by Ann Benson
“Maybe you’ll have to move here too,” Janie said to Caroline. “It’s a good thing you’re familiar with most of this stuff, because I feel pretty lost. You’ll have to guide me through it again when we get back from Leeds with the missing samples.”
“No problem,” Caroline said confidently. “By then I should be a real ace.”
“Great,” Bruce said. “When you get here tomorrow morning, there’ll be a pass for you at the reception desk. Go there first and pick it up. Then have the receptionist page security for you.”
On the way out Caroline ducked into the ladies’ room. Janie and Bruce waited for her in the hallway. He turned to her, as if he’d been waiting for an opportunity to speak privately.
“I enjoyed taking you to the museum,” he said.
“It was fun.”
“I was wondering if you’d like to cash in that dinner rain check. Tonight, specifically. I know a great Indian restaurant in South Kensington.”
Inside herself Janie felt the walls going up, just as they’d risen around the man captured by the Compudoc in the medical inspection line at Heathrow. It was a completely involuntary event, one that occurred regularly and predictably since the first of her Outbreak losses; she’d grown pitifully used to it. With each additional loss the walls had become stouter and more protective, and she was just now beginning to see that individual bricks could be loosened if she worked at it. But Janie felt a certain comfort in knowing that she was safe from the potential trauma of further loss while those walls were in place, and made few attempts to peek over them into the freer emotional world beyond. Like an inmate accustomed to the safety and simplicity of imprisonment, she wasn’t entirely sure that escape was in her best interest.
She didn’t respond immediately, and the silence hung between them like a deadweight. The look on Bruce’s face darkened in what appeared to be anticipation of rejection.
She started to explain. “It’s been hard for me to venture out since the”—she groped for words—“since the bad stuff that happened to me. I’d like to go, but I’m not too steady yet in social situations. I guess I’m afraid I’ll lose my composure.”
He said, “I understand.” He gave her a warm look with Trust me written all over it, and left it at that. No pressure, just an invitation with the implication that he would accept her as is.
She searched his eyes, looking for some undefined sign that it would not be wise to spend time with him. She found nothing to which she could reasonably object. “Oh, what the hell,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. “I accept. What time?”
“I’ll get you at seven.” He smiled. “I’ll make a reservation this afternoon.”
“Great,” she said, just as Caroline rejoined them. “I’ll see you later, then.” They said good-bye and parted ways.
The hours passed more quickly than Janie had expected they would, and when the phone rang in her suite that evening, she felt a little shiver of nervousness pass through her. She willed it to go away, and looked at herself in the mirror before going downstairs. She found herself wanting to look attractive and had taken pains with her appearance, something she hadn’t done much since the close of the Outbreak era.
She was not disappointed with what she saw there. At forty-five she was still slim, largely because of her obsession about exercise; it seemed to be the only thing that allowed her to vent the anger and pain that hid within her. There were small touches of gray in her dark brown hair, and as she fingered a few strands, the notion of coloring it crossed her mind, not for the first time. Her skin was fair, and relatively unwrinkled, considering the stress of her last few years, although she had smile lines at the sides of her mouth and could see the beginnings of a line between her eyebrows. She frowned, and the line deepened. She smiled, and it went away, but the smile lines came out. Can’t win, she thought. Her legs, shapely and firm from years of daily jogging, were what she considered to be her best feature. Consequently, she had worn a skirt above the knees to show them off, and shoes with a small heel to accentuate her height. She liked being a tall woman—it afforded her a view that was customarily reserved for men, and what she’d observed from that view had been quite illuminating on more than one occasion.
She was satisfied that she’d done the best she could with the raw materials she had. The only thing that disappointed her was the deeply ingrained sadness in her eyes. It couldn’t be covered with any makeup she’d yet encountered.
“You look great,” Bruce said as she crossed the lobby. “You look better than I remember you looking twenty years ago.”
“Thanks.” She smiled. “And right back atcha. I still can’t believe how young you look.”
“I attribute my youthful appearance to the dewy English climate,” he said sarcastically. “Speaking of which, it’s remarkably undewy this evening. The restaurant’s not too far. Would you like to take a cab, or should we maybe walk?”
“I’m definitely up for a walk,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been a slug since I got here. I usually run three miles a day at home and I miss it.”
“Then a walk it is,” he said, offering her his arm.
Oh, so charming, she thought as she took it. They headed out of the lobby only to encounter the revolving door, which forced them to let go of each other. Laughing, they slipped into separate cells of the door and were whirled out onto the street, where they joined arms again.
The streets of London were sparsely populated at the dinner hour, and as they progressed toward South Kensington, Janie found herself feeling very much at ease. She hadn’t taken the time to explore since arriving, and as she looked into the various storefronts and office windows, she was taken by how quaint and simple everything seemed. The window displays were subdued and notably free of the garish advertising and obnoxious marketing devices seen everywhere in the United States. She recalled a series of television ads in which a crass and obviously nouveau-riche Texan shocked a well-bred British lady to the point of fainting by asking her to pass the jelly, and decided that it summed up the difference between America and England quite neatly. America had civilization, and the standards of civilization were redefined as needed. England was civilized, and civilized standards were not touched, ever. She realized that she wouldn’t want to have to make a choice between the two.
“You’ve lived here for such a long time,” she said. “Is there anything you miss?”
“Cold beer,” he said, and laughed. “The one or two ninety-five-degree days I used to like in July. But you get used to it. I’ve completely forgotten what it feels like to drive on the right side of the road. I shift with my left hand. I don’t waste water anymore.”
“I noticed that the water’s not too tasty here,” Janie commented. “I’ve been buying bottled water.”
“Everyone does, native or not,” he said. “You guys are spoiled by the quality of the water in the States. By the way, I live not too far from here.” He pointed to a narrow house on one of the side streets as they crossed at an intersection. “In a small town house sort of like that one. I have the top two floors. The building is narrow but the rooms are good sized for London and the ceilings are quite high. Sometimes when I walk through it, it seems way too big for me. But I like space, and I guess I’ll fill it all up eventually. I bought it a few years ago, just before the first Outbreak.”
“If you’d waited a year, you probably could’ve had it for a lot less. Housing prices took a tumble when demand went down in the States.”
“They went down slightly here, but not as much as you might think. They were inflated before, anyway. Everyone sort of accepts that they’ve paid too much. Now prices are more like what they ought to be. But I’m not unhappy. I love the apartment.”
“Is there anything you don’t like about your life?” she asked, sounding almost miffed. “It seems so perfect.”
He gave her question a few moments of thought. “Sometimes I don’t like being alone, and occasionally I regret that I don’t have any children
, especially around the holidays.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I’m sure that must be a tough time for you.”
She sighed. “That and birthdays. Anniversaries aren’t exactly a piece of cake either. I have a tough time getting through those days.”
“What do you usually do?”
“I try to be as far away from familiar sights as possible,” she said, “but it’s difficult to avoid bumping into reminders. They seem to be everywhere. When I get through with my certification, I’m hoping to be able to travel a little more, inside the United States, I mean, since it’s a lot simpler than leaving the country. Once I’m settled into a new position, I should be able to schedule it. Traveling makes it easier because nothing is familiar.”
“Is it easier here?”
She thought for a minute and said, “I think it may be. I feel okay right now.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He smiled and squeezed her arm where he held it, then led her through the door into the restaurant.
The smell of cardamom and fennel welcomed them, and the drone of a sitar played softly in the background, plumping out the Indian ambience nicely. Ornate and colorful embroideries on black velvet hung on the walls, scenes of ravens and elephants and Buddhas in the familiar flat style of the Orient.
They shared a half bottle of red wine, which warmed and relaxed them; they talked about their lives and how different their paths had been. The food tasted as good as it smelled, and Janie was surprised by her own appetite. “I haven’t eaten this much since I got here,” she said as she folded her napkin and placed it on the table. “I’m full to bursting.”
“We’ll take another walk when we leave here,” Bruce said.
“Good idea.”
They took a very different route from the one they’d used to get to the restaurant, and were soon in a residential neighborhood with a notable lack of commercial establishments. Bruce led the way, turning down one street then another, and Janie got the idea that she was being led to someplace specific as they progressed. Her suspicions were confirmed when Bruce stopped in front of a white brick town house with a lovely small garden in front.
“Here it is,” he said, pointing to the house. “This is where I live.”
Janie regarded it suspiciously. “It’s charming,” she said, and wondered if he was waiting for some sort of signal that she wanted to be invited inside. She decided to avoid the issue entirely, and began looking around at other buildings. “The neighborhood is very pretty.”
“And quiet,” he said. “A couple of dogs, but otherwise it’s very peaceful.”
In the brief silence that followed, Janie ran through a list of self-incriminations that would have brought her therapist to tears. I am a forty-five-year-old adolescent, she thought to herself, standing in the doorway of a hot night with a great man. I could go in that door and probably have a good time, maybe blow off a little of this steam. Or I could go back to the hotel.
They both started speaking at the same time. Janie said, “Do you know what time it is …” just as Bruce said, “Would you like to come up …” and then they crossed words again, Janie saying, “I’d love to see it, but we’re leaving early …” and Bruce saying, “Of course, what was I thinking, you must be exhausted.…”
And then they both laughed at the silliness of their situation. Bruce looked at his watch. “It’s almost eleven,” he said. “We can walk up to the next corner. It’s a main street and I should be able to get you a cab.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Janie said, her cheeks hot and red. “I really should get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow.”
As she emerged from the cab in front of her hotel, sleep was the last thing on her mind. She hopped onto the elevator and took it upstairs, where she quickly changed into running gear. Back out on the street again, she ran until the sweat poured off her, until her heart was beating so rapidly that she thought it would surely explode.
At one in the morning she turned on the shower and wasted water in the grand American tradition. She let the steaming water bore into her sweaty skin like hot sharp needles. Purged of her demons, at least temporarily, and cleansed of the sin of sloth, she dried off and slipped naked between the sheets. She closed her eyes and slept, for once, dreamlessly.
Thinking, just in case, Janie threw a clean pair of panties and a toothbrush into her briefcase, then went downstairs to the hotel lobby to wait for Bruce. He arrived at the crack of daylight, as he’d promised on the phone the day before. Let’s hope this mission is successful, she thought to herself as Bruce pulled his car out of the hotel drive and eased into the London traffic.
They drove for most of the morning on major highways. She spent a lot of time looking at the map while Bruce drove, comparing the pastel two-dimensional images on the paper to the lush green reality of the countryside around London. Most of their conversation was focused on the country they drove through and the deeply personal issues didn’t come up, which was something of a relief to Janie. For a good part of the time she leaned back in the bucket seat and closed her eyes, drifting into as peaceful a state as she could manage in view of her personal uncertainties. Bruce did not disturb her when she slipped into that private place. A little before noon he pulled off the highway and headed north on a side road.
Janie came out of her reverie when the surface of the road changed and the speed of their travel slowed. Looking at the map, she said, “This can’t be our exit!”
“Nope,” he said, “You’re right. It’s my exit.”
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“My favorite pub in all of England is here. And it’s time for lunch. We have about another two hours to go before we get to Leeds. I don’t think my stomach will forgive me if I don’t eat something.”
As they entered the small Tudor-style building, she said, “We seem to spend a lot of time eating.”
“But we’re eating well, aren’t we?”
She couldn’t disagree. When the waiter handed him a menu, Bruce promptly gave it back to him. “I already know what I want,” he said, and ordered Yorkshire pudding. Janie quickly ordered a bowl of soup and a roll.
As she watched Bruce eat, Janie let her thoughts float back and forth between the man she saw before her and the boy she remembered from a lifetime ago. The man was handily invalidating any reasons she might have had to dislike the boy; he was an increasingly pleasant surprise. She wondered if she was faring as well in his imagination, or if he was even bothering to make a comparison between the girl he’d known only minimally two decades ago and the woman whose deepest secrets had been laid out for him to see. He ate quickly and with obvious delight, licking his fingers now and then as he dipped huge chunks of the doughy pudding into the drippings on the plate. Remembering an old occasion when she’d seen him dipping doughnuts in coffee, Janie silently compared Bruce Then to Bruce Now as she carefully chewed each bite of her own spare meal. It was a revealing moment, a quiet study in the differences between them, a validation of her personal belief that eating habits were the true measure of any man or woman. She wondered what this moment was for him.
As if in response to her silent question, he said, “Now, this is lunch.”
She laughed out loud.
He gave her a raised-eyebrow look and said, “It’s nice to hear you laugh. I thought you might have forgotten how. What’s so funny?”
She ignored his baiting and said, “Oh, nothing in particular, just life. If I’d known you were going to grow up to be such a good guy, I might have paid more attention to you when you were younger.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“You’re welcome, I’m sure.”
Though his associates frequently found him to be very charming, beneath Ted Cummings’ polished exterior was an annoyingly Spartan human being who always arrived punctually for work with every hair in its proper place, never sick, never externally rumpled. When he woke up on Friday morning with a pain shooting through
his right temple, he was completely unprepared. There wasn’t even an aspirin in his apartment, legally prescribed or otherwise. He hadn’t needed one in years.
He nearly overslept, and when he did finally manage to drag himself out of bed, it was a slow process. He hauled each leg off the bed stiffly and plunked it down on the floor with a thud. His bare feet felt as heavy as if he were wearing steel-toed boots, and he wondered for a few fuzzy moments if the force of gravity had somehow intensified overnight, thereby making his entire body feel unbearably heavy. His pillow-bent hair stuck out from his head in a hundred different directions and had to be rather forcefully tamed before it looked even remotely presentable.
For the first time in his ritualized tenure at the Institute, he arrived in his office later than his secretary. After checking his electronic mail he unplugged the speakers on his computer, for after only a few minutes of use, its voice and signal tones were already starting to sound obnoxious. Following that vein of thought, he shut off his beeper as well.
He stopped in at one of the Institute’s medical offices and commandeered two aspirin tablets from the physician’s assistant, who promptly teased him.
“Better go see your friendly Compudoc,” she said, smirking, a suggestion that Ted rejected immediately. Despite the Institute’s role in developing and overseeing their operation, Ted hated Compudocs and avoided them unless he was scheduled for the required monthly checkup. He’d seen enough people locked by the right wrist to those bloody machines, protesting violently the obligatory confinement that always followed the machine’s discovery of some rogue microbe during a routine scan.
His discomfort by then was so great that he swallowed the aspirin dry, and felt the acidic burn as the tablets went down his throat. Despite his increasing malaise he made it successfully through the first half of his day’s work, although he couldn’t honestly say that he remembered much about it. Later, he dictated the notes of what he could remember of his activities, including his first glance through the list of applicants for Frank’s position. He had just finished packing his briefcase with the intention of going home to bed when he remembered the circle of fabric. The idea that he was supposed to make a phone call flashed in and out of his brain, but he couldn’t seem to nail it down. He searched his memory, but couldn’t manage to bring out the necessary information. Who am I supposed to call? What am I supposed to say? I must be sicker than I thought if my memory’s being affected, he thought to himself, and for the first time considered the possibility that what ailed him might be more than a simple cold. Maybe it’s an out-of-season case of flu. He intended to treat it aggressively with bed rest, fluids, and more aspirin if he could get it (if Bruce were here he’d just write a prescription!) and he felt certain he’d be back at work again in a day, feeling much better, with no one the wiser.
