The Call To Adventure: A Few Reservations

Monday, April 1, 2002

She went into the study, stretching her arms over her head. She was tired, but she couldn’t put this off any longer. What if there were an accident and they needed to go to the doctor? Screwing up her courage, she sat down and picked up the phone. She had spent a year trying to forget the number, but never had. She discovered it was still in her muscle memory; she had dialed it so many times. As the phone rang, she hoped the number had changed, that he had moved, or died in a flaming automobile accident, that…

“What?” he demanded, still sounding as arrogant as she remembered him.

“Um, hi. I, uh… You’ll never guess who this is,” she babbled. She wanted to whack herself for it. To herself, He is not the boogie man, get over it... But then why am I so damned nervous?

After a full twenty seconds of silence he burst, “Ana! What the fuck are you doing calling me?”

She sighed. She had hoped this would be easy. She should have known that nothing was ever easy or simple with this man. “Business. You have the contacts; I don’t.”

Another moments silence then, “Ana, what have you gotten yourself into? Do… Do you need a place to lay low for a while?” The concern in his voice shocked her, and then lit a little warm place in her stomach.

“No. Nothing like that. I need… Should we be talking about this over the phone?”

He was smirking, she could tell by his voice, “Meet me at Benny’s in two hours… And I am checking for a wire.” He hung up without saying goodbye and she growled at the phone. She sat a moment, then flew upstairs and began to change as quickly as she could. She had a bad moment when she could not find her shoe, almost panicked, and then tripped over it. Why am I so nervous? Why am I going insane fixing myself up nice? Damn it, Ana, so what if you had a crush on him in the third grade and almost fell out of your chair the first time you saw him all grown up? So what? He’s an ass, greedy, and slimy to boot. On and on her mind went, but she still did her hair and her makeup and put on a little black dress.

She shook her head to clear it and told Brian she would be back later tonight. She wondered if he had given her so long just to see if she would dress up. It was the sort of manipulative crap he had always pulled. She slowed the car down, resolving to be ten minutes late. She had once been punctual to a fault. Goddess knew that was why she had dumped him; she had been early getting to his house and seen him wiping glitter-blue lipstick off his face.

She shook her hand, remembering how it had felt after a forceful introduction to his right eye. She pulled into Benny’s parking lot and sighed. He was leaning against his car, arms crossed in front of him. Strands of his long black hair danced in the wind and his eyes were dark and cold. She used to think him freakishly tall at 6’4, but Oisin held that title now. His eyes tilted up at the corners and his lips were lush. Indeed, now that she studied him, he looked like Oisin’s darker reflection. She had hoped maturity would cost him some of his looks; it added to them. She exited her car, feeling like she was about to waltz into a dragon’s den. He stood up straight and glided forward. She almost sighed. He still had the grace of a dancer. Too bad the packaging and the product are so very different, she thought.

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He had watched her over the years so he knew she had not gotten fat as he had once hoped. He had not seen her up close in all this time and had forgotten how tiny her hands were. He had not forgotten her right cross, though. She seemed cool and confident as she drifted closer. It made him want to be mean, to make her as off-balance as he was. “Business, huh? Bethany put you up to this? Well, April Fool’s to you too.”

She blinked and her eyes narrowed. “No. And it’s nice to see you too, Tristen.” No, she was serious or she would have looked away. She had always been a terrible liar. And when had she learned to pour on the sarcasm that thick? Interesting. This might be a game worth playing to the end. “I am quite serious. Now can we get on with this abortion or do I need to find somebody else?”

He was tired suddenly. “No. Don’t try to find someone else. You’d just get into trouble.” He paused and bowed to her, wondering if it would make her smile like she used to. “It is good to see you.” She did not smile. He sighed. “Now, what are you after?” He half expected that she wanted a bag of weed and was making a production of it. He could probably still manage to get one for her, but he had abandoned his illegal activities years ago, minus the occasional bet on a horse. He knew people who knew people and he had sold a few Schedule IV substances. She had always grossly overestimated, seeming to think him a mobster. He almost snorted. If he were, he would not be living in a tiny college town in the middle of nowhere. He had made his first mistake when he told her what his father had done for a living, and another when he never explained that he did not want that life. He had thought it impressed her; he learned later that it just scared her.

“Papers. Birth certificates, socials, the works,” she replied evenly, obviously annoyed. Damn, they had always had a talent for pissing each other off. His mother had once told him that he would know when he’d found the woman for him just by that and the fact he would still want to see her despite it. He wondered if David could get him… What she had said penetrated suddenly.

“What?” he demanded. “Ana… Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What have you been doing in your free time?”

She rolled her eyes and he wanted to shake her. “I have two friends. Refugees. They need them.”

His eyes narrowed and several things clicked into place. “Refugees?” Her lips thinned.

“They arrived here in the States with nothing but the clothes on their back and what they could carry in rucksacks. So are you going to help me or what?”

He stared at her a moment more then turned, offering her his arm. “Come inside. I have some thinking to do on that.”

She took it hesitantly. “But we don’t have reservations. And even on Monday night, they aren’t going to have a free table.”

“I have reservations. I called off a meeting for this.”

She snorted, “A date, more likely.” He shrugged noncommittally. She was right, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Refugees? Now that was the girl he remembered, helping out strangers just because it seemed the right thing to do. She was so naïve! She had ‘easy mark’ tattooed on her forehead, so he wasn’t going to be surprised if he discovered she was being used. That pissed him off on general principle. He ordered a glass of wine, slightly surprised when she did as well, and sat back twisting his horse-shoe ring. All this bore looking into and he only knew one way to go about that.

“I want to meet them first. Then I might—might—get those papers.” She began to speak and he held up a finger. “I can do it, but it will take time and money. I will do absolutely nothing until I am satisfied these people are what they say they are. Check?”

She glared at him. “Check. They have the flu right now, so you’ll have to wait a little while. Check?”

He smiled then. “Check. And I don’t want money for my part in this. I want a favor, currently unspecified.” He rolled his eyes at her expression, but did not elaborate. Let her sweat over it. He was not looking forward to what he was going to have to do to fulfill her request. He tossed a quick prayer to the heavens. Her jaw clenched. “Or it’s all off.” She scowled at him and he knew she was not going to back down. Damn. He kicked back and drawled, “As I asked before, what have you been doing in your free time? I presume it was not rescuing refugees.”

She smiled at that and he relaxed. From there it was all polite chit-chat and he quickly came to the conclusion that he did not know her anymore. He managed to deflect the conversation away from himself until the salads were finished. He had hoped for longer.

“Obviously you got the store started and its doing well, but have you been seeing someone, what?”

He took a deep breath. “No, I haven’t seen anyone seriously, not for a long time. I… I had a daughter.” He saw her start to give him congratulations, but then she caught the past tense. “She was born with a serious heart condition.” He was proud of himself, no shaking, but his hands were balled up. He hated to talk about it. Hated to, but he thought he might as well get all of it out now. “I had dated her mother only a week. We didn’t get along and avoided each other through out the pregnancy. I found out too late that she wasn’t going to the doctors, that she was popping pills, that… Well. The doctor told me it was a miracle that the baby was born at all.” There. He'd said it. He hadn't even teared up; he was on a roll.

She squeezed his hand, said nothing. She got a thousand brownie points for not saying she was sorry. She rubbed at her throat, a nervous gesture maybe, but not one he remembered. "It didn't handle it so well when Grandma died. I... made a lot of mistakes." Something about her tone said that was the understatement of the year. "I dropped out of college for a while when Grams was near the end but didn't go back for a while after she'd passed on. I did a lot of things I shouldn't have, to the point that Bethany and Lisa threatened to lock me in a closet for a month if I didn't cut it out." She smiled ruefully and continued, "They only actually locked me in for a few hours, but you coulda fooled me. I got it together after that." Ok. Time for a subject change.

Wryly, "Oh, how the mighty have fallen! I see you drinking and I don't believe it. The words Ana and drunk aren't ones I ever expected to hear in the same sentence. Unless, perhaps, 'Tristen was drunk so Ana had to hold back his hair.' Lord knows that happened too often."

She rolled her eyes, "Don't remind me! That was part of why I didn't drink so long." He shrugged and chuckled, still barely able to recall the first time he'd seen her, peering worriedly down at him as he lay in a bathtub. She drawled, guessing his thoughts, "That night was definitely somethin' else. I'm not sure what, but somethin'."

A lovely idea burst upon him, something to lighten the mood even more. "Dance with me." She took a bit of persuading, but he managed. He'd forgotten how well they danced together. They spent a good while after dinner till the place was about to close. He shocked himself by kissing her. What shocked him more was that she kissed him back. Wordlessly, she turned and walked away. He stood dazed a moment, then hurried to catch up. "Come to my place. Drink some coffee. I'm only a block away these days." He put on his most charming smile.

She wasn't having it. "I can't; I need to go now. I should have gone an hour ago. I promised Brian that I wouldn't be very long, yet here I still am." Worried a moment, "And he'd have no way to get a hold of me if Oisin took a turn for the worse."

He sighed, "Alright. I need to get to bed anyway." He gave her hand a little squeeze and released it, offering his arm. He walked her to her car in silence. "Ana, I know what that favor shall be." He paused to add an element of drama and to make her sweat a bit. "I want a date." He kissed her hand and began walking home without a backwards glance, trying very hard not to think about what her request was going to cost him.

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The creature opened its eyes again, sniffed loudly. Beside it, another one moved, grunting in its sleep. The first creature was hungry, ravenous after the long sleep. It was too weak to move far, but there was another in reaching distance... Sated, it lay down to digest and sleep a few more hours before it was time to seek the bright lands far above.