He put the car in gear, backed out of the lot, and found a Hardee’s with a drive-up window. He picked up his food, parked a dozen yards away, ate it, dropped his trash in the can, and found his way to the entrance ramp and back onto the interstate.

Now what was all that about? The mouthwatering prospect of shoofly pie and apple pandowdy? Had his appetite somehow taken over for his brain?

He thought about it, and figured out what it was.

He was in Pennsylvania, and a lot nearer to home than to Iowa. And the closer he got to New York, the safer he felt. Add in the sense of security that came with having money in his pocket, and the way his baseball cap had smoothed the way for him the last time he filled the gas tank, and he had evidently come to believe he had nothing to worry about.

Soon, he thought. Soon he’d be home. But he wasn’t there yet.

A couple of hours later, he managed to convince himself that the motel wasn’t nearly as risky as the Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant.

There would be no other patrons involved, for one thing. The only person he’d see would be whoever checked him in. And he’d be wearing the baseball cap with the brim down over his forehead, and he’d have his head lowered while he filled out the registration card. And the motel was an independent, not affiliated with a national chain, and that increased the odds that the owner-operator would be an immigrant from the Indian subcontinent. In fact, he’d probably be from Gujarat, and the odds were good that his surname would be Patel.

For years now, people from the Indian state of Gujarat, most of them named Patel, had been buying American motels all over the country. It seemed likely to Keller that there was at least one training academy in Gujarat’s main city, whatever they called it, devoted to schooling ambitious locals in motel management. Our topic today, good students, concerns the proper placement of the mint upon the pillow. Tomorrow we will discuss the paper band proclaiming the toilet to be sanitized for your protection.

If Keller’s face was an unremarkable one, rarely warranting a second glance, wouldn’t it be even less remarkable to someone from a significantly different ethnic background? Keller wasn’t overly given to racial or ethnic stereotypes, and had never been one to say that all Asians or Africans looked alike, but there was no dodging the fact that, when he got an initial look at someone racially different from himself, what he saw first and foremost was that difference. He saw a black man, or a Korean woman, or a Pakistani; later, through familiarity, he was better able to make out the individual.

And, if you were a man or woman from Gujarat, wouldn’t it work in about the same fashion when you looked over the counter of your motel at a white American? Wouldn’t you see what your prospective customer was before you saw who he was? And, since all you had to do was run his credit card and hand him a room key, would there ever be any reason for you to pay attention to any more of him than you saw on first glance?

Keller decided to risk it.

There was no one at all behind the desk when Keller opened the door to the motel office, but he didn’t need to see anybody to know that his first assumption was correct. The owners were from India, if not necessarily from Gujarat. The rich smell of curry left no room for doubt.

It was not an aroma you expected to encounter in the hills of central Pennsylvania, and it had an even stronger effect upon Keller than had the phrase Pennsylvania Dutch home cooking. Here was a smell that promised everything that had been missing from all those fast-food hamburgers and fries. Keller wasn’t hungry, he’d eaten not that long ago, but hunger was somehow beside the point. He wanted to find the source of that wonderful bouquet and roll around in it like a dog in carrion — an image, he reflected, that flattered neither himself nor the food, but even so—

He broke off the thought when the tinkling of a beaded curtain heralded the arrival of a young woman, dark-skinned and slender, dressed in a white blouse and plaid skirt that might have been the uniform of a parochial school. She was almost certainly the daughter of the proprietors, and she was very pretty, and in other circumstances Keller might have allowed himself some light flirting. At the very least he might have commented on how good the food smelled.

But not now. All he did was ask about a room, and all she did was tell him the price was $39, which struck him as perfectly reasonable. If she looked at him at all, at his face or at Homer’s, he never saw her do it. He was just a burdensome duty to be dealt with as quickly as possible, before she got back to polishing the essay portion of her application to Harvard.

He filled out the card she gave him, making up a name and address, leaving the space for his car’s make and license number blank. They always had a space for it on the card, but they didn’t seem to care if you filled it in or not, and this girl, who wouldn’t have noticed if he’d registered as Mahatma Gandhi, was no exception.

He paid cash, because his credit card was in Remsen’s name and he’d already signed in as somebody else. He could have used Remsen, the name would be safe for days if not weeks, and by tomorrow he’d be back in New York and none of this would matter. But he had the money, so what difference did it make?

She asked him if he would want to make phone calls, because then he would need to leave a deposit, or allow her to take an imprint of his credit card. He shook his head, picked up his room key, and filled his nostrils for one last time with the sweet smell of curry.

15

After all he’d gone through to get his hands on it, he managed to walk halfway to his car the next morning before he realized he’d left his baseball cap in his room. Fortunately he’d also forgotten to leave the room key on the dresser, so he was able to let himself in and retrieve the cap. With Homer on his forehead, rather like a Valkyrie on the prow of a Viking warship, he felt ready to face the world.

He drove a few miles, stopped to top off the gas tank for what would be the final time, drove some more. The phrase safe at home echoed in his mind like a mantra. All he needed to do was get into his own apartment and lock the door behind him and he’d be locking out his life as a fugitive and everything that went with it. And, because he was retired now, with no one last job looming in front of him, he’d be locking all of that out forever. He’d have his stamps, he’d have his enormous state-of-the-art TV, he’d have his TiVo, and he’d have all the other aspects of the life he’d arranged for himself within easy walking distance — his regular deli, his favorite restaurants, the newsstand where he bought the Times every morning, the laundry where he dropped it off dirty in the morning and picked it up clean at night. He didn’t suppose it was a terribly exciting life, centering as it did upon such sedentary and solitary pursuits as television and stamp collecting, but excitement had lost its charm for him over the years, if it had ever had any to begin with, and he found it thrilling enough to bid a few dollars on a stamp on eBay and see if some bastard pounced on it before time ran out. It was low-stakes excitement, no question, but that was plenty.

That errant thought was trying to break through again, struggling to rise to the surface. It was like something barely glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. You knew you’d catch sight of it if you turned your head, and that was all it took to keep your gaze fixed straight ahead.

His breakfast, picked up without incident at a drive-up window, consisted of two Egg McMuffins and a big cup of coffee. Just before exiting the interstate he’d seen a sign for a rest area five miles ahead, so he drove there and parked under a tree. He’d timed it just right, he was pleased to note; the coffee was cool enough to drink and the Egg McMuffins were still warm.