Spencerville

truffles. He told himself he did not miss this kind of food, then admitted that he did. But if he wound up in Spencerville, he’d get a couple of good cookbooks. The Porters could do the vegetables, he’d do the meat, and maybe Annie could learn continental pastry. Maybe not. What difference did it make? And, in any case, he had no idea where he was going to wind up. The point was, this brief sojourn in Washington had highlighted the differences between here and Spencerville—not that they needed to be highlighted; they were monumental enough.
    In some strange and perverse way, however, he missed this place. He had to admit that. Charlie Adair knew that, which was why he’d brought him here. Keith kept telling himself he wouldn’t live in Washington again, and he couldn’t live in Spencerville. So he’d find a neutral corner of the world where he and Annie could be happy and at peace.
    He finished dinner and left the room. Downstairs, he asked the doorman to get him a taxi. Keith told the driver, “Georgetown.”
    The taxi made its way through the tail end of rush hour traffic and crossed Rock Creek at the M Street bridge. On M Street, Georgetown’s main commercial street, they passed a number of his old haunts, which conjured up memories of bright and beautiful young people at the bars or sitting in booths, discussing art, literature, and travel, and sometimes they’d discuss sports, too. But these were all hors d’oeuvres, the things you nibbled on before the main course, which was politics and power.
    Keith directed the driver past his old apartment on Wisconsin Avenue, then down some side streets where friends lived, or had once lived, including streets on which lived women he’d known. He didn’t see anyone he knew on the streets, which was just as well, he thought.
    He tried to picture Annie here and realized that she would be perplexed and perhaps bewildered by this world. Even the simple act of telling a doorman you wanted a taxi would be alien to her. Of course she’d pick it up quickly, but that didn’t mean she’d enjoy urban living, not even in the quaint streets of Georgetown. No, she’d feel dislocated and she’d become dependent on him, and that would lead to resentment, and when a woman was resentful—who knew where that would lead?
    They could live in the suburbs, of course, or the exurbs, and he could commute, but he pictured phoning her out in Virginia or Maryland at eight P.M. and telling her he had a meeting that would last until midnight. Younger couples in Washington and elsewhere led this kind of existence, but they were in the striving mode of their lives, and both spouses usually had careers, and one of them hadn’t spent most of their lives in a rural town of fifteen thousand people.
    She’d adjust, of course, and probably not complain, because that was how she was. But it would be such an uneven relationship; it would be his world, and his job, and his friends, and he no longer cared for this world, that job, or those friends and colleagues.
He
would be miserable.
    But maybe not. That was the thought that kept nagging at him. He knew he didn’t want to impress her with the so-called glamour and excitement of Washington cocktail parties, formal dinners, important people, and power.
He
wasn’t impressed, and he doubted she would be. On the other hand, maybe a year or two wouldn’t be bad, as long as it was finite. During that time, maybe the situation in Spencerville would resolve itself. He played around with this thought, then said, “Could it work?”
    The cabbie glanced back. “Yes, mister?”
    “Nothing. Take a right here.” Keith read the name on the cabbie’s license—Vu Thuy Hoang. He asked the man, “Do you like Washington?”
    The man, from long practice and with the inherent politeness of the Vietnamese, replied, “Yes. Very good city.”
    Like so many of his displaced compatriots who lived and worked in the capital of the country that had tried to help and succeeded in failing, this man, Keith thought, had suffered. He didn’t know how or to what extent, but there was a story of suffering in Vu Thuy Hoang’s history that would shame most Americans, like himself. Keith didn’t want to know the story but asked the man, “What part of Vietnam are you from?”
    Used to the question from one too many Vietnam veterans, he replied quickly, “Phu Bai. You know?”
    “Yes. Big air base.”
    “Yes, yes. Many Americans.”
    “Do you go