“I have to pack. I have to phone—” he stopped short of saying “my mother,” as that would make him sound like a boy, and went on, “—to make arrangements for someone to meet me at the airport. I’m sure you will want to get to the reception after all.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” She gave him a look, one he understood to mean, “Don’t leave.” Did she want to sleep with him or just not be alone? He doubted it would be the former: there were so many years’ difference between them.
“I should go,” he said.
“Okay.” She sounded disappointed. “I’ll walk out with you, though, if that’s okay.”
“Sure.”
Getting up, he realized for the first time that he was slightly drunk. Over the past weeks, he had become adept at maneuvering on crutches but as he left the restaurant, he had trouble getting his arms in sync as he hefted himself across the dining room, weaving through spaces that were more tight now than when he had gotten there, because of how crowded it was. At one table, where four obese men incongruously ate four identical cottage cheese salads, he had to reverse course because he could not slip between their table and the one beside it, where a pregnant woman nearly reclined in her chair rather than sitting up in it. By the time they reached the lobby, pushing through the dense crowd of people waiting for a table, he was exhausted, as if he had just run several miles.
The lobby, too, was crowded. Outside, the rain—which he couldn’t hear when he was in the windowless restaurant—continued to pour and a throng was gathered just inside the doors to the hotel, peering out at the street. He turned to say good-bye to Estelle, but for some reason she was shrinking back into the restaurant.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s Frank,” she said, pointing to the lobby beyond them. Edward Everett looked in the direction she was pointing but could not tell whom she meant: a heavyset man in plaid shorts with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that was too tight for his belly was talking earnestly to a plump woman in a matching Minnie Mouse T-shirt, clutching a shopping bag from the Museum of Fine Arts. An athletic, bespectacled, ponytailed, white-haired man in a blue suit stood chatting with a young blond woman in a gold dress that barely reached mid-thigh. Three middle-aged men, in nearly identical brown suits, stood at the concierge desk, listening while she gave directions to somewhere, tracing a line on a map one of the men held out for her.
“I don’t know—” Edward Everett said. Estelle shifted her position so that Edward Everett was between her and the lobby, as if she needed him to buffet a strong wind.
“Can we wait here for a minute? Then you can have your life back. I promise.”
Edward Everett maneuvered so that he was facing her, nearly losing his balance when he set one of his crutch tips onto a slightly uneven spot on the floor.
“Esty?” a man said. “Esty?”
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Estelle said.
Edward Everett turned his head. The ponytailed man in the blue suit was making his way toward them, the young woman trailing behind with her hand laced through the crook of his arm as if she were being escorted onto a dance floor.
“Esty, your mother has been going crazy looking for you,” the man said.
Estelle stepped around Edward Everett. “She found me, but she’s probably still going crazy.”
Up close, the man seemed perhaps as old as sixty, the woman with him nearer to Edward Everett’s age. He could tell that her hair was not naturally blond; where she had parted it, not quite at the center of her scalp, the roots showed through as auburn.
“You really should go back, Estelle,” the man said.
She let out a bitter laugh. “I think you gave up any right to tell me what to do, oh, I don’t know, seven or eight weeks ago. Isn’t that what it’s been, Barbara?”
The girl gave the man a tentative look, biting her lower lip in clear discomfort.
“This really isn’t a good time for this,” the man said.
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you, Francis,” she said, drawing out the “s” of his name in a prolonged hiss. “Edward, this is Francis Mattingly and his ‘plus one.’ Francis and plus one, this is Mr. Everett.”