Men in suits and their wives in flowered dresses were everywhere in the lower lobby, hurrying one way and another, wearing name tags that said BIG TEN. He wanted past all this. But a man seemed to know him as he wove his way through the crowded arcade toward the elevator banks.
“Hey!” the man said, “Wales.” The man bore through the crowd, a large, thick-necked, smiling man in a shiny blue suit. An ex-athlete, of course. His white plastic name tag said JIM, and below it, PRESIDENT. “Are you coming to our cocktail party?”
“I don’t know. No.” Wales smiled. People were all around, making too much noise. Couples were filtering into a large banquet room, where there were bright lights and loud piano music and laughter.
He had met this man, Jim. But that was all he remembered without really remembering that. At a college dinner, possibly. Now, though, here he was again, in the way. Chicago was large but not large enough. It was large in a small way.
“Well, you’re invited in,” the man Jim said jovially, moving in closer.
“Thanks,” Wales said. “Good. Yes.” They hadn’t shaken hands. Neither wanted to hold the other too long.
“I mean, what better offer have you got, Wales?” the man, Jim, said. His skin was too white, too thick along its big jaw line.
“Well,” Wales said, “I don’t know.” He’d almost said, “That depends,” but didn’t. He felt extremely conspicuous here.
“Did you get the tickets I sent you?” Jim said loudly.
“Of course.” He didn’t know what this Jim could be talking about. But he said, “I did. Thanks.”
“I’m as good as my word, then, aren’t I?” The man was shouting through the crowd noise, which was increasing.
Wales glanced toward the elevator banks farther on. Polished brass doors slowly opening, slowly closing. Pale green triangles — up. Pale red triangles — down. Faint, seductive chiming. “Thanks for the tickets.” He wanted to shake the man’s hand to make him go.
“Tell Franklin I say hello,” the man said, as if he meant it sarcastically. By smiling he made his great unusual jaw look like Mussolini’s jaw. Franklin, Wales wondered. Who was Franklin? He remembered no one at the college named Franklin. He felt drunk, although he hadn’t been drinking. An hour before he’d been teaching. Trapped in a paneled room with students.
Bing … bing … bing. Elevators were departing.
“Oh yes,” Wales said, “I will,” and for a third time smiled.
“So,” Jim said, “you be good now.” All his front teeth were false teeth.
Jim wandered into the crowd that had begun moving more quickly toward the banquet room. Just at that moment Wales could smell a cigar, rich and dense and pungent. It made him think about the Paris Bar in Berlin. Something about smoke and this brassy amber arcade light was almost the same as there. He’d gone in one night with a woman friend for a drink and to buy condoms. When he’d stepped into the gents, he’d found the dispenser was beside the urinals, which were in constant use. And somehow — nervousness possibly, anticipation again — somehow he’d let drop his Deutschemark coin. And because he had been drinking then, and because he wanted to buy the condoms, badly wanted them, he’d squatted beside a man who was pissing and fetched the fugitive coin off the tiles from between the stranger’s straddled legs. The man smiled down at him, unbothered, as if this kind of thing always happened. “I must have dropsy tonight,” Wales said, fingering the hard little silver D-mark, which was not at all dampened. And then he’d started to laugh, peals of loud laughing. No one in the gents could possibly have known what “dropsy” meant. It was very, very funny. A typical problem with the language.
“Viel Glück, mein Freund,” the man said, zipping himself and looking around, pleased about everything.
“Yes well. Der beste Glück. Natürlich,” Wales said, depositing the coin into the machine.
“Now everyone will know,” his woman friend said as they exited the bar into the warm summer’s night along Kantstrasse. She laughed about it. She knew everyone there.
“Surely no one cares,” Wales said.
“No, of course not. No one cares a thing. It’s all completely stupid.”
Jena had given him the key, a crisp, white card which, when inserted in a slot, ignited a tiny green light, provoking a soft click, after which the door opened. Room 839.
“Oh, I’ve been dying for you to be here,” Jena said, her voice rich, deeper than usual. He couldn’t quite see her. The room was dark but for a candle Jena had set beside her easel, which was in shadows beside the window. It was a long L-shaped suite ending with a little step-up to tall windows that looked down onto the Drive. The desirable north view. The expensive view. The bed was at the other end, where there was no light, only the clock radio, which said it was 6:05. A good, spacious American room, Wales thought. So much nicer than Europe. You could live an entire life in a room like this, and it would be an excellent life.
Jena was seated in one of two armchairs she’d placed by the windows. She’d been watching cars on the Drive. She extended her arm back to take his hand. She was irresistible. More attractive than anyone. “Aren’t you late?” she said. “You feel very late.”
“There was traffic,” Wales said.
She turned her head toward him. He leaned to kiss her cheek, smelled her faint citrus breath.
Jena had the heat up. She was always cold. She was too thin, he thought, thinner than she looked in her clothes — a small, dark-haired woman with thin arms, not precisely pretty in every light, but pretty — her face slightly pointed, her soft, smiling lips slightly too thin. Yet so appealing — the sensation of incaution about her. She was quick-witted, unpredictable, thought of herself almost constantly, laughed at the wrong moments. She was rich and a wife and a mother, and so perhaps, Wales thought, she’d experienced little of the world, not enough to know what not to do, and so was only herself — a quality he also found appealing.
Wales had been invited to give a lecture to satisfy his college stay. And he’d decided to lecture on the death of Princess Diana as an event in the English press. He’d titled it “A Case of Failed Actuality.” These, he’d said, were the easiest to cover: you simply made up the emotions, made up their consequence, invented what was important. It was usual in England. He’d quoted Henry James: “writing made importance.” It was not exactly journalism, he admitted.
Jena had attended the lecture “from the community,” driving down from her suburb up the lake. Afterward, she’d invited him for a drink. In the bar they’d talked until late about America losing its grip on the world; about the global need to feel more; about an enlarged sense of global grief; about the amusing coincidence of his surname — Wales. She was petite, forward, arousing, rarely stayed on any subject, laughed too much — the laugh, he thought, of a woman accustomed to being distrusted. But he’d thought: where did you come from? Where can I find you again? She had acted uncertain of herself at the beginning — though not shy, she wasn’t shy in the least: she was protected, disengaged, careless, which allowed her to seem uncertain, and thus daring. This he also liked. It was exciting. He knew, of course, that when women came to lectures, they came wanting something — conceivably something innocent — but something, always. That had been two weeks ago. As they left the bar, she’d taken his arm and said, “We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to do anything together. You’re leaving soon.” They had not quite talked about doing anything together. But he was leaving soon.