“I need to see your passport, too.”
“I showed you last time I came through, remember? I was with the blond with the viola?”
“I’ll need to see it.”
“It’s in my bag. At the gate. I’ll go get it and bring it to you, okay?”
She smiled but he wouldn’t smile back.
“You will need to follow me.”
What a relief! She was getting an escort to the gate. The security agent was talking into his walkie-talkie. He would ask the plane to wait.
He led her down the main corridor. Then turned down a side hallway. Another guard walked behind her.
“Wait. My plane is that way.”
“Come with me.” He went down the hall and opened a door. He gestured for her to go in first.
The other one crowded up close behind her. “You won’t be going to your plane right now.”
***
Three hours later they let her go. By escorting her out the front door.
All she had with her were her phone and the flip-flops. They’d confiscated the boarding pass. They sent someone to look at the gate where she’d left her bag with Kaitlyn. There was no sign of it. And they lectured her for asking someone else to carry on a bag for her. She tried to explain she hadn’t intended to have Kaitlyn carry it on, just sit with it till she returned and carried it on herself.
They looked at her like she was a terrorist. They even eyed her extra footwear—the flip-flops—as though suspecting they had something to do with a plot. Right, like she was a Flip-Flop Bomber.
They’d told her to call the U.S. consulate to apply for a temporary passport. But she’d have to wait until Monday. They were closed Saturday and Sunday.
With no destination, she wandered down the walkway. She stumbled to a bench isolated in an oasis of grass. Crumpling onto the seat, she tried not to cry. The tightness in her throat made that hard. But all the other crying she’d done in the last three hours had done nothing to help. She was still a girl stranded in a foreign country without a passport. Or her boyfriend. Or any money.
She pulled out her phone. Finally, it has four bars. A call to Todd went straight to voicemail. Of course. He can’t answer. He’s on the plane. They didn’t like people to talk on cell phones on the plane. It made them crash or something.
Who should I call? Anyone but Mom or Dad. But she couldn’t think of who could help. She scrolled up and down her contact list, searching for someone, but none of her friends could do what she needed. Okay, then. There’s no choice. Mom. Mom could send her some money. It would be a lot easier to talk to her than to her father. Besides, she didn’t have his cell number. The new one he got after he moved out.
She pushed a button and the ringing started.
After five rings, Benji, her four-year-old brother, answered.
“Who is this?”
“Hi Benji. It’s Chloe. Put mom on the phone.” Her voice cracked.
“Chloe is gone. She went to Scott’s to play cello.” And he hung up.
Chloe redialed as fresh tears leaked down her cheeks.
“Who is this?” he said.
“Benji, don’t hang up. This is Chloe. I am Chloe. I need to talk to Mom. Where is Mom?”
“You with Scott?” His preschool had a boy named Scott who he got confused with Scotland.
“No, sweetie. Scott’s not here. Listen Benji.”
“Super Why’s over. He put a watermelon in the swimming pool. And it went—” He made some funny sounds that faded away from the phone.
“Benji, come back. Listen. Where’s Mom? I need her. Go get her. Don’t hang up. Just go get Mom.”
“Cleo got Clifford all wet. Can I watch Clifford? Nana says I can not watch. It’s time for her show now. Can I?”
“Sure. If you go get Mom. Go find Mom, will you?”
“My truck broke. But it didn’t break. But the wheel fell off. Hunter pushed me down. It went—” More noises fluttered into the phone.
“Listen to me. Please. Go. Get. Mom.”
“I’m going to be a cowboy today. Tomorrow I’m going to be a army man.”
“A cowboy, good. Benji, be a good cowboy and get Mom for me.”
“Nana wants to talk.”
“No! Don’t give Nana the—”
“Hello?” Nana’s scratchy voice answered.
Chloe sniffed up a bunch of tears, trying to get a hold of herself. “Nana, I need Mom. Tell Benji to go get her.” She shouted each word, one by one, hoping Nana had her hearing aid in and was having a coherent moment.
“Hello?”
Benji was in the background making train noises, but he was fading out. Then Nana’s voice became distant while she spoke to Benji about his shoes and socks. Her voice and the TV cut in and out like the phone couldn’t pick up all the sounds.
“Pick up the phone, Nana. Benji, can you hear me? Benji? Nana? Mom?”
Chloe waited and listened. The TV continued to cut in and out around the open air space in the phone. Now and then Nana laughed or shouted out dollar amounts.
“Is anybody there?” Chloe wailed. “Pick up the phone!” The broken sounds popped in and out. “Pick up the phone.”
Loud rustling muffled the other noises. Finally. Nana was picking up the phone. But then electronic tones cut into Chloe’s ears like hot pokers.
“Nana, stop pushing the buttons. Listen to me. It’s not the remote. Nana, it’s the phone. Talk on the phone!”
Then it went dead.
She pushed the speed dial for home again, shaking so much it was hard to hold the button down.
It was busy.
Seven more times, and it was still busy.
Frantically, she called her mom’s cell. After the first ring, it popped over to voicemail. Her phone wasn’t on. As usual.
The home phone was still busy.
She tried Todd’s phone again. Just in case the captain had said it wouldn’t make them crash to answer their phones just then.
No answer. Probably a good thing. She didn’t want to be responsible for bringing a plane down.
Because there was absolutely no other option, she would try her father’s office, just in case he was working on the weekend.
Voicemail.
“Dad, it’s me, Chloe. I’ve got a problem. Now, don’t get mad. I missed my plane and, and—” The sobs kept her from going on. She tried to get a few words out, but her weeping was out of control. She got out “passport” and “stay” and “alone” but couldn’t form a sentence. Her phone beeped in her ear. A flash of hope shot through her. Someone’s calling. Mom must have gotten the message. Or maybe it’s Todd!
She looked at the phone. She stared at it in stunned disbelief. It was dark. Blank. Still. She pushed “send” several times. She shook it. Nothing. It was dead. The battery is dead!
CHAPTER 8
Chloe bawled until she couldn’t feel anything anymore. Passersby became visible when she came up for air. No one bothered her. They left her alone on the bench to suffocate alone under her blanket of despair.
Hiccups jerked her every few seconds. Todd flooded into her thoughts. Pain jolted through her, fierce and physical. Why would he have been with Rebecca? Because you’re worthless. His behavior made no sense. They needed to talk and straighten things out. Rebecca must have lied to him. Maybe even attacked him. Such a skank. What if he thought Chloe didn’t want to see him? He might think she missed the plane because she didn’t want to be with him. She had to talk to him.
Then she thought of her dad. He’s going to be so ashamed of me. Not only for losing the competition, but for totally screwing up getting home.
Mr. Pozorski would be furious and probably kick her out of orchestra. He’ll probably take away the scholarship he’d promised me for our Brazil trip.
But none of that would matter because she’d be rotting in a foreign prison for trying to blow up a plane with Kaitlyn’s flip-flops.
The sky was growing dark. Where would she spend the night? Woul
d the bench be her bed until some cop found her and dragged her off to jail?
She didn’t have more than five pounds and some coins in her pocket. She didn’t even know what the coins were worth. Maybe a penny. Maybe a hundred dollars. She had no idea.
The sidewalk leading away from the airport seemed familiar. The hotel where they’d stayed wasn’t very far from the airport. She headed back there where she could ask for help before the cops found her and hauled her away.
Without her Colorado Rockies to show which way was west, she got completely turned around and lost, going by the same place at least three times in one hour. By the time she found the hotel again, the sky was dark and her feet hurt.
At the front desk, a young guy greeted her with way too much enthusiasm.
When she shuffled to the counter, he grinned and said in a thick Scottish accent, “Good evening. How may I help you?”
“Um, I…” The treacherous tears started again. “I’m sorry.” She sniffed and tried to calm her voice and stop the tears, but her mouth wouldn’t open without the risk of sobs blurting out.
Looking confused and uncomfortable with his enthusiasm all but gone, the guy fumbled with several items on his desk then settled for pulling a pack of tissue from a drawer and pointing it at her.
After blowing her nose, she said, “I lost my passport. And missed my plane. And my phone is dead. And my luggage is in the hold of a plane over the Atlantic. And Benji keeps hanging up on me. And—” Her language went foreign and coherent sounds had no part of what came out of her mouth. While the sobs soaked into the tight wad of damp tissue held in a bundle at her lips, the desk clerk got real fidgety. He looked younger than Chloe and couldn’t possibly know he was supposed to do something. So she bucked up and tried to wipe her cheeks dry with the saturated tissue.
Deep breath. “Do you have a phone I can use?”
Relief flooded his face when he had something concrete to focus on. “Is it a local call?”
“I need to call someone at home. In America.”
“What’s your room number?”
“I checked out this morning.”
“Phone’s for guests only.”
“It was just a few hours ago.”
He got fidgety again. “Um, sorry. I can’t.”
“Can I use your computer?”
“That’s for guests only, too.”
She pulled all the money out of her pocket and spread it out on the lacquered counter. A few coins rolled and spun before they fell flat. “I’ll pay you for a phone call. Please. It will be quick. Or just send an e-mail for me. Please!”
“Can’t, not without a room number. Just got the desk. Don’t want to go back to being a bellhop. Waited a year to get here. Just can’t do that.”
“Please?”
He shook his head again. “Sorry.”
Chloe mouthed “never mind” and gathered up her money. Who would she call that would answer anyway? She went to one of the couches and flopped down.
Guests passed by and she sat coma-like. They walked through her line of vision but she just stared straight ahead. They disappeared when images of Todd blinded her. His expression was angry, then sorrowful, then surprised—like when she found him with Rebecca.
“How long do you plan to stay? This area is really for the guests.”
Todd dissolved. The young clerk hovered nervously next to the couch. She found just enough strength to turn her head toward him. But she didn’t lift her eyes. They fell on a storage room. The cloak room where they’d checked the large instruments rented for the musicians who couldn’t afford to buy an extra seat to carry their own on the plane.
She popped up and pointed at the closet. “This morning I turned in a cello I’d rented and they put it in that room. Do you think it’s still there?”
“Don’t know. I came on at five.”
“Could we check? It’s actually rented through the weekend, till midnight tomorrow, technically.”
“I don’t believe I’d be authorized—”
“Please!” She jumped up toward him. He stepped back with a worried twitch around his eyes. “I won’t go anywhere with it. I could play music here in the lobby. I’d just set up a tip dish. I won’t bother anyone. Please, just let me try. I need to earn money. I’ll give you half of what I get. Please.”
He thought long and hard, twitching the whole while, before he finally walked to the closet, looking over his shoulder as though his supervisor would sweep down on him any second.
Inside were the dark silhouettes of string basses, cellos, and a couple of tubas. “That one, there. It’s the one I used.”
He turned on the light and Chloe got the cello. She also grabbed a small glass bowl from the counter that looked like a tip jar for the cloak room. The clerk nearly grabbed it back when she picked it up, but somehow he managed to rein in his trepidation and let her take it.
A wooden chair with an upholstered seat cushion was not far from the entrance, next to an antique side table with a bouquet of orchids. The tip bowl went on the floor in front of her and she primed it with the money from her pocket. After a moment to decide, she began playing a Bach’s cello suite from her last recital. Number Three.
The clerk stood very close, as though he would reach out and grab the cello away from her if it appeared she’d hurt it or make horrible noise. But as soon as the notes started to sing out, he took a couple of hesitant steps backward and gave her some space. He eventually went back to his post and left her alone.
The acoustics of the high ceiling magnified her tone. The music soothed her soul like a balm. The fear and panic lessened and she got lost in the beauty and familiarity of playing. For a short time, she even forgot everything and just became one with the music flowing through her and the instrument.
Within an hour, the bottom of the bowl was filled with coins. She stopped a minute to look around the lobby. Hotel guests passed by, some dressed in satin and sequins going out and others in shorts coming in. This time she played Bach’s suite Number One and noticed what was going on around her. People stopped and listened, smiling for a moment as the music wrapped around them, then the bowl clinked when they dropped in their change. By midnight, the bowl was half full. Chloe asked the clerk if she could keep playing. No longer skittish about her, he said he got off at two and she could play until then.
Before starting again, she took a quick break, cradling her tip jar close, and went into the restroom. Her hair was a frizzy mess and her mascara had made raccoon eyes. No wonder she was getting so many tips. Everyone feels sorry for me. She used a wet, rough paper towel to wipe the black circles from around her eyes, never setting down the jar of money. Her hair was a different matter. Finger combing it hardly made any difference.
Before playing again, she bought a bottle of Coke and a Galaxy candy bar from a vending machine. When she asked the clerk about buying a phone charger, he said she’d be able to look in the gift shop when they opened at eight the next morning. He didn’t have a key to the retractable gate.
By one-thirty, she poured out her coins in a loud clatter onto the clerk's desk and he helped her sort through and stack them into piles. Many of them were one or two pound coins, but one person had given her a paper bill.
“Blimey! I should take up the cello,” the clerk said. “Some bloke even gave you a ten pound note. You can play as long as you like as far as I care, you get money like that.”
But the passersby had trickled to only a couple of people now and then, so Chloe put the cello and tip jar down next to a loveseat and curled up on the brocade upholstery, hoping to reenergize with a moment’s rest.
With her eyes shut, images of Todd floated through her memory. Possible conversations unfolded in her imagination, testing out scenarios to get out what needed to be said. In her mind, he was repentant for all he’d done and was ready to start fresh. A vision of him taking her into his arms comforted her and she slipped into deep unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 9
A field surrounded him, brown and dead, obviously long past harvest. And it was not a modern field. The rows had been plowed one at a time, each weaving a crooked line across the field. Perfect. All I need is to land in some medieval society. He had been enjoying the modern amenities.
Manure from the ancient field smudged his jeans. He pulled himself off the ground and cursed Satarel for pestering him so incessantly while he brushed at the mess. He condemned the girl who had exposed him to Satarel, he swore oaths at the oxen that had manufactured the dung on his trousers, and vilified the witless peasant who put the manure on the field where he had materialized.
Of course, his profanity would not help him get the eternal redemption he sought. But really, it couldn’t be helped. The world is full of idiots, and those idiots are interfering with my plan. Everything and everyone was working against him.
“Blast those humans,” he shouted into the vast, gray sky. It made his temples pulsate. He clutched his head, moaning. The frigid air was his only solace, soothing the hot pain.
What a ridiculous state. If his mother had not been human, he would not have inherited all the many weak traits of man. How was he ever to shed the damnation of the Fallen and gain a chance at redemption if he could not shake their wretchedness? “Blast it all!” he said in spite of his headache. He slapped some more at the muck on his trouser knee.
It only made them worse. He would have to drain some of his strength and change his wardrobe.
He closed his eyes, concentrated on the molecular makeup of his clothes, and transmuted them. He felt the power go from him as he did, and he staggered a step before reopening his eyes.
The new apparel was not only clean and dry but warmer, and quite stylish for the times. He designed it based on what John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, wore to his second wedding in 1396.
Chloe's Guardian Page 5