Elementary, My Dear Watkins (14 page)

D
anny awoke at the sound of knocking, and it took a moment to remember where he was: in a sleeper car, on a TGV train, on the way to Switzerland. Propping up on his elbows to look toward the source of the knock, he saw that Luc was already up, dressed, and opening the door for the steward with their breakfast. Luc took the large tray from the uniformed man, tipped him, closed the door, and then set the tray on the hinged tabletop that swung out from the wall under the window. As Luc removed the lids from the various foods, Danny tried to wake up and clear the sleepiness from his brain. He and Mr. Bashiri had stayed up until 2:00
AM
, just talking and sharing stories of the road.

“
Bon matin, mon ami
,” Luc said, looking up at Danny with a smile. “What is wrong?”

“The view,” Danny said, trying to sit up further without bumping his head. “I was hoping to see the Alps, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

He swung his legs over the side, climbed down, and stepped to the window for a closer look. Visibility was only about 20 feet; beyond that was merely swirling gray mist. Perhaps the fog would burn off once the sun finished coming up. It was tough to be so close to the gorgeous Swiss Alps for the very first time and not even be able to see them.

Assured that Luc had already checked on Mr. Bashiri, Danny sat down to eat. The food was yet another weird European idea of “breakfast,” but Luc paid more attention to the coffee than the food, pouring from a heavy silver carafe, carefully stirring in sugar and cream, and sipping slowly as he gazed out of the window at the fog.

“I’ve never seen anyone who can drag out a pot of coffee longer than you can,” Danny teased as his friend poured his third cup.

“
Eh?
” Luc said, looking up with a smile. “What do you know? You are from America, land of the ‘go cup,’ guzzling your coffee on the run, always while you are doing other things.” Luc dropped a sugar cube into the steaming brown brew and stirred, slowly shaking his head. “I like Americans, but when it comes to food and drink, you are all in too much of a hurry.”

“I like Europeans,” Danny replied, smiling, “but for my taste, in that area I’d say you’re all a little slow.”

Luc laughed.

“
Touché
,” he told him, raising his coffee cup in a toast. “We both like what we are used to,
n’est pas?
”

They chatted easily over the meal, discussing various cultural differences between the United States and Europe. For some reason, Danny found that the conversation was making him homesick, something he’d worked hard to avoid in the past six weeks. When Luc asked about Jo specifically, Danny felt a surge of loneliness deep inside his chest. He missed her so bad it hurt.

“Tell me what is so special about this lady of yours,” Luc said, leaning back in his chair, “that the very thought of her keeps you from even looking at the beautiful women of Paris. If you are so in love, why are you not yet married?”

Danny tried to explain that it was still a little too soon.

“Too soon?” Luc cried. “Did you not tell me that you met her when you were a little boy? That her grandmother and your grandmother were neighbors and that is how you became friends?”

“Yes, but we were just friends. After twenty-something years, we were best friends. Then, last fall, I realized I was in love with my best friend.”

“So all of a sudden you did not just love her any more, you
loved
her, eh?
Ooo la la
. Tell me more.”

Danny jabbed a sausage with his fork and moved it to his plate.

“It’s not an easy decision, you know, moving from best friends to boyfriend and girlfriend. You risk the entire friendship, because if things don’t work out in the love relationship, in the end you’ve got nothing.”

“But let me guess—as soon as you admitted that you had fallen in love with her, she said the same thing had happened to her,
non?
”

“No. In fact, she had a hard time with it at first. It was complicated.”

“Sounds like it.”

Danny remembered the torment of telling Jo that he loved her and not immediately hearing the same sentiment in return. At the time he tried to be patient and put the entire matter in God’s hands, but it hadn’t been easy. The moment when she finally admitted that she was in love with him too had been the single best moment of his life. She had done a lot of thinking and realized that the only thing holding her back from a love relationship with Danny was the fear of losing him. He promised her he would always be there for her, and he meant it with every fiber of his being.

“Love prevailed in the end,” Danny said, remembering.

“And that is when you decided to live happily ever after?”

“No. That’s when I decided to come to Paris.”

Luc let out a groan, tossing his hands in the air.

“Just when you get the girl of your dreams, you go off and leave her? What kind of a lover are you?”

Danny smiled.

“Jo understood. In fact, she insisted. She knows how important my career is to me. She’s very supportive.”

Luc set his napkin on the table, shaking his head.

“No job or career would be worth it to me. Love like that, it does not come along every day. If I had a true love who was also my best friend, I would never leave her side.”

“It’s only for three months,” Danny protested. “And this was the career opportunity of a lifetime.”

He didn’t add that the situation was actually even more complicated than he had described. When he left town, in fact, not only were he and Jo just beginning the transition in their relationship, but her home had burned to the ground
and
she’d been terribly injured in an explosion.

At least he’d managed to postpone the internship for a week so that he could be there when she was released from the hospital. But with nowhere to go and no one to care for her, the best they could come up with was for her to move into the guest room of his parents’ house, where his mom could help out. After Danny got Jo settled in there, he had left town. A week or so later, homesick and missing her dog and feeling stronger and more agile with her cast, Jo had bid his parents goodbye, picked up Chewie from his temporary caregiver’s, and moved into Danny’s house, where she and Chewie were living now.

When Danny thought about it, the big picture kind of gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Had he been selfish to accept the internship and fly away to Europe right when Jo probably needed him more than she ever had in her life? He promised he would never leave her, and then he went and did just that.

Jo was simply so capable, so independent, that once she urged him to seize this opportunity, he had taken steps to leave, telling himself that it was only for a few months. And though his mother and three sisters had promised him that they would be there in his stead, helping out with the logistics of Jo’s recovery and her housing situation, the truth was that
he
should have been the one to do all that. He should have been there for her.

Had coming to Europe been a mistake?

Danny swallowed down the last of his breakfast, which suddenly felt like a big rock sitting in his stomach.

“I can see all of this talk of Jo has made you miss her,
mon ami
,” Luc said, finishing his final cup of coffee. “Cheer up. The fog is lifting,
non?
”

Danny looked out of the window to see that it had indeed grown a little clearer. They were speeding past a mountain lake, and though they still couldn’t see the Alps in the distance, glimpses of turquoise-blue water were visible among the misty trees.

Danny tried to shake off his concern and confusion, comforted by the knowledge that at least Jo’s recovery was going well. Despite all she’d been through, she sounded fine, both in her e-mails and whenever they talked on the phone. Maybe leaving her at such a tough time hadn’t been the best idea, but she was such a trooper that she’d managed to make it work. The worst if it was over now, anyway, so there was no reason to lament decisions already made. It wasn’t as though they’d be separated forever.

“Time to pack up,” Luc said. “We should arrive in Zurich in about half an hour.”

Putting thoughts of Jo out of his mind for now, Danny got up and got moving. Once he was dressed and his own bag was packed, he went next door to make sure that Mr. Bashiri was all set. All three men were ready to go by the time they rumbled to a stop at the station in Zurich. Cool air rushed in when the steward opened the outside door, and Danny realized that it was a good 15 degrees cooler here than it had been in Paris.

“Welcome to the City of Money,” Luc said as he stepped from the train.

Danny stepped out behind him, noting that the station was sleek and modern and bustling with people.

“That is why it makes the perfect counterpoint to our photo essay,” Mr. Bashiri said solemnly. “The pictures we take here will contrast enormously with the pictures we will take in the Congo.”

Because of all the baggage, they rented a Volkswagen minivan. Danny was worried when Luc took the wheel, but fortunately his driving here ended up being much more sedate than it had been in Paris. As they made their way across the busy city streets, Luc tried to teach Danny a few key phrases he might need. The language sounded strange and guttural, a dialect of Swiss German spoken mainly in Zurich.

“Have you ever been to Zurich, Mr. Bashiri?” Danny asked as they turned onto a bridge which carried them over a serene, winding river.

“A few times, Mr. Watkins,” the man replied. He was perched in the front passenger seat, camera bag clutched neatly on his lap, eyes taking in the scenery all around. “It is an impressive place, but I much prefer the quieter outlying areas, such as Engelberg and Lucerne.”

Luc disagreed, and the two men entered into a good-natured debate about the bucolic-but-boring countryside versus the fascinating-but-congested city. Danny tuned them out and took in the sights instead, impressed with the cleanliness of the city, the striking mix of historic and modern architecture, the river that flowed lazily through the center like a deep turquoise ribbon. In a way, from the car at least, he thought Zurich was so well kept and organized that it looked like something from Epcot or Disneyland, a fake version of a real place. But it was indeed real and quite lovely. Fortunately, the fog that had shrouded the train on the way was nowhere in evidence here.

After several miles they reached their destination: the headquarters of Global Mobile Medical on a street whose name was so long that it looked like three or four German words squeezed together into one. Though parking was supposedly scarce in downtown Zurich, this place had its own private lot, to which they’d been given a special permit. Luc turned in, found a spot down a narrow row, parked, and placed the permit on the dashboard.

Danny had a copy of the itinerary in his pocket, so before they got out of the car he pulled it out and they went over the logistics of the photo shoot. They would spend an hour or two photographing the headquarters, the workers, and the warehouse. From there they would focus specifically on the businesses and the residences of three of the doctors who would be going with the team to the Congo. Georgette wanted photos of those three doctors at work, at home, and at play—an effort that would probably take the next two days and involve a number of locations. Tonight, they were supposed to go to a GMM fund-raising event and photograph there as well.

“I’m supposed to check in with Georgette later this morning,” Danny continued, “to talk about getting my travel documents squared away for the next leg of the trip. But that shouldn’t take long. In the meantime, Mr. Bashiri, how can Luc and I best help you?”

Mr. Bashiri was thoughtful for a moment before speaking.

“If the two of you will handle the equipment, the driving, and the translating, then I can focus on the photography. Just do not wander off without telling me first because you never know when I might need something.”

“Of course,” Luc said. “
Allon nous
. Let’s go.”

Danny thought they might want to go inside without any equipment at first, to meet the people and take a quick stroll through the facility and get a better idea of the pictures they wanted to take. But as they climbed from the car, Mr. Bashiri twisted his neck to look around and announced that the morning sun was at the perfect angle right now for some exterior shots of the building.

“Mr. Watkins, I will need the large format, the digital, and the Leica,” he told Danny before setting off to walk around the building and choose his angles.

Danny did as the man asked, pulling equipment out and assembling it so that each camera was on its own tripod, ready to go. Finally, Mr. Bashiri waved him over to where he stood across the street and down the block. Danny obliged, leaving Luc beside the van while he trotted over to Mr. Bashiri with the equipment.

Once the photographer had finished attending to the details of placement, framing, and exposure, he began snapping. Danny stood behind him and watched over his shoulder, wondering why Mr. Bashiri had chosen this particular angle. It made no sense to him, because the sharp morning sun was glinting problematically off of almost every shiny surface between them and the building. He wanted to ask how the man was compensating for that, but Mr. Bashiri was so deeply immersed in what he was doing that Danny didn’t dare speak at all.

In fact, he spent most of the morning confused about Mr. Bashiri’s methodology. When they were finished photographing the exterior, they went in and met the staff, were given a tour, and took many more pictures, often with strange angles, bad lighting, and odd filter choices.

At least Luc ended up coming in handy, for he wasn’t just the translator but also the self-appointed schmoozer. He kept conversations going with the staff, mostly in German, with lots of charm and laughter all around. That left Mr. Bashiri and Danny free to quietly focus on the photography. When they took a break for tea, Danny finally summoned the nerve to ask about Mr. Bashiri’s methodology.

“Take a look at the shots I did with the digital, and see if you can figure this out yourself. You tell me what I’m doing.”