by K. T. Tomb
The phone on the table rang again. Travis clawed his way into the high backed office chair, which was no easy task as the seat swiveled away under his inebriated half-timed lurch. He groaned a mixture of frustration at the chair and himself with a measure of pain as his burgeoning hangover gave his forehead a swift stab with a dull spear. The phone rang uncaringly. Travis looked at Angelo, still under the desk, but no longer cowering.
“Don’t suppose you want to get that, do you?”
The dog didn’t look like he fancied the job at all. Travis guessed the call must be important, if the caller called twice in the five minutes it had taken him to get off the floor and into a chair. Resentfully he picked the receiver up and promptly managed to knock a delicate marble statue of Ganesha off the edge of the table. The statue landed neatly, the right way up and entirely unscathed.
“Fuck! Oh, you lucky elephant bastard.”
“Who are you calling an elephant bastard?”
The voice on the line was slightly indignant, but amused. Savannah.
“Oh, hey Sav,”
Travis found he was actually glad to hear from her.
“No one is, I just nearly killed a Hindu god, which I’m pretty sure is a bad idea as far as escaping the cycle of karma goes.”
“That’s fascinating, Travis. Now, listen, put some coffee on, and try to sober up a bit. I’ll be with you in an hour. And open a window for God’s sake; if you’ve been in that office for as long as I think you have, it’ll stink of booze and dog.”
Travis tried not to tell the obvious lie, but he did it anyway.
“I’m not drunk, I’m fine. Just had a few glasses, reading up on the Marid myths of the Middle East, actually.”
He had honestly meant to read up about the Marids, but had barely got to page five of his book before inebriation rendered the exercise futile. Savannah made a noise that indicated she didn’t believe a word of it.
“Sav, what’s the big rush? Alpha Adventures is inactive, everyone’s off somewhere else.”
Travis walked around the office, trying to clear up one-handed, holding the phone in the other. Bottles clinked, and Angelo gave the entire game away by barking at his feet.
“Traitor!” Travis hissed.
Savannah, to her credit, pretended not to hear.
“I have been trying to get hold of you all morning.”
Travis checked his watch. He must have blacked out for hours. Consequently, he must look like road kill, and smell about as fragrant.
“I just had a call from Thyri,” Savannah continued, “she feels it would be a good idea if we took on a little job ourselves, keep our eye in, so to speak. Fall break begins this weekend at the University, so I have the time and you... well. You need to get motivated by something.”
“Is that you speaking, or Thyri?”
Travis was annoyed he had been discussed in private ‘and’ but he guessed it had happened at least more than once.
“Thyri. I’ve kept her in the loop, and she does finance this project, she had a right to know if one of us is having trouble. Travis, you need to get out of Atlanta for a bit. I’d suggest a holiday, but you’d probably just be holed up in a hotel room getting hammered for a week. You need something to do. Look, get on to Prometheus’ Torch and have a poke about, see if there’s anything easy that we can do, just you and me, okay?”
Savannah had the slightest hint of pleading in her voice. Travis guessed she must be more worried about him than he had thought.
“Yeah, OK. See you later.”
He dropped the wine bottles he was holding in the trash, and hung up the phone. Drawing the curtains, he saw the skyline of Atlanta draped in heavy clouds. He knew a storm was coming and that the October climate would be thick, heavy with rush hour pollution and humidity. Still, the grey skies reminded him, oddly, of London. He had the office looking presentable in only a few minutes. Thyri and Adam had covered most surfaces with antiques, pictures of explorers and objet d’art from around the world. The effect was, with the mahogany furniture, very much of the office a very wealthy time traveler would have. Most of the pieces didn’t belong together, separated by centuries in time and thousands of miles, but they had been purchased with enough care that there were similarities between adjacent pieces, a use of color, or similar material linking items stylistically, if not historically. Travis had to admit Adam knew his stuff when it came to artifacts from the past. He noticed a half empty wine bottle hiding behind a large figurine of Eris, Greek goddess of discord. Appropriate, Travis thought, that she would be trying to sew trouble by concealing the evidence until Savannah arrived. Satisfied that he had collected all the incriminating items, he picked up the trash bag and took it down the three flights of stairs to the bins outside. He passed a couple of workers from one of the other offices, who gave him odd looks. His clothing was creased, hair unkempt, he couldn’t remember the last time he had shaved, and there was presumably more red in his eyes than white. Travis made a point of smiling a madman’s grin at them. Once safely back in the office, Travis had meant to put some coffee on and turn on the PC, but his head was swimming. Instead, he sat back in the ornate swiveling chair, put his feet on the desk, and fell right back to sleep.
He did not wake until Angelo barked to announce Savannah’s entrance to the Alpha Adventures office.
Chapter Two
Fortunately for Travis, the thunderous disapproval that he had anticipated from Savannah did not arrive as he had feared.
She did, “however” greet Angelo much more warmly than him, but then Angelo didn’t smell like a distillery. The little dog submitted to a merciless fussing that he had not experienced from his owner in a considerable time. To assuage yet more guilt, Travis made coffee. He despised instant, but with only a small kitchenette stapled on to the side of the office room there was no room for a hot plate and he had not gotten around to purchasing a coffee maker, nor, for that matter, had he bought any milk or sugar in quite some time. The milk in the refrigerator was at least some of the way to being classified as an intelligent species in its own right, and Travis managed to glean half a teaspoon of sugar for each cup in a vain attempt to make the black mess palatable.
He delivered the coffee to Savannah with what he hoped was an apologetic face. Savannah barely looked at him, now occupying his place in the office chair and engrossed in catching up on the Alpha Adventures emails that Travis had not bothered to read. Behind her half-moon glasses, Savannah’s eyes darted from side to side as she digested the information on the monitor.
“You could have answered some of these, Travis. Mostly begging letters and spam, but there’s some interesting stuff here. Some of it might even be worth looking into, once the team is back together. Although, the press coverage of Baikal hasn’t done us any favors by publicizing us to every crank and conspiracy theorist on the planet.”
Travis perched himself a little awkwardly on the desk, looking over Savannah’s shoulder. The bright screen was just about visible if he closed one eye completely and squinted a bit with the other.
“This guy thinks that aliens, in collusion with the U.S. government, are poisoning cattle in Wyoming to introduce super-viruses into the food chain. Can we investigate?”
The chuckle in Travis’ throat was stymied by the pain in his skull. Savannah touted at him, and produced some painkillers from her jacket pocket.
“Oh, Sav, you’re a life saver.”
“I know. Damn the emails, have you checked Prometheus’ Torch at all while you’ve been camping out here? And stop sitting on the desk, it’s a Miles & Edwards.”
Savannah shooed him off with a wave of her hand. Travis took to standing behind her instead, fumbling for the aspirin and knocking a couple back with the bitter black coffee.
“Everything in here is a bloody antique. It’s like working in a museum. And no, I haven’t checked the website; I thought we were off the job for a while.”
Savannah didn’t reply, but logged into prometheustorch.or
g and accessed the ‘open investigations’ tab. On this open forum, anyone could post a project they wanted investigated, provided that it was within the remit of the Torch’s area of collective expertise. There were the usual pleas for help with missing people which were usually handled by the increasing number of private detectives utilizing the forum. Travis had not seen quite so many posts before. The Alpha Adventures recent case investigating the mysterious floating city at Baikal must have brought some serious publicity, judging by the number of direct requests for their company in particular. ‘Alphas, I think we have found Bigfoot.’ read one, another claimed to have a lead on Atlantis itself.
“Wow,” said Travis, “You crack one criminal crime gang in Russia and all of a sudden you’re a member of the Scooby Doo Gang. Do you want to be Velma, or Daphne?”
Savannah snorted, and did a passable impression of the cartoon dog.
“Good one, Shaggy!” She dropped the accent- “Hey, look at this. This is local… sort of. Atlanta/Tochigi.”
Savannah opened the thread, which had a smattering of replies. Travis knew Tochigi was in Japan, and his mind was already made up to reject the inevitable excitement Savannah would exhibit at the prospect of another overseas stint, especially to a country with as much detailed history as Japan.
“Sav, can we just stick to domestic? I’d really rather not have to deal with international foreign relations again. If you remember, I kind of got a little bit shot the last time, and regardless of how much that hurt, which was a lot, it caused a lot of problems with Homeland Security, not to mention the unending questions from the press and the Russians. And my mom. She was the worst of them all. You’ve not met her, but a sixty-five year old woman from Wisconsin on the warpath about her son getting shot is something even I am afraid of.”
He couldn’t help the sarcasm in his voice. It made it easier to talk about the shooting if he acted like it was a big joke. Savannah wasn’t convinced in the least.
“Ok, Trav,” she accentuated the contraction to illustrate her annoyance at Travis’ insistence on doing the same to hers. “Firstly, Japan has incredibly strict gun laws. No one has guns. It’s a highly formal society, and I doubt we’ll be running into the Russian mob, ok? Secondly, those are Thyri’s orders. We’re taking a job. I’m not going to sit here while you reject everything on the basis of ‘it-might-cause-some-paperwork’. And thirdly, if I have to field another call from Adam at five in the morning because he can’t get hold of you on the phone, I’m going to send YOU to England, so then you will be his problem.” Her tone softened, as she switched her approach. “It’s been four months since Baikal, Travis. It’s time you got back on the horse. I know it was tough, b-“
Travis cut her off, his hangover exacerbating his indignation, “Tough? Yeah, I don’t like getting shot, funny how that is. I don’t know about you, but that wasn’t what I expected at all when I signed up for this. I wanted to see some places and solve some problems and make a bit of extra cash, not find myself having a shoulder like Swiss cheese after what would be described as a bad day in Chechnya, and a really fucking awful day anywhere else. Savannah, I’m not sure I want to do this again, ok? I’m an anthropologist. I’m not cut out for it.”
He slumped back on the desk. Savannah let it slide.
“Alright, no need to take that tone. I know it was hard, but look at this case. It looks like a paper trail! Purely investigatory, we get to see Japan, I get to brush up on my Japanese, you get to eat some sushi and maybe drink a little sake. It’ll be administrative work when we’re out there, which I’ll be doing seeing as you don’t read Japanese. It’ll be like a holiday!”
That didn’t sound so bad to Travis, but he still didn’t feel like doing anything that involved not being drunk.
“What about Angelo? I can’t leave him on his own.” He knew he was stretching.
“Already arranged. Alice from Student Support at the University is going hiking; she said she’d love to take him with her. And he could really do with not hanging out with you in an office for the rest of his life.”
Travis looked at Angelo. He realized that the dog could definitely use some country air. He had not been on a proper walk in weeks, and after all, Japan was one of the safest societies in the world. Still, there was no way he was going to let Savannah know he’d caved so easily.
“Fine, fine. What’s the job?” Savannah scrolled the page on the screen.
“Something about the deed to an amethyst mine. The mine itself apparently doesn’t exist, but the prospective client says here that it’s a well-known family story that their Japanese ancestors owned an amethyst mine and were cheated out of it in the post-war period. She’s in Atlanta, lives here, apparently. I’ll email her, and set up a meeting, ok?”
Travis nodded, noncommittally, but at least it was something to do. Savannah left shortly afterwards, taking Angelo with her. The Jack Russell seemed excited to be going somewhere, unlike his master. Once they had gone, Travis decided his hangover wasn’t so bad after all. From the draw in the antique desk he withdrew an as yet unopened bottle of wine. The meeting probably wouldn’t take place for a day or two at the very least, and he was parched from actually talking to another human being instead of his silent telepathic communication with his canine friend.
He poured a glass, put on some Led Zeppelin, and lay back in the chair with his eyes closed, the departed perfume of Savannah and Angelo’s doggy aroma still clinging to his mind.
Chapter Three
Travis actually managed to get himself together reasonably successfully despite his alcohol induced impairment.
After a slightly inebriated cab ride back to his apartment, eleven o’clock saw him showered, shaved and having actual coffee in his system to flush out the freeze dried rubbish from the office. The shaving was necessary, but it also served to highlight to Travis how gaunt he had become. Half of the bristles in the sink were silver, a far larger proportion than was usual, and, not that he was the sort of person to pay attention to it usually the hairs at his temples were getting decidedly salt and pepper. The motivation for this activity was spurred, obviously, by Savannah. As much as Travis gave himself credit for getting himself human, realistically it would not have happened if Savannah hadn’t called him to say the meeting with the prospective client, a Mrs. Minami Richards of Atlanta, was set for later that day and that he should at least attempt to appear like a human being. Hearing his groans of discontent, she had proceeded to meanly ask him if he thought that looking like a respectable anthropology professor was too much to ask. Travis was well versed in the art of rapidly sobering himself up, having spent a decade associating with a social group made up exclusively of students and other lecturers like himself. His particular no-fail method involved plenty of bacon, maple syrup and enough Tylenol to take down a Kentucky Derby winner; but as he had not done any shopping for weeks, he had to settle for the second, less reliable option of Tylenol, caffeine, and taking a long enough shower in freezing cold water.
Within an hour, Travis was walking to Grant Park to meet Savannah and Mrs. Richards. He already missed Angelo, who always liked park days, and in happier times the two of them had often taken the short trip from their house on Hill Street so Angelo could meet other dogs and Travis could meet their hopefully attractive female owners. Savannah had not told him anything about the prospective client. One of the many things Travis admired about her was her absolute disdain for repeating herself when one conversation between multiple people would convey all the required information. He knew from his own experiences in the lecture hall that there were few things considered more annoying to the profession of lecturer than the unending stream of freshmen who were apparently incapable of either retaining information or taking adequate notes to remind themselves of things that Travis had discussed not minutes before. There was “therefore” a certain perverse appreciation amongst lecturers who, as a species, were dependant on their speaking voices for their careers, for the subtle art of not engag
ing in spurious verbosity. Now that he thought about it, perhaps that was the root of why he had never taken to Alpha Adventures’ currently incarcerated ecologist, Fiona. The woman was more at home with a megaphone than a pen, not that she was stupid, just verbose to the point of belligerence.
“Monahan! Are you blind?”
His last name brought him out of his reverie on tautology, and he spun slowly to face the direction of the speaker. Savannah was behind him, sitting at a table under an awning attached to a food van bearing the legend ‘Kyoto-2-Go’. He had walked right past her.
“Hi Travis, I ordered you some teriyaki beef. Mrs. Richards will be here any- ah, I think I see her now.”
Savannah waved at a short woman who was approaching from across the park. Travis couldn’t make out her facial features yet, which was yet another reminder that he really should get his eyes tested.
“Japanese food, to meet a Japanese-American client? Isn’t that a little…”
Travis trailed off in favor of making a you-know-what-I-mean raised eyebrow at Savannah.
“Relax,” Savannah said, “this was her idea. Apparently Kyoto-2-Go is the best and judging by the sushi “I’m inclined to agree.”
Travis shrugged, and opted to dive into his box of noodles and beef. He wasn’t much of a fan of Asian cuisine, but he had to admit that this was at least as good as pizza, and undoubtedly better for him. He could not quite remember when he had last eaten something that was not ‘a la microwave’ and consequently had to swallow uncomfortably when he realized Mrs. Richards had joined them and he still had a huge mouthful of rich sauce and beef. Savannah saved his blushes by making brief introductions and he was further reprieved as Mrs. Richards ordered her food. Now that Travis could see the client, he found it hard to read her emotional state, which was usually one of his strengths in interpersonal relations. Minami Richards stood at a shade over five feet in height, slim, and could have been anywhere from her late-twenties to early forties in age and her expression seemed to him utterly inscrutable.