by Gwyn Cready
Axel parked himself at the bar, letting the scent of her hair float through his head. Sixty quid. A quick tumble upstairs. Something very fast and very wrong. Then a moonlit walk to the hotel and a long sleep curled up beside her. Life couldn’t be better.
The rain had stopped, and the place was starting to fill. He loved the sound of a bar at full tilt: the clink of glasses, the screech of chairs, the hum of the crowd. Hell, he even liked the heady scent of cigarette smoke, which he only caught when the door opened, for smoking was banned indoors even in England now. There was energy in a place like this, some of it so primed for action, the smallest slight could set off an epic brawl; but, hey, that’s what life was for, right?
“Mackenzie,” a surprised voice said. “I’ll be damned.”
Axel turned. The man was Barry Steinberg, fellow beer aficionado, kick-ass writer and partier extraordinaire. Axel had worked with him on a number of pieces at GQ. Steinberg wrote for Slate now. They had gone drinking many times together, but as Axel had begun to shrug off the life of late nights and hard living, he’d found Barry’s company increasingly hard to take.
Axel nodded at his colleague. “Glad to catch you before the local constabulary discovers you’re in town.”
“Sit, sit. What are you drinking?” Barry opened his wallet, peeled off a ten-pound note and waved it at Simon.
“Club soda, my friend.”
“What?”
“I’m trying to cut back.”
“Relying on better drugs now?” His gave his friend a collegial elbow to the ribs.
Axel let his eyes drift to Ellery. “You could say that. What are you in town for?”
“That conference I was telling you about. Starts tomorrow. And then an interview with Ian McEwan. You?”
“A shoot for Vanity Place. Probably my last. The oatmeal stout is excellent, by the way.”
Steinberg gave his friend a narrow look but ordered the stout. “What do you mean, ‘Probably my last’? Your last with Vanity Place?”
“Maybe my last anywhere. I’m buying a microbrewery.”
“No way! No way!” He held out a fist and Axel bumped it with his own. “Axel Mackenzie and all the beer he can drink!”
“I’m pretty excited.” Though, of course, Axel thought, all the beer I can drink adds up to exactly two eight-ounce glasses a day.
Steinberg said. “Actually, I may be moving on to bigger and better things myself.”
“Oh?”
Simon put down another mug and Steinberg picked it up to look at the foam. “I may be running my own magazine.”
“Whoa! Congratulations. Where?”
“It’s a new rag. I’ll get to build it up from the ground floor. And they’re pouring millions into it. It’s from our friends at Lark & Ives.”
“Well, that’s worth drinking to.” Axel lifted his glass.
“You can’t toast with club soda. Barkeep, bring this man a beer. A big one.”
Simon looked at Axel. Axel gave him a minute shrug.
“So, when do we get to celebrate?” Axel asked, picking up his club soda.
“End of the month. The board makes their decision then. It’s down to two candidates, me and this other woman. Actually, you may know her. Ellery Sharpe?”
Axel nearly choked. Ellery was down to the final round for a publisher’s job and she hadn’t said anything. Not a word. “Yeah, I know her.”
Steinberg made a silent whistle. “Have you seen the bod on that one? Man, I could hit that anytime. Maybe, if she loses the job, I can put her on my staff, if you know what I mean.” He gave Axel a shove.
Simon put down the beer and Axel lifted it. Their mugs clanked and Steinberg took a long swallow. Axel drank without tasting and pushed the mug away. She hadn’t lied. He couldn’t fault her for that. She just hadn’t been willing to share herself with him. His mother once said it wasn’t the fights that destroyed a relationship; it was the silences.
“Purdy says she’s working on something amazing,” Steinberg said. “Which is why I’m over here chasing the McEwan story. I’ve gotta outgun her.”
“I doubt it will come down to a single story,” Axel said darkly.
“No, seriously, man. It’s gonna be a freakin’ shoot-out in front of the board there. I wish I knew what she was working on.”
Well, that certainly helped explain Ellery’s reluctance to do the romance piece, he thought, though he wished she would have considered taking him into her confidence. “Sorry. Can’t help you.”
Axel felt slightly queasy, enough to wonder if he had dosed himself too high on insulin, but decided it was only the impact of hearing this from Steinberg. From the corner he could hear a certain note in Ellery’s voice rise occasionally above the noise of the crowd. He wondered if Steinberg would recognize it. If he did, he’d go over there, and Axel knew it wouldn’t take his friend longer than a minute to figure out what sort of story Ellery was working on. Then he’d carry the news back to Lark & Ives, gloating like a fox that had swallowed a hen.
Axel gazed into the head of the beer for a long time. Then he took a deep breath, drew his stool forward so that his body blocked the view of the snug and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here. I’m ready to party.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
London Hilton, Park Lane
Ellery wept. Stupidly. Though why she’d been surprised, she didn’t know. When she had wrapped up her questions at the table, Axel was gone. Simon told her he’d run into an old friend and left with him soon after.
So she lay flat on her stomach on the hotel bed—such a short time ago their bed—and let the disappointment run out of her like water from a faucet. She rarely cried. As a young girl, it had been out of a wish to not add to the burden of her hardworking mother. After her mother died, it had been to keep Jill from feeling any more than she already did that the world was a terrifying and uncertain place.
But now that Ellery had started, she couldn’t stop. She cried for her lost mother; for the fear of losing a job she wanted so badly; for making such bad choices with men; and for that little boy on the plane, who, in a different world, could have been hers.
And when she’d finally exhausted her tears, and her eyes felt as dry and worn as heaps of gravel, she went to sleep.
A light knock on the door awakened her. She looked at her phone. Four o’clock. An early night for Axel, she thought bitterly. She stood up, slipped on her coat and opened the door.
He looked like shit.
“Sorry,” he said, and stumbled by her to the bathroom. When the echoes of his retching died away, she tapped on the door. “Axel?”
He opened it, wiping his mouth, his eyes as pink as newborn rats.
“I guess I owe you an explanation.”
She opened the hotel door. “Get your things and get out.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Train to Edinburgh
Ellery lifted her eyes from Kiltlander to gaze abstractedly at the East Anglia scenery streaming by her window. Two rows down, on the opposite side of the train’s aisle, she could see the top of Axel’s sleeping head. In four hours they’d be in Edinburgh, which also happened to be where Jemmie and Cara were heading in the story, though they, at least, seemed to be taking some pleasure in each other’s company.
She’d never expected Axel to make the train, and it had been with considerable surprise she’d seen him jogging down the King’s Cross platform, duffel in one hand and camera equipment bag in the other.
Their tickets had been for adjoining seats, but Ellery had found an empty seat next to a nice older man who was getting off in Stevenage. She’d watched Axel find his way to their seats and stop when he discovered they were empty, his thumb drumming against his thigh. She’d lowered her head, returning to the book, not caring whether he saw her or not. The next time she’d looked, he was collapsed in the seat, asleep.
Jemmie and Cara were on horseback, having escaped their captors, and were enjoying their postnuptial bliss. Elle
ry had found their electrifying wedding-night scene salve for her battered emotions. Cara had been as shocked as Ellery about Jemmie’s untouched state, especially given the fact that before Jemmie had fallen in love with her, Cara had come upon him lip-locked with some young Scottish chick who had then screwed her bottom firmly into his lap.
Jemmie, wearing his linen shirt and nothing more, had explained to Cara that holding on to his virginity had been a tribute to his father, who had often spoken to his young son about the honor a man bestows on his chosen bride by waiting. The story had melted Cara’s heart as well as Ellery’s. Unsurprisingly, Jemmie had found his first taste of fornication quite addictive, and Cara had accommodated his every curiosity, to Ellery’s immense satisfaction.
Sometime after her seatmate had gotten off at Stevenage, Ellery was distressed to discover the young couple running into storm clouds, both literally and figuratively. They were returning to the clan castle where they’d first stayed on their long journey, and Jemmie told Cara he needed to see the young woman—she of the firmly screwed bottom—to explain why he had married Cara.
No woman wants to hear that a marriage to her requires explanation to anybody, and Cara had gone darkly silent. Ellery wanted to believe Jemmie was doing the right thing, but the truth was, neither she nor Cara knew enough about him to be fully confident their hopes would be rewarded.
Don’t do it, Jemmie. Don’t disappoint her.
A body dropped into the seat next to her. It was Axel. She stood immediately to squeeze by him. He caught her by the wrist.
“Sit.”
She gave him a look and he let go of her arm. But she sunk slowly into her seat.
“I’m sorry I left you at the pub,” he said. “I had a reason.”
“You needed to party.”
“If I’d needed to party,” he said, eyes flashing, “I could have done that with you. I told you I don’t do that stuff anymore.”
“Except last night.”
“Last night was an exception. For you.”
“For me?”
Axel had a way of squaring his shoulders when he was angry that made him look like he was made of steel. She thought of that puddler in that Pittsburgh mosaic, shoulders bared, red-hot sparks of fire glinting around him.
“I ran into Barry Steinberg last night,” he said. “He’s in town for some publishing conference. He told me he was in the running for a new job.”
Her gaze dropped to her shoes. “Is he?”
A stillness came over Axel that sent a chill through her.
He stood up.
“The reason I disappeared with Barry,” he said, “was to keep him from finding out what you were working on and taking the news back to Lark & Ives. But it would have been a lot easier on both of us if you had been willing to share your situation with me. I’ll be staying at the Albany Hotel in Edinburgh. Call me when you decide what you want to shoot.”
He stalked away.
Ellery sat unmoving as the tidal wave of guilt crashed hard into the breakwater of her conscience. Had she owed him the truth about Lark & Ives? Technically the answer was no. But she of all people didn’t want to live on the razor-sharp edge of technicalities. The truth was, if he’d been one of her other friends, she would have confided in him, especially after he’d told her about chasing his own dream with the microbrewery.
She got up to go after him, letting the book fall to her seat.
He wasn’t in their assigned seats. Scanning each row, she made her way down the line, threading her way quickly through the university students playing with their phones, businessmen reading the Financial Times and well-organized travelers queuing at the end of each car as they approached the stop for Peterborough.
She found him in the alcove at the end of the second car, slouched against the window, watching fields littered with the remnants of last summer’s harvest slip by.
She wasn’t sure if he’d seen her until he said, “I’ve always distrusted fall. The way it carries this false patina of abundance and color, as if the party will never end.”
She thought, The party would never end if you were in charge, but held her tongue.
“But autumn fruits are hard,” he said, “and the pumpkins rot, and you end up living on the memory. And that’s the part I don’t like.”
She felt like an icy November wind was blowing right through her.
He turned to her. “Do you even have the faintest intention of writing the article?”
“Of course. It puts me in a very awkward position, but—”
He caught her hand and turned it over. Then he dropped a USB drive in it. “I saved what you were working on on the plane. Twenty-four hours ago. Maybe less. I shouldn’t have done it, but I wanted to see what you were writing. I looked at it this morning. It’s an article on John Irving.”
Her hand was shaking. “It isn’t a real article. It’s what I wished I were writing.”
“Of course it is.” He took a deep breath and shook his shoulders, as if he were purposefully letting go of something. Then he looked at her, eyes softer. “If you’d like, I’ll tell Black the article’s off. I can’t work. The light’s not right. The subject doesn’t interest me. You know, prima donna at work.”
“No,” she said firmly. “If it’s going to get called off, it’ll get called off because of me.”
He considered this, then gave her a short nod.
“So we’re okay?” she said.
His gaze went back to the passing fields for a moment, and he sighed. “I love you, Ellery. Probably always will.”
Her throat started to tighten. “But?”
“But you shut me out. I don’t mean just Lark & Ives or even the Irving article. You certainly have a right to your privacy. But even when we were together, you threw up this wall between me and the stuff that really mattered. When I found out about the job you’re going for, I felt the same thing. I just can’t do it again. Not anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I think we should just stick to the article.”
He waited for a reply, but she couldn’t think of anything that would satisfactorily explain why keeping a clear line between her public and private desires made her feel safe, nor did she expect an answer to satisfy him even if she could.
In the end, she said nothing, and he shook his head and left.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Less than an hour outside Edinburgh, the train was barreling down a particularly rough stretch of track, and each hitch of the car thumped Ellery’s hip torturously against Axel’s thigh. As punishments go, it was an unjust one, he considered, stealing a look at her as she typed. After all, he’d only accelerated what would have happened eventually.
They hadn’t spoken since the talk in the vestibule. Oh, they’d exchanged pleasantries—“Could you pass my jacket?” “Is there any water left?”—each trying to show that the words in the vestibule had been forgotten; but they hadn’t really talked, and it struck Axel quite forcibly that they might never really talk again. After they’d broken up five years ago and would see each other in the hallway of one publishing company or another, they’d always been able to say what they were feeling, even if what they’d been feeling hadn’t been exactly pleasant. He would hate to lose what they’d been able to re-create these last few days. But he also knew he couldn’t go on feeling that there were parts of her she’d never share with him.
Part of Axel wanted to steal away to the lounge car to lose himself in one slowly sipped beer, but another part couldn’t bring himself to stand. Would he ever feel her next to him like this again?
He had drunk himself into oblivion the night before. He could have chosen to divert Steinberg with a more moderate amount of alcohol or none at all, but he’d been hurt. Why couldn’t she open up to him?
He rubbed his neck, where the tingling pinched nerve, dormant since Tuesday, had returned. He could feel the microbrewery slipping through his fingers. Who knew what Ellery woul
d or would not write? He growled. Why did everything with her have to be so difficult?
Glancing at his watch, he considered what remained of their assignment. Today was Friday. Once they arrived in Edinburgh, the plan had been to make a quick visit to the sociologist, who lived in a small town on the outskirts of the city, then jump back in the rental car and head to the Highlands for a day of shooting. But Ellery had asked to delay the start of the trip north until Saturday morning, saying she wanted to see Cara’s time portal. This was the first time Ellery had shown the slightest interest in any of the books he’d given her, and while he’d been surprised, he’d been smart enough not to show it.
According to the author, the portal was an ancient burial mound in the Lowlands of Scotland called Cairn-papple. However, as with most ancient spiritual places, it had been as much a place for primitive desires to be sated as it had been for connecting with mystical forces—at least, according to Jemmie, and who was going to argue with him?
Axel’s father, a churchgoing Scotsman who had emigrated to Canada as a boy, would have pooh-poohed the magic associated with such places. But his mother—a geologist at the University of Toronto—loved that sort of stuff. He remembered her fascination with the petroglyphs in Peterborough and, as they hiked around Baffin Island one summer holiday, how she’d touched each inuksuk—those rocks stacked by the Inuit to look like pointing figures. She’d told Axel and his sisters that the piles pointed the way to food or water or shelter for travelers. But it was the way her eyes twinkled each time she added her own pebble to the extended arms that had left Axel with the distinct impression she’d felt their use went beyond the mere practical.
Axel gazed into the distance, considering the idea of ancient connections and crossroads in time. While not strictly a believer, Axel had always felt the world could use a little more magic and, therefore, thought it best to keep an open mind.
Of course, he understood why Jemmie would find the place sacred, given that the woman who’d first upended his life, then fallen in love with him, had emerged from the place. Axel wondered with a rueful smile if that’s why he’d always had such warm feelings for Pittsburgh.
