“Look,” the card seller said. He took his cards out of the embroidered bag. “It is in here.” He squatted on the sidewalk, oblivious to the dirt, the people walking by, the fumes from the street. The street, Charles noticed as he sat next to him, seemed to be paved with bottle caps.
The card seller spread the cards in front of him. “Look,” he said. “It is foretold. The cards are our oracle, our newspaper, our entertainment. All depends on how you read them.” Charles wondered where the man had learned to speak English, but he didn’t want to interrupt. “See,” the man said as he turned over a card. “Here you are. The tourist. It was foretold that you would come to the city.”
“And then what?” Charles asked. “How do I get back?”
“We have to ask the cards,” the man said. Idly he turned over another card, the ruins of Marmaz. “Maybe we wait for the next printing.”
“Next—” Charles said. “You mean the cards don’t stay the same?”
“No,” the man said. “Do your newspapers stay the same?”
“But—Who prints them?”
The man shrugged. “We do not know.” He turned over another card, a young blond woman.
“Debbie!” Charles said, startled.
“Yes,” the man said. “The woman you came with. We had to convince her to go, so that you would fulfill the prophecy and come to the city. And then we took your pieces of paper, the ones that are so important to the tiraz. That is a stupid way to travel, if I may say so. In the city the only papers that are important to us are the cards, and if a man loses his cards he can easily get more.”
“You—you took my passport?” Charles said. He did not feel as angry as he would like. “My passport and my plane tickets? Where are they?”
“Ah,” the man said. “For that you must ask the cards.” He took out another set of cards from his bag and gave them to Charles. Before Charles could answer he stood up and walked away.
By midday Charles had found the small park again. He sat down and spread out the cards, wondering if there was anything to what the card seller had said. Debbie did not appear in his deck. Was his an earlier printing, then, or a later one?
An American couple came up to him as he sat puzzling over the cards. “There are those cards again,” the woman said. “I just can’t get over how quaint they are. How much are you charging for yours?” she asked Charles. “The man down the street said he’d give them to us for ten.”
“Eight,” Charles said without hesitation, gathering them up.
The woman looked at her husband. “All right,” he said. He took a five and three ones from his wallet and gave them to Charles.
“Thank you, sor,” Charles said.
The man grunted. “I thought he spoke English very well,” the woman said as they walked away. “Didn’t you?”
A card seller gave him three more decks of cards and an embroidered bag later that day. By evening he had sold two of the decks. A few nights later, he joined the sellers of cards as they waited in the small park for the new printing of the cards. Somewhere a bell tolled midnight. A woman with beautiful long dark hair and an embroidered shawl came out of the night and silently took out the decks of cards from her bag. Her silver bracelets flashed in the moonlight. She gave Charles twelve decks. The men around him were already tearing the boxes open and spreading the cards, reading the past, or the present, or the future.
After about three years Charles got tired of selling the cards. His teeth had turned red from chewing the nut everyone chewed and he had learned to smoke the cigarettes wrapped in leaves. The other men had always told him that someone who spoke English as well as he did should be a tour guide, and finally he decided that they were right. Now he takes groups of tourists through the ruins of Marmaz, telling them about the god of the sun and the goddess of the moon and whatever else he chooses to make up that day. He has never found out what country he lives in.
AFTERWORD
The idea for “Tourists” came to me as I woke up on a bus in Mexico, somewhere between Cancún and Mérida. I had a moment of disorientation, of absolutely not knowing where I was, and I imagined someone who continued in this state for his entire vacation. This dislocation seems to me the essence of the tourist experience, that sudden shock when you realize, My God, we’re really not in Kansas anymore.
I liked visiting this imaginary country so much that I wrote two more stories (both in this volume) and a novel about it. The novel is also called Tourists but has little in common with the story except the title and setting. I gave them the same title because I liked it, and because I wanted to confuse bibliographers, but bibliographers turn out not to be as easily confused as one would wish.
RITES OF SPRING
I’m sitting at my desk catching up on paperwork when there’s a knock on my office door. “Come in,” I say.
The door opens and a woman steps inside. “Have a seat,” I say, filing one last piece of paper.
“Are you Ms. Keller?” she asks.
“Liz Keller. And you are—”
“Dora Green.” Wisely, she picks the more comfortable of the two office chairs. “I want you to find my daughter.”
I look across the desk at her. She has an oval face, dark gray eyes. Her hair is medium-length and black, with a little gray at the temples. She doesn’t look much like a parent of a missing child. She doesn’t play with the handles of her purse, or light a cigarette. I nod, encouraging her to go on.
“My daughter’s name is Carolyn—Carolyn Green,” Ms. Green says. “At least it was. I suppose her husband’s made her change it.”
I try not to frown. In most missing children cases the child is much younger. “Are you sure she wants to be found?” I ask.
“I’m certain. Her husband forced her into the marriage, you see.”
“Was she pregnant?”
She doesn’t flinch. “No.”
I look over this possible client for a moment. She’s very well dressed—she wears a soft green pullover and a skirt with a print of entwining leaves and vines and flowers. I remember that it’s St. Patrick’s Day today, though I would bet that she’s not Irish. She smells a little like some flower too, a subtle, expensive perfume. Golden earrings dangle from her ears.
“Look,” I say. “Before I can take your money I need you to be clear about some things. I can promise to do my best to find your daughter. Whether she wants to be found is up to her. I’ll give her a message from you, whatever—”
“She has to get away from him.”
“I can’t do that. Your daughter’s of legal age—She is of legal age, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“All right then. If she tells me herself that she wants to end the marriage—”
“She does—”
“Then I’ll help her. But not otherwise. If she won’t leave him I can give her the name of a women’s shelter, in case she changes her mind. I know a counselor there. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I need to know some things about your daughter—her husband’s name, their last address if you know it. Do you have a picture of them?”
She does. The photograph she shows me must have been taken shortly after the two eloped: The daughter is wearing what looks like a bridal wreath, a circlet of flowers. She is beautiful, with light brown hair and blue eyes. I can’t tell what she’s thinking; she has the vacant expression of the very young. Her mother seems to have gotten all the wisdom in the family.
Her husband looks nearly twice her age. He is unsmiling, almost grim. He has long, greasy hair, a short beard, and wears a black leather vest over a t-shirt. He stands a little in front of her, casting her partly in shadow. “What does she do?” I ask.
“Nothing, as far as I know,” Ms. Green says. “He won’t let her leave the house.”
“What about him? He looks like a Hell’s Angel.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” For the first time she looks away from me, down toward her lap. She smo
oths her busy skirt. “I don’t like to think about it.”
“How long has she been with him?”
“About four months. They got married right after they met.”
“Where did she meet him?”
Ms. Green looks away again. “She says it was in a park.”
We talk a little more, and then I give her my standard contract and explain about my fees. She signs the contract and writes a check for my retainer.
As soon as she leaves the nausea I’ve been fighting the past few weeks returns. I run down the hallway to the bathroom and make it just in time to throw up into the toilet. As I stand and catch my breath I wonder why the hell they call it morning sickness. Mine seems to go on all day.
I make my way back to the office. I’ve got to do something about this, I think. I’ve got to decide. I flip through the calendar on my desk. The doctor’s appointment is in two days, on March 19.
Dora Green had given me the last address she had for Carolyn and her husband, and had told me that her daughter had been taking classes at the university. It’s past four o’clock, though, and in this sleepy northern California town the university is probably closed for the day. I decide to visit Carolyn’s neighborhood.
Before I leave I call a contact in the Department of Motor Vehicles and ask her to run a check on Jack Hayes, Carolyn’s husband; on Carolyn Green; and on Carolyn Hayes. Then I pick up my coat and purse, lock the office door, and step out into the hallway.
The landing smells even worse than usual, frying grease and floor polish. They say that your sense of smell improves when you’re pregnant, but in the past few weeks I’ve discovered that this doesn’t nearly go far enough. What I think actually happens is that your entire skin becomes a giant olfactory gland.
The temperature outside is in the thirties, and the sun is barely visible through the clouds. It’s the coldest March people in this town can remember. Wind burns my ears. My well-dressed client, I remember, wore a plush padded overcoat. I wrap my thin cloth coat around me and get into my car.
The car’s heater kicks in just as I drive up to Carolyn’s address. I sit in the car a moment longer before going out to face the cold. Iron bars front the windows of some of the houses around me; other houses are boarded up or burned out or covered with graffiti. Five or six teenage boys walk down the street, drinking something from a paper bag and laughing loudly. An old man stands at a bus stop, talking angrily to himself.
I turn off the car and step outside. The wind chills me almost instantly, and I huddle into my coat. The address Ms. Green gave me is an apartment building, and I see the apartment I want facing the landing on the second floor. I climb the outside stairs and knock. Music plays from the first floor.
There is no answer. I knock again, louder. The door to the nearest apartment opens and a man steps out. “What the hell do you want?” he asks. “Can’t a man get a little sleep around here?”
Despite his words he is not angry—he sounds weary, as if he has been certain something would wake him up sooner or later. His blonde hair is lank and greasy, his face an unhealthy white. People pay a lot of money to get jeans as scuffed as his are, with just those holes at the knees. He might—just might—have a night job, but the odds are against it.
“Do you know Jack Hayes?” I ask. “Or Carolyn Hayes?”
“No. Who the hell are they?”
“They live here, in this apartment. Or they did.”
“Oh, those guys.” He leans against his door-jamb, suddenly disposed to talk. I see now that he is younger than I first thought, in his early twenties. A child somewhere in the building cries, and someone shouts for quiet. “Those guys were weird, let me tell you. They belonged to some cult or something. Satanists.”
“Satanists?”
“Yeah. They had all these people coming and going at all hours of the day or night, all of them wearing black. Lots of chanting, lots of strange smells. Incense, maybe.”
I sniff the air. There is a whiff of something, though it’s harsher than incense. My stomach roils.
“You said ‘had,’ ” I say. “Past tense. Are they gone?”
“I don’t know, man,” he says. “Now that you mention it I haven’t seen them around for a couple of days. Weeks, maybe. You a bill collector?”
I give him one of my cards. He squints at it, as though he has grown unused to reading. “Private investigator, huh?” he says. “Isn’t that dangerous, you being a woman and all?” He smiles, as if he thinks he’s said something witty.
“Asking personal questions is always dangerous,” I say. He squints again; he knows that I’ve insulted him, but for the moment he doesn’t get how. “Call me if they come back, all right?”
He mumbles something and retreats back into his apartment. I try Carolyn Green’s doorknob, but the door is locked.
I drive back to the office. There is a message on my machine from my contact at the DMV: She can find nothing for any of the names I gave her. I frown. It’s hard to get around in this town without a car, though it is just barely possible. So much for the Hell’s Angel theory—I had specifically asked her to check for motorcycle licenses. Maybe they’re using aliases, I think, and I frown again.
I had been looking forward to finding Carolyn, to discovering why she had run away with such an unsuitable man. One thing I learned in this business is that people are far stranger than you would ever think, that they almost never do what you would expect. Now I wonder if I’ll ever get to meet her.
The next day I wrap myself in my coat and two scarves and head out toward the university. It’s even colder than yesterday, and a heavy rain begins while I’m driving. The rain turns into snow as I pull up to a parking garage. It hasn’t snowed in this town since I moved here ten years ago.
I show the woman at the registrar’s office my PI’s license and ask about Carolyn Green. “I’m sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s against university policy to give out information on students.”
She doesn’t look sorry at all; she seems delighted to be able to enforce a rule and cause trouble at the same time. Her face is unremarkable, with faded blue eyes and sprayed straw-colored hair, but her glasses are unfortunate—narrow and black, with upswept tips. She must have been in a terrible mood the day she visited the optometrist.
The office is overheated; I shed first one and then the other scarf, and open my coat. I try an appeal to the woman’s emotions—missing daughter, frantic mother—but she is unmoved.
It feels good to leave the office, to walk down the hall and push open the door to the cold outside. The snow has stopped. Students are scraping up the thin snow and trying to make snowballs. Someone slips on the grass and goes down; his friends laugh. I’m not foolish enough to think that I’ll run into Carolyn Green, but just in case I stop several people and show them her picture. No one recognizes her.
I go to the student store to buy a pair of gloves, and then return to the registrar’s office. I’m in luck—Ms. University Policy has left, probably for lunch, and a young woman who looks like a student has come in to replace her. Her eyes widen as I show her my license, and before I even finish my story she is calling up Carolyn’s name on the computer.
“Here—I’ll give you a print-out of her schedule,” the young woman says. “And here’s her address, at the top.”
The address is the one Ms. Green gave me, but the list of classes could be useful. I thank the woman and leave.
The first class on Carolyn’s schedule is Classical Literature, taught by a Professor Burnford. Once again I am amazed at how strange people are, how complex. Who would have thought that the woman in the photograph would be interested in such a thing?
I find the building where Carolyn studies Classical Literature and go inside. Professor Burnford’s office is on the third floor; a sign on the door says that his office hours are from 12:00 to 2:00. It’s five to twelve. I lean against the wall to wait.
A few minutes later the professor comes toward me, follow
ed by a student who tries in vain to keep up with his long strides. Burnford says something over his shoulder to the student following him. “Rabbits!” I hear him say as he reaches the door. “Rabbits are fertility symbols!”
Burnford nods to me as I step forward, and without stopping he says, “I can see you after I talk to Joe here. Late Etruscan burial customs, isn’t it?”
It isn’t, but before I get a chance to tell him so he’s unlocked his door and ushered poor Joe inside. I wait a bit more, and then wander down the hallway and read the notices and cartoons posted on office doors. It’s all fairly interesting, in a sort of anthropological way. I never finished college myself.
Five minutes later Professor Burnford’s door opens and Joe emerges, looking wrung out. He does not meet my eyes as he leaves.
“Sit down,” Burnford says as I enter. His hair, eyes and skin are very nearly the same sandy color, and he wears a sand and black houndstooth coat. I wonder if he matched his coat deliberately to his face or if it’s just a coincidence.
“I hope you don’t mind if I eat my lunch while we talk,” he says. He opens a brown paper bag and takes out a plastic-wrapped peanut butter sandwich. “I have no time otherwise.”
The mention of lunch, and the smell of peanut butter, make my stomach turn again. The doctor’s appointment is tomorrow, I think.
“I’m sorry,” he says, taking a bite of the sandwich. “I don’t remember your name.”
“I’m not a student here, Dr. Burnford,” I say. I take out my license and show it to him. “I’m looking for one of your students. Carolyn Green, or Carolyn Hayes.”
He nods, his mouth full of peanut butter.
“Do you know her?” I ask.
“Of course I know her. Brilliant girl. You don’t get too many undergraduates that good in ancient Greek.”
Brilliant? I show him the photograph. “Yes, that’s her,” he says, taking it from me. “Don’t know who the man is, though.”
“That’s her husband,” I say. “Jack Hayes.”
Travellers in Magic Page 7