The Hotel Eden(8)

The return train was a lesson in sanity. I felt the whole time that I would go crazy the next minute, and this powerful about-to-explode feeling finally became a granite rock which I held on my lap with my traveling case. I thought if I could sit still, everything would be all right. As the afternoon failed, I sat perfectly still through the maddening countryside, across the bridges and rivers of Great Britain with my body feeling distant and infirm in the waxy shadow of my hangover. Big decisions, I learned that day, are made in the body, and my body recoiled at the thought of Porter.

From King’s Cross I took a cab to the museum. I didn’t care about the expense. It was odd then, being in a hurry for the first time that spring, impatient with the old city, which now seemed just a place in my way. Allison wasn’t there. I called home. No answer. I checked in the Museum Pub, where we’d had lunch a dozen times; those lunches all seemed a long time ago. I grabbed another taxi and went home. Our narrow flat seemed like a bittersweet joke: what children lived here? The light rain had followed me south, as I knew it would, and in the mist I walked up to the High Street and had a doner kebab. It tasted good and I ate it as I drifted down to the tube stop. There was no hurry now. Rumbling through the Underground in the yellow light, I let my shoulders roll with the train. Everyone looked tired, hungover, ready for therapy.

I’d never been to the Hotel Eden alone, and in the new dark in the quiet rain, I stood a moment and took it in. It was frankly just a sad old four-story white building, the two columns on each side of the doors peeling as they had for years on end. Norris was inside alone, and I took a pint of lager from him and sat at one of the little tables. The beer nailed me back in place. I was worn out and spent, but I was through being sick. I had another pint as I watched Norris move in the back bar. It would be three hours before Allison and Porter came in from wherever they were, and then I would tell them all about my trip to Scotland. It would be my first story.





KEITH


THEY WERE LAB partners. It was that simple, how they met. She was the Barbara Anderson, president of half the school offices and queen of the rest. He was Keith Zetterstrom, a character, an oddball, a Z. His name was called last. The spring of their senior year at their equipment drawer she spoke to him for the first time in all their grades together: “Are you my lab partner?”

He spread the gear on the counter for the inventory and looked at her. “Yes, I am,” he said. “1 haven’t lied to you this far, and I’m not going to start now.”

After school Barbara Anderson met her boyfriend, Brian Woodworth, in the parking lot. They had twin red scooters because Brian had given her one at Christmas. “That guy,” Barbara said, pointing to where Keith stood in the bus line, “is my lab partner.”

“Who is he?” Brian said.

Keith was the window, wallpaper, woodwork. He’d been there for years and they’d never seen him. This was complicated because for years he was short and then he grew tall. And then he grew a long black slash of hair and now he had a crewcut. He was hard to see, hard to fix in one’s vision.

The experiments in chemistry that spring concerned states of matter, and Barbara and Keith worked well together, quietly and methodically testing the elements.

“You’re Barbara Anderson,” he said finally as they waited for a beaker to boil. “We were on the same kickball team in fourth grade and I stood behind you in the sixth-grade Christmas play. I was a Russian soldier.”

Barbara Anderson did not know what to say to these things. She couldn’t remember the sixth-grade play … and fourth grade? So she said, “What are you doing after graduation?”

“The sky’s the limit,” he said. “And you are going off to Brown University.”

“How did you know that?”

“The list has been posted for weeks.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I may go to Brown and I may stay here and go to the university with my boyfriend.”

Their mixture boiled and Keith poured some off into a cooling tray. “So what do you do?” he asked her.

Barbara eyed him. She was used to classmates having curiosity about her, and she had developed a pleasant condescension, but Keith had her off guard.

“What do you mean?”

“On a date with Brian, your boyfriend. What do you do?”

“Lots of things. We play miniature golf.”

“You go on your scooters and play miniature golf.”

“Yes.”

“Is there a windmill?”

Yes, there’s a windmill. Why do you ask? What are you getting at?”

“Who wins? The golf.”

“Brian,” Barbara said. “He does.”