Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

“Nice,” he said.

“You better mean that.”

“I do!” he said as she hooked her arm in his. “I also want you to know I feel underdressed.”

“You’re not,” she said, finding a little laugh. “You look—Ben-ish.”

He made a sour face. “Is that good or bad?”

“Sartorially neutral,” she replied. “It’s the man in the clothes that matters.”

He took her arm and held the door open with the other. They walked into the cool night, amid but apart from the throng.

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “Cai, you really are beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“I feel like we should be going to the opera. Well, you should, anyway.”

“There was a time,” she said, “when people dressed for dinner… every night.”

“Only people of means,” Ben pointed out. “Servants like my ancestors, we ate around a butcher-block table in the kitchen.”

Mention of ancestors threw a chill into Caitlin. Ben saw it, put his free hand on hers. “Cai?”

“It’s okay,” she said, putting on a smile. “I’m discovering that there are shiny new trip wires in my life. Got to work around those.” She squeezed the fingers on top of hers. “Let’s eat.”

She gave his arm a tug and headed to the corner, turned west—toward a halal food truck with ten people in line: single men and women, some with dogs; a female cop; and a group of teenagers.

Ben stopped hard when he saw it. He was thrown back to their college days, grabbing street-corner hot dogs before their next lecture. This was classic Cai.

“Zero romance,” he said, raising a hand in surrender. “Just us.”

She grinned. “Just us.”

He chuckled, so did she, and they settled into the line. The cop and a man from her building noticed her, looked partly away as the line moved forward a few paces.

“We don’t have Washington Square Park to sit in,” Ben noted, “no guitars or drummers or hip-hoppers with boom boxes.”

“We have my building’s courtyard and the playlist on my cell phone, if you want. All eighties, all the time. Besides, we may not have many alfresco nights left,” she went on.

“Winter’s around the corner—frost on your rivets and ice in your nose,” Ben said.

He twitched his mouth like his beloved fellow Brit Charlie Chaplin and Caitlin smiled, then hugged him. She held him closer, harder than she expected. He wrapped around her and they just stood in the hug, ignoring the world, the grid of skyscrapers, the impatient horns of taxis jerking across the intersection. Finally, the big guy behind them told them to move up, and they stepped forward with their arms still around each other. Ben gave Caitlin a peck on the top of her head and she disengaged.

“So how are you?” he asked.

“We’ll get to that,” she replied. “How are you ?”

Ben laughed, and despite her anxiety over the afternoon’s events, Caitlin smiled too as memories—her own—flooded back warmly, the repetitive, stalling Alphonse and Gaston bits they sometimes stumbled into.

“It’s good to be home,” Ben said to avoid the logjam. “Obligatory question number one: how are you?”

“Better, for the moment,” she answered truthfully.

“Glue or spit?”

“Glit,” she replied. That was something Ben used to ask her before an exam: did she know the material or was she winging it, was she held together securely with glue or tentatively with spit.

God, our past is good , she thought.

“What’s obligatory question number two?” she asked.

“Hold on, woman. I don’t consider ‘glit’ an answer.”

She whispered, “It’s Galderkhaani for ‘I’m going to take whatever the world dishes out, even if it takes some time and adjustment.’”

“I don’t remember that one,” Ben said.

“You’d have to have been there,” she said sheepishly. “In Galderkhaan.”

Ben laughed out loud.

“That’s my Cai,” he said. “Just walk right over to the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room and kick him in the stones.”

“Question two?”

“Us. In English, please.”

“Specifically?”

Ben looked around. “Since our sleepover,” he said delicately.

Caitlin shoved her hands in her jacket pockets. “I don’t know how you’re feeling about our night together, and I’m not completely sure how I’m feeling about it either. I don’t have the first clue about going forward, I just think that we should—”

She stopped as she noticed that Ben was not just grinning but chuckling.

“What?” There was annoyance in her voice but she couldn’t help smiling.

“Oh, I’ve got you. I’ve totally got you.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“This is going to kill you. Caitlin O’Hara,” he whispered into her ear, “it’s only been a week and change. And I’m a guy. And there you are, getting deep and intense about it—”

She narrowed her eyes at him in mock offense, then chuckled and shook her head. “Damn, I’m doing the Girl Brain thing.”

“Like you’re in high school,” he chortled. “You have a crush on me, a crushy crush!”

She swatted him on the arm. “You might speak a dozen languages but modern slang is not one.” Then she laughed wholeheartedly for the first time in days. It felt good.

“Move, ya lovebirds, before I crush ya,” said the construction worker behind them. “The man’s waiting for your order.”

“Sorry,” Ben said, though he continued to mock her while their food was being prepared. They stood in silence and then headed toward the small courtyard behind her building. Caitlin couldn’t wait and took her first bite as they walked, exclaiming how good her dinner was.

“Note to self,” Ben said, “she’s got Girl Brain and she’s a cheap date.”

“Note to self,” Caitlin echoed, “watch out. He’s making noises like he’s planning for some kind of future.”

“Not true,” Ben replied. “I know better. I wish I didn’t.”

They allowed the relationship discussion a respectful moment to die before moving on.

“All right then, Ben,” Caitlin said. “Back to the gorilla. Give me the good stuff.”

He looked around puckishly. “What, here, in public?”

“Grow up. What new translations have you done?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I’m assuming you worked during your flight.”

“Guilty. My astonished cries woke the man sitting next to me. He looked at me funny.”

“You should be used to that.”

“Seriously, no exaggeration, I did actually vocalize at one point. Galderkhaan. Galder. Khaan. Remind you of anything?”

“No.”

“Old Norse and…?”

Caitlin stopped chewing, then stopped walking. “No way. That obvious?”

“That obvious. I have no idea what the ‘ Galder ’ is but ‘ khaan ’ means the same thing as the Mongolian word—a title for a lord and master.”

“Who used it more,” Caitlin asked, “Priests or Technologists?”

“Very clever, you. First thing I checked. It wasn’t the Priests.”

“That’s surprising,” she said. “I would have thought they’d be the ones into the ‘supreme being’ thing.”

“You’re thinking like a modern person,” Ben pointed out. “Things were different then and there.”

A long, relaxed walk later, Ben guided Caitlin into Paley Park, a small courtyard that had more benches than trees. They had the courtyard to themselves. The views were mostly of brick, with an oblong of sky above. But it was quiet, save for a freestanding wall at the back lit in russet gold and covered with long, beautiful, gently melodious rivulets of water.

“So was this khaan a god for the Technologists or a great ruler?” Caitlin asked.