A series of mountain ridges loomed behind the town, each paler than the previous, like the paint lightening with each swipe of a brush. At every intersection, an unobstructed view ran to the foothills, Maya craning to get the particulars — it looked like they simply began, with as little ceremony as the town itself, at the edge of the last backyard — before Alex sped on and another brick building briefly covered the view. The kangaroo stared at them from the galvanized roof of a gas station, the medical clinic, and even the park in front of city hall, as if the other Adelaide had equal claim to the place.
There was only one lodging in Adelaide, the Dundee, a four-story brick box with mullioned windows. Trying to get inside with their bags, Maya, Alex, and Max were halted by the exit of a procession of elderly tourists. These were hauling commemorative take from the gift shop: a silver-plated replica of a revolver; a poster with close-ups of bullet holes; a phlegmatic-looking piebald brown cow that came alive with pinging bullets when you violated its udders. The caravan crossed traffic in a humming, neat single file to a massive coach slumped on the other side of the road.
“Germans,” the woman at check-in said. Her nameplate said: “Wilma Gund, Boss.” “They love this stuff.” She pointed at the wall behind her. Obediently, Maya and Alex studied the massive brass plaque hanging there. An old film director, his name unknown to Maya, had stayed in the penthouse. He had shot a dozen holes in the copper-plate ceiling before relocating his muse and finishing a screenplay in one booze-powered night. Visitors were invited to come view the bullet holes, which remained unmended; for a premium, they could stay in the suite itself on the understanding that in the afternoon it would have to be surrendered to walk-throughs. In a wall of photographs next to the plaque, Wilma Gund embraced one or another artistic personage, all unknown to Maya. In fact, it had become something of a pilgrimage spot for blocked writers, poets, playwrights, and screenwriters.
Alex nodded at the burgundy stairing, each carpeted step popped to reveal honeycombed netting, and asked if the entire hotel was being kept in its ancient condition in tribute to the director’s experience.
“You don’t like marble staircases?” Wilma Gund said icily. “We did add the Wi-Fi for your convenience.”
There being no elevator, Alex heaved their suitcases up the stairs with grim déjà vu: Europeans also liked elevatorless buildings with narrow, vertiginous stairs, and it was up steps just like these that Eugene had hauled the family’s five suitcases in Vienna, the first place the Rubins had reached after leaving the Soviet Union, as little Alex got tangled in his legs trying to help.
This was why the Germans flocked here — they were drawn by amenities that had been contrived specifically in the name of inconvenience. Alex loved America, or what of it he knew, though, being satisfied with what he knew, he had no great need to search out more: the obscenely large coffees, the oversized couches, the one million little appurtenances that came with the blender and anticipated every blading and liquefying and pureeing maneuver he might desire to take up. Unlike most Russian husbands — and unlike most husbands, period, though this was less noted than it should be, he felt — Alex loved going to department stores with Maya; while she bought clothes or what the house needed, he held court with the salespeople in the housewares and home-appliance departments. Only the most hardworking country in the world could come up with conveniences like the ones offered by the shiny objects on the shelves. No country worked harder for you, and if it was motivated to do so by the prospect of claiming your dollars, so be it. This is something Maya did not understand about Alex. Did she think him cheap? He wasn’t cheap. He paid, paid happily — but only for the things that deserved it. Maya paid indiscriminately. Maya paid out of feeling.
In case Maya had been wondering whether Max preferred campsites to hotel rooms, her son’s romp across the beds of Room 31 answered her. He leaped around and shouted. Flying from one bed to another, he delivered a kick into Alex’s spine. Alex clutched his back in agony.
“Max?” Maya said. “You’re dusty from the road. I want you to go to the bathroom and wash up.” Max climbed off the bed, embraced his father, and bounded off.
Alex watched the bathroom door close. Rapidly healed, he let go of his back.
“Can’t we just get on with it?” he said. “We’re here to find the two of them — so let’s find them.”
“Why didn’t you speak up, Alex?” she said. She battered the hair at her temples. “When I asked you to drive to the hotel. Order me around, Alex. But order me by speaking, not by not speaking. You are like a general who doesn’t fight, only waits for conditions to kill the other soldiers one by one.”
“I am trying to respect you,” he said.
“Alex,” she clasped her hands in front of her face. “Please. Please save me from your respect. Please stop respecting me.”
He swung his hands at the ceiling and looked away.
She flopped down on the bed, kicked off her flats, and massaged her toes. “It’s my birthday tomorrow,” she said. “You want to hunt them down tonight, get some answer as if it’s a folder they forgot to give us, and spend my birthday racing across America so I can have the pleasure of cooking a meal for everyone.”
“Birthdays are meant to be spent at home,” he said.
“This is his home,” she said.
Alex stood, grasping his back once again. “In case you haven’t noticed, he’s been nothing but frightened for the past forty-eight hours. He wants to go home. Which is in New Jersey.”
“He seems better now,” she said feebly.
“Better than what? Better than frightened and miserable?”
“He hasn’t done anything dangerous while we’ve been out here.”
“We’ve been out here for two days.”
“So,” she said. “Let’s give him some time. We can’t tell anything yet. We’ll go home and he’ll go right back to what he was doing before.”
“Maya!” he shouted at the ceiling — the floor of the film suite. To Alex, it was an especially offensive version of a nightmare: to pay extra for a hotel room so as to have the pleasure of a hundred Germans trooping through in the afternoon. “How will we know something’s changed?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But we’ll know. We will get some kind of signal. We’ll know.”
“He wants to go home, there’s your signal,” Alex said. “For anyone actually paying attention to him, it’s quite obvious. For anyone actually paying attention to him instead of herself.”
She slapped him. Alex smiled in astonishment. “You forgot to call me a whore,” she said. She swept their suitcase from the ottoman next to the bed, imagining a dramatic spill of its contents out onto the floor, but it only thudded on the carpet. She stalked toward the door.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To fix it, Alex,” she said. “As always, I am going to fix it.”
+
Maya returned thirty minutes later. Alex was seated where she had left him. Max had emerged from the bathroom and was unpacking the clothes that Maya had punted to the floor. Had he heard their argument? Alex’s face broadcast so many accusations at Maya that it was impossible to discern whether this was one of them.
She knelt in front of her son. “Max, darling — are you hungry? If you could have anything, what would it be?” As soon as she uttered the words, she paled because she thought Max would say: “I want to go home.” But Max, who seemed grateful to come to a standstill, cocked his head in a funny way and said, “Anything?”
She laughed without joy. “Well, you know — within reason.”