Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

“You’re sure you won’t stay here tonight instead?” Mary asked Tim. He’d checked into a guesthouse in the Quarter. “Dauphine Street is quieter than most, but still, it is a Saturday night, and—” “You’re forgetting I grew up a few blocks from Times Square,” he said, laughing. “Trust me, this is nothing! And if you’re worried about the money, remember: I’m making seventy-eight whole dollars a month on top of three meals a day and all the milk I can drink.” “I need to talk to you about something after dinner.” “Are you getting back together with Paul?” “No, no. But it does concern an engagement.” “Beverly Phillips and Jerry Baumeister!” Mr. Johnson was coming back into the library. “No, not them,” she whispered. “It’s somebody else.” “Josephine’s boy,” Mr. Johnson announced with a certain wonder, “wants her to take him to Disneyland.” The amusement park’s opening had been all over television last week. Mary looked at Tim from the corner of her eye. No, he hadn’t guessed the news she had to tell him. “Fantasyland?” he asked her father, trying to ascertain which precinct of Disneyland interested Josephine’s boy particularly. “Frontierland?” Mary excused herself to get a pack of cigarettes from her bedroom, and once there, standing still with her left hand on the dresser, she remembered the conversation that Fuller had drawn her into on Monday afternoon, just before close of business.