Phoenix’s dimple rewarded her humor.
He guided her to the reception desk. “She’s my guest,” he said, and flashed his phone to grant them access to a space crowded with leather seating and racks of newspapers. He paused at a buffet of snacks. “Hungry bird?” he asked.
“Maybe later,” she said. She turned away and slipped a package of butterfly crackers into her bag. She herself felt like a chrysalis about to transform.
She hadn’t been this excited about a trip since… well, maybe never.
Phoenix led her to a pod of four armchairs by the window, a welcome sanctuary away from the squalor of strollers and suitcases littering the gate area. She sank into the leather chaise he indicated, and he sat beside her.
A thought struck Orchid. “I’ve been studying Mandarin day and night, and now I’m going to have to remember my high school French!”
“You polyglot.”
“It’s going to come out all jumbled: my own brand of Frandarin.”
“Learned languages might get mixed up, but native tongues are stored in a different part of the brain.”
“So, no worry about Frandarin?”
“Try to say something in French.” He waved an elegant palm in encouragement.
Orchid blurted the first phrase that popped into her mind. “Voulez-vous couchez,” she began, then covered her face in embarrassment. Perhaps starting withwould you like to sleepwas the wrong choice, especially when the complete phrase ended withwith me.
“That sounds like high school French alright,” he managed to say between chuckles.
“Mon dieu, merde, ça va,” she muttered, her gaffe inspiring this flurry of phrases.
Phoenix shook his head as he tried to hold in his amusement.
His attempt to still his mirth made the matter funnier. She couldn’t keep herself from joining in his laughter. “You can’t take me anywhere,” she concluded.
He wiped at his eyes. “You are so fun. I’m taking you everywhere.”
She knew he was joking. Her chest expanded with hope anyway.
When the loudspeaker announced their flight, they wheeled their bags through the automatic doors and down the long corridor to their gate.
“I better sleep on the flight, since I have meetings tomorrow. Otherwise, Frandarin might slip out,” she mused as they walked.
“Or worse, high school French,” he replied.
They approached the ticket agent at the gate.
“You together?” he asked.
Phoenix nodded. An innocent question. Orchid wished for an answer that was less than innocent.
They were on the bridge, just before stepping onto the plane, when Phoenix handed Orchid his boarding pass. Then he held out his hand for hers.
She swapped with him, confused.
When he stopped in the fifth row, she raised a hand to wave goodbye.
“May I have your bag?” he asked, and then hefted it into the overhead bin with the easy grace of an athlete.
“I might need stuff from it,” she said.
“Sure, you can pull it down if you need it,” he said with a shrug.
