My former professor resembled nobody so much as Santa Claus, if Santa were at his fighting weight. And in a tropical suit of blue and white seersucker, Dr. Johnston also managed to look like the very picture of a South American patriarch. Although I knew him to be from Iowa originally, he was one of those people who blended in well in any setting, adapting to local customs with ease and enjoyment. And South America was a natural for him, as his wife, Lourdes, hailed from Argentina.
“Professor!” I greeted him automatically, and as always he corrected me instantly.
“Nonsense, Katherine, you know you should be calling me Arthur by now. What an unexpected delight, my dear!”
Part of the reason I loved Dr. Johnston was the way he could say things like that and sound absolutely genuine. The world would be a happier place if people still talked that way all the time, I often thought.
“It was unexpected for me too. I’m a last-minute replacement for somebody far more senior who had an unfortunate case of morning sickness, so here I am.”
“And no doubt hating every minute of it, if I recall correctly. You never had a fondness for the sun. Our Irish rose, with the instant sunburn. You seem to be managing it well this trip, I see.” The professor tucked my arm around his, another courtly gesture now almost lost to political correctness, and we walked together out to the lobby where coffee, sweet rolls and cookies were still on offer. “But you must have dinner with us. Lourdes is here and I know she’ll insist. And are you going with the group to Pao de Acucar this afternoon?”
The cable car trip to the top of Pao de Acucar, Sugarloaf Mountain, was meant to be a highlight of the conference. I had indeed planned to go, although Jack was threatening to skip the cable car and go rock climbing there instead.
“Of course. Well, and we’ve already been exploring the park…”
Some ten minutes later, deep in a discussion with my old mentor of the sights I’d seen in Tijuca, I was startled to look up and see Jack over Dr. Johnston’s shoulder, eyeing us quizzically.
“Jack! Have you met Dr. Arthur Johnston?” I asked enthusiastically. “My thesis advisor. We still keep in touch every so often, and he was just part of the global warming panel. Dr. Johnston, this is…ah…”
Fortunately for me, Jack was quicker on the uptake than I was. I had just realized I didn’t know how to introduce him. As my boss? My friend? Boyfriend? Nothing quite seemed to fit.
“Jack Benedict,” he cut in smoothly, shaking the professor’s hand in that firm, ultra-professional, alpha-male way. “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Johnston, I’m a big admirer of your early cross-disciplinary work on climate change in the North Atlantic. I drew pretty heavily on your baseline research when I was formulating my thesis.”
Jack had struck the perfect note, and indeed he stole Dr. Johnston’s attention almost completely away. It was several minutes before they paused long enough to finish the introductions.
“And you are Katherine’s boss, now that she’s moving up? I have that correct? You’re a senior vice president with Globe, if I recall the conference literature correctly. I hope you realize what a resource you have here in Katherine.”
“Oh, I do, sir,” Jack said, smiling broadly. “Believe me, I do.”
It was broad daylight, I was blushing, both men were smiling at me and I felt just plain stupid. Still, it was very flattering. At least, I recognized that the appropriate professional response would be to feel flattered, because the appropriate professional response would not include a sudden unbidden memory of being turned over the boss’s knee.
“The professor’s here with his wife and we were hoping to catch up over dinner,” I said to Jack, hoping to strike a note that didn’t sound like I was asking permission.
“Would you mind my tagging along?” he asked. “I’d love the chance to hear your perspective on some of the sessions, Arthur. And Kate’s always spoken very highly of you.”
It was quickly settled. We would ride together in the cable car to the top of Sugarloaf, and then upon our return we would all retire to our rooms—the professor confessed he was likely to want a siesta before eating—and then meet up again for dinner. I was looking forward to it, to the conversation and to catching up on what my old friends at school were doing, since so many of them had continued in academic pursuits while I’d defected to the corporate world. And although at first I had thought Jack was simply schmoozing out of habit, he seemed genuinely interested in hearing the academic viewpoint on the climate change issues the conference was about.
All in all, it promised to be a very educational afternoon and evening. During which, I thought with resignation, I doubted I would be able to do so much as hold Jack’s hand.
* * * * *
The ride up the mountain was truly spectacular. True, I had envisioned myself nestled in Jack’s arms, enjoying the sights with him pointing out all the best parts. But even as it was, jostled platonically between Jack and Lourdes Johnston, it was a vista that could not be disregarded. Draped out over the bay, the long cables seemed to disappear straight into the side of the mountain, although of course instead of crashing into the granite wall we were eventually able to disembark and enjoy the view from the top of the giant rock before riding back down.
“I still want to climb it,” Jack insisted, looking longingly back at the steep face.
“You look like a kid with your face all pressed up against a toy store window,” I said with a giggle, forgetting I was trying to set a professional tone in front of our companions. “How come you haven’t done it before now, anyway?”
“I just never get around to it,” he said, frowning. “It’s on the to-do list, but I’m usually staying with Mario when I’m down here and he doesn’t climb anymore.”
“Really? Did he have an accident or something?”
Jack laughed, a little unkindly. “Yeah, he accidentally keeps eating too much. He’s put on quite a bit of weight since he got married. Marta, his wife, is almost as tiny as you but she can cook. Well, you’ll see. But there’s no way Mario could haul himself up a rock face these days. And it’s never a good idea to climb alone.”
“That doesn’t look like a place for a beginner,” I said, eyeing the rock face behind us skeptically. I was only a little regretful. It looked scary, to tell the truth. “Otherwise I’d offer.”
“Are you kidding? I’m going to start you out at the rock gym, Katie, with so much safety gear you’ll barely have room to move your arms and legs around enough for climbing. I’m not letting you out on something like that until I’m absolutely sure—”
His look of mild alarm was cut short by Dr. Johnston’s pointed but polite throat clearing. The professor lifted his eyebrow at me but said nothing, only turned back to Lourdes and began discussing the sights once more.
“So,” I asked into the awkward silence that fell between me and Jack. “There’s a rock gym?”
“Yes,” Jack said blandly, “there is a rock gym. We’ll discuss it later.” He pointed over my shoulder at the approaching tree line. “Oh, look, a monkey.”
“Where?”
“Made you look.”
He was a grown man—a more-than-grown, Very-Important-Person kind of man. He had two graduate degrees, a single one of his power suits cost more than my clothing budget for a year…and he had just pulled a “made you look”.
What was more, I couldn’t smack him on the shoulder for it, not in front of Dr. Johnston and his wife, who was a professor of Romance languages and therefore also a Dr. Johnston. The jig would have been entirely up if I had smacked him, and it was clearly just about up already. I fully expected to hear a dating-the-boss cautionary lecture at some point, either from the professor or from Lourdes, who was now also lifting an eyebrow at me in a way that only haughty, South American aristocrats could really do well. Not that she actually was haughty most of the time, she was usually a lovely woman to be around. But she sure could do the eyebrow thing to great effect.
I was starting
to wonder whether dinner was such a good idea, after all.
Chapter Fourteen
“Sure I don��t know how she found the time, but she made quite a contribution to the article. I miss her way with organizing a piece. Even purely academic work from her had such a flow, such style.”
“I actually agree with you, sir, and I know she’s still in touch with several other researchers as well. I think it’s probably just a matter of time before she decides to go back to that line of work.”
“I am sitting right here, you know,” I said with yet another blush. “And flattering though this is, I admit it’s disconcerting to hear you planning my departure from my job, since you do employ me at the moment.”
“Just resigning myself to the inevitable,” said Jack, lifting his wineglass in a gallant little salute. “I’ve known all along we won’t keep you, Kate. Not just the fact that you’re still more interested in fieldwork, but the way your face lights up when you talk about research and the fact that hardly a week goes by that you don’t latch on to some topic and mention what a great dissertation it would make.”
“That’s just the problem, Jack. A different topic every week. It took me forever to narrow down my thesis, there’s no way I could decide what I would write a dissertation on, which is why—”
“Now, now, children.” Lourdes tapped her fingers abruptly but elegantly on the table between us, stopping the banter instantly. I had often wondered what her university classes must be like. The students were very well behaved, no doubt. “We are here to eat. You’ll ruin your digestion. No arguments, please.” She turned to Jack, her aquiline features softening a bit, making it easy to recognize the flirtatious beauty she must once have been. “Jack, Arturo tells me you know a Coelho family. Is this the same Coelho family of Carlos y Fernanda? They…have a few boats?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said obediently. It was adorable, watching him fall into step for Lourdes, around whom he seemed completely docile and in awe. I had seen this effect on many of my fellow researchers during my graduate school days, as the Drs. Johnston enjoyed entertaining the students regularly. Her power over men never seemed to fade, and I could only watch in admiration as she twined Jack around her little finger. “Although, of course, to say they own a few boats—”
“Sí. It is a good family. Nice people. Are you, then, the boy that Marisa visited so often in Houston? The boy Fernanda so despaired of ever proposing to her daughter?”
Jack blushed.
I felt slightly faint.
Arthur Johnson’s eyes widened perceptibly, but he didn’t dare face down his wife directly. Few men would—she was quite intimidating. He took a less direct route.
“More wine, my dear? Mr. Benedict is here with one of his employees, after all. Perhaps such a personal topic…” He trailed off delicately as he finished topping off the wine in his wife’s glass. She was clearly not to be put off. Jack, however, saved her the trouble of investigating further.
“That would be me, ma’am. Of course it was quite a long time ago.” He smiled in such a way that anyone who didn’t know him would assume he was simply engaging in fond reminiscence. I heard the truth in his voice, however. Like a lot of men from Houston, he only had a noticeably Texan accent when he was angry, drunk or selling something—and he was definitely not drunk or trying to sell anything right now. “She was a lovely girl but I haven’t seen her in years, I’m really just in touch with her brother. Of course she did get married some time ago. And Mario tells me she’s working for the universidade now? He sent a picture of his son with his two nephews a few weeks ago, actually, Marisa’s boys. They were all visiting at the Coelhos’ ranch. The two nephews are just old enough to start riding horses.”
I recalled the picture from his computer desktop of three little boys on horseback. One, a dark-haired, dark-eyed youth of about ten, was leaning comfortably back in the saddle and looking at the camera with a devilish smile. The other two were younger identical twins of perhaps seven or eight. Sandy-haired and squinting in the sun, they looked ill at ease on their mounts. Which would make sense, I supposed, if they were just learning how to ride.
“Those could have been your sons,” Lourdes pointed out shamelessly. I thought she might actually be doing it to try to get another blush from Jack, but he was better prepared this time, although by now he was nearly drawling.
“Not likely, as Marisa wouldn’t have me, ma’am. Whether or not she told her mama, I did ask—and she declined. Something about my selling out to the corporate machine. And that, I think, is as much as I’m prepared to expose about myself this evening.” He smiled that artificial, very charming smile again, but there was a hint of steel underneath it. He was suddenly one hundred percent in command of the situation and was broadcasting that in a way he hadn’t done all week. At least not outside the bedroom.
His commanding behavior was affecting me predictably, even though it wasn’t directed my way. Evidently it had some effect on Lourdes too, because she nodded gracefully and began discussing the dessert selection as though nothing untoward had just happened.
I tried to look bland and unconcerned, although my mind was racing from one extreme to the other. I told myself it was years ago, before he went to London from the sound of it, and he was obviously past it. Lourdes just liked to play strange mind games with good-looking men.
But who was this Marisa person, and where did she live—so I could go and let the air out of her tires? I could only assume Jack would enlighten me about the whole thing later. I wondered if enlightenment would come before or after the don’t-date-your-boss lecture from the Johnstons, which I was now certain would come at some point before the evening was through. Because Lourdes obviously knew everything—well, not everything, but quite enough—and seemed to have taken the stance that Jack was out to despoil and then desert me.
I had spent at least some time nearly every weekend in graduate school at the Johnstons’ large, comfortable home in Austin. Only on the weekends when I wasn’t off trudging through the desert, slogging through the mud or braving the frozen tundra to collect data for Arthur, of course. It was a house made for entertaining, and the couple loved to fill it with their friends and students. When I became one of Arthur’s research assistants I naturally jumped to the top of the A-list, and was soon a regular fixture at their place, along with a handful of other equally geeky and eager would-be academics.
But more importantly, I think, the Johnstons just liked me, and I liked them. They reminded me quite a bit of my own parents, for one thing, so spending time there was something of a remedy for the homesickness I hadn’t quite outgrown. For a time, I think they had hopes that their son Thomas, who was about my age, would take an interest in me.
I was their type, but not, it seemed, Tom’s type. He had disappointed them in that, as in so much else, including his insistence on going straight to business school out of college. He spurned all pursuits he deemed frivolous, including the study of languages for any purpose other than doing business in them, the reading of novels in any language, the persistent belief in global warming and just about anything else his parents held dear. I could only hope that he had mellowed somewhat in the subsequent years.
I tried to remember what I knew about where Tom was now. He had finished his MBA about the time I was finishing my masters, and I knew he then went on to earn a law degree, but as for details following that I hadn’t a clue. I suddenly felt slightly guilty for not asking Dr. Johnston about his family, but I wasn’t about to bring up Tom with his mother in her current mood.
Lourdes was a strange sort to be a mother hen, but she was fiercely protective of both her own and Arthur’s favorite students. She had always taken us to task for eating poorly, staying out too late…and the girls, in particular, she harangued about our more foolish relationship choices, if we were foolish enough to let her know about them. But even I, secretive as I tended to be, had asked Lourdes for advice on that score once or twice, because she so clea
rly knew things about men that the rest of us didn’t. Her advice, which I had ignored the first time and taken the second, consisted of telling me to dump the idiots and look after myself instead.
Even better than she knew men, she knew herself, a trait I lacked. It was something I came to realize I needed to work on. And thereafter—after I had dumped the second idiot in question—Lourdes viewed me with much greater approval, and I fell into the circle of extra protection she seemed to afford those she liked best.
It was protection I thought I could do without at the moment, although it touched me that even now, years later, she would still be so willing to fend off a potential wolf on my behalf. A part of me wondered just what she would say if I were to ask advice about this particular situation? Because Jack was clearly no idiot, and she seemed to have accepted that. In fact, they seemed to be making small talk now, and Lourdes was eyeing him thoughtfully over the last bites of her orange flan. Arthur had asked me for details about Jack’s presentation, which he hoped to sit in on the next time, and I was giving him a synopsis while trying to tune back in to what Jack was saying as well.
I realized Jack was speaking in Portuguese again. I’d forgotten it was one of the many language Lourdes spoke, or at least understood. He spoke with a cadence, slow and mellifluous, almost as though he were reciting poetry. As it turned out, he was indeed reciting poetry. By the time he finished, Lourdes was resting her chin against her hand, smiling openly, enamored.
Jack realized all three of us were watching him and cleared his throat softly, a bit embarrassed.
“It’s the, um, ‘Song of Exile’. By Antônio Gonçalves Dias, the national poet of Brazil. He was in Lisbon and homesick for his native country. He said—I only know it in Portuguese, it’s hard to translate off the cuff—he said that in Brazil, ‘Our skies have more stars, our meadows many more blooms, our forests have more life and our life has much more love’. And that he prayed to return here, of course.”
When in Rio Page 12