Waking up with the image of his vivid dream in his mind, Elliot opted to ignore it. He didn’t have time for psychoanalysis. Today would be the day that he would begin to see concrete progress on his travelogue. He negated the more reasonable impulse of breakfast to the stronger ambition of setting up some halfway functional workspace. For that he needed at least a table, if not a desk, and a chair. He frowned as he surveyed his rather Spartan accommodations: a bed, a nightstand, a small lamp. This simply wouldn’t do. But it would have to do. He put the lamp on the floor, moved the nightstand into position where he could sit on the bed and study a loose-leaf notebook labeled “Travelogue” on the binder.
Inside the binder was a fresh ream of loose-leaf notepaper, a copy of (Fodor’s) Guide to Washington, D.C.: Our Nation’s Capital, and some written instructions (where?) Ed had provided before sending Elliot off into the wild blue yonder (in a prepaid rented car).
Tucked into an inside plastic pocket were the auto rental papers Elliot had grabbed at the last minute before abandoning the car at the repair shop in Virginia. A passing glance reminded him that the car was only paid for six weeks. He’d have to make immediate and substantial progress if he was to complete his task in the allotted amount of time. Ed had characteristically left the whole arrangement casual and without firm parameters within which to work.
“Is six weeks really enough time to write a travelogue?” Elliot had asked.
Eddie assured him, “Of course! Of course! I’ve written dozens of these. It’ll take you no time at all. Just go take some notes. Don’t worry about coming home with a finished product. We can do that later.”
“What about pictures?”
“Sure, fine. If you want to take pictures, by all means do so. Just don’t take a lot of time with it. Just get it done! I should be home from Europe well before then. And if I’m not, I’ll call you.”
“Wait,” Elliot pleaded as Ed shut the taxi door behind him. “How will I contact you with any questions?”
“Airport! On the double!” Ed tapped the plexiglass to signal the taxi driver to go. As the taxi moved off, he called back to Elliot, “E-mail! Just e-mail your questions and I’ll get back to you …”
Elliot gave a weak wave and said aloud to himself, “What’ll I do for a camera?” He looked at the key in his hand and then at the late model automobile with little idea what one had to do with the other.
This, of course, was the wrecked automobile that was now abandoned at a small repair garage near Winchester, Virginia, two hours away from Washington, DC awaiting an insurance adjuster’s final pronouncement of its fate.
As if waking from a daydream, Elliot realized he had been staring motionless at nothing for several minutes. Enough, he thought angrily to himself, and was just about to draw an six week calendar on a blank page to mark his progress with, when there came a soft rap at the door. Maintaining his ready posture to make his first significant pencil scratch upon his work, he looked up and said, “Yes, come in.”
Benny timidly stuck his head in through the crack in the doorway and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“No trouble at all,” said Elliot, holding his pencil at the ready in a valiant effort to look busy and productive.
“I know you want to work on your travelogue,” Benny said, “but I wonder if you could do me a big favor.”
“Of course,” said Elliot, hoping he had sufficiently masked his ambivalent impulse at the request.
Benny said, “I could really use another set of hands to move something out of the Herald office.”
“Uh… uh… ”
“It really won’t take too long.”
“When did you want to do this?”
“I’ve got a couple of guys with a truck meeting me there in a little while.”
Elliot looked down at his notebook and blank pages. He would have had to get up to sharpen his pencil anyway. “Sure, no problem,” he said as he pushed the night stand aside. “I’ll get dressed and meet you downstairs.”
thermodynamics of ideas 