The shuttle board said 6:20 but the bay was empty except for a pigeon picking at a heel of bread near the curb. Gerald unfolded the laminate again, crease by crease, and held it under the yellow fluorescent overhang. The 6:20 slot had a small asterisk he hadn't noticed before. He turned the paper over.
He ate the custard tart in four bites, the last one still too hot, and dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin that disintegrated on contact. The guidebook was open to page 114 - three yellow flags and one pink one, and his pen had circled the tram stop in a ring so hard it went through to page 115. Eleven minutes. He left two euros on the saucer, stood before he'd meant to, and knocked the espresso he hadn't touched.
Dona Amélia tapped the cover with one coral fingernail and said, "This book - it's wrong about the azulejos on Rua do Século - I know because I taught there forty years. " Gerald's left thumb had already found the watch clasp, pressing the little ridge, but she was pulling a folded envelope from her cardigan pocket and smoothing it flat on the tablecloth, pointing to a hand-drawn map in blue ballpoint, and he stood there with his thumb still on the clasp. The 11:09 came and went - he heard the bell somewhere behind the bougainvillea - and neither of them looked up.
He pulled the phone from his shirt pocket and the screen lit up automatically - fourteen colored bars - each one a city, red for travel days, blue for museums, a green sliver on Tuesday that said "free time (1. 5 hrs). " His reading glasses were in the other pocket and he had to hold the phone at arm's length to see it, the way you hold something you're not sure you want to touch. The April light came flat and white across the tile table and made the screen hard to read - which was maybe why he tilted it, once, then again, then set it face-down next to Dona Amélia's envelope with its hand-drawn curve of the Rua do Século and the little X where the real azulejos were.
The bread crate had a cracked corner and the delivery man kept lifting it to show her, as if the crack were the point - and Dona Amélia kept waving at it with both hands as if it absolutely were not. Gerald had the window seat now - the one with the loose wicker that caught his trouser hem every time - and his jacket was hung on the chair back instead of folded across his lap. He turned the small white cup upside down on the saucer when it was empty, the way he'd seen the man at the next table do it, and when the boy came with the cloth Gerald held up two fingers without checking anything, not the watch, not the phone - not the door.
The gate agent tore the boarding pass along the perforation and handed back the stub, and Gerald tucked it into his breast pocket where the folded laminate used to make a stiff rectangular bulge against his ribs. He pressed his hand flat against his chest for a moment, the way you check for a wallet, feeling only the soft give of his own shirt. In the seat by the window, waiting for the jetway to open - he found the sticky note when he went for his passport - tram schedule on one side, nothing on the other - and he turned it over twice before folding it back the way it was and sliding it behind the card with the worn corner, the one with his blood type. He didn't look out the window when the plane lifted, but he did look at his wrist, and then he put his hand back in his lap.
The customs form asked for his occupation and he wrote "retired" in the little box - then looked at it, then crossed it out slowly with one line, not hard enough to hide it, just enough so he'd have to look twice to read it.
The woman behind him had a roller bag that kept bumping his heel.
At the carousel he found a plastic chair with a view of the belt and sat down, and the Lisbon envelope was in his jacket now - the fold softened from the heat of his pocket, and he smoothed it once against his knee and left his hand there.
When his bag came around he saw it, and then he let it go around again.
The immigration officer asked how long he was staying and Gerald said "two weeks" before he remembered he had changed the return ticket at the Lisbon airport, at the desk with the long queue, paying the fee without doing the math he would have done in February.
He put his passport back in the inside pocket and stood a moment in the fluorescent corridor while the crowd pushed past on both sides - then took it out again and looked at the new date stamped in blue ink, the way you look at a number to see if it's still the number you chose.
The Lisbon envelope was still in his jacket and he set it on top of the bag, on the flat part near the handle, so it wouldn't fold any worse.
He walked toward the exit doors and didn't count his steps.
The hotel key was brass, heavier than he expected - with a fob that said 214 in raised numerals he kept running his thumb across in the elevator. He set it on the nightstand next to the Lisbon envelope and neither of them moved for a while. The room had a window that opened inward on two hinges and he stood at it until the church across the street rang something - he counted five, then lost count, then stopped counting - and the sound finished and he was still at the window. He hadn't unpacked.
He found the notebook in the outer pocket of the bag, the one with the elastic strap across the cover and the ribbon marker still on the page where he'd written the April itinerary in two colors of ink. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at it for a moment, then closed it without reading it and put it in the nightstand drawer - under the Gideon Bible that was already there. The brass key was still on top of the nightstand and he picked it up and set it down again, 214 facing the ceiling. Outside, someone was sweeping the cobblestones with a wide straw broom, the sound coming up through the open window in long slow strokes, and he sat on the edge of the bed and listened until he couldn't hear it anymore - and then kept sitting.
