The Florencia Lozano Homepage - Fan Fiction
Chapter 13
Tea gazed out the window of the small plane that just hovered above the treeline. She’d never seen so much snow: miles and miles of a white, blinding expanse that seemed to go on endlessly like a blank canvas with a story waiting to be told upon it. The land, the ocean, the mountains, everything was white and so were the trees with their branches covered with a thick layer of ice, gleaming like glass in the bright sunshine. It was a wintry fairy kingdom, a snowy fantasy world with a perfect, icy beauty that was completely unique and unimaginable.
She’d traveled through Canada for almost an entire day before finally reaching Fairbanks, Alaska, trying to keep to the same route that Todd had taken. Unfortunately, there were no regular flights to the remote location she needed to get to and she was forced to hire a bush pilot to take her to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories.
It was a small, sputtering and uncomfortable transport plane with room for only a few passengers, but on this day it was only piles of supplies and packages...and Tea. The pilot was a plump, gabby little man of fifty, named Winchel Hesse, who made this run a few times a week. Turned out Winchel was an ex-patriot who’d fled Los Angeles in the midst of a raging mid-life crisis ten years ago. Packed up the kids, sold the house and moved them all to a town in the Yukon called Dawson.
“I used to sit in my car for four hours everyday during my daily commute to work in the Silicon Valley, “ said Winchel, “two hours there, two hours back. One day I was sitting in my car, in my morning traffic jam, sipping my tasteless Dunkin Donuts coffee and I said to myself ‘Win, you’re either leaving this hell today or you’re going home tonight and putting a bullet through your skull. What’s it going to be?’ So...I headed for the Yukon. Now my commute lasts longer but in that time I travel thousands of miles across this beautiful land. I’m free as a bird, like man is suppose to be. That’s what it’s all about, miss...freedom. You put a man in a cage...you destroy his soul, kill his spirit and his need to hope and to dream. Look down...that’s the mighty Yukon down there, Miss, and those are the majestic Mackenzie Mountains...created by the hands of God himself,” he yelled out from the cockpit. “Have you ever seen a more magnificent site?”
“No...it’s quite lovely,” Tea yelled back. “How long till we get to Inuvik?”
“Another hour or so, you just sit back and enjoy the view.”
Tea pulled her thick white parka around her. Arriving in Alaska yesterday, she immediately went shopping, realizing that as bad as New York winters were they had not prepared her for this brutal climate. Sacrificing her vanity, she traded in her expensive New York fashions for more practical outdoor gear: a pair of insulated snow boots, long underwear, fur-lined mittens and a warm, white parka with bushy, Arctic-fox fur trim around the hood.
“I’m out of my mind,” she said, digging through her carry-on for her cell-phone. As she dialed the numbers, she watched the plane ascending and descending over the mountains while her pilot sang sea shanties in the cockpit.
She could here it ringing faintly through the static.
“Hello,” said Paul, his voice barely audible on the other end. “Hello.”
“Hi...can you hear me? It’s Tea.”
“Hello...Tea? Is that you? I can’t quite hear you. Where are you?”
The static got so loud she had to pull the phone away from her ear.
“Paul? Paul?”
“Damn.” The phone went dead.
Pulling the file from her bag she read through it again for the tenth time, pulling out the picture of Todd and Dr. Reese. She had to keep looking at the photo, had to keep justifying her actions to herself.
“Why am I risking my future happiness for you, Todd Manning? Even now, after all you’ve done to me, why is it I still can’t bear to think that you’re out there somewhere...hurting.”
Staring at the image of Todd she thought how different he looked from the man she’d loved when she first came to Llanview, that longhaired, tortured devil that instilled fear in everyone...but thrilled her to distraction.
“What’s happened to you, Todd? I don’t even recognize you anymore...”
Shoving the picture back into the file she laid it on the seat beside her and looked out the window at the white blankness, remembering a warmer, more colorful place, an exotic island somewhere in the South Pacific.
When she and Todd became stranded on that island, she began to think that it had been fate bringing them together, giving them a second chance. But, from the beginning things were off somehow between them. Loving Blair had changed him. Gone was that imposing presence that made her weak with a glance, that labyrinth mind that challenged her at every turn, the dark wit that kept her laughing despite her inclination not to, and that indomitable spirit that tested her will to its outer limits. Todd had been morose and obsessive, now he was light and distracted, with a juvenile attention span, spending his days playing toy soldier with antique guns and hand grenades, cavorting with crabs.
Even his gestures were different, quirky and silly, almost childlike, so unlike the tightly wound, methodical pensiveness and elegance that defined a man who’d experienced so much. And he walked strangely, all discombobulated and erratic with an annoying, bouncing gate, unlike the Todd she once knew who walked silently, gracefully, like a panther on the hunt, one of the sexiest qualities of his dark allure.
And when they made love in the beautiful surf, a mistake she’d always regret...it was so different. It lacked all the intensity of the past...the fiery passion, the unbridled aggression, but mostly, it lacked the aching tenderness they once felt for each other...it was all missing. It was just sex.
This was not the Todd Manning who had loved her, this was someone else...Blair’s Todd.
Still, after all this time, it was the lingering pain she couldn’t rationalize. Even before he’d chosen Blair so definitively, they’d been apart for so long, and yet, the wound inside her festered with fresh soreness, a wound that simply refused to heal. Why wouldn’t the pain go away?
Tea sat back, recalling that moment on the island when his body washed ashore, pale and lifeless. In that moment she felt as if she had died too and remembering her desperate need to revive him. It was the basic of all human instincts kicking in, the instinct of survival...only, not her own, but Todd’s. Yet, it felt as if her very existence depended on his staying alive, like some biological imperative calling to her from inside him. And now, it felt the same. She had to know he was okay...or she couldn’t go on.
* * * * *
“Mike Palladino...he’s missing,” Chuck whispered as Tukluk came by and cleaned off his table.
“How?”
“I knocked on his door again this morning and there was still no answer, so I went down to his office. Dr. Reese was there, looking through his files. He said Mike had a family emergency and had to return to Boston ASAP.”
Tukluk sat down.
“Did you believe him?”
“No. Reese seemed really nervous...and he was drinking Irish whisky at 7:00 in the morning. Then he started asking me questions about Mike, whether I knew him well...what we talked about. I’m scared shitless, Tukluk. They may suspect that I know about Gemini. Maybe Gemini said something after last night...he seemed pretty shaken up when Todd Manning confronted him. He was heavily sedated, but...he might have said something to Dr. Crespo.”
“Time’s running out. I thought we had more time but...I think we need to call the cops.”
Chuck shook his head.
“Call the police? Do you know what that will mean for my career, Tukluk? No reputable school or hospital will take me if they find I was involved with this place...with this unorthodox, renegade research, a kidnapping and God knows what else. And, my family will disown me. No one will believe that I aware of what was going on here. And you...you’re almost done with work release, if they think you’re involved, you’re looking at a few more years behind bars. Sorry, my friend, but I’ve got to get out of here before I disappear too.”
Tukluk stood up, pounding his fist on the table and grabbing Chuck by the throat.
“But, what about Todd!”
Chuck stood up and pulled away from him.
“He’s a dead man. No one is going to allow him to leave now, you know that. They’re just waiting for Gemini to die, then...Todd Manning’s a gonner. Sorry, Tukluk...but it’s every man for himself. I have to go.”
“You’re a coward.”
“Yes...yes, I am...but, remember, my friend though heroes die but once and cowards die a thousands deaths, cowards still live! I hope you and Todd make it out of here, I really do. Sorry, man...but I can’t be a part of this....” said Chuck, looking scared and rushing out of the cafeteria leaving a shaken Tukluk behind.
*****
2003 Copyright by Trog
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