Chapter 10
My head was a swarm of nonbelieving thoughts. There was first the rush of living history: seeing a king of England. Then the
nonreality of my reality: a medieval warlord holding a bottle of Diet Coke. And there were dragons. No, there was one dragon. One dragon and somehow it was connected to the Coke bottle. It didn’t make sense how the king had explained it. The
dragon was breathing fire and leaving behind plastic bottles from the future? It was littering? And the plan was for me to
be used as a sort of bait to find and slay the dragon—but not slay, “bring under control,” and what did that mean? It was
possible the dragon might not actually be a proper dragon but something more abstract, enough of a threat for the king to hear about but not enough for him to get involved directly.
What I felt more than anything was my outsider status. Surely I had missed some key opportunity back there, I had misheard
something, and now it was too late and I was caught up in this uncontrollable swirl.
I tried to think. I tried to think out loud.
But Simon was making himself more subservient than ever, which made me feel more on my own in my thinking, and I was irritated.
Still he wrapped his arms around me in our private tent that night.
Still he assured me we would find a way through this, he would stand by me, God would provide.
He was delusional. God was a clown—that’s the only thing I knew for sure now—complete with a honky red nose and an earth full of balloon animals, squeaking and squealing, popping in and out of time.
“He threatened to kill us, essentially,” I said, laying out the facts. “To kill us over something we have no control over,
something we don’t have anything to do with. And we don’t know what his son’s going to do. We can’t have him and a bunch of
soldiers coming back to our place. They’ll trample the land, terrify the animals. And there’s no dragon—there’s no such thing
as dragons! How are we supposed to satisfy that? It feels like we’re being set up.”
“What would you like me to do?” Simon asked.
“Stop. Don’t be like that.”
“I’m here to help you.”
“You’re not,” I said. “What was that back there? ‘Servant and helpmate’? That’s not how I want you to be. That’s not how I
see you and you know that. You’re not my servant.”
“But I am. I’ve sworn to help you—”
“Then help me understand what we’re supposed to do.” Our heads were pressed together. “We’re getting wrapped up in something
I don’t want us to be a part of and you’ve barely said a word. You were terrified of all this before we left and now it’s
like you’re checked out. What changed?”
“Nothing’s changed,” said Simon. “It’s just, in this kind of world, I think whatever you think is probably the best move. This is your territory.”
“Simon.” I looked into his expansive blue eyes but only saw my darkened reflection in them, the glow of campfire outside the
tent. Again I felt that strange distance between us, like our relationship—his idea of what a relationship should be—was completely
foreign to mine, and here I was on an upward slope looking down at him, paces ahead of him but lost, completely out of my
depth. I didn’t want to be served. I had spent so much of my life doing that, lost in the same role Simon was now immersed
in—I didn’t know how to suddenly be on the receiving end of that kind of devotion. I couldn’t be. I refused. I had been the
servant so many times before, with all those men, and I would not let Simon become the same. I thought of Callum from work,
the way I had melted for him.
“You’re too nice.” Callum called it out one night.
I had sublimated myself for him just like Simon was doing for me. All that yearning for something I could never put into words,
dying for it so many times. I’ve sworn to help you—I had practically said those same words myself.
“No, c’mon, mate. You’ve done so much for me, George, tell me what I can do for you.
” Callum had said this to me at dinner with a twinkle in his eye.
We were out after work. This was during the zenith of my devotion to him, my servicing, my worshipping.
We had been to work, been to the gym, and now we were at a cocktail bar.
Eight a.m. to eight p.m. I had spent twelve whole hours with Callum and suddenly with these words, with this look in his eye, there was the potential for something concrete to be announced, a stamp beyond approval.
“Tell me what I can do for you. For once,” he said.
“Seriously.” He reached out and touched my arm.
I froze. Involuntary nerves fired throughout my body and I couldn’t speak.
“I’ve actually never said this to anyone . . .” Callum began.
My heart leapt. I tried to harden the maturity of the emotions I felt clamoring up from inside me. He had recognized my inability
to let out my greediness, and he was going to reward it himself before I could even ask for it, before I could plead for it.
“This is kind of personal, so don’t tell any of the lads, but . . .”
My breathing stopped completely. I waited. Best friends be damned, we would become something more. I watched his parting lips.
“Alex’s dad owns a hotel out in Tenerife and I think I’m going to go help set up and run a second location.”
A valve somewhere inside me snapped shut. The waves of intimacy backfired and soured too quickly.
“Who?” I said.
“Err—Alex, my wife. Her dad owns a hotel in Tenerife and wants to open a second location. He’s in Costa Adeje now but he’s
just bought a property on Lanzarote.” Callum went on to explain that he was quitting his job at the firm to go run a hotel—or
at least thinking about it, or at least, like, maybe, “Depending on our bonuses this Christmas. If I triple my commission
after these next client trades, I can pull it off. I’ve already doubled my target this year, thanks to you.” He winked. I
stared. “Just kidding—well, not really—seriously, thank you for your help. And that’s not to say I don’t want any more special
George-favors, because I might need some more coming up.”
George-favors?
“You’re moving to Lanzarote?” I said.
“Tenerife. I’ll take over the old hotel while my father-in-law goes and starts up the new one. Eventually I’ll get to start
up my own if it’s a success, and I don’t see why not. Location is perfect, right on the beach, and it’s only going to get
hotter there—warmer winters. Alex is already looking at condos. We’ll rent out our place here.”
I don’t remember what I said next or if I said anything at all—just sort of mumbled a burp and looked around. Glass and steel
was all there was. Canary Wharf, the ugliest place on planet Earth. A spreadsheet of empty buildings dolled up with shitty
Instagram-slut-hut cocktail bars. Mini-golf and ￡30 salads.
“Of course I’ll miss you,” he said. My heart soared and I hated it for doing that. “You’ve been my best mentor here.” It deflated
just as quickly. “But hotels is what’s always been my main thing, my goal. That’s what I was doing at uni before I came here.
Remember? We talked about hotels before. George? You OK, mate?”
Best mentor.
“No,” I said. I didn’t remember. He had never said anything about hotels. What was there to possibly say.
“Ah, maybe I was telling Ollie.” So then he started telling me, about how he had worked at a hotel in Dorset growing up, starting
in the kitchens—they served fresh seafood, he’d go fishing every morning with his pops you see—working his way up, cleaning
rooms, coordinating with tour companies, working the front desk. It was there he learned his charm, he said, his ability to
make anyone fall in love with him. He said those words exactly.
I know how to make anyone fall in love with me.
He mimicked his routine: “Good afternoon, darling, let me take that suitcase for you and help you out of your jacket, too nice of a day innit, where’ve you come from today, you don’t look like you need a holiday, you look like you’ve just come back from one, all fresh faced, you’re a cheeky one—you’re going to be the cheeky one this week aren’t you, you’re going to get me in lots of trouble, mind the step, let me help you, take my arm.
” They would fall for him hook, line, and sinker.
Thousands of people are already in love with him, George, what are you thinking.
In the bowels of the fake-flower-adorned cocktail bar, I felt mummified. A glaring neon sign behind Callum read in a swirly
font vibe shift bitch. He was a blinding pink eclipse. I wanted to close my eyes and unbend my spine, flip backward, and push myself out from under
the weight of the Earth and all its gravity and the LOVE that I had let harpoon me.
This empty pang was what I felt as Simon held me now, in this tent dripping with condensation, in this bed unimaginably softer
than the one we had at home. It was always Simon holding me, not me holding him. Simon giving me his body’s bare warmth and
me absorbing it like a cold stone.
In the morning, we rode back home as changed individuals. Prince Edward and ten men, all on horses, rode out with us. The
next new moon was a week away and if a dragon was really going to appear, then fine, let it appear and eat us, I dared it.
I had no reason to believe this world had anything more to offer than the vacuousness of the one I had left behind, with all
its boys and banter. We arrived at our smallholding and the prince sneered at the state of our land.
“If you really are a time traveler, someone should inform you there are much easier ways to live than like this.” He dismounted his horse and inspected our stone hut, tested the creaky front door, sidestepped the divots in the clay ground.
The fine hem of his cloak was already taking on dirt and dust. He made an adjustment so it wouldn’t drag.
He surveyed our empty meadows, the canal we had dug, our skinny animals.