street,” she said vaguely.

Cannon Street. That was the name of a tube station. I consulted my tube map. District and Circle Line. I could take the Northern Line down to Embankment and catch the District and Circle from there.

I looked at my watch. It was already four-thirty. We were supposed to be at the sherry party at six. I would be cutting it close. I sprinted back to Leicester Square, down to the Northern Line, and onto a train. It was even more jammed, but everyone was still polite. They held their books above the fray and continued to read in spite of the crush. Madame Bovary and Geoff Ryman’s 253 and Charles Williams’s Descent into Hell .

“Cannon Street,” the computer voice said, and I pushed my way off and headed for the exit.

I was halfway down the passage when it hit again, the same violent blast as before, the same smell. No, not the same, I thought, regaining my footing, watching unconcerned commuters walk past. There had been the same sharp smell of sulfur and explosives, but no musty wetness. And this time there was the smell of smoke.

But no fire alarms had gone off, no sprinkler system been activated. No one had even noticed it.

Maybe it’s one of those things where it’s so common the locals don’t even notice it, I thought, they can’t even smell it anymore. Like a lumber mill or chemical plant. We had gone to see Cath’s uncle in Nebraska one time, and I’d asked him if he minded the smell from the feedlots.

“What smell?” he’d said.

But manure didn’t smell like violence, like panic. And the smell from the feedlots had been everywhere. If this was a persistent, pervasive smell, why hadn’t I smelled it in Piccadilly Circus or Leicester Square?

I was all the way to South Kensington before I realized I had gone back down the passage without even being aware of it, boarded a train, ridden seven stops. And not gotten the tickets.

I got off the train, half-intending to go back, and then stood there on the platform uncertainly. This was no carton of rotten eggs, or blood samples, no localized phenomenon of Charing Cross. So what was it?

A woman got off the train, glancing irritatedly at her watch. I looked at mine. Five-thirty. It was too late to go back to the ticket agent’s, too late to do anything but figure out which line to take to get home.

I felt a rush of relief that I wouldn’t have to go back to Cannon Street, wouldn’t have to face that wind again. What were they, I wondered, pulling out my tube map, that they produced such a feeling of fear?

I thought about it all the way back to the hotel, wondering if I should tell Cath. It would only confirm her in her opinion of the Tube, and she would hardly be in the mood for wild stories about winds in the Tube, not if she’d been waiting for me to show up. Cath hated being late to things, and it was already after six. By the time I made it back to the hotel it would be nearly six-thirty.

It was six forty-five. I pushed unavailingly on the lift button for five minutes and then took the stairs. Maybe she was running late, too. When she and Sara started shopping, they lost all track of time. I fished the room key out of my pants pocket.

Cath opened the door.

“I’m late, I know,” I said, unpinning my nametag and peeling my jacket off. “Give me five minutes. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said. She walked over and sat down on the bed, watching me.

“How was Harrods?” I said, unbuttoning my shirt. “Did you get your china?”

“No,” she said, looking down at her folded hands.

I grabbed a clean shirt out of my suitcase and pulled it on. “But you and Sara had a good time?” I said, buttoning it. “What did you buy? Elliott said he was afraid you’d clean out Harrods between the two of you.” I stopped, looking at her. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Did the kids call? Has something happened?”

“The kids are fine,” she said.

“But something happened,” I said. “The taxi you and Sara took had an accident.”

She shook her head. “Nothing happened,” and then, still looking down at her hands, “Sara’s having an affair.”

“What?” I said stupidly.

“She’s having an affair.”

“ Sara? ” I said, disbelieving. Not Sara, affectionate, loyal Sara.

Cath nodded, still looking at her hands.

I sat down on my bed. “Did she tell you she was?”

“No, of course not,” Cath said, standing up and walking over to the mirror.

“Then how do you know?” I asked, but I knew how. The same way she had known that the kids were getting chicken pox, that her sister was engaged, that her father was worried about his business. Cath always noticed things before anybody else—she was equipped with some kind of super-sensitive radar that picked up on subliminal signs or vibrations in the air or something. And she was always right.

But Sara and Elliott had been married as long as we had. They were the couple at the top of our “Marriage Is Still a Viable Institution” list.

“Are you sure?” I said.

“I’m sure.”

I wanted to ask her how she knew, but there wasn’t any point. When Ashley had gotten the chicken pox, she’d said, “Her eyes always look bright when she has a fever, and, besides, Lindsay had it two weeks ago,” but most of the time she could only shake her short blond hair, unable to say how she’d reached her conclusion.

But she was always right. Always right.

“But—I saw Elliott today,” I said. “He was fine. He didn’t—” I thought back over everything he had said, wondering if there had been some indication in it that he was worried or unhappy. He had said Sara and Cath would spend a lot of money, but he always said that. “He sounded fine.”

“Put your tie on,” she said.

“But if she— We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” I said.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. No, we have to go.”

“Maybe you misinterpreted—”

“I didn’t,” she said and went into the bathroom and shut the door.

We had trouble getting a taxi. The Connaught’s doorman seemed to have disappeared, and all of the black boxy London cabs ignored my frantic waving. Even when one finally stopped, it took us forever to get to the party. “Theatergoers,” the cabbie explained cheerfully of the traffic. “You two plan to see any plays while you’re here?”