@lionhvrted / eames
He walked out of LAX, the weight of ten years a new and unfamiliar hand pressing on his shoulder, and into the solid, dry heat of the city of angels. He stopped and stood on the curb. Puzzled; bone-weary. He ran a hand over the face of a man that was, is, him and yet another. Arthur you are Arthur your name is Arthur Benjamin Halperin. How privileged he was: the abandonment of all things sane and logical had not yet destroyed him.
Behind him and around him, they emerged out of the bowels of the airport – his lucky few, his band of brothers. Cobb had already up and gone, chasing the kick of reality in the laughter of his children. Arthur reckoned he wouldn’t see him for a while, and couldn’t say he would begrudge the man his break. Saito, their very own Eurydice sung back from the depths, had left too. Him, Arthur did not expect to ever see again. While hailing a cab, he let his gaze flicker across the rest of them: Yusuf, their potions master, and Ariadne, the girl threading the maze. And Eames. Eames, the phantom, there-not-there and maddeningly equivocal. A merry chase, he’d told him, an off-handed comment plucked from a gut feeling that had made the forger laugh. A merry chase. Arthur thought of farewells and reunions, thought of jobs done and yet to do, and that, as it would usually do, made him think of Mal. He nodded wordlessly––a cheap goodbye for a costly flight––and got into his cab. The weight that had been on his back now settled deeper, punched a hole in his stomach.
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps he would also allow himself a small break after this one.
Weeks slipped into months, and a small break slipped into a not-so-small one anymore. He was back in Bronxville. Routine like breathing: taking the car across the parkway, his morning run through Scout Field, then up to Park Place Bagels and back home. He cleaned the apartment and filled up the fridge, and invested in a new decorative piece or two. He had Hannah over and cooked for her, and then went to dinner at hers. He played with his niece and nephews.
It wasn’t like he had divorced himself entirely from the scene. He kept tabs, of course, on some of his colleagues and former co-players; he wouldn’t be much good as a point if he didn’t. He dabbled here and there: gave recommendations, networked a bit, traveled downtown once or twice to help with a set-up. Other than that, it was routine: pure and simple and blissfully unremarkable.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
He grew restless, of course. The zeal of the perfectionist ran into a wall when it developed a codependence on others to keep its own fantasy alive. (A merry chase.) He had thought he could sit on his couch with his mac in his lap, a glass of dry red in one hand and his phone in the other, and live this life vicariously, all the while telling himself that he wasn’t in it, that he was taking a break, a little breather after the harrowing business of planting a seed that should grow into an elephant.
He thought he could keep tabs. He hadn’t thought that it would perturb him, to find that one of his spotlights would leave him wanting for news. Balls-deep in a new job, and all of a sudden, no update, no nothing. It smelled sour to him, even when he told himself he could give himself a day or two to see whether there was just a lag in information exchange. But it still stank of wrong business, and when he couldn’t quite rid himself of that stench even during his morning run, he knew he had to investigate.
Relief washed over him when he made his decision; and steadily on its heels, chagrin. Perhaps he was overreacting. Perhaps the only way to know is to ask. And where simpler to start than by calling the one who just about went MIA? A customary first step, that, of course. Collegial courtesy. Would he call for just about anyone of his colleagues if he found that he couldn’t keep tabs on their whereabouts for the last three, four days? Absolutely, yes. He would. He would.
(…lead them on a merry chase.)
So he picked up the phone and dialed the last known number he had saved under Eames’ contact.
