Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

In New York the passengers scattered instantly. Macon thought of a seed pod bursting open. He refused to be rushed and made his way methodically through the crowd, up a set of clanking, dark stairs, and through another crowd that seemed more extreme than the one he had left down below. Goodness, where did these women get their clothes? One wore a bushy fur tepee and leopardskin boots. One wore an olive-drab coverall exactly like an auto mechanic’s except that it was made of leather. Macon took a firmer grip on his bag and pushed through the door to the street, where car horns blasted insistently and the air smelled gray and sharp, like the interior of a dead chimney. In his opinion, New York was a foreign city. He was forever taken aback by its pervasive atmosphere of purposefulness — the tight focus of its drivers, the brisk intensity of its pedestrians drilling their way through all obstacles without a glance to either side.

He hailed a cab, slid across the worn, slippery seat, and gave the address of his hotel. The driver started talking at once about his daughter. “I mean she’s thirteen years old,” he said, nosing out into traffic, “and got three sets of holes in her ears and an earring in each hole, and now she wants to get another set punched up toward the top. Thirteen years old!” He either had or had not heard the address. At any rate, he was driving along. “I wasn’t even in favor of the first set of holes,” he said. “I told her, ‘What; you don’t read Ann Landers?’ Ann Landers says piercing your ears is mutilating your body. Was it Ann Landers? I think it was Ann Landers. You might as well wear a ring through your nose like the Africans, right? I told my daughter that. She says, ‘So? What’s wrong with a ring through my nose? Maybe that’s what I’ll get next.’ I wouldn’t put it past her, either. I would not put it past her. Now this fourth set goes through cartilage and most of these ear-piercing places won’t do that; so you see how crazy it is. Cartilage is a whole different ball game. It’s not your earlobe, all spongy.”

Macon had the feeling he wasn’t fully visible. He was listening to a man who was talking to himself, who may have been talking before he got in and might possibly go on talking after he got out. Or was he present in this cab at all? Such thoughts often attacked while he was traveling. In desperation, he said, “Um—”

The driver stopped speaking, surprisingly enough. The back of his neck took on an alert look. Macon had to continue. He said, “Tell her something scary.”

“Like what?”

“Like… tell her you know a girl whose ears dropped off.”

“She’d never go for that.”

“Make it scientific. Say if you puncture cartilage, it will wither right away.”

“Hmm,” the driver said. He honked his horn at a produce truck.

“ ‘Imagine how you’d feel,’ tell her, ‘having to wear the same hairstyle forever. Covering up your withered ears.’ ”

“Think she’d believe me?”

“Why not?” Macon asked. And then, after a pause, “In fact, it may be true. Do you suppose I could have read it someplace?”

“Well, now, maybe you did,” the driver said. “There’s this sort of familiar ring to it.”

“I might even have seen a photograph,” Macon said. “Somebody’s ears, shriveled. All shrunken.”

“Wrinkly, like,” the driver agreed.

Macon said, “Like two dried apricots.”

“Christ! I’ll tell her.”

The taxi stopped in front of Macon’s hotel. Macon paid the fare and said, as he slid out, “I hope it works.”

“Sure it will,” the driver said, “till next time. Till she wants a nose ring or something.”

“Noses are cartilage too, remember! Noses can wither too!”

The driver waved and pulled into traffic again.

After Macon had claimed his room, he took a subway to the Buford Hotel. An electronics salesman had written to suggest it; the Buford rented small apartments, by the day or the week, to businessmen. The manager, a Mr. Aggers, turned out to be a short, round man who walked with a limp exactly like Macon’s. Macon thought they must look very odd together, crossing the lobby to the elevators. “Most of our apartments are owned by corporations,” Mr. Aggers said. He pressed the “Up” button. “Companies who send their men to the city regularly will often find it cheaper to buy their own places. Then those weeks the apartments are empty, they look to me to find other tenants, help defray the costs.”

Macon made a note of this in the margin of his guidebook. Using an infinitesimal script, he also noted the decor of the lobby, which reminded him of some old-fashioned men’s club. On the massive, claw-footed table between the two elevators stood a yard-high naked lady in brass, trailing brass draperies and standing on brass clouds, holding aloft a small, dusty light bulb with a frayed electric cord dangling from it. The elevator, when it arrived, had dim floral carpeting and paneled walls.

“May I ask,” Mr. Aggers said, “whether you personally write the Accidental Tourist series?”

“Yes, I do,” Macon told him.

“Well!” Mr. Aggers said. “This is a real honor, then. We keep your books in the lobby for our guests. But I don’t know, I somehow pictured you looking a little different.”

“How did you think I would look?” Macon asked.

“Well, maybe not quite so tall. Maybe a bit, well, heavier. More… upholstered.”

“I see,” Macon said.

The elevator had stopped by now but it took its time sliding open. Then Mr. Aggers led Macon down a hall. A woman with a laundry cart stood aside to let them pass. “Here we are,” Mr. Aggers said. He unlocked a door and turned on a light.

Macon walked into an apartment that could have come straight from the 1950s. There was a square sofa with metallic threads in its fabric, a chrome-trimmed dinette set, and in the bedroom a double bed whose headboard was quilted in cream-colored vinyl. He tested the mattress. He took off his shoes, lay down, and thought a while. Mr. Aggers stood above him with his fingers laced. “Hmm,” Macon said. He sat up and put his shoes back on. Then he went into the bathroom, where the toilet bore a white strip reading SANITIZED. “I’ve never understood these things,” he said. “Why should it reassure me to know they’ve glued a paper band across my toilet seat?” Mr. Aggers made a helpless gesture with both hands. Macon drew aside a shower curtain printed with pink and blue fish, and he inspected the tub. It looked clean enough, although there was a rust stain leading down from the faucet.

In the kitchenette he found a single saucepan, two faded plastic plates and mugs, and an entire shelf of highball glasses. “Usually our guests don’t cook much,” Mr. Aggers explained, “but they might have their associates in for drinks.” Macon nodded. He was faced with a familiar problem, here: the narrow line between “comfortable” and “tacky.” In fact, sometimes comfortable was tacky. He opened the refrigerator, a little undercounter affair. The ice trays in the freezing compartment were exactly the same kind of trays — scummy aqua plastic, heavily scratched — that Rose had back in Baltimore.

“You have to admit it’s well stocked,” Mr. Aggers said. “See? An apron in the kitchen drawer. My wife’s idea. Protects their suits.”

“Yes, very nice,” Macon said.

“It’s just like home away from home; that’s how I like to think of it.”

“Oh, well, home,” Macon said. “Nothing’s home , really.”

“Why? What’s missing?” Mr. Aggers asked. He had very pale, fine-grained skin that took on a shine when he was anxious. “What more would you like to see added?”

“To tell the truth,” Macon said, “I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals.”