Harry rolled over and kissed her.
“It’ll be all right.”
“Eventually. I know.”
“Sleep on the plane home?” ”I hope so. I didn’t sleep much on the way over but we haven’t exactly gotten our eight hours a night, have we?” ”No.” He laughed.
It had begun to rain. He had felt the air. Cool, damp, falling into the open window, not alight on any breeze, the kind of air that comes only with rain. It felt like London again. He was fully awake. She was too, stroking his back. Both awake ahead of their hotel wake up call the way they had been the entire time here. Every morning.
He smiled at her and she smiled back, sadly. It was her day to go.
He had ordered her a cab. It came and she went to it. He turned to follow but stopped at the entrance of the hotel and looked at her. She was standing at the door of the cab looking back at him. She smiled, then got in and the car pulled away as he watched. It was blue. That didn’t seem right. London was a city of black cabs with engines that rattled like a coffee can full of marbles in perfect rhythm. A lot of things didn’t seem right. The blue cab, the rain that had come out of nowhere and made a memory of the sun of the last days. Days that were atypically English, bright and warm, flooding the city with silver light. Weary Londoners slowed their pace to enjoy a few brilliant days in early June. Now the rain had returned to a cold, wet city where people ducked their heads and hurried on. A blue taxi drove away with her.
She hadn’t kissed him good-bye. That, like the taxi color, wasn’t right either. Lou was asleep, Craig was tracking late market moves from New York, the concierge didn’t care, as familiar as they now were to him. There was no reason not to kiss him good bye. But she hadn’t.
Harry stared as the car got to the end of George Street, where it paused and then turned onto Thayer. Gone. He let his eyes fall to the wet ground. The rain continued and Harry thought of the scene in Casablanca where Rick stands on the railroad platform with Ilse’s letter clutched in his fist. But this wasn’t Casablanca. This wasn’t a movie. There was no theatre, no comfortable seat. There was Harry, the rain, the hotel stoop and she was in a taxi, on the way to Heathrow.
“Look up Harry.” Don’t show the hurt. Its too early.
A sign across the street said “Spanish Place.” It was mounted to the side of the building that housed an art collection they had never visited. That was where they put street signs in this town. About five-eighths the way up the sides of buildings. He looked at the sign.
“Spanish Place” He paused. “Chris.” He said to no one in particular.
***
The flight to London had been uneventful. Harry had slept through most of it since U.S. Airways didn’t offer the variety of movies Virgin Atlantic did. Virgin always kept him up all night despite his promises before take off to sleep on the plane this time. There were about five movies, four of which Harry usually wanted to see and the damn flight always landed when he was just getting to an interesting part. The last time he and his wife had flown over, “Quills” cut out just as the Marquis was having his tongue forcibly removed.
That flight was pleasure, this was business. Harrison Moss was part of a small media consulting group that mainly looked at print properties and advised potential buyers of a magazine’s value or pitfalls. Or a publishing house’s strengths or weaknesses. Essentially, due diligence by proxy. He had spent the last twenty years in the book and magazine publishing business as a writer, editor, managing editor, editorial director and then downsized editorial director. The last move, the one out the door, had convinced him that he was now in his forties and had to wander off the career path that had looked so promising and fruitful when he was twenty-five. In another few years, he would be a fifty something and the word “dinosaur” would creep closer to his name in an adjectival way.
He got lucky. He was a runner and had a regular group of men that he ran with. They were his contemporaries in age and career stage. Some of them were even in publishing as well. They met two to three times a week in Central Park, running five Ks to five milers depending on their mood, the pace of the day and the weather. They talked about things men talked about when alone with their own kind: sports, work, women, wives, girlfriends, sports and work. When one of them hit a crisis time: illness, divorce, fired, they’d talk about that and pull together as best they could to help him through. Usually a few beers and companionship, sometimes a referral or a phone number. When Dave had a heart attack, they hiked to St. Vincent’s every day. In Harry’s case, two of them joined him in forming Intaglio.
He was living in New York City, in a small co-op in Manhattan. An East 82nd street address that had cost a fortune when he bought it in the early nineties. Payments were crushing at first and then only staggering. But he had made them and now he had a little bit of equity. The market had appreciated and he was getting tired of the city so he sold and pocketed the profit and moved out to eastern Pennsylvania where he figured he could be rural but close to the city. He also figured, rightly, that office space was a lot cheaper in Pennsylvania and an LLC in that state had a smaller tax bight that one in New York. So he convinced Lou and Craig about the merits of the business plan and the location and set up Intaglio Media Consulting.
It took a bit of convincing to get his wife to move but eventually she relented. Josette had always been a girl who thrived on being connected to people, groups, clubs, charities and causes. New York laid them out at her feet. Pennsylvania asked that she come to them and that ran her the wrong way. However, a more relaxed lifestyle, a bigger, much bigger, living space for less money and quick access to Manhattan finally made her relent and follow him. Their house was big and new and on a few acres of land that was a half hour from the next town. He loved walking the property, especially with city friends who would comment that he could not see all of his yard at once and wasn’t he the country squire now. He promised Josette gardens , walks, peace and quiet. He delivered with the property. He also promised her companionship on those walks but Intaglio broke that promise for him almost immediately. Lou and Craig initially kept their places in the city and either telecommuted or came out for a few days at a time. Soon, rural life became a lure for them as well. Harry, as Intaglio grew, was either glued to the computer or in the office in town, neither of which pleased Josette. She began to take more frequent trips to New York, staying with friends for days at a time and Harry spent a lot more evenings alone with a few beers and work. Harry didn’t really take notice of Josette’s trips or his solitude. He was busy with Intaglio.
As a trio they were pretty good. They all had substantial backgrounds in the business and they all had friends. It didn’t take them long to land their first job and they worked feverishly at proving themselves. That opened the door to a second and third job and soon they could make a living at this. Not always a good one and there was a difference between turning a profit and making a living but they stuck with it and here, three years in, they were self sustaining.
Lou was a freelance writer. He contributed to everything from Outside to the New York Times Review of Books. He was a fantastically talented wordsmith with a sense for good copy. He would write drafts for weeks only to tear each one up and start again.
“It doesn’t feel right.” He pushed deadlines out and then out again. Editors hated him for it but they put up with it because when he turned a story in it pretty much went straight to layout. It was, and he was, that good. What didn’t feel right to Lou about his own work didn’t feel right to him about other people’s work. He was not a critic, he was an evaluator. He would flop on his favorite couch at home with a magazine and read it cover to cover. Every page, even the ad copy. Then he would go out for a walk, come back and prepare an editorial summary that talked about what was written, how it was written, to whom it was written, why it was written and was it all going to work together. He was clear, concise and didn’t pull his punches. “This book is speaking in an empty room” was one of his summaries on a monthly magazine called “New Spaces.” It got about seven issues out before folding.
“Nobody’s ever rolled this kind of stuff together for this group of men. Look for a lot of copycats.” That was his summary for a little title called Maxim.
Lou was the editorial touchstone of the group. Craig was the financial maven. Harry hovered in between. He had a master’s degree in business on top of his English B.A. and he had the years of experience. Plus, in getting Lou and Craig as partners, he did what had always worked on the job: He surrounded himself with professional, competent people that complemented each other and could get things done. It wasn’t always caviar and roses, but they answered to no one but themselves. There was value in that.
An American health magazine called Towards Better Health was planning a United Kingdom edition. Towards Better Health had grown from an eclectic newsletter run by the village crank into the thirteenth largest magazine in the States. They were based in the same Philadelphia suburb they had started in so Harry’s commute to their offices was made easy and even Lou, coming in from Manhattan, didn’t bitch as much as when they had to live in motels in Des Moines working for Meredith Corp. Towards Better Health was owned by Owens Media Group. The company was expanding globally and London seemed the logical choice for an English language extension of their flagship. They needed help though. The parent company was, for all it’s product’s reach, still a mom and pop shop at its core. Lou had some connections on the editorial staff and he got the call. So now Intaglio had landed a three week stint in London getting operations set up. They had met each other at the ticket counter in Newark. Lou parked his car in long term, called Maria and told her he loved her. Craig had Sue bring him since they lived pretty close in Jersey. Harry wasn’t sure where Josette was that day. He had said good bye when she left for the city two days earlier. He left her a note with his flight itinerary and his hotel number and driven to the airport and the flight to London.
Lou and Craig were exhausted. It had been their first overseas flight in a while. Harry’s too, but he was somehow used to the almost dreamlike first hours of jet lag. In the lobby of the hotel, they handed over credit cards and passports and told jokes that weren’t funny. There were two women standing behind them in line looking just as tired. They weren’t together, it seemed. Harry noticed them. A petite brunette with porcelain skin and a blonde woman with remarkable eyes. Neither looked happy and Harry thought he saw the blonde sneer ever so slightly when Lou started asking about what his room looked out on. She was pretty but her eyes burned with impatience. Somewhere between blue and green and blue again. She kept pushing her hair back over the top of her head. There was a barette holding most of her hair there but a few wisps fell back over her eyes. Her blue, no green, no something inbetween eyes. As the three men started to haul their bags up the stairs, the woman began to check in herself.
***
Harry had been lying on his bed for about an hour. He was weary but not tired. He had showered and was wearing clean shorts and trying to doze off but couldn’t do it on a bet. He got up, dressed and went down to the lobby. The desk clerk was Italian. Probably. Harry thought he recognized the language when he came down the stairs.
“Could you ring Craig Smith please?”
“Your name sir?”
“Harry.”
“Harry?” ”Yes, Harry Moss. Room 307. I’m his friend.” She dialed the phone and waited.
“Yes, Mr. Smith, a Mr. Harry Moss to speak to you.” She handed the phone to Harry.
“Hey, I can’t fucking sleep. How about you come down and we take the only day off we have and do something with it? At least let’s hit a museum and a pub?”
“I’m not really in the mood for a museum.” A woman’s voice answered.
Harry shot the clerk a quick, dirty look. “Wrong room,” he said in a low voice. She understood the look but pretended not to understand him. A lie, she had expertly checked them in earlier. That annoyed Harry. “Wrong room.” He repeated in a lower, angrier voice, stopping himself from putting an “o” on the end of both words. “I’m sorry,” he said into the receiver, “I don’t mean to bother you.”
“You’re American.” She said.
“Yes.” ”Just get in today?”
“This morning.”
“You just checked in, right?” “Yeah, about ten.”
“I think I saw you in the lobby.”
“I guess you did. There were a couple of women behind us. One was a blonde…”
“I’m the blonde.”
“I thought I recognized your voice.”
There was a pause on the line. “Do you always pick up women like this?” Harry relaxed a little.
“Only in Europe. This way, Homeland Security doesn’t stand a chance of catching me.”
She laughed. “Harry, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Chris.”
“Sorry to have disturbed you Chris.”
“Listen, I can’t sleep. I’m jet-lagged and what’s worse, I’m starving. If you’re not hell bent to go to some museum, why don’t we go out and get some lunch, or dinner or breakfast or whatever we’re supposed to be eating right now?”
“I can do that.”
“I’ll come down in a few minutes.” She hung up.
She came down wearing a grey skirt and a blue woolen top. She was wearing burgundy leather flats that were a little scuffed. Her legs had the tone of an athlete. As a runner, Harry could tell that with clinical certainty. She smiled and her eyes flashed.
“Chris Adams.”
“Harry Moss.” He shook her hand gently. The other hand, the one with the ring was holding her purse.
“Know London?” she asked.
“A little bit. I’ve been here on vacation but never in this part of town. So I’m not really sure where to go.” ”Let’s just walk. There’s got to be something and I don’t feel like eating at the desk clerk’s cousin’s joint around the corner.”
“Then we walk. Chris. Christine?”
“Chris.”
