A/N: Please give me a minute to assemble the cast and clarify everyone's roles. Oh, and pay attention to the dates.
Patriot Tours
Chapter 2: Orientation
December 2
Chuck yawned, a shoe in one hand and one already on his foot and tied. The yawn had interrupted the automatic process of tying his shoe — but then again, nothing seemed quite automatic this morning.
He was dressing for orientation. He looked at his watch. It was 8:30 am and he was supposed to meet Jill downstairs at 8:40. They would walk to orientation together.
Together.
Chuck wasn't sure what to make of the night before. Jill had stayed late. They ate pizza, worked on the tour script, and then watched television.
She had asked him to come and sit beside her on the loveseat since it faced the TV — the armchair didn't, although Chuck could have turned the chair around; and since the loveseat was more comfortable than the bed — and Chuck would have felt odd lying on the bed while Jill was in the room with him. At any rate, he moved and joined her. They watched bits and pieces of various shows, never lingering long on any, and mostly talking to each other, talking about Stanford and Scripps, about California, aut their expectations for the break together.
Jill was the one who used the word, 'together'.
It was still in Chuck's head this morning. He knew it need not bear any special weight. Jill had not inflected it in any special way, and yet, Chuck felt like her choice to say it meant something. She seemed to like him.
He liked her — or he did so far.
At Stanford the year before, he had been burned by a woman, Alice, who gave him every sign that she seriously liked him, was ready for an exclusive relationship, and then she had pulled back at the last minute, pulled back in public, and with a public dressing-down of Chuck for his presumption. He had been humiliated in front of his frat brothers and in front of himself: he prided himself on his emotional intelligence, his ability to know people, to understand and empathize with them, and to take their points of view seriously. Not just to see what they saw but to feel what they felt. Yet somehow he had failed to understand that woman, her point of view, and so the scene that resulted not only diminished him in the eyes of many, but it diminished him in his own eyes: he had been presumptuous; he had misunderstood the signs, been clueless.
Since then, he had been reluctant to pursue a relationship. He had not had any thought of meeting anyone while working for Patriot Tours. But Jill was waiting for him downstairs and she seemed to like him. Slow, Chuck, slow. He was determined to be careful, sure he understood what was happening between them.
He put on the other shoe and tied it, then stood and faced the mirror, wincing slightly at seeing the whole room reproduced in it. He wore a green sweater over a white button-down and khakis. His curls were a bit wilder than usual, and even a determined brushing had not tamed them, only stirred them up. He could smell the musk of his aftershave, but just a whiff — he had not overapplied it. Once he started walking, moving around, the scent would settle into the background.
He smiled at himself, trying to make sure it was friendly and nothing more. Overnight, he had become less convinced about the more-than-business suggestion in Jill's smile. It might have been his imagination. At any rate, he had decided on a healthy skepticism about Jill's possible interest in him. The skepticism would be easy — diffidence was his default setting.
He grabbed his leather jacket and his cap and picked up his room card. The last thing he did was throw his shoulder bag over his shoulder. He stepped out into the cold. He took a moment to make sure the door was closed all the way and locked, and then he turned and walked to the edge of the balcony. The frozen fountain was still frozen, locked in ice, the pale DC sunlight doing nothing to break the imprisonment.
Then he heard a voice calling up to him:
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
"Hey, Bartowski," the teasing voice went on through a laugh, "stop lollygagging, admiring the slushy fountain, and come on. It's damn cold for Californians. I need to walk to warm up."
He saw Jill; she walked out from beneath the balcony into view, standing near the courtyard fountain and staring up at him. He called down:
So, you're Romeo and I'm Juliet?"
She shrugged, grinning. "It'll do for a freezing Thursday morning. Let's go get oriented. At the moment, all I know for sure," she said, pointing toward the glow of the morning sun, "it that is the east, and you are the sun."
Chuck shook his head, laughing as he bounced down the stairs. Someone had swept and salted them that morning, so he had no particular fear of hurrying.
Jill looked fresh, her cheeks red, her eyes bright. She gave him another of those smiles. "Do you know the way?"
Chuck nodded. "Yes, and I have my phone if we need to use GPS."
Jill grabbed his hand. She had a backpack on her shoulders. Chuck tightened his return grip on her hand, trying to make sure he was not squeezing her hand harder than she was squeezing his.
They walked out of the parking lot and turned on the street that Chuck thought would lead them to Patriot Tours.
"Have you had coffee?" he asked Jill.
She shook her head. "Not yet, I was hoping for something better than what I could brew in the room."
"There's a coffee shop on this street, that's part of the reason I chose it," Chuck confessed. If we had gone the other way out of the parking lot, it would've saved us a block, but no coffee."
"Oh, I want coffee, Bartowski," she beamed at him. "You know how we Montagues love it."
The coffee shop, The Unbearable Lightness of Bean, was all Chuck hoped: quaint, small, but heavy with the aroma of roasted coffee and fresh baked goods. He wished they had time to sit but they didn't, so they both got lattes to go.
They exited. Chuck held the door for Jill as she had held it for him when they entered. She nodded her thanks.
They walked along in silence, sipping their coffees. Chuck could see Jill's breath as she exhaled, and see his own as he did.
"So," Jill said after they'd walked another block, "are you dating anyone? Someone special back at Stanford" She asked the question without looking at him, and she took a quick sip as soon as the question was asked.
"No," Chuck said, allowing himself a step or two before answering. "Not lately, anyway. I've been caught up in the grind. I'm now in my major courses, the upper-level ones, and so I spend a shit-ton of my time in the library or the lab or in front of my computer. I'm sort of a drudge, although I hate to admit it."
She turned to him, stopping. He stopped too. "Don't call yourself that. It's great that you're so…committed. You're not the sort to suffer from senioritis, I'd wager."
Chuck blew out a breath and shrugged. "Maybe not, but I do periodically suffer from passive FOMO."
Jill scrunched her face, the scrunch cute. "Passive FOMO? I didn't know there were kinds."
"I'm not sure there are, it just feels that way to me. Now and then, I fear I'm missing out, but I'm too…something, passive?...to do anything about it. Maybe it's better thought of as a disquieted sloth, although I don't think that's quite right either. Maybe my FOMO's too weak to spur me to action, but strong enough to leave me discontent.."
Jill started walking again. She'd dropped his hand before they went into the coffee shop; she reached for it now. "Jesus, Chuck, don't oversell yourself!" She shook her head vigorously in an I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-you way. "What will the other Capulets make of such a Juliet?"
Chuck laughed and nodded to the right as they approached the street. "We need to turn here. Almost there."
Sarah Walker, CIA, stood on the windswept Thiers Pier at Arcachon.
The white and yellow and black flags that surrounded the pier were limp. It had started drizzling, and it was cold; she tightened the belt on her trench coat, pulling the hood of the hoodie she wore underneath it over her damp blond hair.
She'd been standing there for two hours.
She'd been played, sent to stand on a pier while the real meet occurred somewhere else, with someone else.
The pier was empty, the meet she had come for a ruse. She looked at her watch. The last train back to Bordeaux would leave the Arcachon station soon, giving her only enough time, ten minutes, to walk to the station.
She scanned the beach around the pier, looking down the long row of umbrella pines, pin parasol, like giant bonsai trees above dots of red benches, and then turning, looking in the opposite direction toward the darkened carousel, no lights, no movement, no music.
Sarah was the lone person on the battleship gray beach.
Nothing new, being alone. She heard the thought inside her head almost as if someone else had said it. She shook her head to dislodge the thought and then ducked against the drizzle; it was worsening into a downpour. She wished she had worn boots. Her thin shoes were soaked, and her feet were already freezing.
She started walking quickly off the pier, back toward the station, walking between the brightly decorated shops, windows full of pricey leather goods and dark chocolates. The large puddles were impossible for her to miss and pressed her lips and splashed through the icy water. It would be a long, uncomfortable, frustrating hour on the train back to Bordeaux and her apartment.
At the Arcachon station, she had enough time to buy a double espresso at the corner newsstand, and she boarded with it, careful not to spill it, sipping it slowly as the train cut through the rain, drops streaking her window as she stared out at the passing stations, her blue eyes reflected to her anytime she shifted her gaze from the outside to the window itself.
She was going to have to call Graham and admit to him she'd failed.
Damn, she hated to fail.
She already knew that Marcuse was in the wind. Cunning, cruel son of a bitch. Her gamble to capture him had allowed him to meet his contact and escape.
Patriot Tours was located on the bottom floor of a tall building.
Chuck saw a listing of all the other businesses in the building, posted next to the door, but he did not stop long enough to read it. The Patriot Tour signs were visible in the windows, red, white, and blue, and Jill was tugging Chuck through the doors.
As soon as they were inside, before Chuck had unzipped his jacket or Jill unbuttoned hers, a tall, slender woman in a navy dress came clacking across the tile floor. "Chuck Bartowski! Jill Roberts! Welcome, welcome."
The woman had a clipboard in her hands and a nametag on which 'Tammy' was written in black. "Did you two walk? You must be frozen!"
Tammy had black hair streaked with gray. She was neither young nor old, although it was obvious that at one time she had been lovely. She was still a handsome woman. She wore a white dress under a black sweater.
"Hi, Tammy!" Chuck said, extending his hand. The woman shook it then turned a bit to face Jill and shook her hand. "Hey, Tammy," Jill offered with a smile.
"Glad you two are here. We're getting ready to start orientation, but I have some paperwork I need for you to fill out." She turned from them and pointed to a table in the center of the large room, on which were several clipboards and a box full of ink pens. Two other college-age people were seated there, writing, a male and a female. "That's David Weinstein and Sheila Burrell. He's from the University of Chicago; she's from the College of Wooster.
Chuck looked at Tammy. "Stanford, Scripps, Chicago, Wooster. That's quite a lineup of colleges."
Tammy nodded. "It is. We don't say this in our brochures, but part of what we hope to do is to inspire the students who take our tours, to interest them in good colleges. Many of them have what it takes to get in and flourish, but they've simply never imagined themselves in college at all, much less at such places. You folks are important just being here, being you. You help make the seemingly impossible seem possible. Go ahead and fill out the paperwork, then we'll take a few minutes for coffee and to meet each other, then we'll start the orientation."
Jill sat down and Chuck sat down beside her and they both grabbed the same pen in the box. She grinned at him and let him take it. She took another.
Jacob Adams, tall, broad-shouldered, and bald, the president of Patriot Tours, was winding down the orientation. He was a man who knew how to speak in public, how to avoid wasting time or repeating himself.
The orientation had been helpful, making clearer to the tour guides what was expected of them and what was expected of the students. There was instruction about what to do if a student fell ill or was somehow injured. He explained that the tour scripts were intended to be entertaining for the students as well as informative, and he encouraged the tour guides to relax and have fun with the tours, to go off the script now and then.
"Tell a story, don't just describe architecture or talk about the dead. You'll need to do both, of course, but remember — stories."
"Tomorrow, we will take our own tour. Tammy and I will be your guides, and you will have a chance to be on the other side of the process. And — that's all. Thanks for your attention. If you've filled out the paperwork and met everyone, feel free to take the rest of the day for yourselves. We'll see you again tomorrow.
Chuck had met the final two guides — there were six in total — Irwin Nord and Grayton Crenshaw. Irwin was from Vanderbilt and Grayton was from Swanee.
The six of them made plans to meet at an Indian Restaurant near Capitol Fountain.
All the tour guides were staying there, although the other four had gone to dinner early the night before and missed the arrival of Chuck and Jill.
Irwin, Grayton, David, and Sheila decided to go to see a movie when dinner ended. Jill seemed tired, and Chuck volunteered to walk her back to the motel.
As they walked back, snow began to fall. Jill slowed and then stopped, turning her face up to the sky. She put out her tongue, trying to catch snowflakes on it. Chuck watched as she spun, moving a little side to side, trying to adjust to the unpredictable fall of the flakes.
After a moment, she closed her mouth and faced him. She looked happy — and no longer seemed tired as she had as dinner ended.
"Not much snow in Claremont," she said, softly giggling at herself, and her antics.
"No, but a lot in Colorado, right?"
"Yes, but I haven't been back for a while. I worked in Hollywood for the last couple of summers. I was the personal assistant of an agent, a powerful one, so I met lots of A-list stars." She paused and a slow frown overtook her features. "It wasn't that great. I was nothing more than a toady, a slave. A couple of stars — men and women — got handsy, and most of them were insufferably arrogant. I wish I'd gone home to Colorado, but the pay was good. My hope is that Patriot Tours will give me a more…satisfactory employment experience."
"Didn't Jacob Adams use that phrase?" Chuck asked.
Jill's grin returned, devious this time. "Maybe so. It does sound familiar. He was impressive, wasn't he?"
"Yes, he was. I liked Tammy too. I'm looking forward to getting started next week."
"Me too. What do you make of the others, Irwin and Grayton and David and Sheila?"
Chuck thought for a moment, watching snowflakes land on Jill's hair and her earmuffs.
"They seem great. Grayton seemed to like you."
Jill smiled but seemed puzzled. "Really? His manners are so Gone With the Wind southern that I couldn't tell if he was flirting or just trying to be Rhett Butler."
"Flirting, I think," Chuck said, working to keep any hint of jealousy out of his voice.
Jill looked at him for a minute then shrugged. "Maybe, but I didn't flirt back, did I?"
"No," Chuck said, shaking his head. "You yawned at him a time or two. Ouch!"
"He's cute and all, but…not for me. I'm no one's Scarlett O'Hara." She winked at Chuck and stepped closer. "I've already found my Juliet."
Chuck laughed but wondered how serious Jill's quip was meant to be.
A moment passed, and Jill spoke, musing. "Huh. Rhett, Scarlett, Juliet. That's a lot of -ets, isn't it?"
Chuck gave her a look. They walked on in snow and silence.
Sarah's cover apartment was at 22 Rue de Lurbe, second floor.
She had gotten off the tram that had taken her from the Gare St. Jean, the Bordeaux station where the Arcachon train arrived. Her feet were still frozen, despite the train being warm. She thought she had rubbed a blister on her heel.
She punched the code into the keypad by the door and went inside, a light coming on in the hallway in response to her movement. The floor was tiled in black and white, leading to a steep stone staircase that wound around, up to the second and third floors. Sarah wearingly climbed the steps, noticing again how worn they were and wondering how many hundreds of feet had climbed them over the years.
She often wished she could be more present at the foreign places she visited — so that she could feel like she was there. As it was, the place itself was always absorbed into the mission, became merely the scene of it, and not an independent geographical location, with its own history and flavor. She left every place she visited unknown and untasted. She left life itself unknown and untasted.
Five years as an agent were five years of her life gone, gone, lost irretrievably among mission details, none of her life hers, all of it the Company's. That was the decision she made when she joined.
She turned her key to get into the room, closing the door and pushing the deadbolt over. She let out a long sigh and walked directly into the bathroom, already kicking off her wet shoes and unbuckling the belt of her trench coat. She would have a hot shower before she called Director Graham.
She needed to collect her thoughts — and put some iodine and a bandaid on her blistered heel.
A/N: I'm looking forward to this. The idea is lots of fun, I think.
