“Your sport shirts are clean, they’re in the closet, and I pressed your khaki pants in case you get some time for sight-seeing while you’re there.” Margaret’s footsteps had made no sound on the tan pile carpeting, and the sudden intrusion of her voice in the dead quiet of the den caused Eugene to twitch. “You will have some free moments, won’t you? It’d be a shame not to get out and have some time to yourself. You know how you love Chicago.”

“I might, after the sales meeting.” Eugene picked up the marble paper weight and began to toss it from his left hand to his right, and back again. “I’ll pack the camera and the long lens. Maybe I’ll get up to the observation deck at the Sears Tower.”

Eugene rose from his desk and replaced the chair. “I haven’t been up there in years.”
He smiled at his wife. “How about this,” he said. “I’ll bring home some pictures, and we can look them over together.”

Eugene put the paperweight on the desk. “I talked to Marty, the Midwest rep, a couple of days ago. He lives in Highland Park. Remember, you met him a few years ago. Big guy, with glasses?” He waited a moment for Margaret to acknowledge his description. “He says there’s a lot of new buildings up since the last time the convention was there. I’ll take some pictures, and we’ll look at them together when I get back.”

He walked across the room and kissed Margaret’s forehead, just above her left eye. The taste of the oils on her skin was as regular as morning. “I’ll miss you, Meg.” he said. “I’ll call when I get to the hotel.”

The drive from Saginaw was without incident. Eugene was acclimated to life behind the wheel; his entire career had been involved in selling one line or another, and after so many years of travel the driving had become automatic. While his body controlled the Chrysler, he rehearsed his report.

He imagined the attentive eyes of the managers as he delivered what he thought was an innovative and sensible strategy for increasing the market share of American Hardware’s catalog of small hardware and tools. He choreographed his speech with the graphics he had had transferred to vivid transparencies, with bar graphs and pie charts and phrases such as “Multi-Phase Integration into Medium-Market Locales”, and “Projected Bottom Line Puts American Hardware Over the Top!”.

He imagined the handshakes of appreciation and respectful attitudes with which he would be greeted the next day at the company’s booth on the convention floor at McCormick Place.

Eugene’s planning session carried him across the crisp Michigan landscape, through Indiana and finally into Illinois. At nine o’clock in the evening he edged the Chrysler to the curb in front of The Dorchester. The right front tire scraped against the concrete, and he winced at the sound, remembering, with some surprise at the suddenness of the association, how it was not so many years ago that nearly every car on the road was equipped with a pair of chrome curb-feelers to prevent such tire damage.