The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams Page B

faces still. I almost cried aloud, so vivid was my sense of the fleetingness of this life. We made our way into the fresh air of the courtyard and I bought a pack of cigarettes at a little stand which sold postcards and film and such. I reached into my pocket for my lighter and it wasn’t there. It seemed that I had lost my lighter. The lighter was a very good one that your mother had bought me the Christmas before, Jane, and your mother started screaming at me. There was a very gentle, warm rain falling, and there were bougainvillea petals on the walks. Your mother grasped my arm and reminded me that the lighter had been a gift from her. Your mother reminded me of the blazer she had bought for me. I spilled buttered popcorn on it at the movies and you can still see the spot. She reminded me of the hammock she bought for my fortieth birthday, which I allowed to rot in the rain. She recalled the shoulder bag she bought me, which I detested, it’s true. It was somehow left out in the yard and I mangled it with the lawn mower. Descending the cobbled hill into Guanajuato, your mother recalled every one of her gifts to me, offerings both monetary and of the heart. She pointed out how I had mishandled and betrayed every one.”
    No one said anything.
    “Then,” Mr. Muirhead continued, “there was the San Cataldo Cemetery in Italy.”
    “That hasn’t been completed yet,” the young man said hurriedly. “It’s a visionary design by the architect Aldo Rossi. In our conversation, I was just trying to describe the project to you.”
    “You can be assured,” Mr. Muirhead said, “that when the project is finished and I take my little family on a vacation to Italy, as we walk, together and afraid, strolling through the hapless landscape of the San Cataldo Cemetery, Jane’s mother will be screaming at me.”
    “Well, I must be going,” the young man said. He got up.
    “So long,” Mr. Muirhead said.
    “Were they really selling postcards of the mummies in that place,” Dan asked.
    “Yes, sweetie pie, they were,” Mr. Muirhead said. “In this world there is a postcard of everything. That’s the kind of world this is.”
    The crowd was getting boisterous in the Starlight Lounge. Mrs. Muirhead came down the aisle toward them and with a deep sigh, sat beside her husband. Mr. Muirhead gesticulated and formed words silently with his lips as though he was talking to the girls.
    “What?” Mrs. Muirhead said.
    “I was just telling the girls some of the differences between men and women. Men are more adventurous and aggressive with greater spatial and mechanical abilities. Women are more consistent, nurturant and aesthetic. Men can see better than women, but women have better hearing,” Mr. Muirhead said.
    “Very funny,” Mrs. Muirhead said.
    The girls retired from the melancholy regard Mr. and Mrs. Muirhead had fixed upon each other, and wandered through the cars of the train, occasionally returning to their seats to fuss in the cluttered nests they had created there. Around midnight, they decided to revisit the game car, where, earlier, people had been playing backgammon, Diplomacy, anagrams, crazy eights and Clue. They were still at it, variously throwing down queens of diamonds, moving troops through Asia Minor and accusing Colonel Mustard of doing it in the conservatory with a wrench. Whenever there was a lull in the playing, they talked about the accident.
    “What accident?” Jane demanded.
    “Train hit a Buick,” a man said. “Middle of the night.” The man had big ears and a tattoo on his forearm.
    “There aren’t any good new games,” a woman complained. “Haven’t been for years and years.”
    “Did you fall asleep?” Jane said accusingly to Dan.
    “When could that have happened?” Dan said.
    “We didn’t see it,” Jane said, disgusted.
    “Two teenagers escaped without a scratch,” the man said. “Lived to laugh about it. They are young and silly but it’s no joke to the engineer. The