Ritual Read Online Free PDF Page A

those two,’ said Charlie.
    Martin looked
around, his hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans. ‘You’re sure this
place has a bowling alley?’
    ‘Down on the
south side of town, next to the supermarket and the railroad depot. What the
folks from the historical district call the commercial district.’
    Charlie tugged
his well-thumbed copy of MARIA out of his sagging coat pocket, licked his
finger, and leafed through it until he found Alien’s Corners, population 671,
one gas station (daytimes only); two restaurants, Billy’s Beer & Bite and
The English Muffin; one boarding house, 313 Naugatuck, six guests only, no
dogs.
    MARIA was the
popular acronym for the guide called Motor-Courts, Apartments, Restaurants and
Inns of America. For Charlie, it was appropriate that it should have been a
woman’s name, because MARIA had been the mistress that had broken up his
marriage. MARIA was the siren who had lured him away from home, and sent him
driving around America in search of an illusory fulfilment that he had realized
years ago would never be his. He wasn’t bitter about it.
    He knew that he
would never be able to settle down, so the best thing he could do was to go on
driving around until some early-morning maid in some small mid-West hotel tried
to wake him up one day and found that she couldn’t.
    Founded in 1927
by a flannelette salesman called Wilbur Burke who had been stranded in rural
communities just once too often ‘sans beefsteak, sans bed’, MARIA had been the
travelling man’s Bible for twenty years. In his preface to the first edition,
Burke had written, ‘This guide is dedicated to every man whose Model A has let
him down somewhere in the vastness of the American continent, on endless plain
or wind-swept mountain, and who has been obliged through lack of local
knowledge to dine on Air Pie; and to seek his rest on the cushions of his back
seat.’
    Lately,
however, MARIA had been overtaken in stylishness and circulation by Michelin
and Dining Out in America. Salesmen flew to their destinations these days,
eating and sleeping high above the prairies which they once used to cross in
overloaded station wagons. But MARIA still sold 30,000 copies every year, and
that was enough to justify the perpetual travels of Charlie and his five
colleagues, constantly updating and correcting like the clerks in George
Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
    MARIA’s
restaurant inspectors managed on average to survive their jobs for three years.
At the end of three years, they were usually suffering from emotional
exhaustion, alcoholism, and stomach disorders. Very few inspectors were
married, but almost all of those who were went through separation or divorce.
Charlie had lost Marjorie; but he had outlasted the next-longest serving
inspector five times over.
    Mrs Verity
Burke Trafford, who owned MARIA, said without kindness that Charlie must have
been born a glutton; not only for food but for punishment. Charlie, in reply,
said nothing.
    Charlie walked
across the dappled shadows of the green towards the two elderly men, and Martin
followed him. Their feet made parallel tracks in the silvery moisture on the
grass. The old men watched them approach with their hands shading their eyes.
One of them was ruddy-faced, and blue-eyed, with the deceptively healthy looks
of high blood pressure. The other was sallow and bent, with tufts of white hair
that reminded Charlie of an old photograph he had once seen of an Indian scout
who had been scalped by Apaches.
    ‘Fine
afternoon,’ said Charlie, by way of greeting.
    ‘It’ll rain
again before nightfall,’ replied the ruddy-faced man. ‘You can make a bet on
that.’
    ‘Wonder if you
could help me,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m looking for a restaurant hereabouts.’
    ‘There’s Billy’s
down by the depot,’ said the ruddy-faced man. Although the church clock was
clearly visible through the maples, he took out a pocket watch and examined it
for a while as if he wasn’t sure