Francis actually laughed at that. “The perfect toast!” He tipped his glass and drained it in a single swallow. “Wow! Now that’s good vodka. Say, have we picked the designated driver for the evening?”
A bright-eyed younger looking man with a slight lisp addressed him. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure you end up in your bed if you can’t make it there yourself. We’ve all used that service once or twice.”
Sokolov was the only one not nodding. “Let us not forget the work that lies ahead of us. Don’t damage Dr. Hamlin too severely on his inaugural evening.”
“Francis, please. Call me Francis. We’re all peers.”
The tall woman playing the role of bartender raised the bottle in her hand. “Another round!”
There was no argument.
Accomplishing such a small amount of marking would throw his planned production off for the rest of the week. It would take some effort to dismiss that aspect of his day—a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder made changes to his schedule seem unusually disconcerting. The side effects of this day were manifesting themselves physically by now. He was growing perceptively weary as he strode along.
Normally, the walk home through his quiet neighborhood was something he enjoyed, but today he just wanted to get there. He also wanted to see Deborah and have a nice, long talk. It was way past supper and he hadn’t eaten since early that morning. Maybe that was a contributing factor to how bad he felt. Perhaps she had cooked him something nice; that would be a sufficient remedy.
With that optimistic thought, he made a right angle turn and stepped onto the sidewalk that ran along the perimeter of his driveway. Halfway up, he stopped. The garage door was open and Deborah’s car was gone. Terrific. It was Murphy’s Law in action—anything that could go wrong, would. He couldn’t recall that she had plans for the evening, but then again he hadn’t been thinking all that clearly. Hopefully she’d be back shortly. He decided to enter the house through the garage since it was open anyway. Why not save a few steps?
He went inside, put his briefcase on the hall table, and turned toward the kitchen. He knew immediately that something wasn’t right, but it took a moment for the notion to manifest itself clearly. There was a lot of stuff missing. Deborah’s stuff.
“What the hell?” He walked in a daze toward the kitchen. There, as if in fulfillment of a bad dream, lay a single sheet of white paper in the middle of the table. He hesitated before picking it up; unconsciously acknowledging that it could be the harbinger of his doom. He lifted it mechanically and couldn’t stop himself from reading it.
“Dear Francis. I think the time has finally come. Thank you for all the great memories, for being so kind and affectionate, and for all the career advice. You really are a great person. I hope we’ll still be friends. I’ll call you when you get back from the Congo. Maybe we can have lunch or something.
All the best. Love Deb.”
He stared in morbid horror at the sheet. What the fuck?
She was on speed dial and he pushed it without any other cognitive thought.
“Hello?” She sounded bright and bubbly.
“What the fuck?” It wasn’t the thing to say, but he had lost his mind. At first all he could hear in response was road noise.
“Oh Francis, don’t tell me you’re going to pretend that this is a surprise. Please don’t make this messy and ugly. Just let me go.”
His mind was completely gone. “Why?” It was all he had for a comeback.
“Seriously?” The calm response was evaporating. “Francis, you’re seventeen years older than me. We never talked about this being a long-term thing. I thought we were on the same page. You were just what I needed at the time, but I’ve got to finish following my own path. You go to Africa, and I go back home to figure out what’s next for me.”
He tried to process and couldn’t. “I…love you. I thought you were staying.”
“Look, I care about you deeply, but I’m not going to participate in this melodramatic bull crap. Go overseas, do what you love, get famous and all of that stuff. Write books, go on a speaking tour…finish your plan for the rest of your life. And I’m going to do the same for me. Don’t make our last conversation an emotional, delusional sob-fest. I want to remember you fondly until the day I die. Don’t make that impossible by what you say in the next thirty seconds. Be strong and do what you need to do. Call me when you get back.”
Incredibly, the phone clicked and the line went dead. He stared at it like he had never held a phone before and had no idea what it was. He looked up at his house, which no longer felt like a home, as if he was seeing it for the first time. It was somehow foreign now. He was a stranger in his own life. What had just happened? After standing there for an undetermined period of time, he moved listlessly toward the only thing that called out to him. Unfortunately, it was the liquor cabinet.
CHAPTER TWO
Hamlin woke slowly as was his custom. Even in the earliest stages of consciousness, he could sense that something was amiss.
“Oh, crap.” His head was full of explosions and broken glass. He had a blurry, fleeting vision of vodka in a plastic cup. “Ow. What have I done?” The broken glass was trying to get out through his eyes. A thought came to him. He was in Antarctica. That startled him fully awake. His eyes flickered open apprehensively. The room he was in was quite dark. He was at a loss as to what to do next. If he chose to sit up and got nauseated, he didn’t even know where the washroom was. He didn’t want to puke in somebody’s closet by mistake. He decided to lay still and do a thorough physical analysis before trying to get upright.
“Shit, why didn’t I drink beer?” He didn’t even know if they had beer. He could remember meeting everybody from the station, but faces and names were pretty scrambled up in his mind. Was it morning? Had he overslept or was everybody still in bed? He listened and heard nothing but the outside wind moaning through the wall. It then occurred to him that there could be someone else in the room. Probably not, though. It was too quiet.
Did the room have windows? Should there be light coming in? Was that bacon he smelled? The questions came quickly and without any particular structure. Yes, after a moment of delicate sniffing, he was convinced that it was, in fact, bacon that he smelled faintly. His room door slowly opened and a bar of soft light stretched across the floor.
“Doctor, are you awake?”
The voice was gentle and understanding. Francis considered ignoring the question, but to be fair, his current condition was nobody’s fault but his own. His punishment would be to force himself into action under extreme physical duress.
“Yeah, I’m awake.”
There was a moment of blessed silence and then, “Breakfast is ready if you want to come out.”
Breakfast was not going to happen for Francis on this fine day. He forced himself to speak again. “Maybe some coffee or juice.”
“Good. We shall see you at the table then.”
Francis was already regretting the decision to get up. “Okay.” He lay back and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
An undetermined period of time passed before Francis woke once again. He sensed he wasn’t alone.
“It seems you are awake again. Very good. We missed you at breakfast.”
That prissy voice was quickly becoming familiar.