Tom Grace: Polar Quest

On the way back, they ordered three pints of amber ale from the bar and settled in at a table by the fireplace.

‘To Lake Vostok,’ Kilkenny offered, his pint of beer raised.

Eames and Sutton seconded the toast and drained an inch from their glasses.

‘May I join you?’ a woman asked.

Kilkenny looked up as a woman approached the table. She looked to be in her early forties, with shoulder-length blond hair and the wardrobe of a working professional. To Kilkenny’s surprise, Sutton rose and kissed the woman on the cheek.

‘Nolan, this is Faye Olson,’ he said proudly.

Kilkenny stood and shook Olson’s hand. ‘A pleasure.’

‘For me as well. Lloyd speaks very highly of you.’

Olson then turned to Eames, who remained seated. ‘Hi, Oz.’

‘Hello, Faye,’ Eames replied politely.

Olson shed her overcoat and sat at the table as Sutton flagged down a waitress for a glass of white wine. ‘So, what are you celebrating?’

‘Just some exciting new things for these two guys to work on,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘I know how good that feels. I just brought in a big historic restoration project for my firm.’

‘You got Gordon Hall?’ Sutton asked.

Olson nodded with a smile.

‘Congratulations,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I live out that way. Given the history surrounding that old place, it deserves to be restored. What are your plans?’

‘Judge Dexter built the main house in the 1840s, so that’s our key date. We’ll make some concessions for mechanical and electrical systems, things that can be hidden in the walls,’ Olson explained, ‘but the rooms and the details will be as authentic as we can make them. Right now, the house is cut up into four apartments, so all that stuff has to go, as well as a couple of houses that were built on the property during the fifties.’

‘What about the acreage?’

Olson smiled. ‘All seventy acres are included in the National Historic designation, so no developer is getting his hands on it. This was, after all, a stop on the Underground Railroad.’

‘So that view will remain unchanged?’

‘It’ll actually be improved. When we’re done, it’ll be a pristine example of a Greek Revival mansion set on a rolling meadow.’

‘Sounds like an interesting project,’ Kilkenny said, picturing in his mind Olson’s architectural vision.

‘It is,’ Olson agreed. ‘Lloyd, do you have the tickets?’

Sutton patted his breast pocket. ‘Right here.’

‘What are you seeing?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Natalie Merchant is playing at Hill Auditorium tonight – Faye’s a big fan. We’re sitting in the main floor center.’

‘Good seats,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I saw her a few years ago. She puts on a very good show.’

Olson glanced at her watch. ‘I hate to steal Lloyd away from you, but we have dinner reservations next door and the show starts at eight.’

‘Have a good time,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘Thanks,’ Olson said. ‘Good to see you again, Oz.’

‘You, too,’ Eames replied.

As Sutton and Olson departed, the waitress returned and they ordered dinner and another round of beer.

‘I had no idea Lloyd was dating anyone,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I thought he just worked all the time.’

‘I think he learned from me that all work and no play makes Jack a lonely man.’

‘How’d you teach him that?’

Eames took another sip of his beer. ‘Faye is my ex-wife.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. My divorce was final last year and they just started dating a few weeks ago. The three of us have known each other for a lot of years. I met Faye when we were undergrads at UCLA. Shook both our families up when we started getting serious, but they got over the black-white thing by the time we got married. We spent the summer after our wedding backpacking across Europe. Those were good times.’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, what went wrong?’

‘It started with grad school. Faye stayed at UCLA and I went to Stanford. Long-distance relationships suck.’

‘Yeah, they do,’ Kilkenny agreed.

‘I hooked up with Lloyd at Stanford and we started laying the groundwork for UGene,’ Eames continued. ‘After Faye finished up her master’s, she moved up to be with me and took a job with a big architecture firm in San Francisco. We shortened the distance, but we still weren’t spending enough time together. It was mostly my fault. I fell in love with my work, and a man can only have one true love at a time. By the time I earned my Ph.D., Faye was ready to divorce me. I managed to talk her into giving me a second chance.’

‘How’d you pull that off?’ Kilkenny asked. ‘I’m interested in second chances myself.’

‘It was the promise of a fresh start. After Lloyd and I finished up at Stanford, we both signed on with the Life Sciences Initiative here at Michigan. Faye hired on with a preservation firm in town and we bought our first house. Things were pretty good for about three months, then I disappeared into my work again. By the time Lloyd and I officially formed UGene, my marriage was dead.’

‘Is it weird that your partner is dating your ex-wife?’

Eames sipped his beer and thought for a moment. ‘When you put it like that it sounds like something off a daytime talk show. Look, Lloyd and Faye are both entitled to happiness, and if they can find it together, then who am I to stand in their way?’

‘Very noble. Have you gotten over her yet?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ Eames asked defensively.

‘It’s just that I recently screwed up a relationship so badly that the woman I thought I’d be going home to is training to leave the planet, and our future is one very big question mark.’ Kilkenny raised his hands up. ‘So, if I’ve crossed the line, tell me.’

‘If you’re asking whether or not I’m carrying a torch for Faye, I guess the answer is no. Our divorce wasn’t ugly and I still care for her, but I think I’ve accepted the fact that we will never be together again.’ Eames sipped on his beer. ‘So what’s your sad story?’

‘When my hitch with the navy was almost up, a friend of mine here at the U asked if I’d give her a hand with a project she was working on – an optical computer processor.’

‘Sounds like something Lloyd would like.’

‘It is. Kelsey, my friend, and I have known each other since we were kids. She was quite literally the girl next door.’

‘Your old high school sweetheart?’

‘No, back then our families were so close that it would’ve been like dating my sister. After high school, I went to the Naval Academy and was pretty much gone for about twelve years, but we kept in touch. We were just good friends up until a couple of years ago when some crazy things happened that forced us to peel back a few layers. Marriage seemed like the next logical step.’

‘There’s your mistake, mixing love and logic. Oil and water, my friend, oil and water.’

Kilkenny nodded. ‘Our problems started after the craziness was gone and things got back to normal. I know Kelsey loves me … and we both take the idea of marriage seriously.’

‘So who got cold feet?’ Eames asked.

‘She did, but it wasn’t cold feet as much as a better offer.’

‘Another guy?’

‘No, a lifelong dream. Kelsey has wanted to be an astronaut since we were kids. She’s been in the corps for a few years, and last August, she got the call. I was excited as anyone for her, until we got the bad news.’

‘What?’

‘NASA needed her to go to Houston ASAP to begin mission training with the rest of the crew. They’d work right up to launch, then she’d spend the next five months on the space station. That kind of schedule wasn’t going to leave a whole lot of time to plan a wedding, at least not the kind she had in mind.’