Whirlwind 01 – Finish Line – Pt. 03 by QuantumMechanic1957,QuantumMechanic1957

Spectacular was the only word for the sunset, looking like two sky-size octopi, one brilliant crimson, the other deep indigo, wrestling in very slow motion. She was enjoying it from the vantage point of the airport’s observation deck, which turned out to be a rock garden of great tranquility just meters from the hurrying masses and less than a hundred meters from various large and small jets. There were three hours until their boarding call, and she wanted to rest. Someone moved quietly behind her and sat beside her on the wall. She did not have to look to know it was Nathan, somehow she had felt it was him from his first faint, gravel-crunching footstep on the winding path. She glanced around, their videographer shadows were evidently in the rest room after overindulging in some Norwegian specialty cuisine.

Ariana wondered if Nathan was going to spoil the scene by chatting, but he settled for companionable silence. As the sun settled behind the deep darkness of the horizon and the indigo octopus slowly overwhelmed its crimson challenger and pulled the night sky over them like a black velvet comforter speckled with sequins, she felt a profound contentment. Part of her appreciated his fine sense of discretion for knowing when to listen, when to talk, and when to just BE. In her experience, men usually got such basic communication judgements utterly wrong.

When the sun was no longer even a faint shine on the horizon, and not even the pickiest lawyer could have called it anything other than night, Nathan said, “You enjoy performing.”

She smiled under the concealing cloak of the night. “The only thing more thrillin is the applause after. I feel…,” she groped for a word and finally settled for, “… appreciated.”

“You are.”

If he could but sing with his warm, intimate baritone, she would sing a duet with him. “Tis not always been that way,” she observed quietly, before she even knew she was going to say it.

She felt his body shift to some state of tension, and knew him well enough that the man and the gentleman were now struggling mightily. He suddenly and desperately wanted to know what had evoked such bitterness in her tone, but felt he couldn’t ask. She knew the curiosity wasn’t nosiness or the desire to run off and sell some juicy celebrity tidbit to a tabloid; it was an honest and deep concern which was his ultimate distillation of respect and affection.

After looking over both shoulders and ensuring as best she might that no Race videographers were putting in overtime around them, she replied, “Well, me mum insisted I be sent off to an all-girl Catholic boardin school. For her twas a prestige thing; but twas a nightmare for me. I made the mistake o singing well; too well. I caught the ear o the choir director, who wanted me in the order and in her choir. Sister Rose. She pummeled me near night an day that I ha a God-given gift an it would be a mortal sin to no give it back. I was quite insistent that I didna want ta be a nun. That bit o defiance got me treated like the daughter o Satan himsel by all the nuns. I was punished for the slightest thing, or nothing at all, wit the clear message it would stop if I twould but repent the error of me ways an become a postulant.” Sitting here with Nathan, she was mildly surprised she could relive the misery with such detachment. “I still hae the scars on me backside from the strap, an sometimes me knuckles ached so much from the rulers that I could no finish me homework, which would lead to more hidings the next day. What priests did ta boys was unspeakable; what some nuns did ta me and other girls is still unsaid.” She took a deep breath of the cool air, a grace which eased the pain. “I woke one morning ta find the nuns had come in in the night and taken all me clothes and left only a postulant’s robe. So I came to breakfast in me underwear. That earned me a beatin in front o the entire school. I was an evil, wicked child alright. My parents would no take me home, an I think many o my letters ne’er saw the post. Then me Aunt Theresa died an me da came ta tell me and take me ta the funeral. He arrived just in time to see Sister Rose slap me fer sayin God was no callin me ta be a nun. Her ring left a gash on me cheek.” She fingered the ghost of the scar in the anonymity of the night. “He had me ot o there an home in a trice. I owe him me life, an I ne’er loved him more. O course mum put up a terrible row, and tossed him outa the bedroom. He had ta sleep in the guest room for a week. He might still be sleepin there ha no mum walked in on me gettin dressed and seen the scars on me back. She turned a bit pale and stared at me. I just looked at her in the mirror, and she hurried oot. We ha ne’er spoken o it since; but da got to sleep in his own bed agin.” When on stage in a role, her grammar and diction rivalled that of an Oxford don; when her barriers were slipping, she regressed to the deep brogue of her childhood, defiant and unashamed. “So I think I am safe on stage. The center o attention – but at a distance. An I NEVER wear backless dresses. Never.” She took a deep breath.

With the softness of a falling leaf, he laid his hand lightly upon hers.

In a long ago classroom science experiment, she had put a stalk of celery into a glass with red food dye in the water, and the dye had slowly crept up the stalk like a blush. The warmth and strength and sympathy and encouragement which had flowed up her arm and across her chest was exactly that, settling in her heart like a blessing not needful of words. For a wild moment she had wanted to unburden her entire soul; to not be the scandal-ridden star but a woman seeking, not absolution or condemnation, but simple acceptance from her best friend. The thought suddenly, thoroughly terrified her, and Nathan, sensitive as ever to her moods, gently withdrew his hand. They sat, side by side, under the stars for a long while, just savoring being together, and then Nathan had stood up, offered her a hand up, and then led her down the path into the terminal.

As she looked at his back, she was surprised to find that she was actually dreading the inevitable finish to the race, and then marveling that she had probably just spent the most intimate evening of her life, even more so than her wedding night.

As she made her way to her bunk, she knew two things for certain – there would be another e-mail from Nathan, and she would go to sleep trying to recapture the memory of companionship under a starry sky.

[Italian race car driver and fan are the last team to arrive and are eliminated]

CHAPTER 13 [Eleventh Leg (Norway to Austria) — Four teams remaining]

Ariana decided it was like the postal carrier back home in the little village outside Dublin. Lonnie Hennesy had been the postal carrier for years, a soft-spoken, cheerful man who had walked with a limp and sported a dramatic scar on his right cheek. No one thought much about him, one way or the other, until the local paper had run a story on him. He had been in the Irish Naval Service and in his time had been awarded no less than five National Lifesaving Medals for saving nearly thirty lives on crippled ships in heavy weather as a crew member of a search and rescue helicopter. He had been honorably discharged due to injuries received in the performance of his last rescue. The day before the article, he had just been good old Lonnie, not more than part of the background of everyday life, to whom people would say ‘good morning’ and might spare a moment to remark on the weather with. After the article, people would tip their cap to him, step to the side of the walk to let him by, and call him, Mr, Hennesy rather than Lonnie. If anything, the recognition had embarrassed him, as if he preferred being Lonnie and not being made a fuss over. Well, accept for one thing.

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