Saint and Scholar

by Holley Trent

  Meg huffed. “Fine. I think the most important thing is that you have goals that are in sync. That means short-term and long-term. You’ve got to be able to make decisions in tandem. If you find that one of you is leading the dance all the time without input of the other, that’s a problem.”

  “Okay…” Carla didn’t know anything about his goals. It’d be a conversation they’d have to have for sure. “Anything else?”

  “Hmm, well, physical attraction is important, of course. People may talk it down, but really–who wants to be with someone they don’t want to bang?”

  “Charming, honey.”

  “Whatever. Make sure you sleep in separate rooms. I don’t like him.”

  “’Bye, Meg.”

  Chapter 9

  Grant and Carla sat in a comfortable silence as their plane taxied to the runway. He didn’t like how far away she was, even though she sat right next to him. He would have almost preferred for them to be in coach so he’d be forced into her personal space for the next six hours. The damned armrests were too wide.

  “Dramamine makes me so drowsy,” she said, covering her mouth as she yawned wide. She lay the side of her face against her seatback and looked at him with sleepy eyes.

  “I guess stimulating conversations are out of the question, then,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I have some questions for you.” She reached across the armrest and laced the fingers of her left hand through those on his right. He studied that naked left hand for a minute and sized up her thin fingers.

  “Nothing philosophical, I hope?”

  “Nuh uh.” She smiled even as her eyelids drooped.

  “Well?”

  She didn’t answer. The upturned corners of her mouth relaxed and her fingers went limp in his. Asleep that fast. He accepted the flight attendant’s offer of a blanket and managed to spread it onto Carla’s lap one-handedly without disturbing her.

  As soon as the plane’s wheels touched down on Irish soil, he let out a deep exhale and said a silent prayer of thanks to at least three deities, one from the Roman pantheon. He hated flying in general, but especially over the Atlantic. In his opinion, he had done enough coach flying from one European state to the next during his teen years. He had many reasons for wanting Carla to stay in Ireland, and one of them was that he had absolutely no desire to board a west-heading plane to go fetch her if she left.

  They gathered their suitcases from baggage claim and picked their way slowly through the throngs of early morning business travelers, stopping at a stand before exiting the airport to get strong, hot cups of coffee. They walked leisurely with the drinks and their bags toward the exit. When they were close enough for the automated doors to slide open, he halted her, pulled her close, and whispered, “You want to put on a sweater, love?”

  She looked down at the knit tank dress dressed she’d traveled in. After disembarking the plane, she’d stuffed her light sweater into her backpack. “Why? It’s nearly summer, isn’t it? If I need one, I’ll get one out of my suitcase when we get where we’re going.” She starting walking toward the doors again, dragging her bag behind her, so he followed.

  “Ireland doesn’t have what you know as summer, love. Rather, we get a yearly preview of things that never come. I just don’t want what’s mine on display.”

  She stopped again just outside the sliding doors, which made the throng of travelers behind them alter their paths at last minute. She glowered at him. “What?”

  He looped his fingers around her biceps and kept her moving toward the sidewalk. Her frown didn’t abate as she walked, but he noticed the chill bumps forming on her naked arms and when he stole a look down at her chest again her nipples made it obvious Carla had noticed the temperature.

  When she sighed and blew out a raspberry, he let go of her arm and smirked. She’d need to learn to let him the final word on some things, even if she hated it. Back to Dad’s motto again: “Shut up and wait.” Eventually, they came around.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” he said, as they started up the sidewalk toward one of the airport hotels. “I had guessed I wouldn’t be able to sleep while we traveled here and it takes the body a bloody while to adjust to the time changes.” As if on cue, he yawned, coffee be damned. “Have you ever traveled outside of the Eastern time zone?”

  She looked up at the overcast sky and chewed her bottom lip for a moment. “Mmm, no. The furthest east or west I’ve gone from home was Indiana, but even that’s still in Eastern time.”

  “It can sometimes be a bit disorienting.” They approached the reception desk, where he tossed his credit card and identification on the counter for the clerk. “Fennell?”

  “Yes, sir,” the attendant said as she typed some information into her terminal.

  “Never had a reason to until last year, and you know how that went,” Carla continued, leaning into his right side when he draped his arm around her shoulders.

  “Right. So, right now we’re five hours ahead of New York.”

  “Two rooms and two people?” the young woman confirmed. She suddenly brightened and sat up a little straighter. When he nodded to confirm, she pulled her shoulders back and jutted out the abundant breasts straining behind her inadequate blouse.

  He could feel the little muscles in Carla’s arm pressed to his side twitching.

  She clenched the handle of her suitcase so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. He could see where her remarkable self-control came from–she found a physical outlet for the anger. He gave her shoulder a squeeze and when she looked up at him with angry eyes, he leaned down and gave her a closed-mouth kiss that could in no way be interpreted as familial or platonic.

  The clerk sighed, slumped again and slid their keycards across the countertop with a glower. “Fifth floor,” she said brusquely and leaned sideways to look at the guest behind them. “Next?”

  He and Carla cleared out of the way of the huffing counter help and waited for their elevator up. He picked up where their conversation had lagged. “It’s seven AM here, but only two on the US East Coast.”

  “No wonder you’re so tired.”

  “I can never sleep on planes. I always think something will happen and if I’m asleep I won’t be able to act quickly enough to save myself.”

  “Phobia?”

  He raised a brow. “Naturally. As if I could save myself from a fall from heaven. Keeping busy in the air helps me not think too much about it.” He’d tried to occupy himself on the plane with his ereader loaded full of history tomes recommended to him by his new department head, but instead he’d spent much of the flight watching her sleep. Her eyes had frequently fluttered behind their lids as she slumbered. She’d made little pleasurable groaning noises and smiled as if dreaming of naughty things. Every time she moaned, he would stop reading and stare.

  “I just need to get a few hours of sleep before we head out again, or I won’t be good to drive. Just give me three hours, okay?” They paused in front of one of their two rooms. He hadn’t known whether to reserve one room or two. His inclinations had leaned toward one room with one bed and he thought perhaps one room with two beds would be a nice compromise, but had discarded the idea, thinking it would probably be awkward. He went with two in the end to give her the final say on where she slept. He’d let her set the pace there. They’d nearly been intimate once, but it would be up to her to decide when and where they’d actually go through with it.

  She shrugged. “Alright. I feel fine, but I can thank the Dramamine conking me out for that.”

  Her face was expressionless as he pressed the second key card into her hand. “Your room adjoins.” He pulled both suitcases through and held the door open for her.

  The door to the neighboring room, situated in the adjacent wall from the hallway door, was ajar, so he pulled her suitcase through with her on his heels.

  “Seems sort of a waste to spend the money on two rooms when we’ll only be here a few hours,” she said, sitting daintily on the corner of
the queen bed.

  “Don’t worry about that. University is reimbursing me.”

  “Hmm.”

  Her expression was blasé. What was she thinking? And what must his face have looked like? His brain was at war with his body–one cautioning prudence, the other overly affected by the silhouette of her body beneath thin garments.

  He turned his back and put her suitcase on the luggage stand, taking longer than necessary to arrange the luggage, and being absolutely terrified at the prospect of facing her. Walking through that door into the other room was going to be the hardest thing he’d done in months–even harder than defending his dissertation. He’d been prepared for that.

  One deep breath, then he forced cheerfulness onto his face before turning to meet her gaze. His urge was to put his hands on her shoulders and chafe her goose-pimply arms, but that changed at the sight of her nipples protruding against the clingy fabric of her knit dress, begging for a pull or suck. Jesus, that body. When she’d stepped into his classroom nearly eight years ago she’d been still developing into the siren in front of him. She didn’t have those hips back then and she damn sure wore a bra to class, thank God.

  He was going hard and the blood rushing away from his tired head made him feel dizzy.

  “You going to be alright for a few hours?” He took a few careful steps back and held his hands with fingers entwined over his crotch.

  Carla didn’t even look down. She was leaned back onto her arms and staring into his eyes with that same blank expression she’d had upon entry.

  “Um, if you’re hungry, feel free to order something from room service. Get whatever you want and later we’ll get a good lunch. Maybe take a bath?” Ask for some company.

  She shrugged and recrossed those tan legs brazenly, giving him a teasing glance of her nude panties without even looking at him. “Okay. Should I wake you?” He watched her long, quick fingers as she flipped through the pages of the room service menu and imagined them fondling other things.

  Fuck, woman. “Please? I’m scheduled to pick up the rental car at eleven right here at the airport. We can go straight from there to lunch.”

  “Fine.”

  “Right. Ten o’clock, then.” He retreated into his room and pulled the door to, leaving it just a sliver ajar. When she didn’t call him back after a moment, he heeled off his sneakers and collapsed face-first onto his empty bed.

  * * * *

  “God damn him,” Carla whispered to herself as she peered through the cracked door to find Grant already deeply asleep, his back rising and falling slowly with his breaths, his face slack and peaceful.

  She’d been extremely disappointed at him boxing her into her own little room, especially after those dreams she’d had on the plane. She wanted him on his knees in front of her, pressing hot lips against her core and giving her the pleasure Curt had previously interrupted, but he had hardly touched her, even on the plane. She’d worn that dress to give him easy access, but he seemed more concerned with other people noticing her than having actual incentive to touch her himself. And where had that possessiveness come from all of a sudden, anyway? She wasn’t certain how she felt about it, but was leaning somewhat toward dislike. She was a grown woman with her head screwed on straight. She could do and wear what she wanted.

  She puttered around in the room for a few minutes, uncertain of what to do with herself, finally sat down with the room service menu and put in an order after deciding she was more hungry than angry. While waiting for the delivery, she took a short, but relaxing, hot bath. Donning a fresh set of clothing seemed anticlimactic with Grant lying in the next room, but her mood had significantly improved. She was being unfair. He was tired.

  Still, as she studied herself in the mirror in the garments Sharon had helped her pick, she mumbled, “Hope he finds it satisfactory,” and rolled her eyes. She couldn’t get a reading on the man. Was he hot or cold? He confused her sensors.

  When her meal came–a light breakfast of mixed fruit, yogurt and toast, she crawled on top of the bed with it and waited as the inadequate hotel coffee machine dripped weak stimulant into its attached carafe. Once settled, she opened her backpack, pulled out her large sheath of research and leafed through while nibbling.

  Minnie had created a booklet many years prior made of carefully documented biographical sketches of certain family members transcribed onto a page with a typewriter. Some pages were photocopies of old photographs that were difficult to make out due to poor contrast, but one had caught her attention. It was the man her father had taken the name of–her great-grandfather, Timothy Adam Gill. She scrutinized the blurry caption, trying to understand what the man must have been like. She’d never met him. Her father had lived with his grandparents for a good chunk of his early childhood. She didn’t know why he’d lived in West Virginia during those early years, only he’d moved back to Southside Virginia with his parents sometime during the seventies. She had a hunch.

  Against her better judgment, she ferreted her phone out of her backpack and let it do its slow wake-up sequence while refreshing her coffee. Once done, she looked at her watch, realized her mother would be at the police station on graveyard shift, and dialed her cell number.

  “Jesus, why aren’t you asleep?” Mom asked in a hushed tone in lieu of “Hello.”

  She swallowed hard. If she had noticed the poor quality of the connection, she didn’t say so. “I’m just up doing some work. Listen, I’m about to pass out, but curiosity is killing me and I wanted to ask before I went to bed.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Did Grandpa serve in Vietnam?”

  “He did. Why?”

  “Is that why Daddy lived with his grandparents as a kid? Because his dad was deployed?”

  Mom was silent for a few moments. “Yes.”

  “Why the pause?”

  “Oh, honey, why do you want to go digging all this stuff up now? What good is it going to do?”

  Carla ignored the question. “Where was his mom? If his dad was deployed, why wasn’t he living with his mother or her family?”

  Another long pause. “Honey, I don’t know if that’s my tale to tell.”

  Carla ground her teeth from aggravation and stopped as soon as she noticed she was doing it. She had expensive dental work, some of which she was still paying off. “Well, whose tale is it then? Everyone is dead, Mom.”

  Mom sighed. “Listen, Adam’s mom wasn’t doing so good when he was a kid. She couldn’t take care of him by herself. I don’t know if she was psychotic or if she was drug-dependent or what, but they had to institutionalize her. Your granddad Paul wrote a letter from Vietnam asking your great-grandparents to help out because he didn’t think your grandmother was doing so good. It wasn’t her first time getting sick and he hated to leave Adam with her, but didn’t know what else to do at the time. So, Tim and Alice drove down and took him in so he wouldn’t go into the county home. Wasn’t an inconvenience for ’em, you know, since they’d been asking your granddad to send Adam to them anyway, ’cause Tim needed some help on the farm during the summer.”

  “Why is that a secret?”

  “If it were you in an asylum, would you want your grandkids to know about it? You’d keep it a secret, right? You respected your grandma until she died.”

  “I still respect her! She couldn’t help being sick, any more than you could help going off-line after Daddy died.” Carla felt like a bitch for saying it, but she knew it was the only way to drive the point home.

  “That was a really shitty thing to say.” Mom sighed on her side of the Atlantic. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry, but yes I would tell. People who survive bad things shouldn’t feed into the stigmas by keeping their experiences locked up in imaginary boxes. I’d want them to know I got help. It’s okay to get help. Just because you didn’t, doesn’t mean people are any weaker if they do.”

  Mom was quiet for a few tense moments and relieved Carla by saying finally,
quietly, “Maybe so.”

  Carla bid her mother goodbye and turned off her phone to study the picture of the young Tim in his dark seaman first class uniform and sailor hat, smiling at the camera as if he weren’t about to sail into the face of terror in the WWII Pacific Theater. He bore a stunning resemblance to his grandson: the high forehead, the chiseled, square jaw, and bright eyes. Although the picture was black and white, she knew Tim had hair the color of a new copper penny, whereas Adam’s had been quite fair. Ashley was the only one of the three Gill children to remain blond beyond childhood. Tony’s hair was nearly as dark their mother’s and Carla’s fell somewhere in the middle. Her dad had always liked her hair. One day when she was a child he’d whispered, “If you ever cut it, you’ll let all the Irish out.” She’d never thought that was true, even as a little girl, but still she clung to her hair as if it were some sort of security blanket.

  She was finally able to make out the scrawled caption beneath the photo: T. A. Gill: Electrician’s Mate. She smiled and felt her curiosity unravel just a bit. An electrician, just like her dad.

  When she didn’t hear Grant stirring at ten fifteen, she turned off the television set she’d had on to keep her company and quietly pulled the shared door open to peer into the adjoining unit. He was still wearing the clothes he’d traveled in, minus his sneakers, lying prone on top of the covers. His dark hair fell over his face, shrouding his eyes and spilling over his cheeks. His mouth was slightly open, and as she stood there in a stunned silence staring at him, she remembered something about that irresistibly plump bottom lip–a memory she’d apparently suppressed for almost eight years.

  Freshman year, when she was Grant’s English composition student, she always sat in the exact same seat for every class, except for that memorable first day. It was third row from the door, four seats back. She wasn’t the only creature of habit in that course section. Two girls from the same small town in the mountains always sat near her. One sat immediately behind her, and her friend took the seat across the aisle to the left. It had only been a few weeks since her father died, so she was in her own little bubble, hearing but not listening, and drawing in the margins of her notebook. Grant had been called out of the room for a moment to discuss some grading issue with another T.A. and the girl behind her leaned across the aisle and whispered, “I’m not even listening to him. I’m just watching his lips move.”