Page 1 of The New Place

1

ABBOT

January’s early sunset sends a riot of gold and pink across the sky above Callahan’s campus, and Abbot ducks his chin into his coat collar as he walks to the faculty parking lot. He knows it’s too early to go home. If he retreats to his house now, the evening will stretch, a dinner by himself the only interruption as he waits for time to pass until it’s a reasonable hour to go to bed.

Still, he’s tired. The time change from Geneva to Portland is part of it, but it’s also that this entire month has plodded by so slowly. Hurry, he wants to tell the tick of his watch, the turn of the calendar, but he can’t rush the day along any more than he’s been able to these last weeks, and so he has to simply wait for the relief the weekend will bring.

Ned. Two whole days with him, after a month apart. Three days, counting Friday evening when Abbot drives down to Boston, through to Sunday night when he’ll have to leave again.

A month sounded so reasonable when he’d bought his tickets to Switzerland for the winter holiday break, but now the length of time drags at him, reminding him every day that this is the longest he and Ned have spent apart in their year and a half together.

If Ned had come for part of the trip…well. He didn’t. He couldn’t, with his work and with Peggy’s school schedule and her days with Jen. But it’s created a veritable eternity since Abbot has seen him, and the two days until Friday feel so very long.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he retrieves it with fingers that are cold even inside his gloves. The chill is worse when he tugs one off to unlock his phone. Come to the cafe, Pat has texted.

Abbot immediately turns to the path that cuts across campus towards Pat’s. Once, he would have prevaricated, but he’s learned to accept these invitations from Pat, letting him be a stand-in for Ned when they’re apart.

No, not just a stand-in. A friend in his own right. Someone with whom to share the silent acknowledgement that Ned is not here, and they’d very much like him to be. To while away hours together so time moves faster—not fast, but more quickly than it does when Abbot’s alone.

Before he can text back, an email alert appears: Meeting NOW, Chris has titled it, and across campus, every other faculty member in the sociology department is likely groaning too.

It fills Abbot’s evening further, delaying unlocking his front door to a lonely house. Abbot can go to this meeting, and then eat dinner at Pat’s café, and return home late enough that the day will be nearly over.

He walks more quickly back toward the department building, making his way upstream against the crowd of students leaving their classes. I’ll be there in a bit, he texts Pat.

Before he can replace his glove, a reply appears. No, no, no, you have to come right now, Pat writes and immediately another message follows it: Like five minutes ago, actually, please.

I have a meeting.

Skip it.

I can’t.

Then come AS SOON as its over.

Abbot debates for a moment, and then writes *it’s.

UGH, Pat sends.

Abbot smiles. I’ll be there as soon as I can. He checks to see if Ned’s returned his earlier message—How was your class? Ned must be busy picking Peggy up, because there’s nothing.

Abbot tucks his phone away as he climbs the steps to the department building.

At the top of the stairs, Lee lets out a loudly exaggerated sigh. “This sucks,” she says with none of her usual energy. “Hi. Happy first day back after break. Is Chris joking?”

“I suppose last semester’s volunteering competition wasn’t enough to satisfy him for the rest of the academic year,” Abbot says as he opens the door for her.

“I cleaned up so much trash,” she says as she removes her hat and arranges her short hair into her usual sideswept pouf. “Which great, happy to do it, felt good to help, but can’t he give us a break?”

“You should have walked dogs.”

“Tragically, I’m not as smart as you are, out there with all those shelter puppies,” she says. “I don’t know how you didn’t adopt one by accident.”

Abbot already has a dog, or as good as. He’s missed Baxter too over this long month. Baxter and Peggy and Dan and Cheryl and the warm embrace of life in the Coppola house. He’ll be there so soon, and that somehow makes it all the harder to wait.

“I’d never live it down,” he says instead of sharing any of that, and she laughs.

Yes. He’s getting better at conversation. Making himself actually try, and finding that each time he does, the effort is a little easier. Shaking off the years of holding everyone at arm’s length and learning that it eases his time in Portland, this city he moved to because he knew virtually no one, and where he spent so long keeping it that way. Chris and Susan had been Abbot’s sole contacts here.