Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [96]
He put himself in her line of sight and said, in his heaviest accent, “A nice evening!”
“What?” She removed the earphones and looked at him. “What did you say?”
“I said the evening was beautiful.” He tried to sound as foreign as he could, the way Germans in Sweden did. “I am a visitor here,” he added quickly, “and not familiar with any of this.” He motioned his arm to indicate the park.
“Not familiar?” she asked. “Not familiar with what?”
“Well, with this park. With the sky here. The people.”
“Parks are the same everywhere,” the woman said, leaning her hip against the wall. She looked at him with a vague interest. “The sky is the same. Only the people are different.”
“Yes? How?”
“Where are you from?”
He explained, and she looked out the window toward the Canadian side of the Detroit River, at the city of Windsor. “That’s Canada, you know,” she said, pointing a finger at the river. “They make Canadian whiskey right over there.” She pointed at some high buildings and what seemed to be a grain elevator. “I’ve never drunk the whiskey. They say it tastes of acid rain. I’ve never been to Canada. I mean, I’ve seen it, but I’ve never been there. If I can see it from here, why should I go there?”
“To be in Canada,” Anders suggested. “Another country.”
“But I’m here,” she said suddenly, turning to him and looking at him directly. Her eyes were so dark they were almost colorless. “Why should I be anywhere else? Why are you here?”
“I came to Detroit for business,” he said. “Now I’m sightseeing.”
“Sightseeing?” She laughed out loud, and Anders saw her arch her back. Her breasts seemed to flare in front of him. Her body had distinct athletic lines. “No one sightsees here. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Yes. The doorman at the hotel. He told me not to come.”
“But you did. How did you get here?”
“I came by taxi.”
“You’re joking,” she said. Then she reached out and put her hand momentarily on his shoulder. “You took a taxi to this park? How do you expect to get back to your hotel?”
“I suppose”—he shrugged—“I will get another taxi.”
“Oh no you won’t,” she said, and Anders felt himself pleased that things were working out so well. He noticed again her pinned-up hair and its intense black. Her skin was deeply tanned or naturally dark, and he thought that she herself might be black or Hispanic, he didn’t know which, being unpracticed in making such distinctions. Outside he saw fireflies. No one had ever mentioned fireflies in Detroit. Night was coming on. He gazed up at the sky. Same stars, same moon.
“You’re here alone?” she asked. “In America? And in this city?”
“Yes,” he said. “Why not?”
“People shouldn’t be left alone in this country,” she said, leaning toward him with a kind of vehemence. “They shouldn’t have left you here. It can get kind of weird, what happens to people. Didn’t they tell you?”
He smiled and said that they hadn’t told him anything to that effect.
“Well, they should have.” She dropped her cup into a trash can, and he thought he saw the beginning of a scar, a white line, traveling up the underside of her arm toward her shoulder.
“Who do you mean?” he asked. “You said ‘they.’ Who is ‘they’?”
“Any they at all,” she said. “Your guardians.” She sighed. “All right. Come on. Follow me.” She went outside and broke into a run. For a moment he thought that she was running away from him, then realized that he was expected to run with her; it was what people did now, instead of holding hands, to get acquainted. He sprinted up next to her, and as she ran, she asked him, “Who are you?”
Being careful not to tire—she wouldn’t like it if his endurance was poor—he told her his name, his professional interests, and he patched together a narrative about his mother, father, two sisters, and his aunt Ingrid. Running past a slower couple, he told her that his aunt was eccentric and broke china by throwing it on the floor on Fridays, which she called “the devil’s day.”
“Years ago, they would have branded her a witch,” Anders said. “But she isn’t a witch. She’s just moody.”
He watched her reactions and noticed that she didn