The guest lecturer rejoined with something I failed to hear, because the name of the hotel had arrested me, and for a moment I was unable to think clearly of anything. The folded piece of stationery I’d fished from my father’s coat had had that name printed on it: the Old Mission Hotel San Buenaventura. The two fingers, meeting in a steeple, and above it the simple cross.

Somehow I’d fallen behind, and now I pushed forward to join the little trio; they were all standing at the edge of the parking lot, looking out toward the street. For all my haste to reach them I had not thought of what to say; would they still be on the subject of the hotel? I wondered, but as I approached I heard the guest lecturer ask:

“Is there anywhere you’d recommend going tomorrow morning? My flight isn’t until five.”

“Hmm,” said one of them, moving aside so I could join them. “Well—”

“I’ve heard,” she went on, and her eyes swung from him to me, her breathing audible in the silence of the parking lot, “that the redwoods are a must.”

“Oh yes,” I heard myself reply. Suddenly the parking lot had grown very still and dark; even the cars on the street in front of us seemed to be moving without sound.

“There’s even one you can drive through? Is that true?”

She gave me a close look. It was clear that her question was meant particularly for me, and I was vaguely aware of the figures of my colleagues silently receding.

I struggled to speak for a moment. Of all the places she could have mentioned, why that one?

“Yes,” I said slowly. “That’s true, there is one you can drive through.”

“Have you been there?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Once.”

“Well, by the look on your face,” said the guest lecturer teasingly, “it can’t have been very fun.”

“No,” I said. “Well—it’s been so long now, and I went there with a … with a friend, who was visiting me from Ottawa.”

Astonishing, really, how painful that was still, I thought, like the pulse of an old toothache that is inexplicably revived. It was unlike me to speak of such things. It was because of the hotel; it had thrown me off course.

“Ottawa,” she said, eyebrows raised. “Is that in Canada?” I could see that my stumble over “friend” had not escaped her, as incapacitated as she was. “Is that where your accent is from? You’re Canadian?”

“No,” I said. “British, but that was very long ago.”

“I see,” she said. “Your accent’s very faint.”

The conversation, if it could be called that, was threatening to peter out.

“Hadn’t we better find your car?” I said.

“Yes, probably,” she replied, and smiled mysteriously. Then she took a few uncertain steps away from me, looking with expectation over the sea of parked cars.