Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

I will be heading back to home and hearth between here and the Sheraton Park.” “Well, the sight of you and Lucy getting ready for a party must look like a ‘Diamond Is Forever’ ad.” She was being very polite. “Actually, we’ll be undressing. I’ve committed to making a baby, and the calendar has been calibrated like an atomic clock. The fertility gods are supposed to be in full cry between now and seven.” He checked his watch. “I’ll be leaving early.” “Would you like a boy or a girl?” “I’d like a reprieve.” He could see a look on her face that said tell me: tell me that you know it’s a mistake; tell me why you really did this; and tell me whether you aren’t really going off to meet a boy instead. But Fuller was thinking that the only mistake he’d made had been with the Italian boy. As Andy Sorrell had predicted, Tony Bianco could be had—but, as it turned out, only inconveniently. The kid had been back to Alexandria twice, without an invitation, the first time parking a block away, waiting for Fuller to pass by so that he could ask him for the price of a new set of tires. The second time he’d reappeared by mail, requesting help for his mother’s operation—for which Mrs. Hawkins Fuller charitably let her husband write a check on the joint account while she suppressed her common sense and they both silently hoped this would be the last such communication. No, this was not the big feared slip-up that had motivated him into marriage, but it was a slip-up nonetheless, and from it Lu...