Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [3]
It was Peri’s parents who gave her the wanderlust. A mating pair of archaeologists (her mother had divorced and remarried when Peri was ten), they took her with them from one continent to another throughout most of her teenage years.
Staying still for her first year of college, in a tidy dorm instead of a cheap hotel or a tent, had felt like being set in concrete.
She joined her step-father in the Canary Islands for the summer vacation, looking for a way out. When she met a migratory English hacker-hippie who called himself ‘the Doctor’, she knew she’d found it.
They had an unusual relationship, these two travellers. For one thing, he had never shown a flicker of interest in her. The Doctor was twice Peri’s age at least, but he didn’t act like a father or an uncle – more like a big brother with a bad case of sibling rivalry. They spent a lot of their time in halfhearted bickering, usually when one of them made some stupid mistake. He burnt dinner, she got lost, he couldn’t steer, she got attacked by some animal
This time it was the Doctor’s turn to screw up. They were supposed to be visiting her family, but the Doctor had got them there at the wrong time, messing up her reunion plans.
1 Not her real name
So now she sat in a booth, looking at a cartoon pizza menu and picking over the contents of her plate. It seemed a little weird to be surrounded by familiar language, money and food. A little creepy, even, reminding her of those long months dragging around at college.
They’d had a fight about it, like always. Now the Doctor was off sulking, sitting in another booth and bugging some waiter who had more important things to do than talk to him.
She’ glanced over. The lanky, bald-headed waiter had actually sat down at the table with him.
Usually, the Doctor dressed like a cross between a flower child and a character out of Dickens. For this trip – to stop her father panicking – she’d insisted he wear something more normal. He’d come up with a tailored black suit and a multicoloured tie. His curly yellow hair still stood out a mile.
The next time Peri looked up from her salad, he was gone.
So was the waiter he’d been talking to. Peri shrugged and stabbed her fork into a lettuce leaf. He’d get over it eventually, and then they’d get out of this dump and go somewhere interesting.
After half an hour, with her plate long empty and the ice cubes in her Coke melted, she decided she’d better go and look for him. She wandered around the restaurant, dodging uniformed waiters and shrieking kids. There was a big video game section, and against one wall four robot dogs jerkily mimed to the Beatles. She hoped the Doctor hadn’t brought her here because he thought she would like it.
Peri played a couple of games of Centipede and went back to the booth. It was empty: the dregs of her snack had been removed and the table wiped.
Where was he?
Peri hovered on the sidewalk, trying to pick the Doctor out of the last-minute Christmas crowds running in and out of the cluster of stores bordering the parking lot. She slumped back into the booth inside, clutching her handbag.
Wouldn’t this be just the perfect opportunity for him to dump her, so close to home? A theatrical exit like this would be just his style. But on the other hand, what if someone had grabbed him? He was always getting thrown into jail for one thing or another.
What if whoever had got him was waiting to get her, too?
She had the restaurant call her a taxi, and dashed into it the moment it appeared. She had plenty of cash and a couple of credit cards the Doctor had given her. She told the driver to take her to the first hotel she could think of, the Marriott in Bethesda – she’d been there once for an aunt’s wedding. The hotel’s tourist shop was still open, so she bought some toiletries and an oversized T-shirt that said ‘WASHINGTON
DC’ to wear as a nightshirt.
She took a long shower and collapsed into bed, going over her options in her mind. She could have gone back to their boat, maybe left a message for the Doctor. But she didn’t want to lead any bad