The Zigzag Way Read Online Free Page B

gigantic armoire and putting out her jars and bottles on shelves of glass and marble, saying merely “It’s the altitude. It affects some people that way”—not her, of course.
    Later that evening, they took the elevator of intricate art nouveau filigree up to the rooftop restaurant and sat by the balustrade with their drinks, looking down onto the plaza that seemed built on a scale greater than a merely human one; it struck Eric as strange in a country where the human scale was generally small. Over this great field of volcanic rock from the ruins of the Aztec temples, the tricolor of Mexico whipped like a dragon in the wind from the mountains that ringed the city and were visible at the end of every avenue and street, benevolent and protective witches wrapped in dark skirts. Eric and Em were just in time to observe the ceremony of taking down the flag for the night by a platoon of toy-sized soldiers as stiff and smart as painted lead. The figures strolling across the vast expanse with their silver balloons might have been toys too, fashioned for the gods. Lights were coming on haphazardly, so many embers in the soot and coal of the night.
    â€œEm, you never told me it would be like this,” Eric said, tearing his eyes away from the scene to her at last. She had never seemed so pale, so Nordic as here with her gray eyes, her fair hair, and her white dress.
    Instead of seeming pleased with his response to the scene to which she had brought him, Em appeared to grow more apprehensive. She frowned slightly and said, “But what will you
do
here, Eric?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean, while I am away.”
    Eric had been picking up grains of salt from the rim of his margarita glass; now he licked them and looked at the oversized goblet with its blue rim and its wedge of lime and crust of salt as if it were an object in a museum, requiring his serious attention and measured opinion. He was considering, too, the fact already known to him, of course, that Em would be going away with her colleagues to carry on their research “in the field.” He knew it would be foolish to tag along, that it was not for him, he would be in the way, but somehow he had neglected to give this fact sufficient thought. Of course in Boston they worked separately too, coming together in the evenings to cook their pasta and listen to Mozart or to Schumann. He was quite capable of spending the day alone even if Em seemed to need reassurance on this point and would anxiously ask, “Did you get any work done today? Did you start with the book?” He would protest, “But, Em, writing is not a nine-to-five job in the city. One doesn’t just sit at a desk and type ten pages a day, you know.” Now he began to doubt his ability to sit at a desk and write two pages, or one, while in this giddy state with so much around to be experienced and regarded. Nor had he thought about where he would go or where he would stay in her absence. He said the only thing that occurred to him at this moment of pressure: “D’you think I could come with you to Yucatán?”
    â€œOf course not,” she said immediately, and he looked at her and smiled: it was what she would say and she was quite right to do so, of course. How foolish to think he could join the company of the sure and the certain, those who knew what to do with themselves from morning to night every day of the year and everywhere. Just when he himself had lost his way and was in search of one. Had he not always been the misfit? It was his role; she knew it.
    â€œBut don’t you have any plans at all?” she asked, sounding worried and making the straw in her margarita glass bob up and down to show it.
    â€œOnly the vaguest one, Em. I’m hoping it will become clear. I have to wait for the ‘Eureka’ moment.”
    â€œOh, Eric. I know what you’ll do with yourself—stroll and chat.”
    â€œThat’s