Just then, a crowd of people came rushing down the stairs, dangling bottles of cheap cava and cans of beer in their swinging grips. Lochlon was leading the pack. When he noticed me, he froze in front of my table, causing a human traffic pileup. The group jammed up behind him in a cartoonish way, each person slamming into the one in front.
“Oi, mind yourself, lad,” said the kid behind him with a moody shove.
Wheeling away from the pileup, Lochlon sat down across from me at the table, staring at me the whole time.
I stared back as boldly and unflinchingly at him. Who the hell is this guy? Do I know him?
When he didn’t speak, I leaned in and with a lilt of humor said, “Close your mouth, you big creeper.”
His whole face lit up when he smiled.
“Can’t help it, so. You’re just . . . stunning, like,” he said stupidly. “A natural knockout.”
I couldn’t help but blush at this straightforwardness, his informal charm. Before I could react further, his friends called out to hurry him along—they were already halfway out the door.
“Sure, I’m not bothered. I’ll meet you there,” he hollered back without looking in their direction. And so in the same swarmlike haste as their arrival, the group exited. It was abruptly peaceful again.
We sat face-to-face in a strange sort of staring contest. He looked away first and flipped up the corners of my map.
“Where you off to, then? I’ve been here two full weeks, so if you’re in need of a bit of help, I’m your man,” he said in a flirty flash of romantic foreshadowing or dumb hope or mere coincidence.
“Are you?” I laced my tone with playfulness.
We walked around the city for hours that day. He had no clue where he was going, but that didn’t matter anymore. I never did find those flamenco fans.
Instead, he taught me how to pronounce his name (Lok-lun O-Ma-hoon) in the animated Boqueria market. We talked of the cities we had come from while eating sugared churros on the steps of formidable churches with gargoyles for chaperones.
I had just come from Latin America and had a few months of travel left. But Lochlon, a serial backpacker, had just started a new journey and would be on the road for at least a year. He traveled until the money ran out, went home to Ireland to work, and then went back on the road. He was Peter Pan with dirty jeans and a brogue.
By the time night fell, we were talking of the places we would go to next while slipping through the side streets and back alleys of Barcelona’s underbelly. I don’t remember where we were going that night, but I can still remember the buzzing rush low in my stomach whenever I think of it.
The next week we would be on a train to the Pyrenees together, the pastoral countryside tumbling past us. Fallow yellow fields; stone ruins; farmers’ cottages; dusty soccer games; sky, sky, sky. It was the beginning of a four-month-long “roadmance” where we traveled and, in effect, lived together. If he was Peter Pan, then I was Wendy.
After Spain, we went on to jump turnstiles on the Paris Métro; got kicked out of a glitzy, ritzy bar in Monte Carlo; and spent nights kissing over bottles of cheap Chianti in dreamy Florentine piazzas.
In Rome, he taught me it was okay to be a tourist and take pictures with the men dressed as gladiators. “If you act like you’re above it, you’re going to miss out,” he told me. And he was right.
We splashed fully clothed in a public fountain in Zurich, La Dolce Vita style; climbed trees in a Berlin park, skinning our knees; and stayed up all night playing poker on an overnight diesel train to Greece with teenagers from Israel. We made love for the first time, hot and desperate and carnal, in Istanbul; and played “Never Have I Ever” on a budget airliner to Mumbai. He first admitted that he was hiding something from me on the Konkan Railway down south to Goa.
“There’s stuff about me that you don’t know, Kika,” he told me as the train wheezed and jangled us along the thin railroad tracks that drew a line between the Arabian Sea and the Sahyadri Mountains. We had been on the train for five hours, and we still had more to go. What is it about long journeys that breeds confessions? I wondered then.
The sun shone through the window highlighting the freckles on my thighs. “Like what?”
“I’ve done some things in my past that I’m not proud of,” he whispered, staring out the window greasy with fingerprints. Sweat oiled his temples.
I shrugged. “So has everyone.” His words didn’t worry me. By this point I had already made up my mind about him. This wasn’t just vacation sex; he was really someone to me. And it would take a lot to change that.
But he creased his forehead seriously.
“No, you’re not understanding me. You’d not be able to look at me in the same way if you knew.” He looked deeply uncomfortable and tented his sweat-stained T-shirt off his chest.
“Why don’t you tell me and let me decide that,” I said without flinching.
But then, it was as if an emergency alarm had been pulled in my brain. A warning image of my mom’s face flashed in the speed of a strobe light: Caution! Caution! Caution!
“You’re not married, are you?” I blurted, abandoning all casual coolness. My insides rippled at the thought.
That was mom’s one rule: Don’t fall in love with a married man. She had that rule because it happened to her. My father was a tremendously handsome (and tremendously married) Roman man she met while living in Italy. They no longer speak.
We didn’t spring for the air-conditioned cabin, and my thighs suctioned to the seat as I shifted my legs.
“Jaysus, no, I haven’t a missus.”
I closed my mouth, but the alarm didn’t subside. “Not even a mad wife locked in the attic? That still counts, you know,” I prodded. This was one thing that my usually chilled yogic mother would panic over.
His head shook like a swinging door. But then a moment later he asked, “Wait, is that not the story of Jane Eyre?”
“Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Illegitimate children?” I fired, my brain whizzing faster.
“Would you stop? It’s nothing like that at all.” He fidgeted with a loose thread on the hem of his shirt, wrapping it around his finger until his skin went colorless.
“Was it something illegal?” I asked. “Were you in jail?”
“’Course not,” he said, pinching his face like he’d just smelled something sour. “Is the question-and-answer period of the program over now? Look, I’m sorry I mentioned it. Forget it, yeah?”
He looked up at me with expectant, childlike eyes; this look was a departure from his usual self-assured swagger. His Adam’s apple dipped in a hard swallow. My shoulder blades unclenched when he looked at me like that.
“Okay. One more question,” I said. “Whatever you did, whatever happened—is it truly in the past?”
The train snaked through a mango grove, and the air grew sticky with the scent of rotting fruit and noxious diesel fumes.
Lochlon didn’t even glance at the luscious, waxy mango trees and instead leaned forward, supporting his elbows with his knees.
“By God it is,” he assured me emphatically.
A freight train going the opposite direction clattered parallel to us, momentarily blocking the view in filmlike flickers. In that moment, the worry burned away like a puddle in the blistering Indian sun.
“Then it doesn’t matter to me. If this is the real you, then I don’t care about what happened back then.” The train plunged into the black shadow of a tunnel.
“You say that now. But once I tell you, you won’t want anything to do with me.”
4
A RUDELY SHRILLING phone yanked me from the Internet rabbit hole.
“Kika Shores, VoyageCorp,” I chirped with counterfeit liveliness. “How may I assist you this fine day?”
I looked at Holland through his glass office, and he curled his top lip in warning. He had been
observing my phone demeanor ever since he caught me answering the phone with “Kika Shores, Office Bitch.” (I thought it was my mom calling. It was an innocent mistake that could happen to anyone.)
“Hi, Kika, it’s Lynn, Madison’s mother. I couldn’t get you on your cell, and your mom passed on this number.”
I winced and swiveled my chair to face away from Holland’s office.
“Hey, Lynn. Yeah, this is my office number, but my mom really shouldn’t be giving it out.”
“Of course,” she said with her heartland politeness, “but darling, I must say you do sound very professional!”
I loved mothers of young children; they were always easily impressed and quick to dole out praise. Thanks, I have a big-girl job!
“I was just calling to confirm tonight. I’ll pick you up from the train station at six thirty with Madison and then drop you girls off at home. I should be home by midnight. I hope that’s not too late for you, is it?”
I jerked my swivel chair one half turn farther, binding the curly phone cord around myself. I was babysitting her five-year-old daughter, Madison, that night. Why did she have to make it sound like we were having a playdate?
Madison’s mom insisted that she pick me up from the train station, which was actually fine by me because it saved my own mother the trouble. Of course, the whole production made me feel like a teenager again instead of an early twenties college grad who worked in the city.
But I was desperate for the extra money babysitting generated. I had a giant credit card bill from last weekend when I took an impromptu trip to see a friend in Montreal.
“Thanks again for helping out. Madison adores you.”
Babysitting came naturally to me—as an only child I always wanted younger siblings. I babysat all through high school and the summers between my years in college. In fact, I was our neighborhood’s favorite babysitter. Shockingly, my college’s career counselor wouldn’t let me add this to my résumé, even though watching five-year-olds truly equipped me for dealing with fussy CEOs.
Holland emerged from his office bundled in his winter coat in preparation to go outside.
“Absolutely, so glad we were able to confirm that. Looking forward to working together in the future. Okay, bye now.” I put the phone down before Lynn finished, and I rotated my chair in the opposite direction to face Holland.
“Something I can do for you, Mr. Holland?” I said, fumbling to unravel the phone cord.
“Kika—” he started forcefully and then cut himself short.
I offered him my most impressive Disney Princess smile, and he took a deep breath. The curiously bulging vein in his forehead throbbed up and down.
“Kika, I’m going to the last-call meeting at the Richmond Group to get any final requests. I’ll send you Ronald Richmond’s changes as they arise so that you can get started on them right away. Just please, I beg you, get everything confirmed. I’m getting a lot of pressure from the higher-ups on this one. I’m not kidding around.”
“Right, Mr. Holland,” I said far too cheerily to instill any genuine confidence. Holland put his hand to his temples, and his vein swelled again, but he walked out without another word.
As soon as he was out of sight, I shrugged off my itchy blazer to reveal a cottony soft retro T-shirt that said, in Russian: “Moscow Is for Lovers.” (There was a highly probable chance that it actually said, “Stupid American Tourist”; I never checked.)
I tried to keep up a semblance of my true self whenever Holland was out of the office. Plus, work clothes were so binding and claustrophobic—wearing them was the fashion equivalent of being told to “quiet down.” I was literally unsuited for corporate life.
The only thing about my work appearance that was wholly mine was my summery, beach blond “Coachella hair,” as Holland called it.
I heeled off my uptight office shoes and curled my legs in a lotus position in my chair, instantly feeling relief.
Contrary to popular belief at VoyageCorp, I wasn’t an idiot. I was just understimulated and underemployed. But it wasn’t like I was irresponsible or anything. I mean, how hard was it to set up and confirm meetings, right?
But then as if on cue, it hit me. Oh no.
I snatched my tasks list and flashed over it. There it was, inked in bright red pen and my own treacherous, loopy handwriting: Set up last-call meeting with Richie Rich re: Dubai.
I was so preoccupied with the actual Dubai conference that I forgot to schedule the meeting in New York before the Dubai conference—the one that Holland was en route to right now.
I frantically looked around like the solution was a physical thing that I could find if I searched hard enough. Holland is officially going to shank me. Or worse, fire me.
I started pacing, but then it struck me: Maybe Richie Rich was available to have a super-quick meeting with Holland. CEOs of multinational export companies weren’t, like, constantly busy, right? He had to have five minutes to spare. I speed-dialed his personal assistant.
“Ronald Richmond’s office,” answered an impatient, too-cool-for-you voice.
I pictured his PA, Bae Yoon, adjusting her headset, which she always seemed to be wearing—even on social occasions—like it was some sort of high-tech fashion accessory.
“Bae Bae! It’s Kika. You have got to help me,” I started.
“Hold please,” she said without emotion.
I tapped my foot. She didn’t put me on hold properly, and I heard her whole conversation through the phone:
“Yes, I did just get it cut, Mr. Jørgensen. Do you really like it? You don’t think it’s too short, do you?”
Bae was a notorious flirt who considered bagging rich men pure sport. At any industry event she could be found shamelessly coiling up the arm of the wealthiest guy in the room like some poisonous snake.
I spanked my palms onto my desk: “BAE!”
“Forgive me, Mr. Jørgensen—oh, okay,” (sickly sounding giggles) “I’ll call you Sven. What a privilege. Forgive me, Sven, but I have to attend to this call,” Bae said in the background.
She came back on the line. Irritated, she asked, “Yes? Who is this?”
Bae and I spoke roughly three hundred times a day.
“It’s Kika Shores, from VoyageCorp. Look, I have a serious problem.”
Bae sighed, fluttering and wet like a horse. “Don’t you always, though.”
“No, seriously, this is not a drill. I repeat: This is not a drill. Holland is coming to your office right now to meet with Richie Rich, and I totally forgot to schedule it with you,” I said in one breath. “Is there any way to get a meeting with Holland on the books, like, now, so they can meet?”
Bae let out another lengthy stream of air, which I really didn’t have time for.
“So let me get this straight,” she started in her snippy, nasally way. “You forgot to schedule a meeting with Mr. Richmond—excuse me, with Richie Rich—wasn’t that what you called him?”
I dropped my head back and grimaced at the ceiling. She wasn’t going to forget that anytime soon.
Bae continued: “—and now you want me to find Mr. Richmond, interrupt him, and tell him that he has a meeting with Holland, like, now, so that I look like the screwup who didn’t put it in the books?”
(Sorry for all the italics, but that’s how Bae Yoon really talks: in alternating italics.)
Bae always took this sort of superior tone with me because back in the day, we were up for the same personal assistant position for Richie Rich. A man named Prescott Darling, the father of one of the families I babysat for, was a financial advisor for the Richmond Group, so when he got word that Richie Rich needed a PA, he got me the interview, even though I was less than qualified with my tourism and travel management degree.
When Richie Rich chose Bae over me, he passed on my résumé to VoyageCorp as a courtesy to Prescott Dar
ling.
Bae acted like she won this big competition when I really couldn’t care less as long as I had a job. And at least for now, I had a job.
“Bae, please,” I implored. “Just get someone—anyone—from the Richmond Group to meet with Holland. Look, he’s been on my ass about Dubai, and if he finds out I forgot this, I’ll be fired.”
There was an unwelcome silence on the end of the phone.
“Will you now?” said Bae in a cool, clear voice.
Unexpectedly, I felt my bottom lip twitch. Sure, I didn’t exactly like this job, but it was really hard to get one. I only got this position because of the personal favor.
Just then the situation became serious. If I lost this job, it would takes ages to get a new one, and I could kiss any hope of traveling in the immediate future good-freakin’-bye.
The line went quiet again. “Maybe I can help you,” Bae finally said.
Now I was the one exhaling. “Bae, thank you so—”
“But you’ll have to do something for me,” she interrupted.
5
I PUT THE phone down and fell back into my chair with a relieved moan.
Bae consented to meet with Holland herself to go over the itinerary for the conference. She agreed to tell him that Richie Rich had something suddenly come up.
In exchange, I would need to run an errand for Bae since she was giving up her lunch break to meet with Holland and she’d be in Dubai next week because she was just sooo busy and important and cool.
But nothing to panic over. A few little errands bartered for job security? Done. Holland had another meeting this afternoon, so I could leave now and return during his second appointment, and he wouldn’t know how long I’d been gone. My job was safe.
While waiting for instructions from Bae, I started prepping myself for the outdoors. I left my blazer and work shoes behind and slipped on my (in)famous Dr. Martens boots, which I brought along to change into after work so I could be comfy at Madison’s house. (Okay, fine, so it sort of was like a playdate.)
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