The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [111]
“I thought you were looking for slippers.”
“But what do you think of these?”
“I can live without them,” he said.
He was feeling bored because Re-Runs carried nothing but clothes.
Muriel abandoned the shoes and they went next door to Garage Sale Incorporated. Macon tried to invent a need for a rusty metal Rolodex file he found in a heap of tire chains. Could he use it for his guidebooks in some way? And make it tax-deductible. Muriel picked up a tan vinyl suitcase with rounded edges; it reminded Macon of a partly sucked caramel. “Should I get this?” she asked.
“I thought you wanted slippers.”
“But for travel.”
“Since when do you travel?”
“I know where you’re going next,” she said. She came closer to him, both hands clutching the suitcase handle. She looked like a very young girl at a bus stop, say, or out hitching a ride on the highway. “I wanted to ask if I could come with you.”
“To Canada.”
“I mean the next place after that. France.”
He set down the Rolodex. (Mention of France always depressed him.)
“Julian said!” she reminded him. “He said it’s getting to be time to go to France again.”
“You know I can’t afford to bring you.”
Muriel replaced the suitcase and they left the shop. “But just this once,” she said, hurrying along beside him. “It wouldn’t cost much!”
Macon retrieved Edward’s leash and motioned him up. “It would cost a mint,” he said, “not to mention that you’d have to miss work.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’ve quit.”
He looked over at her. “Quit?”
“Well, at the Meow-Bow. Then things like George and the dog training I’ll just rearrange; if I was to travel I could just—”
“You quit the Meow-Bow?”
“So what?”
He couldn’t explain the sudden weight that fell on him.
“It’s not like it really paid much,” Muriel said. “And you do buy most of the groceries now and help me with the rent and all; it’s not like I needed the money. Besides, it took so much time! Time I could spend with you and Alexander! Why, I was coming home nights literally dead with exhaustion, Macon.”
They passed Methylene’s Beauty Salon, an insurance agency, a paint-stripping shop. Edward gave an interested glance at a large, jowly tomcat basking on the hood of a pickup.
“Figuratively,” Macon said.
“Huh?”
“You were figuratively dead with exhaustion. Jesus, Muriel, you’re so imprecise. You’re so sloppy. And how could you quit your job like that? How could you just assume like that? You never even warned me!”
“Oh, don’t make such a big deal about it,” Muriel said.
They arrived at her favorite shop—a nameless little hole in the wall with a tumble of dusty hats in the window. Muriel started through the door but Macon stayed where he was. “Aren’t you coming in?” she asked him.
“I’ll wait here.”
“But it’s the place with all the gadgets!”
He said nothing. She sighed and disappeared.
Seeing her go was like shucking off a great, dragging burden.
He squatted to scratch behind Edward’s ears, and then he rose and studied a sun-bleached election poster as if it held some fascinating coded message. Two black women passed him, pulling wire carts full of laundry. “It was just as warm as this selfsame day I’m speaking to you but she wore a very very fur coat . . .”
“May-con.”
He turned toward the door of the shop.
“Oh, Maay-con!”
He saw a mitten, one of those children’s mittens designed to look like a puppet. The palm was a red felt mouth that widened to squeak, “Macon, please don’t be angry with Muriel.”
Macon groaned.
“Come into this nice store with her,” the puppet urged.
“Muriel, I think Edward’s getting restless now.”
“There’s lots of things to buy here! Pliers and wrenches and T-squares . . . There’s a silent hammer.”
“What?”
“A hammer that doesn’t make a sound. You can pound in nails in the dead of night.”