This is where Swimming in Air begins.
March 1988. I reached to the other side of the bed for Vivian, but felt only cold, empty sheets. Still groggy after the eleven-hour flight from Johannesburg to London, I settled back, stared at the ornate ceiling of my Edwardian-era hotel room, and thought about how we live each day as a slight variation of the last, until it isn’t.
A month earlier, Vivian and I were in French-speaking Zaire, sitting outside our tent, eating dinner and swatting mosquitoes. Partway through yet another meal of bland rice and unknown meat, she set down her plate.
In a voice so quiet it made me pay attention, she said, “I’m tired of nothing working. I’m tired of handwashing my clothes every day. Of looking like a rag lady and constantly translating for you.”
At first, I wondered, Why now? We had been living out of backpacks for six months, and this day was no different from the others. But then I thought about what the last few weeks since we left English-speaking East Africa had cost. Every small task fell to her because, as she said to me at one point in frustration, I couldn’t even order escargots in French.
She was right. I had no defense, so I said nothing, hoping she was done. She wasn’t.
She looked at me with her piercing, now-sad blue eyes and said, “And I’m tired of you.”
I let her words hang in the air, willing them to evaporate into the evening sky. But they didn’t.
The alarm clock jolted me back to the present. I enjoyed the soft bed and clean sheets for just a moment longer before I reluctantly began my reentry into the corporate world. A glance out the window revealed a typical wet, gray late-March London morning. After showering and getting reacquainted with a razor, I looked like any other office worker, except for the red, irritated skin where a beard had been until moments before.
Running late, I hurried onto the busy Kensington High Street. The tie I’d struggled to knot that morning began chafing my neck. Shiny new wingtips rubbed a blister on my heel. And I’d forgotten to buy an umbrella, so my conservative new wool business suit was getting damp and itchy in the intermittent rain.
Right on time, I arrived at Lurnix Labs, a British tech start-up, and told the receptionist I was there to meet with Allan. She stared at me. I wondered whether it was my recently shaved, two-toned face or my American accent. Then I remembered the no-first-names rule of British business. “Parker Griffon to meet with Allan Bailey.” That seemed to do it. She motioned toward a row of chairs.
I had barely sat down when a middle-aged woman, dressed in a tailored blazer and matching skirt, appeared.
“Good morning, Mr. Griffon.” She extended her hand. “Evelyn Lawrence, Mr. Bailey’s secretary.”
She led me to a conference room and gestured toward a seat. As she turned to the beverage station on a credenza, she asked, “Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee, thank you.”
She studied me with polite curiosity. “Mr. Bailey says you’ve been traveling rough through Africa for some months with your, uh …”
“My fiancée,” I lied.
The expression on Ms. Lawrence’s face made it clear she expected more, so I pulled a picture from my wallet and traded it for the coffee.
“Well. She’s quite beautiful. And that hair. Is she Scots?”
“No, she’s Argentine.”
Apparently unable to place a strawberry blonde in South America, she handed the photo back and changed the subject. “I hope there were no problems with the flights we arranged.” She waited for my nod. “And is the hotel comfortable?”
“Yes, thank you. Hot water and a soft bed. I was in heaven.”
“Is your fiancée here with you?”
I couldn’t think of a way to avoid the question. “No, she’s still in Africa.”
“In Johannesburg, seeing the sights?”
“She’s in Malawi,” I replied. “When I last saw her, she was heading into the bush. I suppose she’s somewhere around Monkey Bay by now.”
Her eyebrows lifted, just slightly. “Alone?”
“Well, yes.”
Even the proper Ms. Lawrence couldn’t conceal her disapproval. Fortunately, the thought of my beautiful fiancée hacking her way through the jungle with a machete, watched by curious chimps squatting unseen in the canopy above, seemed to stump her long enough for Mr. Bailey to arrive.
“Thank you, Evelyn,” he said.
The last time I’d seen Allan Bailey, my small software operation in Munich was being dismantled by a British private equity firm. Since my German residence permit disappeared with the company, I was packing the last of my belongings when Allan called unexpectedly. He said he didn’t have a presence outside the UK and asked if I’d be interested in setting up Lurnix’s US operations. It was a great opportunity, but I thanked him and said I wasn’t interested. I was burned out from too much time on the tech hamster wheel and needed space to think. Then there was Vivian, who had no interest in moving to the US.
Allan persisted, showing remarkable flexibility. “Do what you have to do for six months,” he said, “then come back.”
Believing I would have everything figured out by then, I agreed.
I was wrong.
Part 2 next Thursday. Swimming in Air arrives October 15.