Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Subject line: Festival Ambassador — Welcome Aboard!!
Two exclamation points.
Eliot read it once. He read it again, more slowly, in case the meaning changed on the second reading.
It did not. He was, effective immediately, the Heart Shaped Clouds Festival's official weather ambassador, a role that Nora described as fun, low-pressure — she had written that in the body of the email — and which would involve appearing at festival events, providing weather commentary for the broadcast coverage, and serving as what she called the scientific face of the cloud-watching experience.
He put his phone face-down on the kitchen counter. He picked it up again, sure there would be a psych added at the end of the email. Alas, there was not. This was a real request. He was now the scientific face of the cloud-watching experience.
Eliot had a master's degree in atmospheric science.
He had spent twelve years learning to read the math of the sky.
It was physics; pressure and temperature and the movement of air masses over terrain, the mathematics of moisture and altitude, the brutal indifference of a low-pressure system to whatever anyone had planned for the weekend.
He had given a lecture at the American Meteorological Society conference.
He had been on the cover of Broadcast Monthly.
And yet, somehow, he was now the scientific face of a cloud-watching experience. Oh irony, the cruelty of it all.
Eliot turned off his phone and turned on the television. The boxed hummed to life and landed on the last channel he'd been watching when he couldn't sleep last night. That channel was the news. Not the local news. Philadelphia's Nightly News.
Derek Haines was on his screen. In his slot. At his desk. With his weather wall.
Derek's manner had a confident imprecision that had always made Eliot's left eye twitch.
The man smiled at the camera. He gestured at the Great Lakes system moving in from the northwest. He described it as a weather event.
Just that. Weather event. No pressure gradient, no moisture advection, no acknowledgment of the cold front interaction that was going to make the precipitation timing completely different from what the graphic behind him was currently suggesting.
"That's wrong," Eliot told the television.
The television did not respond.
"The precipitation onset is going to be four hours earlier than that. The surface low is already—"
Movement outside the window interrupted Eliot's outraged monologue and caught his eye.
On the landing, visible through the glass, Dalene Austen was doing it again.
The same slow-motion, wall-hugging, over-the-shoulder-checking approach she'd deployed the other day.
Eliot found the whole exercise baffling given that she demonstrably owned a key to the unit beside his and had every legal right to approach her own front door in whatever manner she chose, including the upright, unselfconscious manner used by most adults to simply walk right up to their door and step inside.
Eliot opened his door. The jamb swung back with a loud whoosh.
Dalene yelped. Nearly jumping out of her skin. Her keys flew from her hands and landed somewhere in the flower bed.
"Why do you keep sneaking up the stairs?" he asked.
"I wasn't sneaking." She was already crouching for the keyring. Her hair was down around her shoulders. No anemometer holding it in place. "I was being considerate. Some of us think about our neighbors."
"Some of us don't require a covert approach to enter our own homes."
"Some of us don't lurk in doorways waiting to terrify innocent people."
"I opened a door. To my own home."
Spotting the glint of silver metal, Eliot bent and picked up the key.
Dalene reached for it. He didn't release it immediately.
Instead he took inventory of the charms on the ring; an enamel cloud charm, a miniature periodic table, a small brass compass, a dried flower pressed between two pieces of resin.
"You play music at night," he said.
Dalene looked up from the keys. "I — yes. I'm sorry. Can you hear it?"
He nodded. "Through the wall."
She winced. "I have trouble sleeping. The music helps. I'll turn it down."
He looked at the enamel cloud still in his hand. "It's fine."
A beat.
"I have trouble sleeping too," he said.
Dalene cocked her head to the side, reminding him of a bird. Eliot's gaze latched onto the freckles smattered across her nose. The constellation of them were hypnotic. The scent of lavender wafting off her loose curls made him feel restful.
"My mother used to listen to Fleetwood Mac. When she needed—"
He stopped because he realized it was his voice speaking, divulging things he had never told a single soul. So why was he telling her?
Eliot held out the keyring.
Dalene took it.
Their fingers met at the transfer. A glancing, accidental contact, brief as a match strike. He felt it from his hand to his sternum.
She gasped. Small. Involuntary. A complete surprise.
"You're staring at me," she said.
"There's something on your face."
Her fingers went to her forehead.
Eliot shook his head. "No, your freckles."
Her gaze narrowed at him in the way his had narrowed as he'd watched Derek Haines' offensive weather forecast.
"It reminds me of Cassiopeia. That's my favorite star constellation."
The wince between her brows smoothed out. Her lips parted, as though in wonder. Eliot's gaze dipped to her mouth, and—
Voices.
From the bottom of the stairs. A man's voice, low and warm, said something that drew a high-pitched feminine giggle. Footsteps sounded closer and closer. The sound of two people moving with the comfortable ease of a shared orbit.
Dalene's eyes went wide. She looked at the stairs. She looked at Eliot. She snatched the keys.
She was through her door in under three seconds, which was, he thought, objectively faster than the stealth approach she'd been running on arrival, and considerably more effective.
The door slammed. The bolt turned.
The couple appeared at the top of the stairs. The man had his arm around the woman's shoulders in a loose, proprietary way. He was broad-shouldered and wore Valor High letterman jacket that had no business being on the back of a man his age.
Letterman's eyes went from Dalene's closed door to Eliot. The easy smile shifted. Cooled at the edges.
"Hey." Letterman's voice was pleasant in the way that wasn't quite. "Who are you?"
"New tenant," Eliot said.
"Right. Betty Ann mentioned you." He dropped his arm from the woman's shoulders and extended his hand. "Tristan Hayes. I'm guessing Dalene's told you about me."
Eliot looked at the hand and decided, reluctantly, to shake it. "Dalene hasn't mentioned you."
Something moved across Letterman's face. He looked once more at Dalene's closed door, gaze narrowing as though in betrayal.
"Good evening," Eliot said, and walked away from Tristan and the woman he hadn't bothered introducing. He closed the door with the quiet, final click of a man who had nothing further to add to the conversation.