The second-floor hallway was warm but dimly lit. Baedecker checked the apartment number on the envelope, took a deep breath, and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again and waited. A minute later he walked to the end of the hallway and looked out a tall window. Through an alley opening he could see snow falling heavily in front of a neon sign above a darkened shop.
'Hey, mister, were you the one knocking?' A young woman in her early twenties and a young man with horn-rimmed glasses were leaning out into the hall from an apartment two doors down from Maggie's.
'Yes,' said Baedecker. 'I was looking for Maggie Brown.'
'She's gone,' said the woman. She turned into the apartment and shouted, 'Hey, Tara, didn't Maggie go to Bermuda with what's-his-name . . . Bruce?' There was a muffled reply. 'She's gone,' said the young woman as Baedecker took a step closer.
'Would you know when she'll be back?'
The woman shrugged. 'Thanksgiving break just started yesterday. Probably a week from Sunday.'
'Thank you,' said Baedecker and went down the hall and stairway. An attractive young woman with short brown hair passed him in the foyer.
Baedecker stepped out onto the sidewalk and paused, looking up at the snow. He wondered how far he would have to go to find a phone or a taxi. The cold cut through his raincoat and he shivered. He turned right and began walking back toward Massachusetts Avenue.
He had gone a block and a half and his shoes were soaked through when he heard a voice calling behind him. 'Hey, you, mister, wait up a second, please.' Baedecker stopped at the curb while the young woman he had passed in the foyer ran across the street to him. 'Are you Richard, by any chance?' she asked.
'Richard Baedecker,' he said.
'Wow, I'm glad I stopped to chat with Becky,' she said and stopped to catch her breath. 'I'm Sheila Goldman. You talked to me once on the phone.'
'I did?' Sheila Goldman nodded and brushed a snowflake from her eyelash. 'Yes,' she said. 'Way back last September right at the beginning of the school year. Maggie was with her family that night.'
'Oh, yes,' said Baedecker. It had been the briefest of conversations; he had not even left his name.
'Becky told you that Maggie was gone for break?'
'Yes,' said Baedecker. 'I didn't know the university's schedule.'
'Becky said that she thought Maggie had gone with Bruce Claren, right?' She paused and brushed more snow from her lashes. 'Well, Becky doesn't know much. Bruce had been hanging around for weeks, but there was no chance that Maggie was going anywhere with him.'
'Are you a friend of Maggie's?' asked Baedecker.
Sheila nodded. 'We've been roommates for a while,' she said. 'We're pretty close.' She rubbed her nose with her mitten. 'But we're not so close that Maggie wouldn't kill me if she found out that you'd come to visit and . . . well, anyway, she's not down in Bermuda with Brucie.' A car took the turn at high speed, splashing slush at both of them. Baedecker took Sheila Goldman's elbow and they backed away from the curb together. 'Where did Maggie go for Thanksgiving?' he said. He knew that her parents lived only an hour's drive away in New Hampshire.
'She left yesterday for South Dakota,' said Sheila. 'She flew out late in the afternoon.' South Dakota? thought Baedecker. Then he remembered a conversation they had had in Benares many months before. 'Oh, yes,' he said. 'Her grandparents.'
'Just Memo, her grandmother, now,' said Sheila. 'Her grandfather died in January.'
'I didn't know that,' said Baedecker.
'Here's their address and everything,' said Sheila and handed him a slip of yellow paper. The handwriting on it was Maggie's. 'Hey, you want to come back to our apartment to call a cab or anything?'
'No, thanks,' said Baedecker. 'I'll call from down the street if I can't flag one down on Mass Avenue.' Impulsively he took her hand and squeezed it through the mitten. 'Thank you, Sheila.' She reached up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. 'You're welcome, Richard.'
Baedecker flew into Chicago shortly before midnight and spent a sleepless six hours in the airport Sheraton. He lay in the dark room listening to vague motel sounds and breathing motel smells and he thought about his last conversation with Scott.
Waiting with him in the Melbourne Airport near the Cape for Baedecker's connecting flight to Miami, Scott had suddenly said, 'Do you ever think about what your epitaph might be?' Baedecker had lowered his newspaper. 'That's a reassuring question right before flight time.' Scott grinned and rubbed his cheeks. He was letting his beard grow back, and the red stubble caught the light. 'Yeah, well, I've been thinking about mine,' he said. 'I'm afraid it will read — 'He came, he saw, he screwed up.'' Baedecker shook his head. 'No pessimistic epitaphs allowed until you're at least twenty-five,' he said. He began reading again and then set the paper down. 'Actually,' he said, 'that's not too far from a quote I've carried around in my head for years, half suspecting that it might end up serving as my epitaph.'
'What's that?' asked Scott. Outside, the rain was letting up, and they could see bright sky silhouetting palm trees.
'Have you ever read John Updike's ‘Music School'?'
'No.'
Baedecker paused. 'I guess it's my favorite short story,' he said. 'Anyway, there's a place in it where the narrator says, ‘I am neither musical nor religious. Each moment I live I must press my fingers down without confidence of hearing a chord.'' Scott said nothing for half a minute. The airport PA system was busy paging people and disavowing any collusion with religious solicitors. 'So how does it end?' asked Scott.
'The story?' said Baedecker. 'Well, the narrator remembers when he was a boy going to Holy Communion and had been taught not to touch the Host with his teeth . . .'
'Uh-uh,' said Scott. 'That's not what they taught me at Saint Malachy's.'
'No,' agreed Baedecker, 'now they bake the wafer so thick that it has to be chewed. That's what the narrator decides about his life at the end of the story. I think the closing lines are — 'The World is the Host. And it must be chewed.'' Scott stared at his father for some time. Then he said, 'Have you read any of the Vedic holy books, Dad?'
'No,' said Baedecker.
'I did,' said Scott. 'I read quite a bit from them last year in India. They did-n't have much of anything to do with the stuff the Master was teaching, but somehow I think I'll remember the books longer. One of my favorite things was from the Tattireeya Upanishads. It goes — 'I am this world, and I eat this world. Who knows this, knows.'' At that moment the boarding call was announced for Baedecker's flight. He stood, hefted his flight bag with his left hand, and held out his right hand to his son. 'Take care, Scott. I'll see you at Christmas break if not before.'
'You take care, too, Dad,' said Scott and, ignoring the offered handshake, threw his arms around Baedecker and hugged him.
Baedecker put his hand on his son's strong back and closed his eyes.
Baedecker caught a 7:45 A.M. United flight out of O'Hare. It was bound for Seattle but had a scheduled stop in Rapid City, South Dakota, which was as close as Baedecker could get to Maggie's grandparents' ranch near Sturgis without bailing out. Tired as he was, Baedecker noticed that the aircraft was one of the new Boeing 767s. He had not flown in one before.
They served breakfast somewhere over southern Minnesota. Baedecker stared at the tray of reheated scrambled eggs and sausage and decided that appetite or no appetite, it was time to eat after almost three days. He could not do it. He was sipping coffee and looking down at glimpses of brown landscape between the clouds when the stewardess came up to him and said, 'Mr. Baedecker.'
'Yes?' said Baedecker and felt a stab of alarm. How did she know his name? Had something happened to Scott?