Read Online Travellers in Magic by Lisa Goldstein - Free Book Online Page A

and green stones.
    When he paid the check he realized that he still didn’t know what country he was in. The first bill he took out of his wallet had a 5 on each corner and a picture of some kind of spiky flower. The ten had a view of the ocean, and the one, somewhat disturbingly, showed a fat coiled snake. There was what looked like an official seal on the back of all of them, but no writing. Illiterates, he thought. But he would remember soon enough, or Debbie would come back.
    Back in his room, changing into his swim trunks, he thought of his passport. Feeling like a detective who has just cracked the case he got out his money belt out from under the mattress and unzipped it. His passport wasn’t there. His passport and his plane ticket were missing. The traveller’s checks were still there, useless to him without the passport as identification. Cold washed over him. He sat on the bed, his heart pounding.
    Think, he told himself. They’re somewhere else. They’ve got to be—who would steal the passport and not the traveller’s checks? Unless someone needed the passport to leave the country. But who knew where he had hidden it? No one but Debbie, who had laughed at him for his precautions, and the idea of Debbie stealing the passport was absurd. But where was she?
    All right, he thought. I’ve got to find the American consulate, work something out.… Luckily I just cashed a traveller’s check yesterday. I’ve been robbed, and Americans get robbed all the time. It’s no big thing. I have time. I’m paid up at the hotel till—till when?
    Annoyed, he realized he had forgotten that too. For the first time he wondered if there might be something wrong with him. Overwork, maybe. He would have to see someone about it when he got back to the States.
    He lifted the receiver and called downstairs. “Yes, sor?” the man at the desk said.
    â€œThis is Room 1012,” Charles said. “I’ve forgotten—I was calling to check—How long is my reservation here?”
    There was a silence at the other end, a disapproving silence, Charles felt. Most of the guests had better manners than to forget the length of their stay. He wondered what the man’s reaction would be if he had asked what country he was in and felt something like hysteria rise within him. He fought it down.
    The man when he came back was carefully neutral. “You are booked through tonight, sor,” he said. “Do you wish to extend your stay?”
    â€œUh—no,” Charles said. “Could you tell me—Where is the American consulate?”
    â€œWe have no relations with your country, sor,” the man at the desk said.
    For a moment Charles did not understand what he meant. Then he asked, “Well, what about—the British consulate?”
    The man at the desk laughed and said nothing. Apparently he felt no need to clarify. As Charles tried to think of another question—Australian consulate? Canadian?—the man hung up.
    Charles stood up carefully. “All right,” he said to the empty room. “First things first.” He got his two suitcases out of the closet and went through them methodically. Debbie’s carrying case was still there and he went through that too. He checked under both mattresses, in the nightstand, in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Nothing. All right then. Debbie had stolen it, had to have. But why? And why didn’t she take her carrying case with her when she went?
    He wondered if she would show up back at the office. She had worked down the hall from him, one of the partners’ secretaries. He had asked her along for companionship, making it clear that there were no strings attached, that he was simply interested in not travelling alone. Sometimes this kind of relationship turned sexual and sometimes it didn’t. Last year, with Katya from accounting, it had. This year it hadn’t.
    There was still