Photographs of Graves
Catching a Flight.
“Now, I'm telling you: Look sharp, bring me home an attractive male that preferably is Spanish and will serenade me with sweet music, and don't feed the fucking pigeons.” Zoe was going through my luggage for the third time to make sure I had all the essentials. She'd picked out an outfit both for today and orientation and insisted I not stray from her advice. She slipped in an extra box of Fire and Ice condoms as well as some extra tampons in a side pocket of my suitcase for good measures. Both sides of the spectrum. This girl had me covered.
“It's going to be incredibly awkward if a TSA agent decides they have to go through my luggage,” I noted. She looked up at me.
“They won't check, it's not in your carry-on,” she insisted. “And besides, you don't know awkward until you're stopped and they pull out your personal maid outfit and red corset.”
I raised an eyebrow. She didn't elaborate.
“You're a fantastic pre-med student that's taking honors biology and chemistry... And you travel with corsets and maid uniforms?” I asked skeptically.
“I know my way around the human body. Consider it research.”
She finished her inspection and zipped my suitcase back up. She handed it to me and gave me a funny look.
“What's wrong with you?” I asked. She gave me the biggest bear hug I'd ever endured, nearly knocking me off balance.
“I'm going to fucking miss you, dude,” she said.
We were sitting in my room back in Michigan. She'd come to visit about a week ago. The school year ended in May and I spent the first few weeks off with my family and she had spent hers shopping in New York with her mother, grandmother, and older sister. From what I'd gathered her father had barricaded himself in his hotel room to avoid the invasion of estrogen all around him. Even Zoe's pitbull, Belle, was female.
I'd worked my ass off in my last months at Xavier. Both Zoe and I had been buried in work, trying to get our best in before our Study Abroad. She would be studying medicine in France in the upcoming semester, but she wouldn't be shipping out for another couple of months. I really wished she was coming with me now, but you can't have everything.
“I'll miss you, too,” I hugged her back just as tightly. “But hey, at least we'll be able to chill together in France hopefully in a few months, right?”
“Right, and you better have found me a Spanish boy by then,” she nodded. I laughed. We went downstairs to where my family was waiting to say goodbye to me before my father drove Zoe and me to the airport.
On the way there I got a farewell and good luck from Oliver on my phone. I read the message quickly and smiled. He and his now fiance, Caroline, were sight-seeing somewhere on the east coast. I wished them well, and told them to get their bar the hell out of Michigan because the economy was so bad. I hoped they took my advice.
The airport was, as expected for an early June day, completely packed. Luckily it wasn't too terrible due to the fact that most public schools didn't get off for Summer Break until the following week, but there were plenty of people showing up for graduations and such. We waited in line for a very long time. By the time I got through customs I practically had to sprint to my terminal, kissing my dad and Zoe on the cheek before running to catch my flight. We took off not ten minutes later.
It was June eighth when I left for Amsterdam. I had two days before orientation: Enough time to get to my hotel, take a tour around the city, brush up again on my elementary Dutch that I had taken up in haste, and comfortably prepare for my orientation. My hotel room had been chosen by Morrow & Sons, a suite that was in a line of rooms all occupied by Morrow & Sons interns from America and various regions of Europe. I was pretty sure there were twenty of us in all, all hand-picked by members of the newspaper that had lectured.
I spent the duration of the flight organizing my best papers and reports I had written in college. With a pang I opened up the report I had made about and edited with Graves. This one I added to the file: It was one of my best, even if it brought back painful memories. What little time I had left was spent with my headphones in reviewing basic phrases in Dutch that every tourist that wanted to be self-sufficient should know: Things like “where is the nearest coffee place”, “what street am I on”, “by god, I know my accent is horrible, I'm a fucking tourist”, and “Please, do you speak English”.
The clouds shifted outside my window, sometimes giving way to bright expanses of rippling blue or bright cities that glowed as the sun started to go down.
It was very odd when we landed: Although I left at noon in Chicago, it was just before two AM in Amsterdam. Due to the six hour time change the eight hour flight seemed to have taken a lot longer. The streets were quiet at this time so it was easy to get out of the airport, collect my luggage, and hail a taxi. I handed the driver the address of the hotel I was staying at and paid him in euros. We sped silently off into the night.
There were a couple people outside in the hallway when I got to my floor of the Mariot hotel I'd been assigned to: A guy and a girl, the guy tall with a jagged haircut, lip piercing, and dark jeans and shirt and the girl nearly a foot shorter with high boots and bubblegum pink hair. They were both smoking and waved when I came in with my luggage.
“Est-ce que tu parles le francais?” the girl asked.
“Oui,” I nodded. “Je le parle.”
“Es-tu une americaine?”
“Oui, j'habite a Chicago.”
“Ah.” she nodded at me. “Bonne nuit, americaine.”
“Bonne soir.”
I walked past them and entered my room, swiping the card key I had picked up at the lobby. It beeped and I opened the door, turning on the lights. There was a small welcome poster reading, “Welcome to Amsterdam, Arden Murphy!” hanging in the entryway, signed across the bottom by members of Morrow & Sons. I smiled and shoved my luggage into the closet area, pulling out just the toiletries and some night clothes. Well, and my teddy bear, but no one needed to pay attention to that.
I showered and did my nightly ritual quickly, and after finishing braided my wet hair and quickly shot a text off to Zoe and dad to let them know I'd made it to my hotel room alive. I was starving so I pulled some emergency snacks and a water bottle out of my bag – a boxed turkey sandwich and a mini can of Pringles – and polishes those off in a good ten minutes. I set an alarm on my phone for eight o'clock, about five hours from now, and put it on the bedside table with its charger.
I walked around the suite, taking down the welcome banner and looking over it. I froze for a moment when I saw the curly signature of Theodore Graves upon the paper, but laughed it off, imagining how truly unhappy he must have been to welcome me to his world. I sat down on the sofa in the suite and looked out my window. It had an incredible view of the city. I propped my legs up on the wooded coffee table and sighed.
My feet were not the only thing on the table. Something rustled and I looked down to see an envelope sitting there. It had the unmistakable stamp of Morrow & Sons on its back so I quickly opened it and read the letter contained inside. It was a welcome to Amsterdam by Charles Morrow and his staff, along with a reminder about the agenda starting on the tenth with orientation. I set it down, revealing a second note behind it on plain notebook paper.
”Murphy,
I'm not sure exactly what I did to make you run out of my hotel room last year, but I wanted to tell you that I'm truly sorry for whatever I had done. I wanted to tell you that I was delighted to see that you had taken the internship at Morrow & Sons. You've earned it. I'll be looking forward to seeing you at orientation on the tenth.
I hope that you don't hold whatever past grudge against me that you had last year in your coming to Morrow & Sons. But if your actions were not, however, done on the basis of a grudge, but something else entirely, then I feel it is necessary to tell you that what I said as you stormed out of my door still holds true.
Yours,
Theodore Graves
PS. The last time we met, your social skills were really bloody awful. I hope we can work on that.”
Fuck.
“It's going to be incredibly awkward if a TSA agent decides they have to go through my luggage,” I noted. She looked up at me.
“They won't check, it's not in your carry-on,” she insisted. “And besides, you don't know awkward until you're stopped and they pull out your personal maid outfit and red corset.”
I raised an eyebrow. She didn't elaborate.
“You're a fantastic pre-med student that's taking honors biology and chemistry... And you travel with corsets and maid uniforms?” I asked skeptically.
“I know my way around the human body. Consider it research.”
She finished her inspection and zipped my suitcase back up. She handed it to me and gave me a funny look.
“What's wrong with you?” I asked. She gave me the biggest bear hug I'd ever endured, nearly knocking me off balance.
“I'm going to fucking miss you, dude,” she said.
We were sitting in my room back in Michigan. She'd come to visit about a week ago. The school year ended in May and I spent the first few weeks off with my family and she had spent hers shopping in New York with her mother, grandmother, and older sister. From what I'd gathered her father had barricaded himself in his hotel room to avoid the invasion of estrogen all around him. Even Zoe's pitbull, Belle, was female.
I'd worked my ass off in my last months at Xavier. Both Zoe and I had been buried in work, trying to get our best in before our Study Abroad. She would be studying medicine in France in the upcoming semester, but she wouldn't be shipping out for another couple of months. I really wished she was coming with me now, but you can't have everything.
“I'll miss you, too,” I hugged her back just as tightly. “But hey, at least we'll be able to chill together in France hopefully in a few months, right?”
“Right, and you better have found me a Spanish boy by then,” she nodded. I laughed. We went downstairs to where my family was waiting to say goodbye to me before my father drove Zoe and me to the airport.
On the way there I got a farewell and good luck from Oliver on my phone. I read the message quickly and smiled. He and his now fiance, Caroline, were sight-seeing somewhere on the east coast. I wished them well, and told them to get their bar the hell out of Michigan because the economy was so bad. I hoped they took my advice.
The airport was, as expected for an early June day, completely packed. Luckily it wasn't too terrible due to the fact that most public schools didn't get off for Summer Break until the following week, but there were plenty of people showing up for graduations and such. We waited in line for a very long time. By the time I got through customs I practically had to sprint to my terminal, kissing my dad and Zoe on the cheek before running to catch my flight. We took off not ten minutes later.
It was June eighth when I left for Amsterdam. I had two days before orientation: Enough time to get to my hotel, take a tour around the city, brush up again on my elementary Dutch that I had taken up in haste, and comfortably prepare for my orientation. My hotel room had been chosen by Morrow & Sons, a suite that was in a line of rooms all occupied by Morrow & Sons interns from America and various regions of Europe. I was pretty sure there were twenty of us in all, all hand-picked by members of the newspaper that had lectured.
I spent the duration of the flight organizing my best papers and reports I had written in college. With a pang I opened up the report I had made about and edited with Graves. This one I added to the file: It was one of my best, even if it brought back painful memories. What little time I had left was spent with my headphones in reviewing basic phrases in Dutch that every tourist that wanted to be self-sufficient should know: Things like “where is the nearest coffee place”, “what street am I on”, “by god, I know my accent is horrible, I'm a fucking tourist”, and “Please, do you speak English”.
The clouds shifted outside my window, sometimes giving way to bright expanses of rippling blue or bright cities that glowed as the sun started to go down.
It was very odd when we landed: Although I left at noon in Chicago, it was just before two AM in Amsterdam. Due to the six hour time change the eight hour flight seemed to have taken a lot longer. The streets were quiet at this time so it was easy to get out of the airport, collect my luggage, and hail a taxi. I handed the driver the address of the hotel I was staying at and paid him in euros. We sped silently off into the night.
There were a couple people outside in the hallway when I got to my floor of the Mariot hotel I'd been assigned to: A guy and a girl, the guy tall with a jagged haircut, lip piercing, and dark jeans and shirt and the girl nearly a foot shorter with high boots and bubblegum pink hair. They were both smoking and waved when I came in with my luggage.
“Est-ce que tu parles le francais?” the girl asked.
“Oui,” I nodded. “Je le parle.”
“Es-tu une americaine?”
“Oui, j'habite a Chicago.”
“Ah.” she nodded at me. “Bonne nuit, americaine.”
“Bonne soir.”
I walked past them and entered my room, swiping the card key I had picked up at the lobby. It beeped and I opened the door, turning on the lights. There was a small welcome poster reading, “Welcome to Amsterdam, Arden Murphy!” hanging in the entryway, signed across the bottom by members of Morrow & Sons. I smiled and shoved my luggage into the closet area, pulling out just the toiletries and some night clothes. Well, and my teddy bear, but no one needed to pay attention to that.
I showered and did my nightly ritual quickly, and after finishing braided my wet hair and quickly shot a text off to Zoe and dad to let them know I'd made it to my hotel room alive. I was starving so I pulled some emergency snacks and a water bottle out of my bag – a boxed turkey sandwich and a mini can of Pringles – and polishes those off in a good ten minutes. I set an alarm on my phone for eight o'clock, about five hours from now, and put it on the bedside table with its charger.
I walked around the suite, taking down the welcome banner and looking over it. I froze for a moment when I saw the curly signature of Theodore Graves upon the paper, but laughed it off, imagining how truly unhappy he must have been to welcome me to his world. I sat down on the sofa in the suite and looked out my window. It had an incredible view of the city. I propped my legs up on the wooded coffee table and sighed.
My feet were not the only thing on the table. Something rustled and I looked down to see an envelope sitting there. It had the unmistakable stamp of Morrow & Sons on its back so I quickly opened it and read the letter contained inside. It was a welcome to Amsterdam by Charles Morrow and his staff, along with a reminder about the agenda starting on the tenth with orientation. I set it down, revealing a second note behind it on plain notebook paper.
”Murphy,
I'm not sure exactly what I did to make you run out of my hotel room last year, but I wanted to tell you that I'm truly sorry for whatever I had done. I wanted to tell you that I was delighted to see that you had taken the internship at Morrow & Sons. You've earned it. I'll be looking forward to seeing you at orientation on the tenth.
I hope that you don't hold whatever past grudge against me that you had last year in your coming to Morrow & Sons. But if your actions were not, however, done on the basis of a grudge, but something else entirely, then I feel it is necessary to tell you that what I said as you stormed out of my door still holds true.
Yours,
Theodore Graves
PS. The last time we met, your social skills were really bloody awful. I hope we can work on that.”
Fuck.
♠ ♠ ♠
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