Anne Tyler: The Accidental Tourist

“You really think that might be true?” Muriel asked.

“Yes, I do,” he said. And the funny thing was that he did, just at that moment. He had a vivid image of Dominick in a sunlit meadow, a chamois skin in his hand and a big, pleased, cocky grin on his face.

She said at the end of the evening that she wished he would come to her room — couldn’t he? to guard against bad dreams? — and he said no and told her good night. And then he felt how she drew at him, pulling deep strings from inside him, when the elevator creaked away with her.

In his sleep he conceived a plan to take her along tomorrow. What harm would it do? It was only a day trip. Over and over in his scattered, fitful sleep he picked up his phone and dialed her room. It was a surprise when he woke in the morning, to find he hadn’t invited her yet.

He sat up and reached for the phone and remembered only then — with the numb receiver pressed to his ear — that the phone was out of order and he’d forgotten to report it. He wondered if it were something he could repair himself, a cord unplugged or something. He rose and peered behind the bureau. He stooped to hunt for a jack of some kind.

And his back went out.

No doubt about it — that little twang! in a muscle to the left of his spine. The pain was so sharp it snagged his breath. Then it faded. Maybe it was gone for good. He straightened, a minimal movement. But it was enough to bring the pain zinging in again.

He lowered himself to the bed inch by inch. The hard part was getting his feet up, but he set his face and accomplished that too. Then he lay pondering what to do next.

Once he had had this happen and the pain had vanished in five minutes and not returned. It had been only a freaky thing like a foot cramp.

But then, once he’d stayed flat in bed for two weeks and crept around like a very old man for another month after that.

He lay rearranging his agenda in his mind. If he canceled one trip, postponed another. Yes, possibly what he’d planned for the next three days could be squeezed into two instead. If only he were able to get around by tomorrow.

He must have gone back to sleep. He didn’t know for how long. He woke to a knock and thought it was breakfast, though he’d left instructions for none to be brought today. But then he heard Muriel. “Macon? You in there?” She was hoping he hadn’t left Paris yet; she was here to beg again to go with him. He knew that as clearly as if she’d announced it. He was grateful now for the spasm that gripped him as he turned away from her voice. Somehow that short sleep had cleared his head, and he saw that he’d come perilously close to falling in with her again. Falling in: That was the way he put it to himself. What luck that his back had stopped him. Another minute — another few seconds — and he might have been lost.

He dropped into sleep so suddenly that he didn’t even hear her walk away.

When he woke again it was much later, he felt, although he didn’t want to go through the contortions necessary to look at his watch. A wheeled cart was passing his room and he heard voices — hotel employees, probably — laughing in the corridor. They must be so comfortable here; they must all know each other so well. There was a knock on his door, then a jingle of keys. A small, pale chambermaid poked her face in and said, “Pardon, monsieur.” She started to retreat but then stopped and asked him something in French, and he gestured toward his back and winced. “Ah,” she said, entering, and she said something else very rapidly. (She would be telling him about her back.) He said, “If you would just help me up, please,” for he had decided he had no choice but to go call Julian. She seemed to understand what he meant and came over to the bed. He turned onto his stomach and then struggled up on one arm — the only way he could manage to rise without excruciating pain. The chambermaid took his other arm and braced herself beneath his weight as he stood. She was much shorter than he, and pretty in a fragile, meek way. He was conscious of his unshaven face and his rumpled pajamas. “My jacket,” he told her, and they proceeded haltingly to the chair where his suit jacket hung. She draped it around his shoulders. Then he said, “Downstairs? To the telephone?” She looked over at the phone on the bureau, but he made a negative movement with the flat of his hand — a gesture that cost him. He grimaced. She clucked her tongue and led him out into the corridor.

Walking was not particularly difficult; he felt hardly a twinge. But the elevator jerked agonizingly and there was no way he could predict it. The chambermaid uttered soft sounds of sympathy. When they arrived in the lobby she led him to the telephone booth and started to seat him, but he said, “No, no, standing’s easier. Thanks.” She backed out and left him there. He saw her talking to the clerk at the desk, shaking her head in pity; the clerk shook his head, too.

Macon worried Julian wouldn’t be in his office yet, and he didn’t know his home number. But the phone was answered on the very first ring. “Businessman’s Press.” A woman’s voice, confusingly familiar, threading beneath the hiss of long distance.

“Um—” he said. “This is Macon Leary. To whom am I—”

“Oh, Macon.”

“Rose?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I work here now.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I’m putting things in order. You wouldn’t believe the state this place is in.”

“Rose, my back has gone out on me,” Macon said.

“Oh, no, of all times! Are you still in Paris?”

“Yes, but I was just about to start my day trips and there are all these plans I have to change — appointments, travel reservations — and no telephone in my room. So I was wondering if Julian could do it from his end. Maybe he could get the reservations from Becky and—”

“I’ll take care of it myself,” Rose said. “Don’t you bother with a thing.”

“I don’t know when I’m going to get to the other cities, tell him. I don’t have any idea when I’ll be—”

“We’ll work it out. Have you seen a doctor?”

“Doctors don’t help. Just bed rest.”

“Well, rest then, Macon.”

He gave her the name of his hotel, and she repeated it briskly and then told him to get on back to bed.

When he emerged from the phone booth the chambermaid had a bellboy there to help him, and between the two of them he made it to his room without much trouble. They were very solicitous. They seemed anxious about leaving him alone, but he assured them he would be all right.

All that afternoon he lay in bed, rising twice to go to the bathroom and once to get some milk from the mini-bar. He wasn’t really hungry. He watched the brown flowers on the wallpaper; he thought he had never known a hotel room so intimately. The side of the bureau next to the bed had a streak in the woodgrain that looked like a bony man in a hat.

At suppertime he took a small bottle of wine from the mini-bar and inched himself into the armchair to drink it. Even the motion of raising the bottle to his lips caused him pain, but he thought the wine would help him sleep. While he was sitting there the chambermaid knocked and let herself in. She asked him, evidently, whether he wanted anything to eat, but he thanked her and said no. She must have been on her way home; she carried a battered little pocketbook.

Later there was another knock, after he had dragged himself back to bed, and Muriel said, “Macon? Macon?” He kept absolutely silent. She went away.

The air grew fuzzy and then dark. The man on the side of the bureau faded. Footsteps crossed the floor above him.

He had often wondered how many people died in hotels. The law of averages said some would, right? And some who had no close relatives — say one of his readers, a salesman without a family — well, what was done about such people? Was there some kind of potters’ field for unknown travelers?