For an unguarded moment, Leo’s considers apologizing for his failings, promising to do his best to transcend his limitations in the future. While these thoughts pinball about in his head,
Wizard leans over and licks his hand.
At some point, at Leo’s request — the gauge registering empty-Sara pulls into a Mobil station to gas up and to find out where they might be in relation to where they are going. The news is bad. Apparently, they have been heading for the most part in the wrong direction and are farther away from home than ever. The source of their information, an overeager teen-aged attendant, says he knows of a shortcut and he draws them a not quite decipherable map on a coffee-stained napkin.
“What do you want to do?” Sara asks Leo, showing him the makeshift map. “We could stop at the motel we just passed and start out fresh in the morning or we could turn around and drive through the night. Either way, honey, is okay with me.”
Instinctively, he turns to Wizard, but the shaggy dog, head pressed against Leo’s leg, eyes mostly shut, merely smiles.
As Leo considers his options, he imagines them — the three of them — moving on in whatever direction, stopping to get advice again and again, letting the trip take them where it will, the hand-drawn map, the various maps, just an excuse to pursue space and distance, and the more lost they seem to get the closer they are to some place unknown to him he has never been to before and has never hoped to reach.
SEATTLE
For days they argued as if the terrifying unimaginable were at stake over something that had happened (or had not happened) 15 years back. Or perhaps 17 years back, as Genevieve continued to insist. The dispute concerned a trip they had taken to Seattle — that much was sometimes agreed on — in which they had both behaved badly, a trip that had very nearly ended in the dissolution of a long term marriage. It had come back to Josh in barely discernible disguise, provoked into memory by a startlingly vivid dream.
When he woke in a tattered rage, he replayed the dream in his head, not wanting to lose it as he had lost so much else in recent years, juggling its shapeless fragments in the imaginary air while waiting for Genevieve to open her eyes.
Finally, outmaneuvered by his own impatience, he woke her.
“I just had this disturbing dream…” he started.
She anticipated what came next. “And you want me to listen to it? Is that what this is about?”
“You were in the dream,” he said.
“Was I?”
He couldn’t remember when it started or even precisely how it started or if it had always been this way. He would have something in his hand or there was something in his sight he was thinking of picking up, something — whatever, car keys, reading glasses — he had plans for, and then in the next moment it was nowhere. Once it had vanished, he could look everywhere for it, he could tear the house apart, and not find it. It was as if the object were playing tricks on him. How furious it made him, furious at the object and furious at himself for being its gull. Genevieve hated his rages, but what else could he do, rage was the only revenge powerlessness offered.
Shortly after that, or perhaps concurrently, was Josh’s burgeoning failure to come up with words (sometimes names) that had previously been available to him. It was his habit to do the Times crossword puzzle every night before going to sleep. His skill, which he secretly prided himself on, began to fail him, answers he was almost certain he knew refusing to come to hand. And more than once, perhaps even several times he had lost the names of people he knew perfectly well when running into them unexpectedly. If he worked at it, which he did — it was almost all he did beyond staring at unkempt sentences on the computer screen — he knew, or supposed, or was eager to believe, he could defeat the problem.
“I’ll listen to your dream after I have my coffee,” she said.
He followed her into the kitchen impatiently, rehearsing the opening of the dream in his head. They were riding in a rented car, a late model Audi wagon, going to a party at an old, sometime-friend’s house.
“I have a feeling I know how this is going to end up,” she said, sipping her coffee.
“I was uneasy about going,” he said, “because the host was the guy you once had a one night stand with in Seattle. I considered turning back, though for various reasons — there were no exits on this particular highway, the traffic was unimaginably dense — the choice was out of my hands.”
“I never had a one night stand with anyone in Seattle, for God’s sake,” she said. “Who did you have in mind?”
“The trip seemed to go on forever, though it was supposed to be three hours at most. Maybe we should head back, I said, wanting you to want not to go. It’ll be longer going back, you said. Let’s just get there and get it over with, okay? Then suddenly the house appeared — it was as if it were parked in the middle of the road — and we had to pull over to the side not to run into it. Pulling over, we slid into a ditch and you said, I knew this was going to happen. When I promised you I would find a way out, you shook your head with what I took to be contempt and looked out the window. Then we got out of the car and let ourselves into the house without knocking or ringing the bell. We were obviously very late because the party seemed in its last stages, couples lying on the floor, drunk or asleep, a few having sex in what seemed like slow motion. The hostess appeared — the guy’s wife — and she said to make ourselves at home, but that she was sorry to say all the good wine had already been consumed. I had brought a good bottle but it was still in the car and I excused myself to go out and retrieve it. Don’t leave me, you whispered, but I went out anyway, stopping at the door for a moment to embrace the hostess, whose name I had forgotten. And then I was in the car, looking under the seat for the bottle of good wine I had brought as a gift. I came up with a dusty bottle of Pinot Blanc from some fake-sounding chateau, Ryder or Riser — it was not the bottle I remember taking — and handed it to the hostess who was on the floor of the car on her knees next to me. I know this wine, she said to me. It was my absolute favorite before I quit drinking and carousing altogether. I don’t know how to thank you. Will a long lingering kiss do the trick? I didn’t think an answer was appropriate. Then we got out of the car and started back to the house. She took me around the side where there was a picture window and we looked into the master bedroom together, her small breasts pressing against my back. There was a couple on the bed, fooling around, his head under her skirt, and the hostess said, That’s my husband and your wife. It was odd because, though the woman was wearing the clothes you traveled in, her hair was shorter and a different color. I had the idea, which I believed and rejected at the same time, that you were wearing a disguise.”
“Is that it?” she asked.
“There was more, but that was the important part. The point is, it was just like that time at the party in Seattle where the hostess and I found you in the upstairs guest room with her husband. He had been a high school sweetheart or something of the sort.”
“I have no what you’re talking about,” she said. “That never happened. When is this supposed to have happened?”
“The trip, don’t you remember that terrible trip we took — we had picked up your mother’s car in Annapolis — and we were delivering it to them in Seattle. It was around 15 years ago. I never wanted to go. Along the way, we fought over everything. It was a nightmare. You can’t have forgotten.”