Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

Once he was alone, he unpacked and he hung up his suit coat, then he went to the window. He stood looking out over the roof-tops; the dust on the glass made them seem removed in time, part of some other age.

How would she manage alone in such an unaccustomed place?

He thought of the way she navigated a row of thrift shops — the way she cruised a street, deft and purposeful, greeting passersby by name. And the errands she took the neighbors on: chauffeuring Mr. Manion to the reflexologist who dissolved his kidney stones by massaging his toes; Mr. Runkle to the astrologer who told him when he’d win the million-dollar lottery; Mrs. Carpaccio to a certain tiny grocery near Johns Hopkins where the sausages hung from the ceiling like strips of flypaper. The places Muriel knew!

But she didn’t know Paris. And she was entirely on her own. She didn’t even have a credit card, probably carried very little money, might not have known to change what she did carry into francs. Might be wandering helpless, penniless, unable to speak a word of the language.

By the time he heard her knock, he was so relieved that he rushed to open the door.

“Your room is bigger than mine is,” she said. She walked past him to the window. “I have a better view, though. Just think, we’re really in Paris! The bus driver said it might rain but I told him I didn’t care. Rain or shine, it’s Paris.”

“How did you know what bus to take?” he asked her.

“I brought along your guidebook.”

She patted her pocket.

“Want to go to Chez Billy for breakfast?” she asked. “That’s what your book recommends.”

“No, I don’t. I can’t,” he said. “You’d better leave, Muriel.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said. She left.

Sometimes she would do that. She’d press in till he felt trapped, then suddenly draw back. It was like a tug of war where the other person all at once drops the rope, Macon thought. You fall flat on the ground; you’re so unprepared. You’re so empty-feeling.

He decided to call Sarah. At home it was barely dawn, but it seemed important to get in touch with her. He went over to the phone on the bureau and picked up the receiver. It was dead. He pressed the button a few times. Typical. He dropped his key in his pocket and went down to the lobby.

The lobby telephone was housed in an ancient wooden booth, very genteel. There was a red leather bench to sit on. Macon hunched over and listened to the ringing at the other end, far away. “Hello?” Sarah said.

“Sarah?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Macon.”

“Macon?”

She took a moment to absorb that. “Macon, where are you?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. I just felt like talking to you.”

“What? What time is it?”

“I know it’s early and I’m sorry I woke you but I wanted to hear your voice.”

“There’s some kind of static on the line,” she said.

“It’s clear at this end.”

“You sound so thin.”

“That’s because it’s an overseas call,” he said. “How’s the weather there?”

“How’s who?”

“The weather! Is it sunny?”

“I don’t know. All the shades are down. I don’t think it’s even light yet.”

“Will you be gardening today?”

“What?”

“Gardening!”

“Well, I hadn’t thought. It depends on whether it’s sunny, I guess.”

“I wish I were there,” he said. “I could help you.”

“You hate to garden!”

“Yes, but…”

“Macon, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” he said.

“How was the flight over?”

“Oh, the flight, well, goodness! Well, I don’t know; I guess I was so busy reading that I didn’t really notice,” he said.

“Reading?” she said. Then she said, “Maybe you’ve got jet lag.”

“Yes, maybe I do,” he told her.

Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, omelets. He walked blindly down the sidewalk, scribbling in the margins of his guidebook. He did not go near Chez Billy. It’s puzzling, he wrote, how the French are so tender in preparing their food but so rough in serving it . In the window of a restaurant, a black cat closed her eyes at him. She seemed to be gloating. She was so much at home, so sure of her place.

Displays of crushed velvet, scattered with solid gold chains and watches no thicker than poker chips. Women dressed as if for the stage: elaborate hairdos, brilliant makeup, strangely shaped trousers that had nothing to do with the human anatomy. Old ladies in little-girl ruffles and white tights and Mary Janes. Macon descended the steps to the Métro; he ostentatiously dropped his canceled ticket into a tiny receptacle marked PAPIERS. Then he turned to glare at all the others who flung their tickets on the floor, and as he turned he thought he saw Muriel, her white face glimmering in the crowd, but he must have been mistaken.

In the evening he returned to his hotel — footsore, leg muscles aching — and collapsed on his bed. Not two minutes later he heard a knock. He groaned and rose to open the door. Muriel stood there with her arms full of clothes. “Look,” she said, pushing past him. “See what-all I bought.” She dumped the clothes on the bed. She held them up one by one: a shiny black cape, a pair of brown jodhpurs, a bouffant red net evening dress sprinkled with different-sized disks of glass like the reflectors on bicycles. “Have you lost your senses?” Macon asked. “What must all this have cost?”

“Nothing! Or next to nothing,” she said. “I found a place that’s like the granddaddy of all garage sales. A whole city of garage sales! This French girl was telling me about it where I went to have my breakfast. I complimented her hat and she told me where she got it. I took a subway train to find it; your book’s really helpful about the subways; and sure enough there’s everything there. Tools and gadgets too, Macon. Old car batteries, fuse boxes… and if you say something’s too expensive, they’ll bring the price down till it’s cheap enough. I saw this leather coat I would have killed for but that never did get cheap enough; the man wanted thirty-five francs.”

“Thirty-five francs!” Macon said. “I don’t know how you could get any cheaper than that. Thirty-five francs is four dollars or so.”

“Oh, really? I thought francs and dollars were about the same.”

“Lord, no.”

“Well, then these things were super bargains,” Muriel said. “Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“But how will you get all this stuff on the plane?”

“Oh, I’ll figure out some way. Now let me take it back to my room so we can go eat.”

He stiffened. He said, “No, I can’t.”

“What harm would it do to eat supper with me, Macon? I’m someone from home! You’ve run into me in Paris! Can’t we have a bite together?”

When she put it that way, it seemed so simple.

They went to the Burger King on the Champs-Elysées; Macon wanted to recheck the place anyhow. He ordered two ‘Woppaires.’ “Careful,” he warned Muriel, “these are not the Whoppers you’re used to. You’ll want to scrape the extra pickle and onion off.” But Muriel, after trying hers, said she liked it the way it was. She sat next to him on a hard little seat and licked her fingers. Her shoulders touched his. He was amazed, all at once, that she really was here.

“Who’s looking after Alexander?” he asked her.

“Oh, different people.”

“What different people? I hope you haven’t just parked him, Muriel. You know how insecure a child that age can—”

“Relax. He’s fine. Claire has him in the daytime and then Bernice comes in and cooks supper and any time Claire has a date with the General the twins will keep him or if the twins can’t do it then the General says Alexander can…”