State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [35]
“I’m here,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “Good.” He cleared his throat and she heard some rustling around. She wondered if she had woken him up. “I thought I’d hear from you earlier. Did you get some dinner?”
Marina thought about it. She must have eaten something on the plane but she couldn’t remember. “My suitcase was lost. I’m sure they’ll bring it tomorrow but I wanted you to know I don’t have the phone.”
“You put the phone in your suitcase?” he said.
“I put it in the suitcase.”
Mr. Fox was quiet for the briefest moment. “They always find them these days. Usually they bring it to the hotel in the middle of the night. Call the desk as soon as you wake up in the morning. I’ll bet it’s there.”
“The driver took me to get some things. At least I have a toothbrush now. Thank you for that, by the way.”
“For the toothbrush?”
“For Milton, the driver.” She put her hand over the receiver and yawned.
“I’m glad he’s helpful. I’m sorry I’m not more helpful myself.”
She nodded, for all the good it did their conversation. Maybe she should have waited until tomorrow to call. The draperies were open and she looked out onto the city, that infinite sea of tiny lights. In the dark, in the distance, she could have been anywhere. She closed her eyes.
“Marina?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I fell asleep.”
“Go to bed. We can talk tomorrow.”
“Unless the phone doesn’t come,” she said, and then she remembered. “Or you can call me at the hotel.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “Get some sleep.”
“I’ll write you a letter,” she said. She did not remember hanging up the phone.
Manaus wasn’t difficult to figure out. It catered to tourists and travelers and shippers, who, in this accommodating city, were free from all import duties. Everyone was either getting off of boats or getting on them, and so the streets had been laid out in such a way that one always had the feeling of walking away from the water or towards it. By the third day Marina could navigate easily. Once she got a fix on the river’s position everything else fell into place. She went to the market hall at six in the morning when the world was out to accomplish as much as was humanly possible before the truly devastating heat began. The smell of so many dead fish and chickens and sides of beef tilting precariously towards rot in the still air made her hold a crumpled T-shirt over the lower half of her face but she took the time to stop and look at the herbs and barks at the medicine table, the snake heads floating in what she sincerely hoped was alcohol. A black vulture the size of a turkey walked down the aisles like all the other shoppers, looking for whatever fish heads and entrails were to be had underneath the tables. The bloody scraps were hard to find. Marina bought two apple-flavored bananas and a pastry from a woman who kept hers under a crumpled sheet of waxed paper. After that she went down to the river to watch the boats. She spent a great deal of time looking at the water, which was the color of milky tea and completely opaque even when she walked down a dock, squatted on her heels, and stared directly into it. She did this often. She couldn’t see a quarter of an inch below the surface. She was waiting for Dr. Swenson.
Waiting for Dr. Swenson to appear would have been a clear waste of time had there been some other means of putting time to better use. Waiting for