Chapter 18

The Cathay Pacific flight from Los Angeles landed in Shanghai Pudong International airport just after midday. It had been a long and gruelling flight, as it always was. Lionel would have preferred a direct flight but one was not available today, and it was imperative that he arrive today, and at this particular time of day. The stop-over in Hong Kong had not helped anything. To Lionel’s mind, it had only lengthened the journey. He was excited to be in China, however, and eager to get to his hotel but he was worn out. He totally understood why Sasha had not wanted to make the trip, and he wondered how she was managing, although, she had said that she was always perfectly fine when she landed anywhere.

Flying did not usually wear her out, she had said. Quite the opposite, she had told him. It always left her feeling wired and unable to rest, especially after a very long flight. When she travelled, therefore, she would always make sure she had something planned for the hours immediately after arrival. She’d either go straight to work, or do something that would help her wind down and relax so she could fall asleep. He was different. Right now, he could hear the bed in his hotel room calling his name, and he was literally itching for a long, hot shower. He figured he could catch a nap during the afternoon and be awake and refreshed in time for dinner. He wasn’t sure how that was going to go, but he was keen to find out.

As it turned out, the hotel driver who was there to meet him was the same one who had dropped him at the airport when he had left only about a month ago. The man remembered him and greeted him with a slight bow and a smile. He smiled back and nodded.

“Ni hao,” the driver said. “Good to see you again, sir.”

“Ni hao,” he replied. “Thank you.”

When the driver had loaded his bag and his guitar into the trunk, and he had settled into his seat in the back of the car, the man started the engine and began to weave his way out of the airport and onto the freeway.

The driver looked at his passenger in the rear view mirror and after a while asked, “Your work go well, sir?”

“Yes, thank you,” Lionel answered.

“Aah! That is good,” the man said. “I think last time you not so happy, maybe?”

Lionel laughed a little bit, in spite of his tiredness and his not really wanting to chat. Last time he had been very agitated and irritable, yes. He hoped he had not been rude to the man.

“Yes,” he said. “I had many problems the last time and my business did not go well at all.”

“Maybe his time it will be better,” the driver said with conviction.

“Yes, it will be,” Lionel agreed. “Yes, it most certainly will be.”

“Good,” said the man, and turned his attention back to the road and the traffic around them.

Checking in at the Grand Hyatt hotel Shanghai was unusually quick. For some reason, there was hardly anyone in the lobby of the massive hotel today. He was checked in and ensconced in his suite less than twenty minutes after he came through the door. The processes were always efficient and professional at the Grand Hyatt, but the sheer number of guests some days, sometimes made check-in a bit of a long affair. He was grateful that today was an exception to that particular rule.

He really liked the rooms at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai. He always found the wooden décor and especially the tall bed heads with gold Chinese lettering to be warm and welcoming. This afternoon was no different. His bags were already in the suite when he entered, very neatly placed on the wooden horse in the bedroom. He had kept his backpack with him, of course. He never let that out of his sight when he travelled anywhere. Now, he put it down onto the desk in the living room and headed in the direction of the shower. He had already completely undressed by the time he reached the bathroom door. He tossed his dirty clothes into the bag to go out to laundry and stepped into the stream of steaming, hot liquid.

He turned around and around and then this way and that, so that the jets hit him everywhere. He lathered, rinsed and repeated, and lathered, rinsed and repeated again, several times – both his body and his hair. When he was done, he wrapped himself in one of the massive, white bath sheets stacked right next to the shower on a series of shelves recessed into in the walls of black, white and grey marble of the bathroom. He walked to the wall of glass and looked out over the city. He could see airplanes flying by. None of them was hers yet. It would be several hours still, before she landed. He chuckled to himself. He hoped his plan would work the way he intended.

“Right!” He said to himself, then. “Bed. To sleep.” But sleep did not come. The shower had reinvigorated him and that energy surge was making the sleep state difficult for him, but he was determined to rest, so he stayed in bed, and before very much longer, actually, he did fall asleep. The surge had been short lived and for that, he was very happy when he awoke.

It had just past five o’clock in the afternoon when he did eventually wake up. The minute he opened his eyes, he looked at the clock beside his bed afraid that he might have overslept and missed his appointment. He breathed a sigh of relief and rolled over. He closed his eyes and smiled to himself. He had time. There were still a number of hours left so he reset his alarm clock and stayed in bed, thinking about the evening ahead with almost uncontainable anticipation. To say that he was excited was to state the obvious, except that there was no one to see it.

He had called his sister Francesca very soon after he landed. Just the day before he had left Los Angeles, his brother had got out of bed for the first time. He had moved from his bed to sit in a chair, for only a very few minutes before he had got tired again and fallen asleep right there. He had hardly spoken at all while he sat in the chair, but it was a significant improvement and the whole family had been overcome with joy, relief and hope.

The doctors were still somewhat concerned about the damage to his spine, but he was moving his limbs and responding satisfactorily to stimuli. His mother had finally left the hospital and was spending the nights at home. She was back again at the crack of dawn the very next morning, always, but that she had felt comfortable enough to leave his bedside seemed like a good sign for everyone else, and they too, had begun to spend time away from the hospital, getting back into their own lives to some degree. Up until that point, their mother had left the hospital only so she could shower and change, and they had all done the same. Getting her to leave the hospital to shower and change had the family taken three whole days.

“Bring me a toothbrush and some toothpaste,” she had said, “and a change of clothes. I will freshen up in the bathroom here. I am not leaving him.” And she had not. Not even to sleep, hardly. If she slept at all that first week, it was no more than catnaps, mere minutes at a time, on the couch in the family visiting room. The rest of the time, she was up and looking at her son through the glass partition. When she finally was allowed in and could touch him, she had cried uncontrollably afterwards with relief combined with her fears still for his life.

The doctors had been very cautiously optimistic throughout, but just a couple of days before Lionel had left LA, the doctors had finally told the family that their son and brother was probably going to make a full recovery. It would take a while, and he would need a lot of care, but they expected that he would, eventually, be back to his old self. Now, Francesca told him that their mother had left her post and slept at home again, for the third night running. That was a great relief to him.

Seven o’clock came. The moment was close. Lionel was ready. He had rested. He had checked with all the people involved to make sure everything was going as planned, and now he sat and waited. Well, he didn’t sit exactly. He was so nervous and excited that he was sitting down and constantly getting up again within minutes afterwards. He surfed the channels on the tv. He turned the television off entirely when he could find nothing that held his interest. He got up and looked out at the city. Then he turned the tv on again. Finally, his phone rang. He smiled broadly as he noticed her profile picture appear on the screen and her name – well, the name he had given her.

After that last incident at the hospital when Gina had answered his phone and told Sasha that she, Gina, was Lionel’s fiancée, he had changed her name in his address book. That name is what was causing him such joy right now.

“Ciao, Amore Mio!” he said. “How was your flight?”

“It was good,” she told him. “I slept much of the time. My playlist abandoned me, well actually, I forgot my charger, and my phone died, so I just slept.”

“So, you’ve just got here”? He became immediately aware of the slip, but he ignored it hoping that she would not notice. She seemed not to.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m on my way to the hotel now. I just got into the car.”

“Cool,” he said. “Good. So, call me back when you’ve checked in at the hotel, when you’re in your room or something. Before you go to sleep. Or, I’ll call you back in a little bit. I’m in the middle of something here.”

“No, no!” she told him. “Don’t worry yourself. It’s ok. I’ll call you when I get to the room.”

“Great!” He smiled to himself and hung up.