The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [102]
fifteen
I’m sorry I’m so fat,” Macon’s seatmate said.
Macon said, “Oh, er, ah—”
“I know I’m using more than my share of space,” the man told him. “Do you think I’m not aware of that? Every trip I take, I have to ask the stewardess for a seatbelt extender. I have to balance my lunch on my knees because the tray can’t unfold in front of me. Really I ought to purchase two seats but I’m not a wealthy man. I ought to purchase two tickets and not spread all over my fellow passengers.”
“Oh, you’re not spreading all over me,” Macon said.
This was because he was very nearly sitting in the aisle, with his knees jutting out to the side so that every passing stewardess ruffled the pages of Miss MacIntosh. But he couldn’t help feeling touched by the man’s great, shiny, despairing face, which was as round as a baby’s. “Name’s Lucas Loomis,” the man said, holding out a hand. When Macon shook it, he was reminded of risen bread dough.
“Macon Leary,” Macon told him.
“The stupid thing is,” Lucas Loomis said, “I travel for a living.”
“Do you.”
“I demonstrate software to computer stores. I’m sitting in an airplane seat six days out of seven sometimes.”
“Well, none of us finds them all that roomy,” Macon said.
“What do you do, Mr. Leary?”
“I write guidebooks,” Macon said.
“Is that so? What kind?”
“Oh, guides for businessmen. People just like you, I guess.”
“Accidental Tourist,” Mr. Loomis said instantly.
“Why, yes.”
“Really? Am I right? Well, what do you know,” Mr. Loomis said. “Look at this.” He took hold of his own lapels, which sat so far in front of him that his arms seemed too short to reach them. “Gray suit,” he told Macon. “Just what you recommend. Appropriate for all occasions.” He pointed to the bag at his feet. “See my luggage? Carry-on. Change of underwear, clean shirt, packet of detergent powder.”
“Well, good,” Macon said. This had never happened to him before.
“You’re my hero!” Mr. Loomis told him. “You’ve improved my trips a hundred percent. You’re the one who told me about those springy items that turn into clotheslines.”
“Oh, well, you could have run across those in any drugstore,” Macon said.
“I’ve stopped relying on hotel laundries; I hardly need to venture into the streets anymore. I tell my wife, I say, you just ask her, I tell her often, I say, ‘Going with the Accidental Tourist is like going in a capsule, a cocoon. Don’t forget to pack my Accidental Tourist !’ I tell her.”
“Well, this is very nice to hear,” Macon said.
“Times I’ve flown clear to Oregon and hardly knew I’d left Baltimore.”
“Excellent.”
There was a pause.
“Although,” Macon said, “lately I’ve been wondering.”
Mr. Loomis had to turn his entire body to look at him, like someone encased in a hooded parka.
“I mean,” Macon said, “I’ve been out along the West Coast. Updating my U.S. edition. And of course I’ve covered the West Coast before, Los Angeles and all that; Lord, yes, I knew the place as a child; but this was the first I’d seen of San Francisco. My publisher wanted me to add it in. Have you been to San Francisco?”
“That’s where we just now got on the plane,” Mr. Loomis reminded him.
“San Francisco is certainly, um, beautiful,” Macon said.
Mr. Loomis thought that over.
“Well, so is Baltimore too, of course,” Macon said hastily. “Oh, no place on earth like Baltimore! But San Francisco, well, I mean it struck me as, I don’t know . . .”
“I was born and raised in Baltimore, myself,” Mr. Loomis said. “Wouldn’t live anywhere else for the world.”
“No, of course not,” Macon said. “I just meant—”
“Couldn’t pay me to leave it.”
“No, me either.”
“You a Baltimore man?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“No place like it.”
“Certainly isn’t,” Macon said.
But a picture came to his mind of San Francisco floating on mist like the Emerald City, viewed from one of those streets so high and steep that you really could hang your head over and hear the wind blow.
He’d left Baltimore on a sleety day with ice coating the airport runways, and