Welcome to Chapter 6! With Paul safely tucked in, Church has some time to kill before dinner. He tries to do it with a visit to his brother, then he visits some friends from the past, then he tries to connect with his husband. Each event is met with limited success. Let's see how Church deal with the idle time.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: Stolen Love The third and final installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
6
Killing Time
As I left the residential wing, I set the alarm on my phone to sound at a quarter to six. I figured that would give me time to get back to Paul's room, from wherever I happened to be. I wanted to make sure I was there well before his wake-up call from Sven sounded. I worried that he would wake up confused or maybe think he'd been caught in a dream. Changing worlds can be a jarring experience, as I well knew, and I didn't want to stress my elderly guest any more than necessary.
I noted the time. It was a little passed two-thirty, so I had three-and-a-half hours to kill before it was time to get Paul ready for dinner. Since that night's meal was just for immediate family, I wasn't too worried about seeing to any preparations. We had a party planned for the next night, but Cellarius and his staff already had those arrangements well in hand, so there wasn't much for me to think about for that event either.
I ran over that night's list of attendees in my head and thought about who was already on the estate verses who still needed to arrive. The total list was me, Shawn, Joe, Andy, Comet, Mary, Bem, Tobit, Hannah, Leah, Altus, Lenis, Cass, and probably Met Iners. In spite of only running into Papa Cass, Andy and Comet, I knew that everyone was on the estate except for Mary, Bem, Tobit, Shawn, and Met.
Joe spent much of his time in his apartment, so I didn't expect to see him before dinner. The twins and Altus also tended to spend their afternoons in their shared apartment. I assumed they spent that time in the throes of sweaty passion, as they usually arrived at the family dinner table freshly showered and with good color in their faces.
Just one time Andy had made a smart remark about their appearance. I don't know what took place in my nephew's mind after his comment was made, but whatever message the twins sent him, his face flushed like a glowing traffic light, and he never said another word on the subject.
The stark reality was that Andy was every bit as active with Comet as Hannah and Leah were with Altus. Andy was just a little more self-conscious than the girls were. The other stark reality was that Mary and Bem as a couple and Shawn and I as a couple were likely almost as active, or every bit as active as the young people. The difference was that the older generation understood discretion while the younger was still showing off.
Having accounted for the people on the estate, I sought to account for those that weren't there. I knew from discussions had the previous day that the Ecclesia family was shopping in town and would return with Shawn in the commuter jet when he finished his day at his practice. I assumed Met would come then as well.
Met was a physician who we, or really Shawn, had helped out of a financial jam when he was in medical school. In exchange for our financial support, Met became the caretaker of our apartment building in the capital city of Epistylium. He'd long since graduated from medical school and had his own thriving general practice in that city but for whatever reason, he remained our caretaker and, until very recently, still lived in the second-floor apartment of our building despite no longer needing financial assistance. I think he did it out of habit.
The change that had caused Met to move from that apartment was that Shawn had taken him on as a partner in his medical practice in Oppidum. For some reason, besides working with Shawn at the practice, Met also followed him home most days and had been spending so much time at the estate that he practically lived there. I didn't mind, or I didn't think I minded.
I liked Met well enough and enjoyed his company, but I didn't understand his presence. Shawn's sudden need for a partner in his practice had never been satisfactorily explained to me. I assumed that anyone Shawn would take on would have to have a similar power level as him to be of any use, and since no one did, I didn't know what help Met could offer. I'd tried discussing it with Shawn, but he didn't seem to appreciate my curiosity and changed the subject every time I tried to bring it up.
Eventually, I didn't ask Shawn anymore about it. It was his practice, after all, and if he wanted a partner, that was fine with me. I reasoned that Shawn probably needed someone to deal with the regular walk-in, non-emergency patients. I hoped that having a partner would take some of the load off Shawn so he and I could spend more time together...like we used to. The reality of the arrangement was different from what I'd hoped. Met seemed to always work the same hours Shawn did, and to travel with him to and from the office.
What the fuck's the point of that then?' I'd asked myself when I saw them leaving together day after day and coming home together evening after evening. I didn't figure Shawn was cheating on me, but I was jealous of the time Met got to spend with my husband. I was also jealous of the conversations they had, about the day's cases and medicine this' and `doctor crap that.' I felt left out of Shawn's professional life, and with Met at the house all the time, I felt left out of his personal life as well.
I tried not to express my jealousy. I tried to be happy that Shawn finally had someone to be his doctor buddy, because I knew Shawn didn't get much of a chance to discuss his work with another physician. He always tried to tell me about the particularly difficult cases, and I always listened and cared what he said, but I didn't understand enough of it to be an active listener. I usually lost focus and glazed over like he did when I reminisced about welding or talked about working on the Vic. Unfortunately for both of us, medicine was as interesting to me as internal combustion or welding was to him.
Originally, I'd tried to look on the situation as one that would run its course in time. I reasoned that I had plenty of time. Since I'd been on Solum for almost eighteen years, and aged backwards for many of those years, I'd started to come to terms with the idea that I was going to live a very long time. That idea had given me a different perspective on how events fit into my life. I figured that, if my husband spent six months professionally infatuated with a doctor partner, that was fine. When that infatuation was over, he'd come back to me, and it would be like it was again. At least, that's what I tried to tell myself.
Lately, it had been getting harder to keep telling myself that. I'd been starting to worry. I'd been starting to worry Shawn and I didn't have as much in common as we thought. I'd been starting to worry that we were growing apart.
I shoved those thoughts away, half out of fear and half out of practicality. I couldn't do anything about the problem without Shawn, and he wasn't there. I cast about in my mind for something to do until Shawn got home...something that wasn't brooding. I considered trying to read something, but the events of the morning had left me a bit too excited to sit still for long.
The idea of reading did remind me that I'd wanted to give Paul a copy of Fidum's bible that I'd made at Shawn's practice the previous week. I'd actually planned to give Paul the original but figured that Paul would worry about handling a book that was almost two-thousand years old. To take the worry out of the equation, I'd made a copy.
I'd actually made two copies, one for Paul and one for me to read at some point. I felt guilty that, in the almost twenty years that had gone by since Fidum entrusted the book to me, I still hadn't done more than open the cover. I promised myself that I'd read the book the next time I needed to kill time.
With that promise made, I thought about what else I could do to kill time that wasn't reading. I thought about going for a climb, but I didn't feel like climbing alone. I could go for a swim, but I didn't really like to swim. I could take the Vic out and tear across the plains, but I'd already done that.
I thought about the people on the estate. I could visit with my nieces or my nephew, except I couldn't because they were probably in the middle of things that they wouldn't want their uncle interrupting. I thought briefly about visiting with Shawn's mother, Lenis, but figured she'd want to talk about financial matters and that was the last thing I wanted to discuss.
She and I didn't have much else to talk about as we didn't really have anything in common, other than our love for her son. As she and I had gotten to know each other, I was surprised to learn that she was very much like her brother, Ars. I'd assumed, from seeing her in Shawn's memories and from the one time I'd met her at her husband's mansion right before Shawn and I were married, that Lenis was a timid woman. It turned out the opposite was true.
Lenis had been weirdly submissive with her husband, sort of like Ars was when he was around women, but with everyone else, she was very direct, even a little hard. It made her an excellent businesswoman. Her financial acumen had taken our original two-billion-credit fortune and expanded it to staggering dimensions. Shawn and I very literally had more money than we knew what to do with.
When Lenis left her husband and moved into the third-floor apartment at our building in Epistylium, she occupied herself with decorating the apartment and rediscovering her relationship with her son and her relationship with herself. After a few months though, she got bored and restless. She came to me, during one of our stints at the apartment between missions for Ars and asked me for money to invest. She'd already been working on another project for me, and had proven herself an excellent organizer, but once that project was up-and-running, Lenis wanted more to do.
"How much do you want?" I asked.
She'd clenched her left hand into a fist and wrapped her right hand over it. She was obviously uncomfortable asking for anything. When she first moved in, she'd made a lot of noise about paying her own way in spite of the fact that she had no resources of her own. Shawn had to expose our financial independence to his mother to quiet her concerns.
Once she realized we were rich, she settled down, for a time anyway. Soon though, every time she and I saw each other, Lenis would get me alone and grill me about how I was managing our fortune. She was always upset when I told her I wasn't managing it. There was more money than I thought I could spend in ten lifetimes, and I was happy letting it sit wherever it was and using it when I needed it.
The conversation she and I had that day, about me giving her money to invest, seemed the logical culmination of those other discussions. Her right hand was squeezed over her left fist in an exact copy of a nervous gesture I'd seen Shawn use a million times. She assailed me with her similar ice-blue eyes and boldly stated, "I want it all."
I almost laughed, but I didn't when I saw the smoldering intensity of her gaze. The hard look on her face told me that Lenis was dead serious. I shook my head but didn't know what to say. She saw my consternation and clarified for me. "I want the full management of your fortune. That is what I want once I prove myself.
"I do not expect you to just hand over all that money, but I want you to know my goal so you can begin to think about it. To start, I would like one-hundred-thousand-credits. I do NOT want it as a gift. I want it as a loan that I fully intend to pay back, with proper interest, once I have made my own fortune with it. When you see what I can do with money, you will beg me to manage your affairs."
Lenis seemed completely confident, to the point where her confidence felt like a direct challenge. I took my phone from my pocket, opened my banking app, and transferred a million credits from my account to the account Shawn and I had started for Lenis when we brought her to live with us. She objected to the extravagance, even scolded me for it. I told her that's just how I was with money and that she'd have to put me on an allowance when she had full control.
Lenis thought about that for no more than an instant, then she made me a business offer. "Every quarter," she said, "I will report my earnings, and I want you to double them. If I earn two-hundred thousand in a quarter, you give me control of an additional two-hundred thousand in capital, and so on as long as I am earning money.
"If I have reversals or tread water or lose money, you do not give me an increase that quarter. If I have reversals for two quarters in a row, you have the option to take your capital back. You retain all the capital and monies earned, minus my commission. You will pay me ten percent on all net profits and a bonus five percent every time I double your initial investment."
The arrangement sounded reasonable to me, but I didn't have full control of our fortune. Even though the payments for saving the world were meted out to Shawn and me individually, aside from ten million we each held in personal accounts, the rest was held jointly. Shawn and I would have to agree to anything done with any portion of the total sum. I told Lenis as much, but she didn't seem ready to discuss the arrangement with her son. "Will you agree to my proposal up to the limits of your discretionary funds?" She asked.
"Yes." I agreed and held my hand out for her to shake.
Lenis had stared at my outstretched hand like I'd offered her a dead rat to seal the deal. "A handshake?" She admonished. "You think we are going to make an agreement on a ten million credit investment with a handshake? No. I will draft a contract that will spell out everything we have discussed, and we will sign it and have it witnessed. A handshake...ridiculous. Is that how things are done on Earth?"
I made some general statements about the way business was done on Earth that didn't satisfy her. She said it didn't matter. She and I would have a contract, or we wouldn't do business. I agreed and dutifully read and signed what she eventually put in front of me.
Since that meeting, Lenis had earned money for us at a spectacular rate. She'd done so well that Shawn and I put her in control of our entire fortune after just one year. Later, the other members of the original team including Bem, Neb, and the Dux brothers all put Lenis in charge of their money. Even the members of Divided Light, the band that had been started by Neb and my former doctor Calidi, asked Lenis to manage their money.
Lenis became a powerhouse of finance. It quickly got to the point where Divided Light was making more money by investing with her than they were with their music.
When Lenis' brother, Ars, found out about her financial success, he diversified his portfolio by asking her to invest a portion of his fortune for him. She did the same, splitting part of the money under her control away to be managed by him. They had a running sibling rivalry between them to see who could make more money in a given time period. Lenis won more often than not.
None of that was the point though. The problem at hand was I needed to kill two-and-a-half hours. Thinking about the events that led up to Shawn's mother being in control of billions of credits and making us all wealthy beyond our wildest fantasies only took minutes. I'd used that time to climb the stairs from the residential wing to the entryway of the main house. I went through the yawning front door and sat on the black basalt step to soak up some sun. I scanned the horizon to see if I could locate Cass. When I couldn't, I peeled my shirt off and laid down on the warm stone with my eyes shut.
The sun felt good on my skin and so did the stone, but I was too anxious to stay still for very long. I was excited about Paul's visit and worried about how he'd react when his magic activated, something it was certain to do in short order. I was looking forward to Shawn being home and hoped we'd have time for a matinee before dinner.
I felt needy, very needy, and I fantasized the breeze that caressed my face was Shawn's breath as he leaned in to kiss me. I reached down to adjust myself in my pants and figured I'd better go do something before I decided to rub one out on the front steps.
I got up, went down the steps to the scrub of the plains, and crossed the hard-packed dirt to the residential wing of the house. The second unit in, the first one beyond Paul's, belonged to Joe. I pressed a spot next to the front door jamb that served as a doorbell and glanced up at the shining black surface of the building skin.
Joe's place was closed up tight, the way it usually was. I pulled my shirt back over my head as I waited for Joe to answer, something that usually took a while. "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Joe's voice barked through the intercom.
I felt my hands ball into fists at Joe's snapping intolerance to my interruption of his busy day of wasting time. I forced my frustration down because it wouldn't help either of us. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly enough that Joe wouldn't hear me sigh through the intercom. "I just got Paul settled in and thought I'd stop and see you." I said through a forced smile that Joe couldn't see.
"You mean FATHER MILLER?" Joe demanded. He emphasized the priest's official title to stress what I was certain he saw as my disrespect for the man's calling.
I forced another long breath into and out of my lungs to keep from barking back the fact that Paul was the one who'd told me to call him Paul. "Yes...will you let me in?" The latch on the door clicked and I pushed my way inside.
Joe's apartment was a physical copy of Paul's in size and shape, but that's where the similarities ended. The inside of Joe's place was dim to the point of being gloomy with the living room light panel ceiling glowing at a bare minimum. The walls that could be as clear as the air were set to block all outside light. They appeared black but they weren't a color as much as they were the absence of color. The living room furniture was brown leather on brown carpet and the open plan kitchen was black glass.
The depressing room smelled musty, and the air was stale in spite of the modern HVAC equipment that served the residence. It was like Joe's depression had somehow leached into the apartment to the point of poisoning the air like it was poisoning his spirit.
I fought the urge to call up the building management system to unshade the walls and open them wide. I'd done that more than once and it always ended with Joe screaming at me and throwing me out of his place. I had to remind myself that I wouldn't go so someone else's house and open all the windows, so I had to respect Joe's preference for gloom.
I went to Joe's kitchen and asked his culinarian for a cup of coffee. It couldn't provide one because Joe had let the hopper of base run empty. I dug around in his cabinet until I found a bag of the stuff and loaded the hopper. I was pushing the empty bag into the trash chute when Joe came stomping down the stairs from his bedroom.
He started in on me as soon as he was in view, massive in his plain brown pajamas. "What are you doing? Why are you always screwing around in my kitchen?" Joe demanded. "Every time you come in here, you fiddle with things. You know I hate it when you fiddle."
I finished disposing of the empty bag and held my hands up to show surrender. "I just wanted a cup of coffee, and your machine was empty. I figured my request was the last straw. It was only right that I refill what I emptied out, right? I was trying to be respectful, OK?"
Joe scowled at me like he suspected I was making fun of him but couldn't lay his finger on anything that I'd done wrong. He moved to the two seats at the island and settled his bulk on a chair. "I'll have a cup." He grumbled at me. "Cream and sugar."
I obligingly programed the machine for Joe's coffee and then my own. The machine chimed, the door opened, and I took the mugs from the inner compartment. I handed Joe's mug to him and leaned on the counter to stand like I'd stood in Paul's kitchen. Joe sat and stared into his cup, breathing hard against the weight he carried. He looked terrible, but I'd never say it to him. He looked like I used to, but in some respects, he looked worse.
Joe's brown hair had grown long and dull and straggly from lack of care. He had it pulled up in a loose and greasy ponytail. An unkempt beard covered the lower half of his fat face, while high blood pressure colored the upper half an unhealthy red.
Andy and I had both asked Joe to get checked out, but he always refused. He had a thick neck that strained his shirt collar and led to his sloping shoulders, weighed down by depression and his sloppy girth. He had a huge, sagging gut that protruded from the loose clothing he wore. Joe always insisted on earth tones despite Andy's pleading with him to wear anything but. The man was a vast, gasping lump of obstinance.
"How's Father Miller?" Joe asked his coffee cup.
"He's good. He doesn't seem as...what's the word...his energy is down, but I think he'll feel better after a few days here. You should know that he took his collar off in the car. He doesn't want to be a priest while he's here. Those were his words not mine. He wants to be treated as a retired person. That's why I called him Paul. He asked me to call him Paul. It will make him more comfortable if everyone calls him that. He asked the young people, Andy and Comet, to call him Mister Paul."
Joe set his coffee aside and grumbled at the counter. "Comitis...the man's name is Comitis. Why do you insist on calling everyone whatever you feel like? His parents gave him that name and you should respect him and them enough to use it."
`You're getting like mom.' I thought at my brother, but I didn't say anything. He raised his eyes high enough to glare at me from under his heavy brow, and I wondered if he'd sensed my thoughts. He'd never developed his magic beyond his power of truth, but I assumed his capacity had increased from being around me for years. I supposed it was possible he was getting impressions of my thoughts even when he didn't actively force the truth from me. I worked on moving my mind to less confrontational topics and Joe's glare faded.
"I'm bored." I said to announce the reason for my visit. "You want to do something?"
"Like what?" Joe demanded like I'd asked him to borrow money.
I tried to stay buoyant and positive, but it was difficult around Joe. "I don't know...anything. Do you want to go for a walk, or for a drive across the plains, or watch a movie, or play cards, or sit and talk, or stare at the sun? I'm bored. We're two reasonably intelligent people. We should be able to come up with some way to murder a couple hours. What do you say?"
Joe stood from the island with a grunt and a gasp and stomped toward the stairs. "I say I'm busy. Finish your coffee and get out." He crossed the room and plodded up the stairs until he was out of sight.
I wanted to go after him and shout at him and shake him and force him to be the Joe that I remembered, but I knew that wouldn't work. If I tried that, it would only drive another wedge between us, maybe the last wedge, and I'd lose him forever. I took my coffee, and my frustrated anger with me, and left Joe alone.
Out on the plains, in front of Joe's apartment, I raised my face to the sun with my eyes closed. I stood that way to let the sunshine beat on my skin while I finished my coffee. When my mug was empty, I threw it into the air as hard as I could, snapped my eyes open to find it, and vaporized it with a stinger of white magic. My own version of shooting clay pigeons.
It didn't make me feel any better. Joe had pissed me off to the point of wanting to destroy something big, but I didn't have anything around me that I could wreck and there wasn't enough time to go somewhere to find something. Even if I couldn't destroy something, I still felt the need to escape. The house, the entire estate made me feel hemmed in. I needed to go somewhere else. I had an idea of where I could go.
I went into the main house, crossed through the entryway, through the ballroom, to the balcony, down the steps to the pool, down those steps to the scrub behind the house and around to the still-open garage door. I jumped in the Vic, started it, dragged the gear selector into Drive, and stomped the accelerator. The transmission grabbed forward gear when the engine RPMs were already climbing and launched the big sedan from the garage with the violent tearing of the tires on the structural-glass floor.
The car slid sideways when the light truck tires it wore lost traction on the hard-packed dirt of the plains. I corrected the slide with a flick of the steering wheel but stayed hard on the gas as the car accelerated toward the east side of the mountain and the statue of King Pravus. I drove far enough to clear the sight of Joe's mural painted on the climbing wall. I continued, passed the monument I'd shown to Paul just a couple hours before, and jerked the car to a stop near the northeast corner of the mountain, just beyond Fidum's carving.
I shut the Vic off and leapt from the car to stomp my way toward the base of the mountain. When we built the estate, I'd had an elevator installed to get to the top. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do because I was the only one who couldn't ride my power up.
There was access, via the staircase that Fidum had carved through the mountain, but one-thousand feet of steps is a fuck ton of steps. I got in the clear elevator and punched the button for the top. The door closed and I ascended rapidly to the flat plateau that was the mountain peak.
At the top, I stepped off the elevator, crossed a small clear glass bridge to the rock outcropping that had once supported Fidum's wooden gantry, and planted my feet on the mountaintop. I continued over the flat rock to the spiral staircase that led down inside the head of the statue and hurried down the steps into the last place Fidum and Pravus lived together.
"GODDAMNIT FUCK!" I shouted to the ghosts of the past. My voice came back to me in a mocking echo and died against the vaulted stone chamber around me. I took a deep breath and felt a little better for the outburst.
"Sorry, guys." I apologized aloud to the imaginary Fidum and Pravus. "I don't mean to always bring my trouble to you, but you guys always seem to know what to say when I'm frustrated. It's comforting to be here with you."
I crossed the empty room to the sculpture of Pravus and his seven advisers having a feast. It was the only thing left from the room that I'd visited when its residents were alive. The wooden and upholstered furniture that was there before, had turned to dust when I defeated the barrier and the mountain aged fifteen-hundred years in an instant. I'd cleaned it up and vaporized the few sticks that were left, like some kind of half-assed offering for the dead.
I looked around to remind myself that Fidum's wall paintings had survived very well, as did his stonework. I was glad for that because it was those things that illustrated his love for his king. The only change I'd made to the space, beside my minor clean-up effort, was a chair I'd added at Fidum's carved stone feast. I placed it down at the end of the table, opposite the old servant, Timore Pedisecus. There I could sit and pretend to be part of the party.
I liked that spot especially because I could look across the table and see my friend, or the man who I considered to be my friend, Fidum, with a smile on his face. The man's stone image seemed happy to be where he was, celebrating the accomplishments of the King who he'd loved from afar. I felt there was a touch of worship on the face of the stone Fidum. I reasoned that, as the man had carved the image himself, it was more than possible that the emotions he felt were transferred to the stone.
I sat in my chair and admired the left profile of Fidum's face, the high cheekbones and handsome features. I let my eyes trail down the athletic build of the short-waisted man. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I'd picture him and Pravus together in intimate moments and wonder who preferred what. They made an interesting fantasy because of their very different builds.
Pravus was a great burly bear of a man, a powerful king, while Fidum was a gentle physician, a healer. I wondered if Pravus liked to exert power in the bedroom as much as he did in his life, or if that was the one place where he was humble. Perhaps he was gentle, maybe even submissive in his lovemaking. I wondered how their preferences would compare to mine and Shawn's.
"I wish Shawn was here." I said to the stone revelers. "I wish it was just me and him and no one else. A part of me wishes that he and I were trapped here like you and Pravus. I suppose eternity would get tiresome with no one else in it...eventually, but right now, I can't imagine anything better than just me and my husband and no yesterday and no tomorrow and no interruptions.
"I'd hoped that's what we would have here. When I built the estate, I hoped it would be far enough out of the world that we could have the time we always wanted just to be a couple, to live for each other and no one else. We've never had that though. I want that. I want him to leave his practice and be my husband. I want to be his husband and I don't want to have to share him with anyone. Does that make me selfish?" I asked.
I wished the stone carving would tell me the answer. I sighed when they didn't and continued my confession. "I'm starting to wonder again guys. I'm starting to doubt, and I don't know how to make it stop."
I lowered my eyes from Fidum's face and noticed my right hand was closed around my bracelet like it had been earlier when I was talking to Paul. "You see?" I raised my bracelet-clenching hand for them to see. "I'm doing it again. They finally got me to stop holding onto this thing, like a fucking security-blanket, and here I am doing it again. What the fuck is wrong with me?
"I'm scared," I said to answer my own question, "that's what's wrong. I'm scared again, like I was before, and I can't tell Shawn that, or he'll be disappointed with me. I don't know how to fix it though. Why can't it just be easy? Why does life have to be one goddamned question after another?"
I covered my face with my smooth palms and wished...wished things were different. I gritted my teeth and rubbed my face like I was trying to rub it off my skull and lowered my hands to the table. "I'm sorry, guys." I apologized to the stone men. "I guess this is just how it is sometimes. Thanks for listening. It means a lot."
I stood up and crossed the room to the windows that overlooked the plains, the windows that, on the outside, were the irises of the statue's smiling eyes. I leaned against the stone and looked over the nothing and felt a little better. At least if I was going to be overwhelmed, a place as peaceful as the Pravus Plains seemed about the best place in the world to be that way.
I stood there and stared into the nothing for a long time. Long enough for the sun to shift in the sky far enough to change the way the light fell in the room. It got dark inside the statue head early in the day because the only windows, the eyes of the statue, faced east. A glance at my phone told me it was approaching four o'clock. The sun was behind the statue, and the mountain was casting a long shadow across the yellow scrub of the plains.
In the distance of the sky, now turning a deeper blue as the sun slid lower, was a speck of black growing more obvious against the contrasting color. I knew what that speck was, and I knew it wasn't really black. A trick of the light made it appear that way, but I knew it would be plumb purple when it got close. I knew because I'd stood on top of that mountain and waited for it many times.
Shawn was on his way home in the jet. He'd be landing in less than twenty minutes, and I wanted to be on the ground at the end of the runway when he did. I rechecked the time on my phone to get an exact read. The digital numbers said it was 4:03 PM. "He'll be on the ground by 4:19." I told myself and hurried to meet him.
I stopped on my way passed the stone feast and put my hand on Fidum's shoulder. "I really hope you're with him. I hope you're happy." I said to the ear of the sculpture. "Maybe that's what heaven is." I reasoned aloud. "Maybe you get to be with whoever matters to you the most and all the questions are answered, and the worries soothed. It would almost be worth having to face heaven to have that."
I glanced passed Fidum to wink at Pravus, patted Fidum's stone shoulder, and hurried from the chamber. I just about ran to the elevator and leaned on the down button until I got to the ground. My heart beat faster as I anticipated Shawn's arrival and I was looking forward to feeling our emotional link reestablish when he got close enough.
I had the Vic running and its tires churning the dust as I throttled the big sedan into a fishtail U-turn toward the estate and the landing strip. I patted the steering wheel with my right hand as I urged the car on with my right foot and let the V-8 roar around the front of the estate. I craned my head from the window to find the plane in the sky. I spotted it and decided it was still far enough away for me to drive the length of the runway to get to the hangar without interfering with the plane trying to land.
I kept the speed up on the car and howled along the two miles of runway to the hangar. The strip didn't need to be two miles long for the small planes we owned, but the additional length had helped land supplies when we were building and furnishing the house. We maintained the longer runway just in case we ever needed to use it.
It was also a nice, marked out drag strip for when I was feeling particularly rammy. I reached the end of the runway and braked the car to a slow cruising speed. I steered in a big circle to loop the hangar and come to a stop on the far side of it, facing the runway.
I'd just finished my trick-driving when the jet descended into its final approach to land. I felt my emotional link with Shawn reestablish just before it touched down. I could tell he'd had a good day and was happy to be home. I hoped that his happiness would translate into at least a quickie for me. I checked the time on my phone again to see that I was running out of time before I had to be back to help Paul get ready for dinner. I figured that if I could get Shawn alone fast enough, there would just be enough time to blow off some steam.
The jet landed and taxied into the hangar through the automatic door. I followed it inside on foot and waited while the motors spooled down and stopped and the side door to the plane opened. A short set of foldable steps flipped down and Bem was the first to use them.
He climbed down and reached up to take his young son, Tobit, from Mary. He accepted his son into his arms, then used his spare hand to help Mary out of the plane. Mary was pregnant again and starting to show and Bem was being ultra-careful with her. Mary got to the ground and moved aside to make room for more people to come down.
Met followed Mary. The petite young man hopped down easily. Behind him was the man I was waiting for. I was so hungry for him; I couldn't help myself. When Shawn appeared on the steps wearing a pair of lime green hip hugger pants, orange heels, and close-fitting yellow top, my lust went right through the roof. I plucked him off the plane steps with my magic, floated him to me, and right into my arms. I hugged him close and kissed him greedily.
He kissed me back, but I could feel that his intensity wasn't the same as mine. He was happy to see me and grateful for the welcome, but he wasn't passionate about it. I broke our kiss and set him on his feet. "I'm glad you're home." I stated the obvious and followed it with some more obviousness. "I...uh...came to pick you up."
"Thanks." He said without much enthusiasm. "That was a nice welcome."
No one else said anything, not even Bem. The others were long used to my enthusiastic welcomes. I didn't go overboard every time Shawn came home, but I'd done it often enough for my actions to be familiar to everyone present. I greeted the group and they greeted me, and I shepherded them to the Vic for the short ride to the estate.
Shawn took the seat next to me with Met next to him while the Ecclesia family sat across the back. As I drove, I didn't crack the throttle off an idle in deference to my pregnant sister, her protective husband, and their young son who wasn't in a car seat. The distance was short, and we got to the garage in good time. I backed in and killed the engine.
Everyone piled out, but I asked Shawn to wait with me for a second. The rest of the group went on their way and left us alone. Shawn slid from the middle of the front seat, away from me into the passenger seat. "I'm sorry, Church, I'm not in the mood right now." Shawn said into his lap before I got a word out.
"Yeah, I gathered that." I answered with more bitterness in my voice than I'd planned to let through.
"I said I was sorry." He insisted.
"I heard you."
"Well," he pressed, "you wanted me to wait. Here I am."
I dropped my face in my hands and rubbed it and was disappointed and sad and almost as frustrated as when I walked out of Joe's apartment. "I missed you." I said to my palms and dropped my hands to say it to his face. "I miss you all the time. I hoped when you got home, we'd have some time for just us, but I guess...I guess you've got shit that you want to do that isn't that. It's just as well. I don't have much fucking time anyway."
I pulled the car keys from the ignition cylinder and stowed them on top of the sun visor where they lived whenever the car wasn't being driven. I felt that Shawn felt bad for rejecting me, but not bad enough to change his mind. I got out of the car and moved toward the door into the house. I had my hand on the knob when Shawn called, "it won't always be this way," to my back.
"Yeah," I muttered loud enough for him to hear me, "someday I'll be dead." I pushed my way through the door and swung it shut behind me.
I felt that Shawn felt bad, but he didn't come after me. I wished he would have.