Madagascar

by Steven Schwartz

  A tall man sat down next to her.

  He had an overcoat over his arm. But he had brown curly hair, not blond, and he wore a herringbone sports coat, not a dark suit and blue tie. Nor was it a surprise that he’d have an overcoat; it was cold and damp outside, and this was Philadelphia where people dressed more formally than they did in Denver with parkas and ski jackets. Indeed, nothing about the man looked like the description of the thief. He was what her father would have called an ordinary Joe, and after he ordered a Scotch from the bartender he turned to her and said, “Your flight delayed too?”

  Elaine placed her wine back on the cocktail napkin. “Yes,” she said, and left it at that. It had been a long time since anyone had tried to pick her up. She was forty-six and although she did not feel old, she didn’t think men noticed her anymore, not in that way. Her figure was still good, trim. But it was her “figure,” no longer her “body,” and she was trim, not hot.

  “I’ve been here since noon,” the man said. “How about you?”

  “A little after three.”

  The man—he had a strong, slightly hooked nose and his short curly hair was speckled with silver, about fifty she guessed—checked his watch. “What I hate,” he started to say, and then looked up at the TV. “Oh, Jesus, we’re never going to get out of here now. Did you hear that? There’s a blizzard in the Midwest.” He shook his head and took a long sip of his Scotch. “So, anyway, I cut you off, what were you saying?”

  Elaine laughed at this, and she did not know whether he laughed along with her because he understood that he had only cut himself off or because he had no clue. It was sometimes hard to tell with men like him. The good-natured salesman type, who rolled from one segue to another without noticing much in between. She could say anything to him, she supposed, and he would listen pleasantly and meaninglessly. “My wallet was stolen,” she told him.

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” he said, an expression she hadn’t heard for a while. “That’s misery. When’d it happen?”

  “About an hour ago. I fell asleep in my seat and a man took my wallet.” She paused a minute, to let him finish shaking his head. “He kissed me on the cheek.”

  Elaine waited to see his reaction. She would explain nothing further, a test of sorts.

  “The kissing thief,” he said. “Herman Grace,” he added, extending his hand, and she wanted to laugh again—his last name. Was it real? She certainly wouldn’t give a stranger her full name, but he was a man, after all, and on much safer ground here. “So anyhow,” he was saying, “it takes all kinds, doesn’t it? Next thing you know we’ll have apologetic murderers and counseling prostitutes. What’s the world coming to? Criminals kissing you on the cheek. That must be some sort of new age mugging.”

  “I don’t think he meant it as a sensitive gesture.”

  “No,” Herman Grace said, shaking his head. “You’re quite right. There is nothing the least bit kind or caring about what was done to you. I’ve taken your comment about being robbed and kissed and made it into fodder for chitchat. I stand corrected.”

  At least he believed her.

  The bartender came over and asked if she wanted another glass of wine. Immediately, she checked the remaining cash in her hand. Always a good budgeter, Richard had said about her, and the thought of Richard made her unhappy with responsibility: she should be calling him to inform him of the theft, checking in about Caidee, too.

  “I’ll have another,” Herman said, holding his empty glass aloft. “And for the lady too, whatever she pleases.” He turned back to her, his mouth, it seemed, suddenly full of extra teeth. “You don’t mind if I buy you a drink, do you?”

  “I should really check on my flight.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “Me, too,” but neither of them made a move to go, and when their drinks arrived, he slipped the bartender a twenty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change—a conspicuous, even vulgar gesture meant to impress her, she decided. She checked her face in the mirror behind the bar. Her hair curled smartly at the neck. Her eyebrows were darkened, her cheeks lightly—very subtly, she thought—rouged. And her eyeliner modest, restrained compared to, for instance, the spook show of Caidee’s eyes. No, she didn’t look like someone waiting to be picked up, not in her black turtleneck and gray skirt, her unpolished nails and stylish if discounted camel-hair coat that she’d gotten at a factory outlet mall in Denver. She looked, she thought, like her mother did before she died, if she hadn’t dyed her hair and had let the gray show through like Elaine. It would soon be all gray. “Where are you from, Herman?”

  “L.A. Born and raised. And trapped there. You?”

  “From Denver.”

  “Terrific skiing. We try to make a trip there every season.”

  So, he had a family. He was not wearing a wedding ring and there was no mark from where he might have slipped it off. Now she was curious. “Do you have children?”

  “Grown,” he said. “Two boys and a girl. My daughter, she’s at Haaavaad.”

  “You must be very proud.”

  “I certainly am,” he said and took a swallow of his Scotch.

  “And your wife? Is she back in L.A.?”

  “Divorced.” He drummed his fingers on the bar, smiled—defensively chipper?

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No need to be. We waited until the kids were grown, did our duty. Ten years of love, ten of stale bread.” His eyebrows twisted a bit. “I’m not trying to pick you up, you know.”

  “Oh?” It was all she could manage.

  “Am I insulting you?”

  “Of course you are. I suspect you know that, though.”

  “You needn’t worry about me. I’m harmless.”

  She considered him for a moment while he lit a cigarette, offering her one, which she refused. She never smoked. “What exactly do you want?”

  “To talk. Just to talk.”

  She put her drink down half finished on the napkin. It was time to go.

  “In which case I don’t know anything about you,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “You want to be anonymous. You would have told me something about yourself if you didn’t.”

  She should leave instantly and decisively, but the wine made her legs feel as if they were kicking lazily through water at the bottom of the barstool. “If I’m not mistaken, you didn’t ask.”

  “Because you weren’t going to tell me. If you were, you would have told me your name when I told you mine.”

  “I must be out of practice. I don’t make a habit of talking to strangers.”

  “I can see. Otherwise you would at least have given me an alias.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then laughed. Alarmingly, she was finding herself less afraid of him. “What line of work did you say you were in?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “That’s right, I’m not. I’m in the electronics industry. Semiconductors.”

  “Now I believe you, Mr. Grace.”

  “Is it Mr. Grace, now? We were on a first name basis a minute ago, at least unilaterally.”

  “A minute ago you were asking if I wanted to be picked up.”

  “If memory serves”—he put his glass against his forehead to feign concentration—“I was saying the opposite.”

  “You were thinking it. Am I wrong?”

  “I was thinking you are very attractive, sure of yourself, and guarded, as you should be. I was also thinking you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I have never done this before.”

  “Done what?”

  “Approached a woman at a bar.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t.”

  “Let me ask you a question or two,” he said. “Is that permitted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your name?”

  “Elaine.”

  “Elaine,” he said, as though examining her name like a small, pleasing, striated rock. “What is it you do?”<
br />
  “Marketing, software. But don’t ask me anything too technical. I depend on R and D to give me the details and then I spin them into gold.”

  “I’m sure you do.” He picked up a pretzel from the bowl of party mix the bartender had left them and slowly chewed, then took a long drink. “I want to tell you something, Elaine. You won’t mind, will you?”

  “That depends.”

  “That’s the sensible answer. But you needn’t be afraid. I won’t offend you.”

  The bar had become noisier, almost six o’clock now, and she could see by the crowd at her gate that her plane had still not arrived. She put her palm over her empty glass of wine, her second glass, to keep herself from ordering more. That was her limit usually, two glasses when she and Richard went out for the evening, but the idea of limits had suddenly become just that, an idea. She studied his hands; he had strong smooth fingers and clean nails. She appreciated a man who gave his fingernails attention. She stared at the white half moons of his cuticles, then raised her eyes and said, “Tell me. I’d like to hear.”

  “I’m not here on business. My children lured me here, perhaps that is the best word. They are fed up with me and have tried an intervention of sorts, to no avail. That’s what I was doing in Philadelphia and that’s why I am leaving alone. The intervention failed. They are furious with me. This is my fourth Scotch and my second pack of cigarettes in as many hours. Airport delays are unstructured, unhealthy time and I am as weak as I’ve ever been.” He stared out the window a moment at the parked planes. “What nakedness would you like to tell me, Elaine?”

  Names were being called over the paging system, Mr. Simon Agler, Mrs. Alsa Hong, Ms. Susan Lewis…Elaine heard them dimly along with the announcements of flights; the electronic beeping of courtesy carts going by; cranky children screaming at being dragged another inch through the miserable terminal with its delayed passengers. Right now the dirt of her father’s grave would be running muddy from the rain, while a thief somewhere was picking through her assets, discarding credit cards, throwing her wallet with the photograph of her mother and her in Atlantic City into a filthy dumpster behind a warehouse. Her mother had hated the cold and damp, and on such mornings her father would warm her sweaters over the old steam radiators in their house on Belmont Street.

  If her mother had remained alive, Elaine might not have made certain mistakes—entered into a disastrous first marriage or cut off friends when she needed them most. She might have told her mother, as she never did her father, about the “struggle” with the boy in college—what would flatly be called date rape now. She might have drawn more comfort and courage for this second part of her life had her mother lived and had her father not expected her and her sister to handle everything on their own, because Mother’s death was mostly his loss. And yet she had loved her father all the more desperately after her mother died, jumping to him, her only remaining oar.

  “My father just died,” Elaine said. She was thinking about Herman Grace’s grown children surrounding him, pleading with him to save his life. The image had an exquisite pain, so much love and so much stubbornness, so much trouble and so much spilled hope.

  “I’m a man who still carries a handkerchief. May I?” and she let him dab at her eyes—she had started to cry. He worked tenderly, as if his fingers themselves were gloved, touching her cheeks with the soft cotton cloth, fresh and clean as a white veil.

  “Can I help you get somewhere?” Herman Grace asked, because he could see when she stood up she was slightly unsteady from her two glasses of wine.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, but then leaned into him anyway, and he put his arm around her shoulder. He smelled of aftershave, Scotch, and smoke, a not unpleasant combination at the moment, and she listened to his breathing—heard all the discordant sounds of his life commingling into a stand against oblivion.

  They walked silently toward her plane. She held his arm for comfort more than support, and she felt safe next to him. At the gate, passengers were gathered around the ticket agent’s podium.

  They went over and listened. The flight had been cancelled, stuck in Chicago. People were angry, asking why they hadn’t been told sooner. “We got the information to you as soon as we received it,” the ticket agent said, a thin man with droopy eyes. One other flight this evening was scheduled for Denver, but that was on a different airline and presently at full capacity, the ticket agent said, studying his monitor. “Everyone will be rebooked on flights tomorrow morning,” he told them. “We can’t control the weather. I’m very sorry, but if you need assistance with arrangements for staying overnight we can try to help.”

  “Try,” Herman Grace said. “Key word. They’re not obligated to do anything because it’s weather-related.”

  She stared in disbelief at the scrolling red letters on the board: FLIGHT CANCELLED. “I can’t believe this. I can’t fucking believe this.” Herman Grace looked away, quieted, she wondered, by her profanity. “You’d better check on yours,” she told him, though she did not want him to leave her alone.

  “I did,” he said. “It’s still cancelled.”

  She stared at him. “Still? What do you mean?”

  “It was cancelled hours ago. I’ve been—how shall I put it?—reluctant to leave the airport. I didn’t want to face my children, and I didn’t want to go to an empty hotel room. And then I met you.”

  She knew now he was asking her to spend the night with him, and she was thinking that she could do it and live with the guilt or not do it and live with the relief and that the two choices didn’t seem that far apart in consequence. She had assumed such parallel lines would never converge—and they never had for her. But, as Richard was fond of saying, she was in a state. All the more reason to behave badly and irresponsibly, not be accountable for her actions from the shock of her father’s death, her stolen wallet, her cancelled flight…

  None of this equaled the clarity of knowing that what she was about to do was wrong.

  She could—should—take a cab to Rachel’s house and spend the night. Her sister would surely be glad to drive her the next morning to the airport, as she had done this afternoon. She could even sleep in her father’s apartment, the bed where he died, a communion of sorts, maybe finding a macabre peace in his penultimate resting place. She certainly had resources, unlike Mr. Grace. “I need to make a phone call,” she told him. “Where should I meet you?”

  “Same old, same old.” He pointed to the bar where they’d been. “Shall I order you anything?”

  “Water, please.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “The healthy choice.”

  Her cell phone was out of juice, and she didn’t want to ask Herman Grace to use his. She went over to the pay phone and made a collect call to Richard, prepared to hang up if he didn’t answer after three rings, long enough to fool herself into believing she tried.

  “Hello?”

  “Richard,” Elaine said, and could feel herself saying his name as if she had just dropped all her heavy bags in front of him with utter relief.

  “Where are you, Laine? What’s wrong? You’re calling collect.”

  “I’m still at the Philadelphia airport. My flight’s been cancelled. Oh, Richard, what a day it’s been.”

  “I was just about to go out the door to pick up Caidee after her swim practice and go straight from there to the airport. What happened?”

  “My wallet was stolen. I’m so sorry, I should have called earlier.”

  “Your wallet? Are you all right? Were you hurt?”

  “No, no,” she said, imagining his worried face. “I’m fine. I was sleeping. It was stupid. He took it from my bag by pretending…” She looked over at the bar. Herman Grace waved to her and she back at him.

  “Laine? Are you going out on a later flight?”

  “There are no others tonight. I’ll have to fly back tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ll stay at Rachel’s, right? Can we reach you there? I want to know you’re safe. It will be
good to be with your sister after such a miserable day.”

  “I think,” she said, playing with the phone cord, “I think I’m going to stay near the airport. The flight leaves early.”

  There was a pause, and she thought that Richard didn’t believe her, but he said, “That’s a good idea perhaps.” She nodded, as if she’d gotten a forged permission slip. “But what will you do for money?”

  “What?” she asked, understanding clearly what he had said.

  “Money for a hotel.“

  “Maybe,” she said, placing a hand on her stomach, “I can get the airline to help.”

  “Are you sure? I hate to think of you there without a cent. You really should call Rach—”

  “I’ll be fine. Give Caidee a kiss for me. I miss you both.”

  “I love you, too. And, Laine, be good to yourself. Your father and all.” She touched her cheek where the thief’s lips had been and felt a bluish heat, ran her finger up near her earlobe where Richard liked to kiss her and felt Herman Grace’s mouth there.

  When she got off the phone, she didn’t look over at Herman Grace at the bar; she didn’t want to show anything on her face. She went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet and listened to more names being paged…Mr. Callahan, Ms. Wilkens, Mr. Pintauro…a dull drone of missing people. She looked at herself in the mirror for a long time after she brushed her hair: her brown eyes, such pretty, warm eyes her mother would always say, like little poems.

  She walked out of the bathroom, joining the dwindling crowd—people on their way home or to hotels overnight or back to where they started. There were only two men sitting together at the bar, younger men. She stood in the middle of the concourse and watched both ways, and then kept her eyes on the men’s bathroom for a moment. She went into the bar and sat down to wait; he was no doubt in the bathroom himself.

  The bartender, the same one who had been there before, came over to her. “The gentleman said to give this to you.” He handed her a business card. Elaine looked at it: Herman Grace, Tritronics Electrical Systems. She turned the card over: Is it cowardly or honorable of me to leave? Try to think well of me. I always will of you. Love, Herman.