The Best of Connie Willis (35 page)

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.”

“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?”

I wondered if Cath would still want to go to a play, convinced as she was that Sara was having an affair, but as we passed the Savoy, its neon sign for
Miss Saigon
blazing, she asked, “What play did you get tickets for?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I ran out of time.” I started to say that I intended to get them tomorrow, but she wasn’t listening.

“Harrods didn’t have my china,” she said, and her tone sounded as hopeless as it had telling me about Sara. “They discontinued the pattern four years ago.”

We were nearly an hour and a half late for the party. Elliott and Sara have probably long since left for dinner, I thought, and was secretly relieved.

“Cath!” Marjorie said as we walked in the door and hurried over with her nametag. “You look wonderful! I have so much to tell you!”

“I’m going to go look for the Old Man,” I said. “I’ll see if he wants to go to dinner afterward.” He would probably drag us off to Soho or Hampstead Heath. He always knew some out-of-the-way place that had eel pie or authentic English stout.

I set off through the crowd. You could usually locate the Old Man by the crowd of people gathered around, and the laughter. And the proximity to the bar, I thought, spotting a huddle of people in that direction.