A/N: More of our tale.
Patriot Tours
Chapter Five: Hall of Fossils
Chuck had been looking back at his tour group and wondering how much trouble he was in.
The first meeting at Patriot Tours had gone poorly. Corday immediately started calling Chuck Pet Sounds, and it took him a minute to remember that was the title of a famous Beach Boys album.
Each time she called him that, the other Woodson students sniggered. He wasn't sure they all knew the reference, but even Chuck had to admit it was funny in an odd, kind-of-genius way.
Chuck's group boarded the bus first, crowding into the rear seats. Chuck sat down just in front of them.
Gammon Moulder was seated in the very back row, hulking, his broad shoulders blocking the view through the rear window. He stared down each student in Jill's group. The student boarded the bus, not relenting until each student had looked down, breaking eye contact, surrendering.
Almost all the other students in Chuck's group watched Gammon intimidate Jill's students. Tim Maxwell seemed torn between relief that Gammon was not staring at him, and pity for the students Gammon was staring at. Corday shook her head as if ashamed of Jill's weak-spined students. Natalie looked out the window but held herself to make clear that she was aware of Gammon, of what he was doing, even though ignoring him. Anong Suwan alternated between smiling at Chuck and brushing the front of her cheerleading sweater, although Chuck could see nothing on it but the sewn letters. He noticed that she was wearing an expensive watch and expensive earrings that were, apparently, real diamonds.
"So, Pet Sounds," Corday asked when everyone from both groups was seated and before Marge, the driver, had pulled away from the curb, "where are we going again?"
"The Smithsonian, first," Chuck answered, deciding to accept Corday's name for him, at least temporarily. Jill widened her eyes at him. "I won't be the guide through the museum; there'll be a Smithsonian guide to do that. We'll tour the museum for a while, then have lunch there. After that, we'll be going to the War Memorial."
Corday shook her head as if in disbelief. "A thrill a minute, Pet Sounds." Almost all the students, Chuck's and Jill's, took in the exchange. Chuck heard someone toward the front ask in a stage whisper, "Is his first name Pet?" Chuck tried to ignore it but felt a blush on his cheeks. Corday chuckled victory, a chuckle that seemed to say: direct hit. Jill made a shushing sound at the student who spoke, but that ill-advised overture only made Corday's victory more complete.
Chuck heard Gammon's laugh as the bus pulled into traffic. He glanced back to see Anong shaking her head.
Marge expertly steered the bus into the space marked for it. Jill stood and went quickly to the front. "If you're in my group, step off and congregate to the left. If Chuck's, to the right."
Corday brightened up. "Hey, we're the sheep, not the goats. Score one for Woodson! How about a cheer, Anong?" Anong ignored Corday.
Chuck stood up but did not step into the aisle.
Jill's students exited quickly. Chuck motioned for his group to go ahead. "I'll get off the bus last," he told them. They slowly exited. Corday was humming I Get Around, and as she reached Chuck, she sang: "...I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip…"
Chuck had no idea how she knew Beach Boys songs or album titles. She was too young, he would have thought, but she was his cross to bear.
He should never have mentioned California.
When Gammon shouldered past him, Chuck brought up the rear. The students had left their coats in their seats and Chuck dropped his in one too.
Jill gave Chuck a look as he got off the bus and she gestured for him to go ahead. He figured she wanted to be able to keep an eye on his group from behind, rather than having his group follow hers. He was himself a little afraid to turn his back on them.
But at least Corday was no longer humming. Anong had made sure she was standing next to Chuck. She gave him the captain of all cheerleader smiles.
"Follow me. Our group's going first," Chuck said, rising to his full height, and reminding himself and Gammon that he, Chuck, was the tallest in the group. Gammon frowned, unimpressed.
Chuck led the group into the building. He was telling them a little of his favorite exhibits in the museum, "minerals, mammals and mummies," but only Anong seemed to care, and she seemed more interested in the teller than in what he told.
Chuck turned as the group came through the door, and, ahead of him, standing at the lobby's front desk, was a tall blonde. She was wearing a brown leather jacket, a white blouse beneath it, blue jeans, and brown boots. The moment she registered on him, Chuck smiled.
He couldn't help it. The smile began at his feet and rose through him, gaining strength, and broadcast itself on his face. Just seeing the woman made him feel joy in living, blessed to be where he was, even trailing the Woodson kids snickering behind him.
Corday piped up. "Oh, look! Pet Sounds just found a woman out of his league." Chuck ignored the quip.
The vision of the woman carried with it the sudden conviction that anything was possible. Everything seemed to vibrate in anticipation, the entire vastness of the Smithsonian trembled.
The short man on the other side of the lobby desk motioned to Chuck. Barney. Chuck turned to his group, now all through the doorway, and told them to wait for a moment. "Our guide will be here in a moment. I have to talk to Barney."
"Barney?" Corday started but Chuck gave her a glance and surprisingly, she stopped.
Chuck stepped quickly to the desk, trying not to stare at the woman but trying not to ignore her either. He ended up stranded between. "Hey, Barney, what's up?"
Barney gestured to the woman and now Chuck allowed himself to look at her. "This lady's tour got canceled. Jamie's sick. I don't have anyone to take his place. Would it be okay with you if she joined your group? You don't have as many as usual today, and Patriot's allowed it a few other times." Barney seemed intimidated by the blonde and Chuck had to admit, that close to her, he was too. There was an energy about her, something tightly coiled, electric, an almost audible hum.
Chuck nodded, unsure. "Hi, I'm Chuck! You won't be annoyed by a group of students? This one promises to be…um…chatty…maybe even snarky."
The woman smiled and her smile seemed grateful, not only for Chuck's implied acceptance of her but for the chance to smile itself. Her smile smiled at her smile a little, but mostly at Chuck.
"I can do snarky, and it won't bother me. I'm Sarah." She extended her hand eagerly, her long, lean fingers strong and delicate. He took her hand into his and found he could not breathe.
Their hands clasped.
"Welcome to Patriot Tours."
Her smile crooked mysteriously. "Not my first," she said quietly but offered nothing more.
"I'll get my group," Chuck said but did not move. He was still shaking Sarah's hand, or holding it. Her beautiful, strong hand.
Barney cleared his throat and Chuck dropped Sarah's hand. "Here's your guide, Chuck."
Chuck looked away from Sarah, embarrassed. Striding down the hall quickly was Chuck's least favorite Smithsonian guide, Dan Shaw.
Chuck walked to his group. "We're being joined by a visitor today. Sarah." He was so out of breath his voice was almost a whisper.
Anong was staring across the distance at Sarah. Corday shook her head at Chuck. "Breathe, Pet Sounds, breathe."
Chuck did inhale and exhaled but did not look at Corday. Gammon was shaking his head, clucking, a soft pitying sound. Tim was staring at Sarah, his mouth hanging open like he was deep in REM sleep.
Chuck led them to Sarah. She had been joined by Dan Shaw, the Smithsonian guide, who was listening as Barny explained the situation. Shaw was a tall, athletic man with black hair and dark eyes, and a magazine-cover smile. He had always vaguely reminded Chuck of Superman — if Superman were an earthbound bore. Shaw was certainly handsome, though. Chuck had to grant him that. On past tours, when it was possible, Shaw had worked hard to impress Jill but had not made much headway, although Jill seemed to like Shaw well enough.
But Shaw was now all-eyes-on-Sarah. Jill's group was through the door and Shaw had not looked back at them. Chuck ran back to Jill. "I've got an addition to my group," he shrugged and smiled as Jill looked and frowned. "A civilian. Her tour got canceled. Jamie."
"Jamie?" Jill asked although her eyes were on Sarah. "He's always sick. He's gluten intolerant. I've told him. So, you've got Dan? And that woman?"
"Sarah, yes. We'll go ahead." Chuck turned and looked down the hall. Mary Sue, another guide, was approaching. "Oh, you have Mary Sue. She's the best."
Jill nodded but unhappily. Her eyes had never left Sarah. "Yes, she is. If your group's too much of a handful, I could add that woman -— Sarah? — to mine."
Chuck shook his head. "No, I already warned her. She seems…game."
He turned to Jill to find her in the middle of a long, exasperated look at him. He did not quite meet her gaze. "Alright. We'll see you at lunch." Chuck ran back to his group and introduced them all to Sarah. Dan waited until Chuck finished, then Dan began to talk to them.
Chuck gave Sarah a quick grin and she gave him one back, then turned her attention to Dan.
"The Smithsonian," Dan was saying, waving his hand past the lobby, the front desk, repeating himself, "The Smithsonian Institution is the world's largest museum, education, and research complex. We are a community of learning and an opener of doors. Not all of The Smithsonian is here, spatially contiguous with this building. Other museums are part of The Smithsonian. You are about to tour The National Museum of Natural History. We will have to pass through a security checkpoint before we begin. Follow me…"
Sarah looked away from Dan and at Chuck. Chuck noticed her eyes had narrowed at the phrase, 'security checkpoint'. But whatever the look was, it passed. Dan led the group away from Barney and the desk.
Chuck heard Mary Sue, behind him, begin her spiel for Jill's group.
Passing through the security check should have been easy, but Chuck was distracted. He forgot to take off his watch. Beep. He left his phone in his back pocket. Beep. The multitool he somehow forgot to leave in his Capital Fountain room. Beep. His keys. Beep.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Each time he was sent back through, his group was in hysterics, partly real, partly feigned, increasing his humiliation. Gammon suggested Chuck was a high-tech Sysiphus, and everyone who got the joke, museum staff included, laughed.
Sarah, who had led the way through the magnetometer and sailed through it beeplessly, stood by, smiling and shaking her head.
Corday's sharp voice cut through the final beep. "Jesus, Pet Sounds, you sound like the Road Runner! Meep, meep. And did you visit Acme Terrorist Depot on your way to work?"
Chuck smiled and shrugged and circled back and finally made his way through the magnetometer without setting it off. Anong glared at Corday who shrugged the glare off.
The man who was running it took pity on Chuck and returned the multitool while Chuck repocketed his other items in the pockets of his hoodie.
Though Chuck had been through the museum many times by now, he still found it fascinating.
He could have done without Dan's super-drone, but he mostly ignored it; he had heard all Dan had to say before — from Dan on an earlier visit, or from Mary Sue or Jamie. Their tour narratives were all the same, content-wise, setting aside a few personal touches.
But Chuck found this visit especially absorbing. The most fascinating exhibit was new, a mobile, tall, taciturn blonde who had moved to his elbow and was walking through the museum close to him.
For a few minutes anyway, all his students were silenced by the size of the museum and by the displays, and so Chuck did not have to divide his attention between Sarah and them, although he pretended to do so, hoping to mask his fascination with her.
He began to realize that the mystery of Sarah's earlier smile was only one fragment of the mystery that enveloped her. Although she looked carefully and observantly at the exhibits as Dan pointed them out, and even asked a couple of penetrating questions (rewarded by Dan with his flashiest, toothiest Krypton grin, if not with equally penetrating answers), her eyes were often restless, always taking in more than the exhibit, aware of everything around her. She had a penetrating habit of awareness.
Maybe that was why the museum itself had seemed to tremble earlier, as her awareness ran through it: invisible rays of illuminative regard, a sort of caution, ran from her in every direction as if she were the nerve center of the building. Omnipresent in it. Chuck had not seen anything like it. Preternatural awareness. He was flattered that she was happy to be aware of him too, to let her gaze linger on him when she thought he wasn't looking. She was enjoying her experience (that's what it seemed to be), but there was an air of endurance about it too, as if the museum visit were a trial — as if the whole touristy thing were difficult for her, a gauntlet as much as a pastime. Tourist trap.
They climbed stairs from the ground floor to the first floor, where they entered, and began the tour in earnest — in the Hall of Fossils.
Dan stopped the group and spoke: "We will now explore the epic story of how Earth's distant past is connected to the present and informs our future." He turned to lead them farther inside, and Chuck heard Corday whisper to Natalie, "I bet Pet Sounds grew up with dinosaurs, probably near the La Brea Tar Pits out in LA." Chuck glanced at her (La Brea?), wondering if there was anything she didn't know. She smirked at him. Natalie shook her head, contradicting but only for the sake of facts. "He's not that ancient."
Chuck heard a soft laugh from beside him. He met Sarah's eyes, their blue dancing with her tinkling laughter. She winked at him and whispered: "She's right. You're not that ancient. But the other one, the little redhead — she's a ballbuster, isn't she?"
Chuck had not expected the comment and he laughed too. "She's been stomping mine since I introduced myself to the group."
Sarah nodded. "I know her type. Give me a second," she fell back into the group, stopping alongside Corday. Corday looked up at her and Sarah nodded to her. A moment later, they were whispering together, Sarah leaning down (Chuck could not see her face) and Corday talking responsively with her hands.
Chuck turned around, checking on the other students. They were all near him. Gammon was listening to Dan but watching as Natalie craned her head to take in a large, prehistoric skeleton. A moment later, Chuck felt a hand on his arm. It was Sarah's.
"Hey, Chuck," Sarah said softly, "mission accomplished. She'll cut you a little slack."
Chuck looked back at Corday. Her face was a study in placidity and she was pretending to do as Natalie was doing, pretending to study the massive skeleton. "What did you say to her?"
Sarah shook her head slightly. "Just a little woman-to-woman chat. Nothing that concerns you." With that, Sarah stepped past him and gazed up at the skeleton too.
After a couple of moments, she turned to him. There was a hint of something in her eyes. "Do you know that movie, Bringing Up Baby?"
Chuck nodded. "Sure, screwball comedy. Howard Hawks, right? 1938?"
"Wow, good memory. Anyway, I saw it recently, in between Hallmark Movies." Chuck must have shown the puzzlement he felt at that (Hallmark?) but Sarah went on, ignoring it. "Remember, the movie opens with Cary Grant, the scientist, way up on a scaffold, holding a bone, thinking. Rodin's The Thinker, almost. Except for the bone. His uptight assistant, and, it turns out, also his uptight fiancé, Alice Swallow, is down below, gazing up. Grant, that is, Huxley, suggests to her that maybe the bone goes in the tail. But Miss Swallow says, no, we tried it in the tail — and it didn't fit."
Chuck nodded, slowly, unsure where the recitation of the movie's beginning would end, recalling the scene. Sarah paused for a second, then smiled, her eyes wide, apparently innocent. "Do you think that was all a sex joke? I mean, her name was Miss Swallow…"
Chuck felt himself turn beet red; it happened in an instant.
He had never considered those details of the opening. Sarah saw his nuclear blush and she began to smile, mischievously. Her smile widened. She glanced at Corday, who glanced at Chuck and then at Sarah. Corday shook her head and began to laugh silently.
Chuck looked back at Sarah, perplexed. "What?"
"I told her if she eased up on you, I'd make you blush. She bet me I couldn't do it without touching you. She lost. Now, to pay up, she has to control her tongue until after lunch — Pet Sounds."
Chuck's blush deepened, impossibly; he could feel the incandescent heat of it on his face. Sarah studied his redness with a pretense of detachment, as if she were matching it to a shade sample, say garnet.
"What's your last name, Sarah?" Chuck asked with an unintended (and embarrassing) gulp, trying to divert the conversation from himself, grasping for anything.
She arched an eyebrow slowly before she responded. "It's not Swallow."
Chuck boggled, unsure how to understand that.
Sarah turned on her heel and followed the group (minus Corday) as Dan led them to the next display in the Hall. Chuck could hear Corday quietly chuckling behind him.
Sarah was having a good time.
The Smithsonian tour guide, Dan, on the one hand, was ridiculous, staring at her and chatting her up between displays made her like him less each minute. He was more fossilized, more frozen, than the prehistoric skeletons on display. But Chuck, on the other hand, Chuck she liked more each minute. He made her feel lit up inside, suffused by daylight. The darkness that was her old friend seemed to have taken the day off.
She was impressed by Chuck's patience with his group of students, especially Corday, who had decided Chuck was hers to torment, and Gammon, who held a grudge, not so much against Chuck, but against some group to which Gammon took Chuck to be a paradigm. But Chuck bore it all patiently. The name-calling, the beeps, the various wisecracks. Sarah was not one for banter normally, but Chuck's blindsided reaction to her Bringing Up Baby question had been priceless, and his reaction to her comment about her name, precious. Adorable.
It had been a long time since she spent time with anyone male who was also her own age. Her marks on missions were almost always much older than she, creepily happy about her relative youth. Older men, younger women. Chuck not only made her feel sunlit inside, but he also made her feel young. Not that she wasn't, she was — but most of the time she felt ancient, like she were the one who might have traced her birthplace to La Brea, who might have congealed from some formless, primeval ooze.
Sometimes she felt that she had only a past, not a future; it seemed her present was a dead end and no time stretched beyond it. Each moment of her life seemed to be created from nothingness, or recycled out of the darkness of her past.
It made hopelessness almost irresistible. But Chuck seemed so naturally hopeful, so overbrimming with it that he seemed to make her aspire to it too.
She turned from Chuck and followed the group and Dan. She heard Corday laughing behind Chuck.
Corday reminded Sarah of her frenemy, Carina, the DEA agent. Sarah could feel an emptiness in Corday; Corday filled it by abusing others. Carina often did that. Sarah knew how to handle it.
Sarah glanced back to see where Chuck and Corday were, and she noticed a man behind the two of them, between Chuck and the other tour group that had come in just after his, the one overseen by the bespectacled brunette, who was, it turned out, staring at Sarah, not the dinosaur skeleton. Sarah ignored the brunette's stare and turned back around, but the man lodged in her mind. She had never seen him before but there was something about the way he moved, the balance and control of his gait, that made her tense up.
She told herself that there was no reason for high alert. And she had no weapons. She really had come out to be a tourist. Surely, that's all the man was — a gym rat, maybe a boxer, but one who also prized science and culture. Sure.
As Dan stopped the group at the next exhibit, Sarah turned again. The man was no longer between the groups. He was walking the other way, back toward the stairs. Chuck and Corday joined the group.
The brunette frowned at Sarah across the Hall of Fossils, her eyes like sniper scopes, zeroed in.
Sarah stopped worrying about the man — now gone from sight — and started wondering about the other Patriot Tour guide.
"Who's that woman, Chuck?" Sarah asked, without looking at Jill, "The one with the other group behind us? The one you ran over to talk to when the tour started?"
Chuck's blush returned did not reach garnet this time. "Oh, that's Jill. We work together."
Sarah nodded. "Right. Is that all?"
Corday was paying close attention, ignoring Dan and the rest of the group.
"Um," Chuck offered indecisively, "it's not all she hopes for. We've gone out a few times."
Disappointment stole into her chest, tiptoe. "So, you're dating her. She's pretty."
"Yes, but, no, I'm not dating her. We've dated, that's all."
Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Pretty big distinction to rest on the little difference between -ing and -ed, isn't it?"
Chuck's eyes showed both admiration and concern. "Yes, but it's a real distinction. I've run at times in my life but I'm no runner."
Corday nodded. "He's loved women, but he's no lover."
Both Sarah and Chuck responded at the same time. "Hey!"
Corday backed up a step. "Sorry."
Beyond Corday, Sarah saw that the man had returned.
Another man was with him, another stranger. They stopped next to Jill's group. Anong seemed now to be aware of the men too; she glanced back. She crossed her arms over her sweater.
Sarah tensed up again.
A/N: And so the tour begins. Love to hear from you!
