One Step Ahead

by J. J. Kapka

  Maddie felt much the same herself. But she had thus far beaten back her emotions with the hope that by morning, after filling their stomachs and getting a good night’s sleep, all their experiences thus far might be laughable, and they could embark on their journey with a clean start.

  “I know, it’s not exactly four-star cuisine, is it?” she said lightly.

  “I’d be happy for half a star. How can you possibly screw up a sausage?” he growled. He set his knife and fork down with a clatter. Elbows on the table, he leaned over his plate to add, “And those mouse droppings over there under that table don’t exactly make me feel this place has the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, either.”

  Maddie’s previous bad vibrations suddenly spiked upward as she saw the look on her husband’s face. She quickly set out to quell his escalating displeasure. “Aw, c’mon, Beck, it’s not been the best start for a trip, but it’s only one day. I’m sure tomorrow…”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll still be waking up in a room that looks like it was decorated by a group of color-blind five-year-olds, in a bed so saggy, it nearly reaches the floor when I sit on it. It’ll still smell like an attic that hasn’t had air in fifty years, and the desk clerk will still be as lifeless as a mannequin when we ask him for directions to whatever it is we want to see.”

  “Okay, so we’ll move. In fact, we’ll make that our mission for the day, and that’ll give us a chance to explore a little. We’ll check out some hotels in other neighborhoods, which will help us get our bearings, and get a sense of the place. And while we’re walking around, we can scope out the restaurants, too. It’s just our bad luck we happened upon this place on our first night. Let’s go back and crash for the night, and we’ll both feel much better in the morning.”

  Becker kept on glowering. “It’s not just the hotel,” he said ominously.

  “What? You mean the jet lag, or the lost baggage? They’ll both be OBE by tomorrow,” Maddie said cautiously, knowing deep in her heart, though dreading it, that at last, she was going to hear what really was wrong, what she’d suspected all along he was hiding—or denying.

  Becker took a deep breath, and Maddie could tell he was trying to collect himself and drop down his emotions a notch before he started to say whatever it was he’d been keeping to himself up till now. He pushed his chair away from the table and leaned all the way back in it, moving his hands to his lap and staring at them for a minute, as though deciding how exactly to put his thoughts into words.

  He fixed his eyes on the ceiling far to his right and said, “Maddie, I don’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do. We’ve been through so much and had such a good run…” He trailed off, finally bringing his gaze downward to look into Maddie’s eyes.

  Now Maddie’s heart was in her throat. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even breathe. It felt as though they were suspended in time. The moment before he started talking again seemed to last forever, and there was nothing she could do anymore to snatch back their lives to where they were just ten minutes before. After what seemed an eternity, Becker started again. With a sense of dread, Maddie felt like she was on the brink of a whirlpool and about to be sucked in no matter how much she resisted.

  “You were right,” Becker said with a sigh, “when you asked me back in New York if something was wrong. I should have said this back then, but I stupidly…foolishly…thought that somehow things would change when we got on that plane and landed here in London. Maybe something magical would happen, and we’d be back to square one.”

  Maddie recoiled at the thought that he was saying she’d been right. She didn’t want to be right. She didn’t want…

  “I…I think I need to move on…by myself. I, well, to be honest, a few months ago I found myself getting infatuated with a woman at work. I mean, I didn’t set out to have a crush on someone, but somehow, it happened anyway.”

  “You mean you’ve been having an affair?” Maddie asked in horror.

  “No, no, it never came to that. But I found myself swept up with the idea of being involved with someone new, someone different. I just enjoyed the pleasure of that feeling so much that…well, I had to ask myself why something like that could happen. I knew I loved you. I still do. But I realized it wasn’t a “lover” kind of love anymore. And I missed that. There’s something about that thrill of the hunt that made me nostalgic about the days when you and I were first dating. I started thinking that I wouldn’t be looking for that kind of connection again if there weren’t something missing in our relationship. I’m not saying it’s because of you, or because of me. It’s just a void, and I don’t know how it got there.”

  Becker paused a few seconds. With an almost hopeful look on his face, he said, “I’m wondering if maybe you’ve felt the same things.”

  “Felt the same things?” Maddie whispered. “I can’t even comprehend you feeling like this. Why would I feel that way? I’ve committed my entire being to you…I mean, nothing even remotely close to what you’re saying has entered my mind. I…I just love you. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Maybe it really isn’t all that simple, though. In fact, I think it’s terribly, horribly complex, and maybe that’s part of the problem. Too many things to think about, and not enough just coming straight from the heart. For me, at least. I…again, I don’t say this to hurt you, but my whole outlook has changed, and I just feel myself drifting further and further from any concept of ‘us.’”

  “Well,” Maddie started, trying to collect her thoughts in the midst of her incredible confusion and hurt, “then it’s good that we’re taking this trip right now. We’ll have two solid months to devote to putting us back together the way you want us to be. No work to divert us, no apartment to consume our attention with silly tasks. Just you and me.”

  “Oh, Maddie.” Beck sighed, looking back down into his lap, “I think it’s beyond that. I could just kick myself for not saying something sooner, but now that we’re here, in fact, ever since we got off the plane, I just knew in my heart that it’s too late. The kind of work I think we’d need, I just don’t have it in me to give anymore. It’d be robbing both of us to spend any more time on, well, on a hopeless cause…”

  “A hopeless cause?” Maddie shrank back from what amounted to a slap in the face from the man she’d promised to love, honor, and travel around the world with.

  “Yes, I think it’d be best if we just separated for the rest of the trip. We’ve got open tickets and no hotel reservations after London. We can just concentrate on doing the things each of us is interested in and catch a breath of fresh air. When we get back to New York, we can sit down and talk about—probably—how to best go about making it permanent.”

  For one long minute, Maddie could do nothing but stare dumbfounded at her husband, trying to come to grips with everything he’d just dumped on her. But thinking of the word “dump” inspired her. Maybe it was that and the effects of the ale, on top of the jet lag, on top of the disappointment. She rose up, leaned across the table, and said, “Becker Wolf, you are an unmitigated cad, and an ass, and a shallow, selfish…”

  At a loss for yet another appropriate insult, she reached down, grabbed Becker’s barely touched plate of bangers and mash, and dumped it firmly over his golden blond head. As she grabbed her purse and turned on her heel to leave, she could see sausage grease seeping out of his hair, oozing down his forehead, and meeting up with the spatterings of mashed potatoes that had already landed on his face. Thrusting herself through the throng of curious faces that had gathered at the dining room entrance as their argument heated up, she decided that bangers and mash couldn’t have had a better name, considering what she’d just done with it.

  ~~~

  June 24

  Maddie left the pub with a full head of steam that she used to propel her back up the street and toward their woebegone hotel. Her anger even lasted long enough for her to reach their room and grab her still unopened backpack. Glancing at her suitcase, she made
a split-second decision to leave it behind and make do with what she had in her pack. She knew it’d be a bigger burden for Becker to have to carry her things around with him or to make other arrangements, and somehow that felt good. As she was about to go out the door, an evil thought struck her. She strode back to the bedside, grabbed Becker’s backpack, and awkwardly slung it over one shoulder. She quickly made a beeline down the stairs and out the front door before Becker came back and saw her with the packs.

  She headed down the street toward the busy intersection. Once there, she turned left instead of right, rather than chance bumping into Becker, and resolutely walked several blocks before coming to her senses and realizing that she had no idea where she was or where she was going.

  Suddenly deflating from her adrenaline-pumped anger, she slumped against a shop window. The enormity of her situation hit her. What a rotten coincidence to be farther away from home than she’d ever been in her life, only to lose her husband at the same time. It was just so hard to comprehend. Without her willing them, tears started unbidden from her eyes, and before she knew it, became a torrent. Soon she was racked with disconsolate sobs, made all the worse by the weight of the dual backpacks and the insanity of being stuck in the middle of nighttime London without anywhere to turn.

  Ten minutes passed, and she was no closer to overcoming her emotions, when one of London’s famous black cabs pulled to the curb in front of her. The cabbie rolled down his window and shouted, “Something wrong, Miss? Can I take you somewhere?”

  Maddie looked up through eyes so tear-soaked that everything was completely blurry. With no tissue close at hand, she pulled up her shirt to wipe her eyes and runny nose before gazing toward the source of the voice. Seeing the helpful-looking demeanor on the face of the cabbie, she took a few tentative steps toward the curb, before stammering, “I…I’ve had about the worst day of my life, and I’d really appreciate it if you could just take me to a decent hotel. I…I can’t go back to where I was supposed to be staying…” She trailed off.

  “Climb in, then,” the cabbie said, as he reached back and pushed open the back door from inside. “It’ll just take five minutes, and I’ll have you in a nice, tidy establishment in the wink of an eye.”

  Maddie thrust the backpacks onto the seat before her as she gratefully shut the door and abandoned herself to whatever the cabbie had in mind.

  The cabbie studied her in his rearview mirror before he spoke up and said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Miss, but one o’clock in the morning isn’t a proper time to be out on the streets of London crying your heart out.”

  “Oh.” Maddie collected her breath. “It’s been so horrible…the flight was so long, our room was…and then my husband, my husband…oooohhhhh,” and she dissolved into tears again.

  “There, there,” he said reassuringly. “Look, Miss, we’re nearly at the hotel. In fact, there it is down at the end of this street. See that nice white building with that sign lit up over the entrance? It’s nothing fancy, but I think you’ll like it. There’s so many hotels in this city, but I’ve heard from a number of customers that this place does the trick nicely.”

  He eased the cab up to the curb, while Maddie pulled open her purse and started frantically to look for where she’d put her pounds, even though she could barely see a foot in front of her from all her crying.

  “This one’s on me tonight,” the cabbie said kindly. “I wouldn’t take a pence from you, the state you’re in. Just get yourself inside and have a good night’s sleep.”

  Maddie was astonished at his kindness. She certainly couldn’t imagine a New York cabbie having done what he had, from pulling up to a crying stranger in the middle of the night, to recommending a hotel and taking her to it for free. Speechless, she stumbled out of the cab and turned to whisper her gratitude.

  The cabbie just nodded before she could even get a word out. Touching his hat with his hand in a gesture of goodbye, he rolled back out into the sparse traffic.

  Pulling herself up, Maddie dabbed the worst of the tears from her face. She hoisted her backpacks onto her shoulders and climbed the four steps to the entry door. Ready for the worst, and thinking there would be no one on duty this late, she held her breath as she buzzed the bell.

  Someone walked toward the door.

  Taken aback by the immediate response, Maddie wondered why the person didn’t simply buzz the door open.

  In short order, an elderly lady unlocked the door and beckoned her inside. “Good evening. Please, do come in,” said the kindly looking woman. “I was having a very late pot of tea. Just can’t sleep through the night anymore. The older I get, the less sleep I need. Looks like we both had perfect timing.”

  Maddie followed the woman to a modest registry desk.

  After the lady stepped behind the counter, she took her first good look at Maddie’s face. “Oh dear, looks like you’ve had a bad time of it tonight. Well, let’s not worry about any kind of formalities right now. What you’re needing is a good night’s sleep, and the sooner, the better.” She turned, pulled a key from a cubbyhole, and laid it in Maddie’s hand. “Room twenty-five. Just go up the stairs. It’s the second room on your left. Nice and quiet. It faces the courtyard, so you won’t have the morning traffic waking you up.”

  “But don’t you want my name and my credit card?” Maddie queried.

  “Oh no, that can wait till tomorrow morning. I think you’ve probably got more important things on your mind right now. Go on up and get a good, long sleep, and tomorrow will take care of itself.”

  Acting on autopilot, Maddie turned to do what had been suggested. Hesitantly, she started up the stairs, then turned back one time, just in case she’d misheard.

  The woman had already disappeared to wherever she’d been having her tea.

  Maddie spun back around, finished climbing the stairs, and headed toward her room. Thinking back with a shudder to the room she’d just left behind, she was almost afraid to go in. The key turned smoothly, and the door opened to reveal a smallish but cheerful and tidy room that was infinitely closer to what she’d originally envisioned when she thought of a “charming” hotel. The walls were freshly painted a sunshine yellow, with a checked gingham bedspread to match. Sheer curtains with lacy hems were draped across a large window, over which the shade had been drawn down.

  Maddie gratefully shed the backpacks onto a white wicker suitcase stand and started peeling off the clothes that she now realized had been on her body for the better part of two days.

  “Ugh,” she exclaimed out loud, catching a whiff of her socks as she stripped them off. It’s a wonder that woman even let me in the door: I look more like a street person than a tourist.

  She balled up the clothes and thrust them into a corner of the closet. Before heading into the bathroom for her shower, she grabbed one of the backpacks to pull out her pajamas and toiletries bag. When she looked inside, she realized it was Becker’s pack. She hadn’t looked at the little colored tag she’d placed on the straps to differentiate the two. She grinned at the thought that she had two backpacks to choose from, whereas Becker was likely staring down into a suitcase full of her underwear and clothes at this moment. She, at least, would be able to use some of the shirts from his backpack to sleep in, or for hiking around, and maybe even his pants could be rolled up in a pinch. Becker, on the other hand, would be stuck walking around in the same smelly clothes for yet another day until he could get to a store. Even worse for Becker, as she dug into an inside pocket, she pulled up his passport and calculated how much trouble he’d have to go through to get it replaced. Touché.

  That hopeful thought revitalized her somewhat, and she commenced pulling out and surveying the rest of the contents of his backpack, to see what she could salvage and use. With a nod of satisfaction, she discovered more than a few things that were keepers. The rest she left out of the backpack, with the intention of dumping them in the first trash can she could find—outside of the hotel, of course, lest they thi
nk she’d lost her mind and try to return the items to her. She grabbed Becker’s pajama top and set it aside to put on after her shower, then retrieved her underwear from her own backpack.

  At last she was ready to step into the shower. The hot water beating down on her weary back felt sinfully luxurious. Given the amount of time and all of the events since her last shower, it certainly gave her a whole new appreciation for something she realized she’d always taken for granted.

  Stepping out of the shower, she gratefully reached for her toothbrush and toothpaste, anxious to rid herself of the pasty feel that had built up on her teeth since she’d last brushed on the plane. She ran a quick comb through her hair, trying not to look at the circles and bags accumulated under her eyes from lack of sleep and lots of tears. She was as refreshed as she could get, and completely, utterly exhausted. Her mind started to race as all kinds of questions tumbled in. Should she go home? If she did, could she salvage some of the cost of her ticket and use it toward her return trip? What would she tell her friends and family? Almost as soon as the thoughts started pummeling her, she realized that she was too tired and weary to solve anything tonight. Wisely deciding that she could think through her tangled situation in the morning, she tucked herself in and had barely turned off the bedside light before she nodded off into the deep, satisfying sleep that only came after a good cry.

  ~~~

  June 24

  Maddie emerged gradually from her deep sleep, with the sensation that everything was a heavy gray. Slowly, as her mind spiraled upward into wakefulness, she blinked open her eyes. She continued to have the impression of grayness, only to realize she’d somehow managed to burrow herself completely under the covers, something she normally never did. As she flung the covers back and gazed around her room, further realizations started layering onto her consciousness, like a pileup on the freeway at rush hour.