Hard News

downtown Atlanta for an hour. He was astonished at the changes. It was clean and landscaped. He laughed at the number of streets with “Peachtree” in them—laughed because he remembered his daddy saying most people thought that referred to peaches when in fact the name came from “pitch tree,” like tar. He passed the street named Boulevard and laughed again.
    This was a town where it seemed you could laugh at something like that and nobody would think you were crazy—as long as you eventually stopped laughing and went about your business. Boggs went into a luggage store and bought an expensive black-nylon backpack because he’d always wanted one, something made for long-distance carrying. He slipped the money and his change of shirt into the bag, which put him in mind of clothes.
    He passed a fancy men’s store but felt intimidated by the weird, headless mannequins. He walked on until he found an old-time store, where the fabrics were mostly polyester and the colors mostly brown and beige. He bought a tan off-the-rack suit and a yellow shirt, two pairs of black-and-red argyle socks and a striped tie. He thought this might be too formal for a lot of places so he also bought a pair of double-knit brown slacks and two blue short-sleeve sport shirts. He thought about wearing the new clothes and having the clerk bag his jeans and work shirt. But they’d think that was odd and they might remember him.
    Which probably wouldn’t matter at all. So
what
if they remembered him? He hadn’t done anything illegal here. And so
what
if they thought he was odd? If he’d been a rich Buckhead businessman who’d decided on a whim to buy some clothes and wear them home nobody’d think twice.
    But he wasn’t a businessman. He was a former convict. Who wasn’t supposed to leave New York. And so he paid fast and left.
    He walked into a Hyatt and strolled past the fountains. Boggs had always loved hotels. They were places of adventure, where nothing was permanent, where you could always leave and go elsewhere if you weren’t happy. He liked the meeting rooms, where every day there was a new group of people, learning things for their jobs or maybe learning a new skill, like real estate investing or how to become Mary Kay pink-Buick saleswomen.
    Every guest in a hotel stayed there because they were traveling.
    And a traveling person, Randy Boggs knew, was a happy person.
    He went into the washroom on one of the banquet room levels and, in a spotless stall, changed into his suit. He realized then that he was still wearing his beat-up loafers with the 1943 steel penny in the slit on the top. That afternoon he’d get some new shoes. Something fancy. Maybe alligator skin or snakeskin. He looked at himself in the mirror and decided he needed more color; he was pretty pale. And he didn’t like his hair—very few men wore it slicked back the way he did nowadays. They wore it bushier and drier. So, after lunch: a haircut too.
    He walked out of the john and into the coffee shop. He was seated and the waitress brought him an iced tea without his saying a word. He’d forgotten about this Southern custom. He ordered his second steak since he’d been Outside—a sandwich on garlic bread—and this one, along with the Michelob that went with it, was much better than the first. Boggs considered this his first real meal of freedom.
    By three he’d bought new shoes and a new hairstyle and was thinking of taking the MARTA train out to the airport. But he liked the hotel so much he decided to stay the night.
    He checked in and asked for a room close to the ground.
    “Yessir. Not a problem, sir.”
    He tried out the room and the bed and felt comforted by the closeness of the walls. He realized only then that he was uncomfortable in the spaciousness of Atlanta. With their tall, dark canyons of buildings, the streets of New York had made him feel less vulnerable. In Atlanta, he felt exposed. He took a nap in the darkened room and then went out for dinner. He saw an airline ticket office and went inside.
    He walked up to the United counter. He asked the pretty ticket agent what was nice.
    “Nice?”
    “A nice place to go.”
    “Uh—”
    “Outside of the country.”
    “Paris’d be beautiful. April in Paris, you know.”
    Randy Boggs shook his head. “Don’t speak the language. Might be a problem.”
    “Interested in a vacation? We have a vacation service. Lots of good packages.”
    “Actually I was thinking about moving.” He saw