The City of Your Final Destination

by Peter Cameron

  Caroline found Arden in the kitchen, where she appeared to be making bread. Caroline secretly felt that the point of much of Arden’s domestic activity was to irritate her: they could easily buy their own bread.

  She stood in the doorway for a moment, and then said, “I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be joining you for dinner this evening.”

  “Why?” asked Arden. She did not look up. “Aren’t you feeling well?”

  “I’m feeling fine,” said Caroline. She thought: She pretends it is such hard work, making bread.

  “Then why won’t you come to dinner?”

  “I see no point in it. I will not change my mind about this. It is a waste of my time, and his.”

  “He just wants to talk to us,” said Arden. She stopped fussing with the dough. “To all three of us. To make his case. He’s offered to take us out to dinner. He’s come all this way to do that. It will seem rude not to go. It is rude, I think.”

  “His coming here is rude, I think. We should not indulge him. I shall not,” said Caroline.

  “Well, it makes no sense for us to go out to dinner, then,” said Arden. “The whole point was for him to be able to talk with all three of us. If you don’t come, it is pointless.”

  “Why especially me?”

  “Because it is you he must convince.”

  “I have just told you I will not be convinced.”

  “Well, if you are so sure of it, there can be no harm in coming to dinner and listening to him.”

  “He must convince you as well,” said Caroline. “Or have you changed your mind?”

  Arden kneaded the dough. “I think I have,” she said.

  “Ah,” said Caroline. “He has charmed you. He has—”

  “He hasn’t charmed me!” Arden exclaimed. “I have changed my mind.”

  “Call it what you will,” said Caroline.

  Arden said nothing.

  “Why have you changed your mind?” asked Caroline.

  “Why do you ask me? So you can make fun of me?”

  “No,” said Caroline. “I’m sorry. I’m not making fun of you. Truly, Arden, I’m not. Why have you changed your mind? I sincerely want to know.”

  “I don’t really know,” said Arden. “My reasons for objecting were muddled, as you know—it was an instinctual response to say no, to agree with you. And now I feel differently. I don’t know precisely why. I think Jules would like him. I think he will understand Jules. I feel it should happen, now, the book.”

  “You don’t honestly think it is because he has charmed you?”

  “Do you think he is charming?”

  “No,” said Caroline. “I do not. But I would not be surprised if you did. I think you are more susceptible to charm than I.”

  “Why?” asked Arden. “You think I have no mind of my own?”

  “No,” said Caroline. She paused. “I think you are lonely.” She said it kindly: it was a statement, not an accusation.

  Arden glanced down, deflecting her face, but then raised it. Her cheeks and throat were red. “Perhaps I am lonely,” she said. “Perhaps his coming here has made me feel that I am lonely. Yes—perhaps that. But changing my mind is separate from that; it is not about that.”

  “Perhaps I should not tell you this—”

  “What?” Arden demanded. “Tell me what?”

  Caroline considered. And then she said, “Did you know that he is in love with someone?”

  “No,” said Arden. “I did not know that.”

  “He told me this morning. He has a fiancée. Well, perhaps they are not engaged. He did not say that. She is a fellow academic.”

  “Why do you tell me that?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you should know.”

  “Why?”

  Caroline turned toward the door. “Forgive me if I have upset you.”

  “You have not upset me,” said Arden. “Although I’m sure that was your intention.”

  “You are mistaken, Arden.”

  “It seems a shame,” said Arden.

  “What?”

  “To do what you’re doing, withholding authorization, out of spite.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Caroline. “I do nothing, as far as I know, out of spite.”

  “I see it differently,” said Arden.

  “No doubt you do,” said Caroline. She turned around and walked down the dark corridor, into the front hall, but paused at the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the banister. It cannot be left in this way, she thought. She retraced her steps to the kitchen door. Arden was rolling out the dough, flushed and intent, and did not look up.

  “Arden,” Caroline said.

  Arden looked up then, and said, “Yes?”

  “I am sorry if I have offended you. I don’t really understand what we just said to one another.”

  Arden said nothing. She pressed her fingers into the dough.

  “I don’t want this to cause trouble between us.” She noticed that Arden was crying and stopped talking.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Arden shook her head and sat down in a chair. She put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her hands, awkwardly: palms out, fingers splayed, for they were covered with flour. Caroline crossed the room and stood beside her. She laid her hand, tentatively, on Arden’s back. “What’s wrong?” she repeated.

  Arden revealed her face; her cheeks were wet. She shook her head again. “Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know—I’m just emotional.”

  Caroline removed her hand. She could not remember touching Arden before. Surely she must have, but she could not remember it. She dampened a cloth at the sink and handed it to Arden. “Here,” she said.

  Arden took the cloth and pressed it against her eyes, her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said.

  Caroline stood there for a moment. “You’re welcome,” she said. She touched Arden again, quickly and lightly, on her shoulder and then she turned and left the room, not pausing this time, and not returning.

  Arden sat in the kitchen while the bread baked. She drank a glass of water and then made rings with the wet glass on the stone table. The rings faded. She thought if she sat there quietly, long enough, the shaken mess of her mind would comprehensibly settle, like glittery snow in a glass dome.

  Had she made a mistake? Had Omar simply charmed her? Was she betraying Jules? Jules had never said to her he did not want a biography. Perhaps he had said something to that effect in a letter to Caroline twenty or thirty years ago. It did not signify anything now. If we were held to everything we wrote in letters thirty years ago—No, if that was the only reason, it was not enough. She had been right to err on the side of caution initially, but the very fact of Omar coming this far changed everything. He was not a charlatan or a monster. It would be simply mean, perverse, to withhold authorization from him at this point. Perhaps it was not spite—she should not have said spite—but there was something twisted and perverse in Caroline’s response. Yet it made sense: Caroline had so little to hold on to, so of course she was fierce with it. I must allow her that, thought Arden: it is how she reminds herself that she was loved.

  Adam awoke to hear someone calling his name. He lay on the bed for a moment, slightly disoriented. Then he heard his name again, shouted up from below. It sounded like Arden. Of course it was Arden. She was the only one who would stand in the hall and bellow his name. He roused himself and stepped out onto the landing. Arden was standing inside the door, head thrown back, gazing up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” she called. “Did I wake you? Were you napping?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I was.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s important. Something’s happened.”

  “What’s happened?” he asked. “Wait. I’ll be right down. There is no need for us to scream at one another. Perhaps you could make some coffee, if you can find the coffee. It has lately gone missing.”

  “Of course,” said Arden. She disappeare
d into the living room. Adam returned to his bedroom. He stood in front of the mirror and yawned. There was nothing worse than being roused untimely from a nap. These awful, interfering women, he thought. Running about like headless chickens shouting something’s happened! The sky is falling! He combed his hair and straightened his clothes, which had suffered from both his lunch and his nap, and went downstairs.

  After a moment Arden emerged from the kitchen with two cups of coffee. “Your milk’s gone horribly bad,” she said, “so we’ll have to drink it black.”

  “I prefer it black,” said Adam.

  She handed him his cup and sat on the sofa.

  “Where did you find the coffee?” he asked.

  “In the bread tin,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “There are all sorts of things in the bread tin,” she said, “except bread.”

  “It would be rather depressing to keep one’s bread in the bread tin,” Adam said. “So something has happened?”

  “Yes,” said Arden. “And I thought we should talk before this dinner.”

  “What has happened?”

  “Well,” said Arden. “I have changed my mind.”

  “How has this happened? The effect of Mr. Razaghi is potent! He has hardly been in our midst twenty-four hours. This coffee is very good. When I make coffee, it never tastes this good.”

  “You must measure it correctly,” said Arden. “How was your lunch with him?”

  “Nice enough. I found him charming in a slightly stupid, dewy-eyed, bushy-tailed way.”

  “He is not stupid,” said Arden.

  “I’ve no doubt he seems quite wise to you,” said Adam.

  “I have never claimed to be smart,” said Arden.

  “It is the wisest thing about you,” said Adam.

  “I like him very much,” said Arden.

  “So do I,” said Adam. “He is very pettable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it would be nice to put him in a cage and feed him nuts. And pet him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s not gay, if that’s what you mean. He has a fiancée. Or girlfriend. Or something like that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he has something like that. We all have something like that. So he has changed your mind?”

  “I have changed my mind,” said Arden. “But there is a problem. Caroline refuses to go out to dinner with us.”

  “Why?”

  “She says there is no point in her going. She will not change her mind. She seems very certain.”

  “Of course she seems very certain. Caroline is always certain. It is what I most admire about her. She is just certain about different things at different times. Often diametrically opposed things. There will come a time when she will find it is more fun to cooperate. And she will change her mind, just as you have sensibly done.”

  “It is the right thing, isn’t it?” asked Arden. “I mean the biography, and letting him do it. You don’t really think he’s stupid, do you?”

  “Oh, you don’t need to be smart to write a decent biography. Only dogged. And he is dogged, we know that. He has proved that by coming here.”

  “I’m quite excited about it, now,” said Arden. “How long do you suppose it will take?”

  “Years and years, I’m sure,” said Adam. “It will take him as long as he can find grants to support the writing of it. It’s the writing of it that will support him, not the publishing.”

  “Well, I hope he won’t take too long,” said Arden. “I want to read it. But now listen—what should we do about tonight? The whole point of going to Federico’s was to give him an opportunity to make his case to all three of us. Should we cancel it?”

  “We shall certainly not cancel it,” said Adam. “We shall go and have a nice dinner with him. Caroline can mope in her tower and feel righteous. She is so very good at it. We can drink champagne with the adorable Mr. Razaghi.”

  “All right, then,” said Arden. She stood up. “We’ll pick you up at about seven-thirty. Is Pete coming?”

  “I don’t know,” said Adam. “He’s disappeared. I assume he will come.”

  “Do you think if you talked to Caroline, she would come?”

  “No,” said Adam. “Let’s forget about Caroline for the nonce, and have a happy time.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Omar appeared in the front hall, promptly at 7:00, as he had been instructed. He was wearing a jacket and tie. He had interfered with cologne and pomaded his hair. He sat on one of the pewlike benches beside the door and tried not to sweat. It seemed very warm. After a moment, a door on the right side of the first gallery landing opened and Arden appeared. She was wearing a sleeveless striped silk shirtdress in sherberty shades of orange, red, and lilac; it was rather old-fashioned, and reminded Omar of a box of colored pencils—or a section of such a box. She looked very beautiful, and she knew it, for she blushed as she walked down the stairs.

  “I’m afraid Caroline is not going to join us,” she said.

  “Oh. That’s too bad,” said Omar.

  “She’s—well, I won’t make excuses for her. She’s being difficult. But Adam and I are happy to speak with you. And dine with you.”

  “Good,” said Omar. “Thank you. You look very beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” said Arden. “So do you. Should we go? Just let me say good night to Portia.” She disappeared down the hallway toward the kitchen. Omar opened the door and stepped out onto the portico. It was that lovely time of day when everything—the trees, the façade, even him, he knew—seemed gloriously lit. After a moment he heard the door open behind him. “There you are,” said Arden. “We’re going to take Adam’s car. So we’ve got to walk down to the millhouse, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s fine,” said Omar.

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take off these damn shoes,” said Arden. “They weren’t really made for walking. At least around here.”

  She bent down and unstrapped her shoes—beige, open-toed sandals with a heel. She carried them in one hand as they set off down the drive. “You must be tired of all this walking,” she said.

  “No. I like walking.”

  “So do I, but I get so tired of this route. It doesn’t change much, day to day.”

  “In some ways that’s better: it’s less distracting.”

  “I would welcome a little distraction,” said Arden.

  “Are you bored, living here?”

  “No,” said Arden. “It’s quiet, and I like that. And I think it’s a good place for Portia to grow up. I don’t want her to have all that junk that surrounds kids in the States. But there’s no avoiding some of it. American popular culture is so pernicious, especially when it comes to kids. Of course, the price you pay for that is no culture at all.” She laughed.

  “But do you like it here?”

  Arden looked around. So did Omar. The setting sun filtered thickly through the alleys of pines. The two stone pillars of the gate were covered in climbing wild roses. The air was fragrant.

  “Yes, I like it here,” said Arden. “I had a lot of drama early on in my life, a lot of moving around and inconstancy. Perhaps that’s why I like it here. No doubt Portia will grow up wanting just the opposite. You moved around, too, didn’t you, when you were young? From Iran to where?”

  “Toronto. Canada. And then I lived in Berkeley, California, before I went to Kansas.”

  “What were you doing in Berkeley?”

  “I worked in a restaurant.”

  “As a waiter?”

  “No, as a busboy.”

  “And then you went to Kansas?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about your parents? Are they still in Toronto?”

  “Yes,” said Omar. “My father is a surgeon. He’s very tyrannical, conservative. He has never forgiven me for not going to medical school. I come from a long line of doctors.”

  “But aren’t you getting a Ph.D.? Won’t you be a doc
tor then?”

  “If I write this book,” said Omar. “But it’s not really the same. At least not in my father’s eyes.”

  “What about your mother? Is she proud of you?”

  “No,” said Omar. “She would like me to be a doctor too. What about your parents? Where are they?”

  “They are both dead,” said Arden.

  “Oh,” said Omar, “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t really miss them,” said Arden. “They weren’t very good parents. Or people, for that matter. Well, my mother I hardly knew. She died when I was five. I think she killed herself, although technically it was an accident. I went to live with my grandmother then.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Ashland, Wisconsin. Nowhere, like here. I loved my grandmother. But then she died, and I moved to England, to live with my father. Or go to boarding school and visit my father. And now he is dead too. They are all dead.”

  Omar said nothing. They passed through the gate and turned onto the road.

  “I’m sorry,” said Arden. “I must sound morbid.”

  “No,” said Omar.

  “It’s just that I hate the past,” said Arden. “I hate my past.”

  “Why?” asked Omar.

  “It seemed so stupid. So random. There was no logic to it, or evolution. It was just bouncing around. That’s what I want to give Portia: a sense of stability, of home. I mean a home in every sense: even geographically. I think it’s important to be allied with a place: to think you come from someplace specifically. Do you feel that way about Iran?”

  “No,” said Omar. “Not really. We left there when I was ten. And Toronto never seemed like home, either, because there was always this idea that we might return to Iran one day, if things changed …”

  “What about Kansas?”

  “I’ve only been there a couple of years,” said Omar. “Perhaps when I have been there longer …” He remembered how he felt that night standing outside Yvonne’s house, the night he had lost Mitzie.