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Background Information |
Text Analysis |
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Romantic Roundabout
16.
He nodded: ¡°She was a gardener. I called her former boss, but all he knows is that she left to get married.¡±
17.
Well, that¡¯s how it began. Sidney hung around that line and the museum for the next three or four days.
The D.C. police looked into the case, but they couldn¡¯t do much; after all, no crime had been committed.
Maybe she had just changed her mind, they reasoned. Somehow I didn¡¯t believe that.
18.
One day, after about two weeks, I told Sidney of my theory. ¡°If she¡¯s a traveler, and if you wait long
enough, you¡¯ll see her coming through that door someday.¡± He turned and looked at the front entrance
as though he had never seen it before, while I went on explaining about Maryanne¡¯s figures on the laws of probability.
19.
Sidney went to work for Maryanne as a clerk. ¡°I had to get a job somewhere, didn¡¯t I?¡± he said sheepishly.
Neither of us ever spoke of Kate anymore, and we dropped the subject of the laws of probability, but I noticed
that Sidney observed every person who entered
that most visited of all museums.
20.
Maryanne tired of life in the nation¡¯s capital about a year later, and she moved to New Mexico.
Sidney took over the stand, expanded it, and soon had a very nice little business.
21.
Then came yesterday. It was spring and the tourists had descended on Washington, as they do every year.
There was an endless stream of them, as usual. What made yesterday different began with a great noise.
22.
Sidney cried out and the next thing I knew, there were souvenirs and cards, dolls, and who-knows-what flying all
over the place. Sidney had leaped over the counter and upset everything in sight. He ran across the floor
and grabbed a young woman who was standing not ten feet from my window. She was small and dark and had
an interesting face.
23.
For a while they just hung on to each other, laughing and crying and saying things which had no meaning.
She¡¯d say a few words like, ¡°It was the other one, the one down the street, the one called the castle on
the mall,¡± and he¡¯d kiss her speechless and tell her the many things he¡¯d done to try to find her. What
apparently had happened, three years ago, was that Kate had gone to a different building. When she was young,
her family had taken her to a part of the Smithsonian where the plane in which Charles Lindbergh had flown
across the Atlantic Ocean was. She remembered where it was, but she didn¡¯t think that they would move it.
She had waited at another museum for days and had spent all her money trying to find Sidney.
Finally, she got a job as a gardener with the Department of the Interior, working on the grounds of various
government buildings around town.
24.
¡°You mean you¡¯ve been here all the time?¡± Sidney gasped incredulously.
25.
She nodded.
26.
¡°But everybody visits the Air and Space Museum! You mean you¡¯ve been here for three years and never come
through those doors before? I¡¯ve been here all the time, waiting and waiting for the day to come,
watching everyone who came here¡¡±
27.
She began to look pale. She looked over at the doors and said in a weak voice, ¡°No, I¡¯ve never been in here
before. But Sidney, for almost three years I¡¯ve been working on the grounds around this very building! I¡¯ve
thought about coming in here often, but I never did before today. I just never go around to it.¡± Then she threw
her arms around him and they both began to cry again.
28.
What a wonderful drama had unfolded before my eyes! It¡¯s too bad Maryanne couldn¡¯t have seen it, too.
The wonderful thing is how the laws of probability worked so hard and so long until they finally got Kate
to walk through those front doors of ours.
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