“I just don’t… what exactly is a Duat… boy, I wish I hadn’t left behind that piece of paper with your grandson’s phone number on it. What was his name? I think he needs to know that you’re a bit… confused.”

“I am not confused,” she answered, straightening her back and giving me a look that made me feel like a big meanie for picking on a little old lady. “I know more about what’s going on than you do if you don’t think your young man will help us.”

I gave up trying to reason with her and decided that it was probably better to humor her than point out the obvious. So I nodded, and made a conciliatory gesture. “Are you hungry, or would you like to have a little nap? Or perhaps take a little stroll around the neighborhood?”

She let her eyelids drop halfway. “I had a nap on the plane.”

“I suppose we could have dinner early—”

“No.” Mrs. P eyed me, her lips pursing at what she saw. “You need to be lithe to cross the Duat.”

“Hey, no judgments,” I said, tugging down my t-shirt. “I am entirely comfortable with myself and don’t allow people to body shame me. Yes, I could lose a few pounds, and yes, I stopped swimming because there was an outbreak of chlamydia at my local pool, but that’s no reason to look at me as if I was Sophea the Hippopotamus.”

Mrs. P stared at me in surprise.

I made an irritated gesture. “Okay, it wasn’t chlamydia—that’s some venereal disease that koalas get, but it was something that started with a C. Crypto-something. Whatever the reason, I stopped going to the Y every day for a swim, but that doesn’t give you the right to judge me. Viva la difference, that’s what I say! Everyone is beautiful in their own way, especially those women who refuse to conform to society’s stupid unrealistic standards of beauty!”

I took a deep breath to continue my tirade, but Mrs. P stopped me by gesturing to my feet. I’d worn the only slip-ons I owned through the airport, which were my sole pair of heels. “Your shoes, gel, your shoes. You can’t be lithe in those things. You’d likely wrench your ankle if you had to run more than a few blocks.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my shoes. “Oh, I thought you meant—never mind. Sorry I jumped to that conclusion. It’s just that body shaming is so prevalent these days.”

She took the towels that I had removed from her suitcase, and tucked them back into her luggage. “Why should you feel any shame about your body? You are round and fleshy where women are round and fleshy. Your man must enjoy that. My beau always took much pleasure in my breasts and hips. He often said that my hips could talk him into anything.”

I couldn’t help but note her wizened figure, with nonexistent breasts, and no sign of curved hips at all, and then was instantly ashamed of myself. I was doing the very same thing I objected to in others. “You go, girlfriend,” I told her, and as penance for my slipshod ways, allowed her to keep the two towels. “Well, then, I guess we could take a stroll around the block. You know, just to get a bit of fresh air and to see the neighborhood.”

“No.”

I sighed to myself. It was going to be a very long night if she continued to be so obstinate. “Would you like to see a movie? I’m not sure where we could find one in English, but—”

“I wish to attend a séance.”

“You what?” I sat down on the striped couch, and wondered if the jet lag had caused me to hear incorrectly. “A séance? For whom? Or rather, what?”

“Spirits, of course.” She toddled into the bathroom and returned with a roll of toilet paper.

“Of course. How silly of me. Whatever was I thinking?” I took a couple of seconds to stifle the urge to giggle somewhat hysterically, and said, “I wouldn’t know how to even begin to find someone who could conduct a séance for us—”

“Across the street,” she interrupted, moving to the mirror to examine herself. She patted her fluffy white hair and brushed off an imaginary speck of dirt from her sleeve. “The tearoom. They have séances every afternoon. Quickly, gel, or we won’t get my favorite table.”

I thought of pointing out that I hadn’t remembered seeing a tearoom across the street from the hotel—assuming they had tearooms in Munich (it sounded like an awfully British establishment)—and that even if one existed, just because they had them in the past, when Mrs. P was last in Munich, it didn’t follow that they continued to have such a thing in this day and age of relative enlightenment. All of that went through my head in a very short space of time, but I decided it was too convoluted to speak aloud, and instead duly rose.

“Change your shoes,” Mrs. P said helpfully as she opened the door to the hall.

“The only other pair I brought with me are my tennis shoes, in case I have the chance to walk through one of the Cairo museums before I fly home, and they aren’t at all fashionable,” I pointed out. “Certainly not something one would wear to a tea shop.”

“I just hope you don’t hurt yourself running,” she said in the manner of one imparting a dire warning, and sailed through the door.

“I’ll take that chance,” I said with a little roll of my eyes and followed her out of the room.

“You going out?” Hansel asked when the odd little elevator grumbled and lurched its way down to the ground floor with us in its steely clutches. I had to admit that I rather enjoyed the two wrought iron doors that you had to close before punching a button and pulling a crank to get the elevator to move, but the noises that emanated while it did so made me wonder when the last elevator safety examination had been held.

“Yes, we thought we’d take a look around outside,” I said, following Mrs. P when she headed toward the front door.

“You must leave your key here,” Hansel said, his hand outstretched. “It is the policy of the hotel.”

“But we’re just going—oh, whatever.” I trotted over to the desk and laid the big black key on his hand, pausing long enough to add, “You do know that those keys are pretty old, and not that secure, right?”

He pursed his lips. “What are you saying? You don’t like the key?”

“Not at all, they’re very art nouveau, but that’s probably because they’re at least a hundred years old, which means your door locks are the same age. I took a course in lock picking a year ago,” I said by way of explanation. “The instructor had a passion for old padlocks, and he said that a lot of locks shared keys. I was just pointing out that your keys might fall under that description.”