What A Woman Can Be

I was woken by the noise of the car running over the rumble strip at the edge of the road. Why is Debbie drifting out of the lane? I wondered. Is something wrong?

I glanced over at my nearly-new bride, sound asleep on the seat beside me. In that moment several significant facts scrabbled across one another to fight for my attention:

You’re not at home.
Here they drive on the other side of the road.
The controls of this hire car are not on the side you’re used to.
Debbie’s not driving.

I shook myself awake and tried to concentrate on steering straight. I must have disturbed Debbie, who opened her eyes and said “Whu hu?”, or grunts to that effect.

“I fell asleep at the wheel,” I confessed. “Sorry. We have to stop for the night.”

Debbie started to sing. “Welcome, too thee Ho — ”

I cut her off. “Please,” I said, “don’t tempt fate.”

“I want my money back,” Debbie grumbled. “I didn’t ask to be married to a superstitious idiot.”

I smiled and fell in with the routine. “Why, what kind of idiot were you expecting to be married to?”

“A sexy one, please,” she said, leaning closer to grasp my arm lightly with both hands. “Do you know where I might find one like that?” She grinned up at me.

I’d do anything for that grin. “Let’s find a hotel first,” I said. “We’ll see about the other thing when we get there.”

The next anonymous service area along the road boasted two gas pumps, one convenience store and no hotel, but it did have a stack of flyers and leaflets about accommodation throughout the state. The few towns whose names I recognised were all in the wrong direction. “We need a place to stay,” I said to the woman behind the counter. “Can you recommend anywhere close by? We’re heading West,” I added.

She stared at me. “Whe’ y’ from?” she asked.

“England,” I told her. “We’re on honeymoon.” I’d heard somewhere that women of a certain age are predisposed to liking newlyweds.

What I’d heard was irrelevant here. “England.” She went into a reverie. “Ah’d like t’ visit someday.”

“Please do,” I smiled, “you’ll be welcome.”

“Ah no,” she sighed. “Mah husban' don’ like t’ travel.” Which, somehow, closed the topic. She stared at me again as if willing me to say something else in my outlandish accent.

I was rescued by Debbie coming in from the car with the big road atlas she’d insisted we buy before we left the airport. “Hello,” she said, which kicked off the woman’s unrequited xenophilia all over again. At length we established that we were currently in Civilisation (pop. 119), and that there was no Travelodge or similar to be found this side of the state border. “That’s too far,” Debbie said, musing over the map. “Oh, what about this?” She pointed at one of the flyers. “Hotel Farrago, Paradise City. That’s only about ten miles, isn’t it?”

“Ne’ bin there,” the woman muttered. She turned away. That she’d never been to the hotel was possible, even probable, but I had a feeling she meant the city, if city it was. I reminded myself that words can have different meanings, and wondered whether she knew something that we didn’t.

I used the payphone to call ahead. “Hotel Farrago, my name is Novelia, how may I help you today?” The voice was crisp and professional, and some of my tiredness lifted.

“I’d like to book a room for tonight, please,” I said. “Would that be possible?”

“Let me see.” She sounded doubtful. “Tonight, tonight…”

Won’t be just any night, I thought, and then: What’s going on here?

“We are fairly full,” the voice said. “For how many?”

“Just the two of us,” I said, “my wife and myself. We’re on honeymoon.” It was worth a shot, and I wasn’t going to get many more chances to use it.

This time it worked. “Oh, why didn’t you say?” The doubt vanished, replaced by glee. “I can let you have the Michaelson Suite for just the standard room rate.” She almost giggled. “I’m sure you’ll like it.”

She told me what the standard room rate was — very reasonable, especially considering the short notice — and took my credit card number. “We’re about ten miles away,” I said, “in, ah, Civilisation. We should be there in less than half an hour.”

“No hurry,” said Novelia. Had I not been so tired, I might have wondered what she also knew that I didn’t.

Novelia, or Miss Kepler as her badge had it, was keen to tell us about our billet. “And here it is, the Michaelson Suite,” she repeated as she opened the door. She must have sensed our non-plussedness. “Jack Michaelson used it when he stayed here. It was in all the papers.”

“The name rings a faint bell,” I said, “but I don’t — ” I looked around the room, unable to speak. It was a full drawing-room, high-ceilinged and wide; there was even an inglenook fireplace. It contained a mix of sumptuous splendours that somehow failed to gel: Mackintosh and Bauhaus stood side-by-side, in front of a William Morris wallpaper. Through the bedroom door I thought I could see some Louis-Seize. Someone who had an eye for tasteful craftsmanship — no, someone with a lot of money, who knew a lot of people who had eyes for tasteful craftsmanship — had furnished this place. Michaelson?

“There’s a folder of cuttings in the bureau,” Miss Kepler said, ignoring my dropped jaw. “Breakfast is seven till ten, but I don’t suppose you’ll be early, will you?” She and Debbie exchanged conspiratorial grins; that is, she grinned at Debbie, and Debbie returned the exact same grin. “Would you like me to make a dinner reservation for you?” Her eyes darted between us. “It’s not too late, I can ask Wiley to stay a little longer, as it’s a special occasion.”

Debbie shook her head. “Thank you, no,” I said. “The last place gave us a going-away bag and we’ve been nibbling all day.” The bag was in the car, still half-full of the less perishable items. The honeymooners gambit had worked there too.

“I understand, dears.” Miss Kepler patted my arm. “If you change your minds, Cory serves food until late in the Bar. See you in the morning.” She handed me the key and walked away. The door closed behind her.

“Bagsy the bathroom first,” Debbie said, walking towards it, “unless… you’d like… another nibble…? Hmm?” She pouted, inviting, teasing, utterly delicious and she knew it, then glanced through the doorway and stopped dead. “Oh my God, come and look at this!”

Thanks to the palatial bathroom (all mirrors, marble and gold) and our genuine lack of need to feed, but mostly the bathroom (multi-jet shower, jacuzzi, a basket of exquisite toiletries and an acre of towels as soft as angels’ feathers), we didn’t get out for dinner or bar snacks or anything else we couldn’t find in the Suite. The bottle of champagne was obvious in its ice-bucket on the Linley table, next to the slate of fine chocolate truffles, but if there was a television it was very well concealed, so we had to make our own amusement.

Life can be hard.

“Who’s Jack Michaelson?” Debbie asked. She was lying alongside me, cuddled up with her head on my shoulder, near the middle of the Louis-Quinze (I looked it up) four-poster. Each post seemed about a mile away, their tops lost in the stratosphere. “Politician? Oil baron? Hollywood heartthrob?”

“No idea,” I admitted. “But since you’re so interested, I’ll go and look in the bureau. I may be some time. Try not to be too lonely without me.”

“I’ll try. Come back before I’m old and grey.”

“Grey might be interesting,” I said, “could you do grey first? Like black-and-white film.”

“Vie noir.”

“Vie gris, surely? Oh, here it is.” I had found the promised folder. “Keep a light in the window, I’m coming back. Expect me any day soon.”

“Oh no,” Debbie said. “The last expedition to put a light in the window never returned. Above their empty graves, the stones say Missing, presumed lost in the carpet. Whatcha got?” She moved, unnecessarily, to make space for me.

We paged through the folder. Most of it was news reporting from the time of the incident, the kind that assumes the reader knows all about the subject. The most illuminating article was a retrospective from the Weekly Hatchett, some fifteen years afterwards. The headline posed the unanswerable question Did former child star believe he could fly?

Jack Michaelson first came to the world’s attention as a child, singing close-harmony with his schoolmates Jack Daw, Jack Knife and Jack O’Lantern to the accompaniment of a cocktail-jazz quintet, “The Jacks & Five.” He left the band under a cloud, citing the usual personal and musical differences; however, as his departure demanded no change of their name, it was barely noticed by the public.

As a solo artist, Michaelson began to achieve success with the updated form of traditional country-dance music known as Lino. It became his passion; and demanding ever more authenticity, he began to dress, and eat, and in every way possible live, in what he claimed was the manner of his 18th-century predecessors. For a time, he was content.

His decline is generally reckoned to date from a Q&A session following a sellout concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. “Traditional music,” a questioner opined, “means music from before the present time. And whatever time you go back to, it’s got to be older than that. So logically, for true authenticity, you need to go back to the dawn of human history. Right?”

Michaelson, already a bundle of behavioural and other eccentricities, was an instant convert to this philosophy (although the questioner, interviewed some years later, stated that he had been “only having a laugh.”). He took to living for months at a time in a wood, subsisting on nuts and berries. Deciding that his deep all-over tan was insufficiently pre-agricultural, he darkened his skin further with plant extracts, and attempted to catch lynx, mammoth and cholera. He disappeared (often literally) from view.

He was an almost entirely forgotten figure when he was spotted on a hotel balcony in Paradise City. By chance an international news team was nearby, covering the preparations for a poker tournament. The transcript of the cameraman’s statement reads:

“I pointed my lens at the sky, then down, getting the range of levels, you know? and there’s this bloke in a white suit, doing his bat impression. I hit the shutter button, looked round to call someone, looked back, and he’d gone. There’s just this one snap. I didn’t notice till I saw the print that there was someone behind him, someone little, see? Sorry it’s a bit washed out, that shutter’s a bit slow for so much white.”

Above the text was a grainy picture of a man, presumably Jack Michaelson, hanging upside-down from a balcony. We recognised that balcony: not two hours earlier we had been sitting on it, sipping champagne and watching the sunset over a lake. The empty bottle and glasses were still out there.

Jack Michaelson had jumped, or fallen, or been pushed, from this room.

“What’s that about someone behind him?” Debbie asked. “Is there any more?”

There was, although it took some finding. The continuation page had become separated from its parent in the folder:

Analysis of the sound engineer’s concurrent recording suggests that Michaelson’s characteristic squeal of delight, familiar from all his records, was emitted before his fall commenced. That sound in turn is slightly preceded on the tape by a childish chuckle.

A statement issued at the time by lawyers for Michaelson’s children, three-year-old twins Fili and Kili, confirmed that both were fond of “tickling Daddy’s toes”, but nobody could be sure which, if either, had performed the fatal entertainment.

That was all. The accompanying paparazzi shots, said to be of the grown-up twins, could have been anyone.

We looked again at the first page. “I’ve seen that face,” Debbie frowned, pointing at the small smudge behind Michaelson’s ankles. “Recently.”

“Jack Michaelson? You can’t have done.”

“No, the child.” She gasped. “But it wasn’t a child. Did you notice the housekeeper when we came in?”

I hadn’t. Who notices housekeeping staff? I mean, besides Debbie?

We skipped breakfast; we skipped check-out. The going-away bag from the previous day would have to provide, and the credit card company would have to sort out any dispute.

“Just drive to the border,” Debbie said through gritted teeth. Our new heading was at right-angles to our planned course: the next state, i.e. anywhere not this one, was closer that way. The next country would have felt even more reassuring.

“I need to fill up,” I said. “The light’s come on.”

“Then just fill up and drive to the border. Don’t say anything to anyone. Just drive.”

I filled up and drove. At intervals I tried the car radio, but found only the same stadium-rock stations that we had tired of during the previous thousand miles. Who liked this stuff? I wondered. How could anyone? It just gets under your skin.

“That was a weird place,” Debbie said when we were travelling in open country. She had relaxed a little and stopped shivering. “Maybe there was something in the air.”

“We’ve got to get together sooner or later, because — ”

“What?”

“What what?” I had no idea. “Did the radio just come on?”

“You said we’ve — oh, never mind. Let’s talk about something else. Do you know that I love you?”

That was more like it. “And, let me guess, you always will?”

“As long as you never take me back to that Paradise City.”

A snatch of music crossed my mind just then, but I couldn’t think what it might be.