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ings account. She takes the elevator downstairs and negotiates a
reduced rate with a nice young manager named Rick. Together,
they decide that she can stay at the hotel for twenty-two days,
which is one day longer than her intended honeymoon would
have been. Sydney decides to think of her time in Boston as a
kind of anti-honeymoon.
Sydney discovers that if she is careful and not reckless and leaves
her room only periodically, she is not unduly reminded of Jeff or
of the Edwardses. Though, in truth, they never leave her.
The feeling is similar to that she had when Daniel died sud-
denly. But then she had not wanted to forget Daniel.
Across the street is a residential building. For hours, Sydney sits on a
silk-upholstered chair and gazes out a window in her room and tries
to divine, through movements in the windows opposite, the lives
within. The infrequent comings and goings require some imagi-
nation on her part, so she invents stories that occupy her for hours.
Sometimes, when Sydney is sitting in the hotel dining room or is
walking the streets of Beacon Hill, she contemplates a version of
herself who knew what the future held. Had she been told when
she was eighteen and just graduating from high school that she
would have a husband and then another and that she would be
left at the altar by a third  all by the age of thirty  would she
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have needed to reach out a hand and grope for a chair so that she
could sit down? Would she have been excited? Alarmed? Sad?
Wouldn t she have wanted to know why?
One day, when Sydney is in the room, a maid comes to clean.
She points out to Sydney a switch on the wall that Sydney has
noted but ignored, not knowing what it was for.  It s a privacy
switch, the maid tells Sydney.  When you turn it on, a red light
appears outside your door, and no one will bother you.
Sydney shakes her head in amazement.  A privacy switch,
she repeats with awe.
Sydney wonders if Jeff understands what he did to her. Perhaps
he does, for he does not call her or make any further attempt to
explain. When Sydney thinks of the Jeff she never knew entirely
well  the man whose thoughts were often elsewhere  such a
treacherous move seems just possible. Who could know what he
had on his mind all those times she saw him looking off into
the distance? And yet when she thinks of the Jeff who fixed the
lightbulb, the man who asked her to marry him, such a betrayal
is nearly impossible to imagine. And when Sydney can stand it
and thinks about the man with whom she made love, his actions
are truly inexplicable.
Sydney sometimes wakes to the memory of Jeff standing in
her bedroom on her wedding afternoon, explaining to her why
he couldn t marry her, that it had all been an elaborate game.
She remembers her shock. It wasn t so different, she sometimes
thinks, from hearing that Daniel had died on the floor of one of
the best teaching hospitals in the world. The news had stunned
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her; she could not comprehend it. Her mind had simply refused
to accept the facts. Yet she knows now that with time  for didn t
this happen with Daniel?  a kind of necessary acceptance will
form around her, like a lobster making its new shell, one that
will be soft and easily breakable in the beginning but so hard
that only lobster crackers can shatter it in the end.
She can hardly wait.
Leaving the hotel one morning, Sydney sees a middle-aged
couple sitting on the striped sofa in the lobby. They are hold-
ing hands. They look alike. Sydney thinks about how it is that
couples who have been together for a long time begin to resem-
ble each other. She wonders if she and Jeff looked at all alike, if
they would have come to do so over time. She wonders if the
couple on the sofa have just renewed their vows.
Sydney is aware that there are matters more important than love
and the loss of it. A child s incapacities. A climate of terror. Sui-
cide bombers. As she walks the city streets, she repeats this fact
to herself again and again.
She tries to read, first magazines and then a book. She is success-
ful at neither. She cannot bear the television, and so she walks.
Having brought little with her, she purchases sensible clothes.
After a week, she buys a bottle of her favorite bath oil and con-
siders this a victory.
Sydney counts out the days. First there are twenty-two. Then
there are fifteen. Then there are ten. When she has nine days
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remaining, she leaves the hotel in her sensible shoes, prepared to
walk a mile for her breakfast. If ever she lives on Beacon Hill, she
will know all the best eateries.
The desk clerk says good morning. The doorman nods and
smiles. Sydney passes through two parked cars on her way to
cross the street.
A calamity at the bottom of the hill  a car accident  catches
her attention. She steps into the street and hears the screech of
brakes shortly before she feels the impact.
There is a moment of pure wonder and then a bolt of pain.
Sydney is catapulted down the street.
The doorman, a cabbie, and a man who looks European hover
over her. Sydney tries to sit up. The pain in her wrist is a serious
matter, though she notes a slight shift in consciousness, as if she
had woken up from a nap.
The European  Sydney notes that he is marvelously dressed in
a dark suit with snowy cuffs  has his cell phone out even as he
is cradling her head. A policeman, out of breath, bends over her
as well. For a moment, Sydney sees only faces.
 It s just my arm, she says.
 You stepped between the cars, the European explains with
perhaps a British accent.  I was watching you as I waited for my
car to be delivered. The taxi couldn t stop.
 I should have looked, Sydney says.
 Yes, yes, the cabbie says.
Sydney gives her name, the hotel as her address.
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* * *
As she is being lifted into the ambulance, Sydney notices the
taxi stopped at an odd angle on the street in front of the hotel.
Behind it stretches a line of cars as far as she can see.
Rick, the manager, accompanies Sydney to the hospital. A man
used to making things happen, he arranges for her to see a doc- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]