Let's Get Lost. Adi Alsaid

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       7

      IT WASN’T THE light of the sun that woke him up, but the heat of the starting day and the sweat dripping down his lower back. Hudson opened his eyes in a panic, immediately noticing the absence of stars, the sky bruising with the oncoming sunrise that, under any other circumstances, might have been breathtakingly beautiful.

      “Shit. Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.” He nudged Leila until she woke up with a sleepy smile. “We have to go. We have to go right now.” He lifted her gently by the shoulders until she rolled off him and watched him scurry around looking for the phone he realized he’d left in his car.

      “What time is it?”

      “Way too late. We have to go.”

      Hudson started doing math in his head to figure out how fast he’d have to go to make it to the interview on time. Leila was just barely getting off the ground. He looked across to the mainland as if that might help reduce the distance. She stretched, yawning. It was a shame that he couldn’t take the time to appreciate her beauty in the morning light.

      “Please, Leila, we have to hurry.”

      This time, he jumped first into the water, going as fast as he could. When he reached the other side, he tried shaking himself dry as much as possible; then he helped Leila out of the river. Hudson hoped that his clothes would dry in time. He opened the car door for Leila, unable to break that habit even under the circumstances. He rushed around and got into the driver’s seat, reached for the glove compartment, and grabbed his cell phone. It was flooded with missed calls and voice mails from his dad. It was 7:15. The interview was in forty-five minutes and about sixty miles away. “Shit,” he said, shifting the car into reverse and getting them back on the road.

      “Don’t worry, we’ll make it,” she said, placing a hand on his thigh.

      He didn’t respond, but he brought one hand over to where hers was and gave it a squeeze before pulling it back to the steering wheel. He kept his eyes on the speedometer’s rising needle, on the odometer adding on the miles. The car was heavy with silence.

      They arrived at the Jackson campus of Ole Miss. It wasn’t where Hudson would be attending, since it was just the medical center, but the dean had scheduled the interview there that day to keep Hudson from having to drive the two hundred miles to Oxford. There were a few buildings, and Hudson didn’t exactly know which one to park near. He turned into the nearest parking lot and hoped he’d guessed right.

      The parking lot was full of cars, mostly older, used models and pickup trucks. A couple of women in nurses’ scrubs were sitting on a bench, drinking coffee and catching up on whatever nursing students catch up on.

      Hudson pulled the car up to the curb in front of the nurses. He didn’t look at the time so that it couldn’t confirm his fears.

      “Go,” Leila said. “I’ll park the car here and wait for you to finish. Good luck.”

      Hudson climbed out of the car, breaking into a sprint toward the nearest building. He knew well before he reached the doors that it was a futile act. He was doing it because his dad was there, watching from someplace inside Hudson’s head. Hudson was dressed in clothes he’d not only slept in but had swum across a river in. Twice. His shirt was still a little damp, and his jeans were soaked. Even if this was miraculously the right building and he only had to find the dean’s office, he’d be late. A good first impression was not about to happen. His only hope was that the dean would see him anyway, and that Hudson could somehow express himself well enough to wow the dean and make him forget about his tardiness and his presentation. But the chances of that happening in his current condition were unlikely. He’d slept only a few hours, and he could still feel Leila’s touch on his skin.

      He was just about to try the doors when he noticed a sign pointing to the Admissions Department in the neighboring building. He grumbled a few curse words and changed directions, rushing past the nursing students and hearing just a snippet of their conversation, “...it was absolutely awful. I even asked to speak to the manager, and I never do that...”

      Only now, while running through the courtyard, did he realize that his muscles were sore from his night with Leila, wonderfully sore.

      Finally, he turned a corner and reached the building entrance. He scanned the directory and rushed up the stairs to the second floor. Hudson felt himself relax a little when he saw the office empty save for a matronly woman sitting at a receptionist’s desk. She was large, her hair up in a bun, her eyes rising from her book to look at Hudson. Maybe it was because she looked like an embodied cliché of a teacher, but Hudson thought he recognized her for a second.

      “Hi,” Hudson said, trying to offer a polite smile and not seem as if he’d just sprinted up the stairs. “My name’s Hudson, I have a meeting with Dean Gardner. An interview.” He cleared his throat a little and folded his hands in front of his stomach, as if that might hide his clothes.

      The woman sighed and put her book down on the desk, turning to her computer screen. She played with the mouse a little bit and then hit the keyboard until the monitor came back to life.

      “Hmm,” she said after a moment. “You’re late.”

      Hudson nodded, making sure to look ashamed of himself. “I know. I’m terribly sorry. I’ll make sure to apologize to the dean. There’s no excuse for it.”

      “Too late,” she said with a sigh. “Sorry, hon. The dean waited twenty minutes. Then he had to go to a meeting across campus.”

      Hudson’s immediate reaction was to hang his head. He kept it there for a moment, trying to think, until the receptionist asked if he was okay.

      “There must be something I can do,” he said. “When’s his next open slot? I’ll explain as much as I can in however much time he has.”

      The woman shook her head, angling her eyebrows sadly. She turned to the computer and made a show of scrolling up and down the calendar in front of her. “You were his last meeting here. He’s across campus now, then at lunch with the school president, and then he’ll be driving back to Oxford straight from there. Nothing I can do.”

      Despondent, Hudson turned away. He crossed the courtyard slowly, trying to think of how he could possibly explain himself to his dad. The two women were still chatting on the bench, steam rising from their coffee, thick like smoke from a train wreck. Leila had parked on the far side of the lot, her red car pointed away from the campus. She was sitting on the hood, her knees up and legs crossed in front of her, looking out at the road, which was as quiet as you’d expect on a Saturday morning. She looked tired but happy. There was some light bruising where her collarbone met her neck, a hickey Hudson hadn’t noticed because of the morning’s hectic mood.

      Finally she noticed him and slid off the car. “What happened?”

      “I didn’t make it in time.”

      She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him in tight. “Shit, I’m so sorry.” It was weird how he could recognize the hug’s physical comforts yet not be comforted. “Maybe you can reschedule?”

      He returned the hug briefly, then pulled away from her. “No, I can’t reschedule. СКАЧАТЬ