“I have them at the hotel.” The words are out of his mouth before he recognizes how suggestive they sound. Behind the bar Cyclops Bartender realizes too, shakes his head.
“Are you inviting me to your room?” Her hand on his shoulder again.
Adam’s got just enough bravado left to smile. “Would you like me to invite you to my room?”
She nods, and he sets a twenty on the bar.
As Adam helps Cecily into her leather jacket, Cyclops Bartender looks at him with equal parts envy and anger. And he can’t resist.
“Adam Zoellner,” he says, taking Cecily’s extended hand. “That’s my name.”
* * *
Thank God for hotel cleaning staff.
When Adam left that morning before 6:00 A.M., it looked as though his suitcase had exploded, something he completely forgot until the moment he’s sliding the key card into the slot, Cecily indecently close behind him. But when he opens the door and taps on the track lighting, everything is in perfect order, clothes folded neatly on the luggage rack, shoes lining the wall, the E&E graphic novels and the sides for the next day stacked on the desk.
Out of long-established habit, he takes off his coat and empties his pockets on the dresser—keys to his car and apartment (both in LA and completely useless), wallet, spare change, phone. Fuck, he’s missed two more calls.
“Your room is bigger than mine.” Cecily walks toward the window, pulls aside quilted drapes to reveal the shimmering skyline. “Your view is better, too.”
He contemplates saying it’s a better vista now that she’s in it, rethinks, and joins her by the glass. It’s frigid here, too, and he fights back a shiver, shudders freely a half second later when Cecily runs fingers down the back of his neck, rubs her ridiculously soft cheek against his.
“I have a confession,” she whispers. “I’ve seen everything you’ve ever been in. Like, I even tracked down a tape of Goners.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” He smiles, cock fighting viciously against his pants, because, yes, it is a turn-on when a model tells you she’s seen your obscure work. “There’s a reason some pilots don’t go.”
“I think you’re talented.”
“Do you now?”
Kissing, kissing, more kissing. Against the window, cold glass on his bare head. Against the wall, her hands fisting his sweater. She’s got him in the plush chair, hovering above him. Then she’s in his lap. When she finally breaks contact, her lips are swollen.
“I’ll be right back.” She struts toward the bathroom.
Moving toward the bed, Adam starts to take off his thin gray sweater but pauses at the blinking message light on the hotel phone, glances at his cell.
His grandparents are getting older; he should probably check.
Five messages from Phoebe on the hotel phone, the initial one placed mere minutes after he’d left. In the first two, her voice is too wet and raw for Adam to understand what she’s saying. Crush in his guts that she’s been trying to reach him all day and he’s been playing darts with a jeans model. Midway through the third message, he’s almost pieced events together, when Cecily reappears wearing a lace thong and a matching bra. His expression makes her face fall. Sitting on the chair, she crosses her legs.
Phoebe’s fifth and last voice mail, left two hours ago, is clear: “The funeral is tomorrow at two. You don’t need to come or anything. But, I dunno, maybe you could call me?”
On the nightstand the alarm clock reads 2:15 A.M., which he thinks puts things after four in Chicago.
“Your girlfriend?” Cecily asks flatly.
“Not really…”
“Don’t worry, it’s late anyway—”
“Her brother, he’s, um … dead.”
The words take a second to register. “Oh, God.” Bones in Cecily’s face shift, and he realizes her beauty is a tad north of freakish, absently wonders if she was teased in high school. “I’m so sorry.”
“The funeral’s tomorrow—today, I guess … I should. I have to go.”
On her feet (still in her underwear, but on her feet), Cecily is talking him down, explaining there probably aren’t any flights leaving for a few hours, telling him to pack a bag. He must look confused, because she offers her knitting satchel with the pig on it, starts removing balls of yarn and needles. Finally he nods, throws in a change of underwear, nothing close to a suit, but he has a pair of black pants and a different gray sweater, phone charger, dress shoes.
“Um, when’s your call tomorrow?” Cecily is miraculously back in her clothes.
“Not until four; I only have the pool scene.”
“I can explain to Mick and the crew, but maybe you should have your agent call somebody.” The way she’s saying this, Adam realizes leaving could really, really screw up his career. “I mean, especially if you’re not back by Friday…”
Friday, where he has what’s slated to be another fourteen-hour day of filming, is all of twenty-one hours away, and Adam has no idea how long it will take to get to Chicago from Vancouver. Still, he nods, tells Cecily he’ll have Marty reach out, that he’ll fly in for the day and then take a red-eye back. She looks less than convinced about the quality of this plan. Still, she calls a car service and rides the elevator down to the lobby to wait with him for the black Lincoln.
“Good luck.” She squeezes his hand, adds, “Godspeed.”
* * *
As Cecily predicted, the entire airport is on skeleton crew when he arrives shortly after three. It takes a while to locate an airline employee who can sell him a ticket, and she yawns apologetically through the transaction. Adam will have a layover in Phoenix, Houston, or Salt Lake City. If he can wait until two, there’s a direct flight to Chicago.
“I wouldn’t take that one, though,” the yawning clerk advises. “It’ll probably get canceled; they’re expecting weather in the afternoon.”
Salt Lake leaves earliest and seems his only chance at getting in anywhere near the time of the funeral. So Adam plunks down his credit card for a ticket costing more than a month’s rent. After that, it seems prudent to find a phone booth, call his agent, and see if it’s possible not to get fired.
Knowing Marty will be royally pissed when he hears of Adam’s misadventures, and also knowing Marty won’t be in the office until ten, Adam leaves the message for him there and hopes everything will magically be resolved by the time he lands in Utah.
The voice mail picks up at Phoebe’s parents’ house, so he leaves a message, saying he’s on the way and will call during his layover.
“I’ll be there soon,” he says. And then he’s hurrying through the nearly empty security line and echoey terminal, as if that could help him keep the promise.
* * *
Ninety minutes and a spectacularly uncomfortable nap on the floor later, he’s nodding absently at the woman in 16A as he stows Cecily’s knitting bag in the overhead compartment and collapses into 16B. Seat belt buckled, impotent cell phone switched off. There’s pressure in his ears as the plane speeds up and propels into the brightening sky. Still in his coat, still freezing, Adam tries to rest his head on his shoulder in a way that won’t result in a neck kink, closes his eyes.
Darts with Cecily only they’re not darts, but arrows he fires from a giant bow, and it’s not the bar, but a grand venue where crowds cheer.
Sharp squeeze of his hand.
Adam pops awake and finds the girl in the window seat is gripping his wrist on the armrest they share. Blushing, she lets go.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I don’t fly a lot.”
Even half asleep Adam knows he should say something about air travel being extremely safe.
“It’s just a little turbulence,” he says, and Jesus f-ing Christ he hopes he’s been turning in better performances on set. “They haven’t even turned on the ‘fasten seat belt’ light.” Adam points to the panel above their heads. His finger is still in the air as the pilot comes on the speaker announcing they’ve hit a patch of rough
air and he’s turning on the seat belt sign.
Adam smiles. “Now you can panic.”
The girl laughs. She’s cute, nymphlike. “I’m Callie.”
“Adam.”
“So, are you starting out or heading home?” Her voice is still shaky, eyes terrified and wide, so he tells her that he was working in Vancouver but has to go to Chicago for a funeral, labels Phoebe his “best friend,” which is true. Callie says appropriate conciliatory things, and once she determines the dead person was not someone personally close to Adam, asks polite questions about what he’s working on. She reacts with genuine enthusiasm when he tells her he’s an actor and they’re making an E&E origins show. She even claims to have watched a few episodes of Go Go Trons with her nephew.
“Wow, that’s wow.” She lowers her lids, then raises her eyes in a way he’s pretty sure she intends to be seductive. “I’d have flown more if I’d known you could meet TV stars.”
The stewardess comes by offering plastic tumblers of soda and pretzel packets, and Adam realizes his jaw isn’t clenched anymore and he’s no longer shivering, that he’s momentarily forgotten how tired he is.
Before Callie even sips her Diet Coke, he’s devoured his snack, remembers the last thing he ate was a different handful of pretzels fourteen hours ago.
“Here.” Callie hands him her own pretzels. “I stopped for breakfast on the way to the airport.”
As he eats, she tells him about Salt Lake City, jokes it’s not just Mormons. Originally Adam thought she was barely into her twenties, but as she talks it becomes evident she’s not a girl but a woman who knows how to work personal space—a light touch of his elbow, subtle bump of her shoulder to his. Perhaps it’s just habit, but he finds himself flirting back.
Callie explains she’s an assistant in a dermatologist’s office and writes the name of a lotion on a cocktail napkin when he tells her how the Rowen makeup makes his head itch. “This stuff is a godsend,” she says. “It’ll keep you ageless.”
As the plane begins its descent, she asks when his connection leaves. “If you’ve got time, we could grab a coffee?”
So totally something he would have been up for yesterday, or last week, or any number of days before Phoebe’s messages.
Since it’s only thirty-seven minutes before his next flight, Adam doesn’t have to lie.
“That’s too bad.” She sighs. “Well, maybe you’ll come back for a proper visit, or I’ll get out to California one of these days.”
“Yeah, that’d be fun.” He nods but doesn’t give her his info even when she says she wrote her number on the napkin.
Stuck in a holding pattern, they land fifteen minutes late. Hurriedly handing Callie her bag from the overhead bin, he calls a quick good-bye and sprints down the jetway. Behind him he can feel her deflate.
Ultimately there’s no need to rush; monitors list his connection as canceled. As is the flight to Chicago scheduled two hours later. In fact, several flights to Midwestern cities he’s never been to—Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis—are no-gos.
Callie appears next to him, roller suitcase in tow.
“There must be bad weather,” she says.
As if further proof is needed, CNN Airport Network is showing a puffy-coated reporter braving wind and sleet above the headline: SNOWSTORMS PUMMEL THE MIDWEST.
They both stare at the screen.
“You can stay with me,” Callie offers. “You’re not going to make the funeral, and I don’t have to work until Monday. I can show you the city.”
There’s something creepy about the offer, but also sweet.
“That’s really nice, but I need to get to her. Maybe I can fly nearby and drive the rest of the way?”
Callie opens her mouth as if she’s going to protest but changes course. “I’ll stick around until you’re rebooked, just in case.”
“You don’t need to do that—”
“It’s no big deal.”
Protesting more will achieve nothing, and a line of grumbling passengers is already forming at the United counter, so he agrees and gets in the queue.
“This way you’ll have a place to crash if you end up shipwrecked in Salt Lake.”
Flash of what it would be like to stay with this girl. Blond hair splayed across pink sheets, golden throat under his lips, a lacy negligee he’ll pull up to expose her breasts, let it cover her face like a veil.
He shivers, cold again.
Clocks all over announce it’s almost 10:00 A.M., noon in Chicago, he’s pretty sure. Adam starts to run fingers through his hair but hits skin and remembers that, in addition to likely missing Chase Fisher’s funeral, he’ll soon be late for work. Work on a project with hints of brilliance hidden behind its too pretty cast, a project where he beat out hundreds of other actors for an iconic role. He needs to call his agent.
Apologizing to Callie, he checks voice mail on his finally working cell phone.
Four messages from Marty in varying degrees of distress, each first relaying the calls and exaggerations he’s made thus far on Adam’s behalf, then insisting Adam call immediately. One message from Cecily, asking if he got in okay. Another from his mother he simply skips.
There’s a message from Phoebe, voice pebbles and blood, telling him not to worry if he doesn’t get there in time for the funeral, giving directions to her father’s house and the cemetery. “Thank you, Adam, I … thank you.”
Callie’s eyes on him.
For the second time in a dozen hours, a very pretty girl is looking at him expectantly, and all he can think of is the tender flesh of Phoebe’s earlobes and the way she braids her fingers together and clasps them to her heart when she’s sad. Phoebe, who over the years he’s hurt countless times, countless ways. When, he wonders, did it become his lot in life to disappoint beautiful women?
Finally he’s at the desk where a rep tells him there’s no way he’s getting to Chicago until tomorrow morning. Callie lays a hand on his elbow.
“Please, I have a funeral, is there anywhere within driving distance?” Adam asks the clerk.
The man presses lips together and nods, as if to convey that he feels bad as Adam is probably bald from chemotherapy and all, but he’s not the only person trying to get somewhere. “Right now we’re still going to Cincinnati; I think it’s about a six-hour drive.”
“Perfect,” Adam says, feels Callie stiffen.
“Did you check a bag?” the clerk asks. Adam shakes his head. “Good, I’m going to put you on the eleven forty-five, which gets in at four ten.”
Right around the time Adam would conceivably be filming his lone scene for the day and just late enough to guarantee there’s no way he’s making his 5:00 A.M. call tomorrow.
“So I guess you’re off then?” Callie says. His flight isn’t for another hour and a half, and Adam says a silent prayer to various deities that she won’t insist on waiting with him.
“Yeah.” Burying hands in his coat pockets, he looks at his feet. “It was really nice meeting you.”
“Is it wrong I’m bummed you’re not staying?” she asks, young and timid, like when she was scared on the plane. “Is this chick in Chicago really that much hotter than me?” She forces a laugh but seems authentically injured, and it breaks his heart a little.
“Callie.” He brushes his lips to her cheek; he’s always been good at making people believe things that aren’t true. “She’s got nothing on you.”
* * *
By the time Adam boards Flight 568 to Cincinnati, the fact that he hasn’t slept in thirty hours is becoming increasingly evident. It takes considerably longer than it should to find his row, and he almost sobs when he sees a girl wearing an Unaccompanied Minor badge in the leg-roomier aisle seat.
The kid might be the most striking he’s ever seen—perfect red curls down her back and skin the color of the vanilla ice cream he used to serve in his grandparents’ shop. This doesn’t make the prospect of sitting next to her for three hours in the cramped space by the window a
ny more appealing.
“I would actually prefer the window, if you would rather have the aisle,” the preternaturally pale child says in the polite, perfect English of no young person he’s ever heard.
“I’d like that.” As they shuffle into their places, Adam decides she might be the best kid ever.
“Natasha.” The girl extends her hand, offering a surprisingly firm grip. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Adam expects her to begin a conversation like Callie, and frankly he’s so grateful for the extra legroom, he’d happily oblige. But Natasha says nothing, only removes items from a pink backpack: a book of Japanese anime with its wide-eyed schoolgirls in short skirts, a bottle of water, and a Ziploc bag of homemade trail mix that looks significantly healthier than the too-sweet Cinnabon he’d eaten about a third of at the airport in between leaving messages for Phoebe and taking the incredibly cowardly route of calling his agent’s assistant and telling her he was about to get on a plane before she could patch him through to Marty.
Eyelids heavy as anvils, Adam can’t quite fall asleep, so he skims the in-flight magazine and learns he can watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding and that he will have his choice of Coca-Cola products.
When they finally do take off, a full hour and a half late, the air is too choppy to focus on the words. Things get disturbingly rough an hour in. A major dip knocks his coffee from the tray, spilling it onto the sleeve of the jacket he’s still wearing. Remembering Callie’s fear, he smiles at the girl in the window seat. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he says. “Just a few bumps.”
“I know. My father’s a pilot, and my parents divorced when I was six. I fly all the time.” She points to him wiping coffee from the sleeve of his jacket. “I can fix that. I’m good at laundry.”
Dipping a napkin in her water, she dabs lightly at the stain until it’s gone, not even damp.
“Which of your parents lives in Cincinnati?” he asks after he thanks her.
“My mother and her fiancé.” Her nose crinkles with dislike. “Are you from the area or just visiting?”
“A friend’s brother died,” he says. “I was trying to get to the funeral, but…” His watch says 1:15 P.M., though he has no idea what that means in conjunction with their current position above the Earth. “I’m pretty sure I’m missing it.”
In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel Page 13
