| |
Nobody wanted to leave Atlanta, Georgia in February. Not anyone in this conference room, anyway. The temperatures were finally inching into the sixties, which was close to short-sleeve weather, and Ariel was still shell-shocked by the frozen hands, icy roads, and glacial moods from only few weeks ago. The South wasn’t supposed to get freakish weather like that at all, but with climate change, just about anything seemed possible.
He looked around the conference room, waiting to see who’ll volunteer to go to England and report to their big pharma bosses at Corporate.
Nobody did.
“I can’t,” Josh said. “I’d be gone over Valentine’s day and it’s our tenth anniversary!” He tilted his head, trying to look apologetic and failing miserably. “We already have tickets and everything. My wife would kill me.”
“Blame it on the wife, that always works well,” Noreen said with a merciless grin as she tapped her tablet with her long, red nail. “Why don’t you grow a pair and say you have a vacation planned? Happy anniversary, by the way.”
Josh blushed all the way to his thinning hairline. “Thanks, boss.”
The rest of the team started chiming in with their congratulations, and what used to be a productive meeting on the newest research in hypertension drugs turned into a free-for-all where three people bragged about their big plans for V-day, and the other six sat sullenly, trying not to rain on their parade.
Ariel belonged to the latter group. The V-day had always been an awkward dance of doing the right thing and hoping not to have his offering spurned with an upturned nose. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with all that Valentine’s Day bullshit this year. Not after Jake dumped him for a younger, more agreeable model.
A less busy model, too. Because research chemists weren’t the most socially astute relationship material - or so he had been told. If he could avoid this trip to their British headquarters, he just might take the weekend and go diving with one of those tours in Florida - unless they were swamped with sickeningly sweet couples. Maybe hunkering down here in Atlanta would work just fine, just him and the Lord of the Rings and some beer and pizza.
“... and we’re organizing a Valentine’s Day party,” Noreen said.
Ariel realized he had lost track of their nattering quite a while ago. “What?” He said with a jerk of his head. “Here?”
“Yes, right here and during the working hours! All of you quiet scientific types need to socialize some more, and I’ll make that happen for you, honey.”
“Bless your heart,” somebody said in that special, Southern way that was an equivalent of flipping the bird in Ariel’s native New York.
Bless your heart, indeed.
“I’ll do it,” Ariel said, not quite realizing why and how did such words leave his mouth. England would still be freezing in February. Or at the very least, rainy and dreary the way it had been on his last two trips. But he’d take a quiet evening in a local pub over a department-sponsored Valentine’s Day party any day.
––––––––
LESS THAN A WEEK LATER, Ariel landed at Heathrow. He made his way through the gate waiting area and down to passport control and luggage claim. The duty-free didn’t tempt him the way it used to, and the throng of passengers was, with all his practice, navigable.
The British English he heard around him was familiar and soothing with its melodic, slower pace and all those little social niceties that differed ever so slightly from the American South, and which were entirely absent in New York.
A tunnel spat him out into the Arrivals hall, where Chris stood with his big “Ariel Sutton” sign. Their eyes met, and they grinned at each other.
“Hello hello, and welcome back!” Chris shook his hand with vigor. “Did you have a pleasant flight? Or was it awful?”
Ariel was only too glad that his main contact from headquarters chose to meet him in person instead of sending a driver. “Passable,” he said, which in British meant “great.”
“It appears you brought us spring weather. It’s bucketing outside.” Chris led on. Down the hall and toward a bank of elevators, queueing up and keeping the conversation for later. Even going through the airport was peaceful somehow, and Ariel got the disconcerting feeling that he had arrived back home.
Which was, of course, impossible.
Once Chris took them past the snarl of Heathrow traffic and onto the M25, he nodded at Ariel from his right-side driver’s seat. “I hear you’re staying longer than usual.”
Ariel rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I don’t know what got into me, but I thought I’d see a bit of the countryside. Maybe rent - I mean, hire a car and drive out a bit. I hear Bath is nice. And so is Stonehenge. This is my third time here, and all I’ve ever seen is a bit of London and the corporate headquarters.”
“Brilliant!” Chris slapped the steering wheel. “When?”
Ariel told him.
“Oh drat it, I wish I could’ve gotten you a proper tour of all the old places, only I’m otherwise engaged.”
“Oh?” It seemed that Chris was quite happy to be otherwise engaged.
“I’m seeing a new girl!” he positively crowed. “And it’ll be Valentine’s Day, don’t you know? So I got us tickets to the ballet. She loves the ballet! She’s just such a lovely girl.”
Oh, God. Just the thing Ariel had been trying to escape, and it followed him across the pond and into Blighty itself. “Is that so?” he said while mentally groaning. “Which ballet?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Something Russian. It’s got dancers in it.”
“You’re an idiot,” Ariel said, and Chris only grinned. Then again, with Chris in such a good mood, work would likely be entertaining.
––––––––
WADE SURVEYED THE MODERN, wood-and-glass auditorium. “And that’s your assignment until next week,” he said to his twenty-one students, who sat scattered in the first few rows. “Focus on the morning fog. That means getting up whilst it’s still dark outside so you can be fully ready to click the shutter at the butt-crack of dawn.”
Somebody said something in the back, and a few people giggled in the manner of their tribe.
He shook his head, making his bouncy curls fly in their usual disarray. “Move on, you lot! I have places to be.”
An hour later, Wade was well outside the confines of the art school area and on his way to Fairford. He swung around the roundabouts and zipped down those stretches of maze-like, hedge-enclosed roads he knew to be safe. His little Triump Stag was a horribly impractical vehicle, a two-seater convertible, but he didn’t need much. His photo gear fit into its boot along with a stuffed weekender bag. The rest of his things were securely stowed in the cottage - in his cottage, now that aunt Rose was dead and buried.