ELEVEN

 

 

August 4th, 2018

Boise, Idaho

 

AFTER BREAKFAST, WADE and Sophie walked back along the river to the institute library. Sophie wore her hat, the same one that was in the picture, and when he mentioned that as being weird, she suddenly stopped, letting him go a few steps ahead.

“Yup, same butt as in the picture,” she said, smiling at him. “But nothing at all weird about that.”

He laughed and just shook his head. He was really, really falling for this wonderful, smart woman. More than he wanted to even admit to himself.

Around them the city seemed to be alive and there were already people floating by on the river. He was really starting to like this city and he didn’t even know that much about it. Most of that liking, he had a hunch, was because of Sophie.

They spent two hours in the library with Sophie showing him all the details of the massive place and introducing him to some of the staff who were there to help the researchers. They all already seemed to know who he was and seemed genuinely glad to meet him.

Feeling welcome didn’t even begin to describe all of this.

From there they headed to the main institute building to check out a car. He had thought it would be a good idea to get a sense of Boise and Sophie had agreed on the condition that he drive. She didn’t much like driving and that was one of the reasons she hadn’t gone much past the area she could walk around the city.

He had a hunch that driving in Boise would be a cakewalk compared to driving in LA.

The car they checked out was identical to twenty other cars in the large garage that had been clearly converted from a barn. It was a white Cadillac SUV.

“And they are all new this year,” Wade had said as they walked into the garage. “Does this place ever do anything cheaply?”

“Sure doesn’t look like it, does it?” Sophie said, clearly as surprised as he was at seeing twenty brand new Cadillac SUVs just waiting to be used.

The one they decided to take because it would be the easiest to back out had seven hundred total miles on it.

“Never had a new car,” Sophie said, inhaling the new car smell and the smell of new leather like it was life-saving oxygen as she got in and buckled her belt.

“Grew up poor, huh?” he asked. Then felt instantly bad about asking it in such a crass fashion.

“Not poor,” she said. “Just working class. I got a scholarship to Harvard and got my doctorate at University of Massachusetts and liked it so much just stayed to teach and do research. Never needed a car there. How about you?”

He seldom told anyone the truth about his background, but he felt he needed to tell Sophie and not dodge the question as he always did.

“Parents were fairly well off from family money before them,” he said, not even glancing at her as he worked to get the car out of the large garage. “They managed to make the family money even bigger. They are divorced and when I finished my MD, they both wanted to help me, so they tossed a lot of money and property and investments my way. It seems a few of the properties I ended up with became very expensive and I made some nice money selling them last year. So I’m doing fine.”

Sophie looked at him as they stopped in the driveway of the institute to turn onto Warm Springs Avenue. “Doing fine is what rich people say.”

“Guilty I’m afraid,” he said, smiling at her. “Does that change the look of my butt?”

She laughed. “Not in the slightest.”

“Oh, good,” he said. “I was worried.”

He felt amazingly lighter telling her about his money. Not sure why that was, but it felt great.

For the next hour they explored the area around the downtown part of Boise, then stopped and got a quick lunch before heading to the west down a beautiful, tree-lined boulevard with old homes on both sides. The boulevard ended as the foothills started and the road went up toward the ski resort.

He really wanted to see some of the resort in the summer and figured that up on the hill there might be a place to look at the entire valley. Turns out, there was.

They had wound up the twisting road for fifteen minutes before he pulled over on a wide gravel area and stopped, facing out over the valley below them, leaving the car running to keep the air-conditioning on.

“Wow,” Sophie said, “This place is beautiful.”

He couldn’t agree more. Spread out below them was a lush, green valley full of trees and houses and businesses. In one area, the taller buildings of the downtown stuck up through the trees, but most of the buildings and roads were hidden by the lushness.

They could see three major parks along the river and then the more suburban areas beyond the river and up on slight hills that stretched out toward the brown desert beyond. A freeway cut through that area and the airport was out there along the desert as well.

The valley ended on their left not that far above where he figured the institute was, but it spread as far as they could see to the right.

“They call this the Treasure Valley, I think,” Sophie said.

“I can see why,” he said.

They sat and stared for a while at the valley, trying to pick out some landmarks and get the feel of their new home. He had a good sense about this place. The air was clear, the water clean, the mountains and valleys beautiful.

This made where he had come from in the heart of LA look very sad. It was really a hidden secret.

After a time, they decided that their next stop would be on the other side of the city at the large old cemetery, just to get a sense of the history of the town. Cemeteries were a wonderful place for that.

But just before he was about to put the car in reverse and get turned around on the two-lane road, Sophie said, “Hold on.”

She unbuckled her seat belt, climbed up on her knees on the seat and reached over and kissed him.

He was so surprised it took him a moment, but then he kissed her back.

After a wonderful minute or so, she broke the kiss, sat back down and put her seatbelt back on.

He was sure his face was flushed and he was breathing harder than normal.

That kiss had been something special. Very special and he wanted to repeat it very soon.

“There,” she said, looking forward out the window, her white skin slightly red as if she had a slight tan, “now I can say we parked and made out on our first date.”

“This is a date?” he asked, laughing.

“It is now that you took me up in the hills to go parking,” she said.

Then she turned to him, smiled, and then laughed.

All he could do was laugh along with her.

And try to catch his breath from the kiss.