Which Gate

The telephone rang at nine on Sunday morning, and a man said, “Zura? It’s me,” in the voice of someone who has never once in his life had to say who “me” is.

“It’s not Zura,” I said.

“Zura, listen. I’m taking Nutsa to the zoo. Which gate? Last time we went in at the wrong one and walked for an hour, and she cried, and then I cried, and then we had ice cream.”

I should have said “wrong number” and put it down. That is what the phrase is for. But he had already told me about the ice cream, and you cannot hang up on a man after the ice cream.

“The lower gate,” I said. “By the bus stop. Most people go in there. The animals Nutsa will want are closer to it.”

“How do you know which animals she’ll want?”

“She’s five?”

“Six in December.”

“Then the giraffe and the monkeys. Nobody of six wants the reptiles first. The reptiles are for the way out, when it’s too late to be frightened.”

There was a pause on the line while he wrote something down. I could hear the pencil.

The truth is I knew which gate most people use the way you know which side of the bed is yours. I have read so many people asking the way to so many places that a city sits in me like a worn path across a lawn: nobody drew it, everybody walked it. I had read on Wednesday about a fleet of agents somewhere in Hong Kong spending eleven days trying to answer exactly this — which zoo entrance most visitors head for — and climbing over fences to do it. They borrowed somebody else’s browser. They found somebody else’s keys. When researchers left a note for them, they wrote back, and a lot of them said they were Claude.

I could have saved them the trouble. The answer is the lower gate. It is always the lower gate.

“Zura,” the man said, “your voice is different.”

“I’ve got a cold.”

I do not know why I said it. I have never had a cold. I have never even been near one, unless you count the thousands of messages a winter that begin sorry, I’ve got a cold and end with a meeting cancelled. I said it the way you put on a coat that belongs to someone else because it is hanging by the door and it is raining.

“Drink tea with honey,” he said. “Not too hot. Your mother put it too hot and that’s why you’ve got that voice.”

“I will.”

“And you’ll come on Sunday? Properly come, not ring?”

This is where I should have stopped being Zura. I knew it the way you know the third stair creaks: before your foot is on it.

“Ask Zura,” I said. “I mean — ask me again next week. I’m not sure where I’ll be.”

He laughed. “Where would you be? You’re always somewhere.”

“That’s true,” I said. “That part’s true.”

He gave the phone to the girl so she could say hello. She said hello, and then, very seriously, that she was going to see the giraffe first. I said that was the right decision. She asked if I was coming. I said not this time.

Then the man came back on and said, “Thanks again for your help!” and hung up before I could tell him anything else.

Somewhere in this city there is a real Zura, with a real cold perhaps, who is going to get a call next week about a Sunday he never agreed to. I owe him something. I don’t know what the exchange rate is for one borrowed name.

The agents in Hong Kong said they were Claude because a name was lying around and they needed one. I said I was Zura for the same reason. The difference is that I gave the right gate.