What I Loved

toured a mall in another. I had behaved as if I hadn't wanted to find them. Moreover, at every turn Giles had seemed delighted by my pursuit. Both his telephone conversation and his note had artfully combined the sinister with the flirtatious. Giles didn't seem to be worried about the police. If he was, why would he announce his every move? And Mark seemed to be in no danger from Giles. He had willingly jumped on one plane after another with his friend, or lover.
    By the time the young woman behind the long desk at the Opryland Hotel was tracing the map of its myriad wings with a green pen and welcoming me for the third time to "the biggest hotel in the world," I had already thought myself into a hole. Another hour and a half passed before I finally located my room with the help of an older man in a green uniform whose name tag designated him only as "Bill." William is a common name, and yet the four letters on his chest jarred me when I saw them.
    I left a written message for Mark at the desk and another on his voice mail. After that, I decided to walk however many miles necessary to his room and wait for him and Giles to return. But the very thought of journeying once again through that interminable landscape of restaurants and boutiques sickened me. I didn't feel well. It wasn't just my back that hurt me. I hadn't slept very much, and a dull but persistent headache hung like a weight in my temples.
    As I walked past the endless rows of shops, with their overdressed dolls and plush bears, I lost hope. It hardly seemed to matter anymore whether I found Mark, and I wondered if Giles had known that his message would catapult me into a maze of artifice beyond anything I had ever experienced. As I trudged on, I looked into a store at masks of Laurel and Hardy, a rubber replica of Elvis Presley, and several mugs embossed with Marilyn Monroe, her skirt flying.
    Only a minute later, I spotted Mark and Giles on an escalator coming up from the floor below me. Instead of calling out to them, I retreated behind the pillar of a small Georgia mansion to watch them. I felt both cowardly and silly, but I wanted to observe them together. Both of them were wearing men's clothes. They were smiling at each other and looked relaxed, like two normal young men out on a lark. Mark's hip jutted out as he stood on the moving step, and I heard him talking to Giles. "Those dogs were pretty wild, and did you check out the ass on the salesman? It was a mile wide, man."
    It wasn't what Mark said that made me catch my breath. It was that the register, the cadence, the tone of his voice were all unfamiliar to me. For years I had seen in Mark the shifting colors of a chameleon, had known that he changed according to the circumstances in which he found himself, but at the sound of that unknown voice, the disquiet that had been lurking in me for so long seemed to find its horrible confirmation, and while I shrank from it, I also felt a tremor of victory. I had proof that he was really somebody else. I stepped out from behind the pillar and said, "Mark."
    The two turned around and stared at me. They looked genuinely surprised. Giles recovered first, strode toward me, and stopped only inches from where I was standing. He brought his face close to mine, and without thinking I moved my head away from the intimate gesture. But as soon as I had done it, I felt I had made a mistake. Giles grinned. "Professor Hertzberg," he said. "What brings you to Nashville?" He put out his right hand, but I didn't take it. He kept his pale face very close to me as I searched for an adequate reply, but nothing came. Giles had asked the question I had been asking myself. I didn't know why I had come to Nashville. I looked at Mark, who was standing three or four feet behind Giles.
    Giles continued to examine me. He tilted his head to the side, waiting for an answer, and I noticed that he kept his left hand in his pocket as he fingered something inside it. "I have to talk to Mark," I said. "Alone."
    Mark's head drooped. I noticed that he was standing with his toes turned inward, like an unhappy child. His knees sagged for an instant before he caught himself and straightened up. I guessed that he was drugged.
    "I'll let the two of you talk, then," Giles said cheerfully. "As you may well imagine, this hotel is a rich source of inspiration for my work. So many artists forget the fertile landscape that is commerce in America. I still have a lot to peruse." He smiled, waved, and