The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [75]
As quickly the others moved in, surrounding Lybarger and leaving Joanna all but forgotten. The whole thing puzzled her. In five months of intensive physical therapy, Elton Lybarger had never once given her any indication of the wealth or position he seemed to have. Where had this entourage been the entire time? It didn’t make sense. But then, it was none of her business.
“Miss Marsh?” An extremely good-looking man had left the crowd to approach her.
“My name is Von Holden. I am an employee of Mr. Lybarger’s company. May I escort you to your hotel?”
Von Holden was in his thirties, trim and nearly six feet tall, with shoulders that looked like a swimmer’s. He had light brown, close-cropped hair and wore an impeccably tailored, double-breasted navy pin-striped suit with a white shirt and dark crested tie.
Joanna smiled. “Thank you very much.” Looking toward the crowd, she saw that someone had brought up a wheelchair and two of the chauffeurs were helping Lybarger into it. “I should say something to Mr. Lybarger.”
“He’ll understand, I’m sure,” Von Holden said pleasantly. “Besides, you’ll be joining him for dinner. Now, if you will—this way, please.”
Taking Joanna’s luggage, Von Holden led the way through a side door to a waiting elevator. Five minutes later they were in the backseat of a Mercedes limousine driving along highway N1B heading toward Zurich.
Joanna had never seen such green before. Trees and meadows everywhere were rich emerald. And beyond them, like ghosts on the horizon, were the Alps, even this early in the season capped with snow. Her New Mexico was a desert land that, despite high-rise cities and shopping malls, was still new and raw, and boiling with the restlessness of the frontier. Coyote, mountain lion and rattlesnake owned the land, and its deserts and canyons still housed men who chose to live alone. Its mountains and high meadows, lush with wildflowers at spring runoff, were, at this time of year, brown and dusty and dry as tinder.
Switzerland was entirely different. Joanna had seen it out the window as they’d flown in and could feel it all the more now as the limousine brought them into Zurich through the Old Town. Here was a place rich with the history of the Romans and Hapsburgs. A world of medieval alleys towered over by gray stone buildings of pre-Gothic architecture that had existed centuries before a single coal oil lamp shone in a New Mexico shanty.
In her mind Joanna had projected what it would be like When she got here. A small but compassionate and loving family waiting to greet Elton Lybarger. A hug goodbye from him, maybe even a kiss on the cheek. Then a pleasant room in a Holiday Inn-like place. And maybe a sight seeing tour of the city before her return trip the following day. The time would be short, but she’d do the best with it she could. And mustn’t forget souvenirs! For her friends in Taos and for David, the speech therapist from Santa Fe she’d been seeing for two years but with whom she had never slept.
“You’ve never been to our country.” Von Holden was looking at her, smiling.
“No, never.”
“After you are checked into your hotel room, if you will permit me, I will show you some little of our country before dinner,” Von Holden said, graciously. “Unless of course, you prefer not.”
“No. Please. That would be terrific. I mean, I’d love to.”
“Good.”
The limousine turned left, down Bahnhofstrasse, and they passed block after block of elegant shops and exclusive cafés that increasingly broadcast an atmosphere of great and understated wealth. At the far end of Bahnhofstrasse glimmered a vast turquoise waterway—”The Zurichsee,” Von Holden said—churning with lake steamers that left long ribbons of sunlit white foam in their wake.
Magic settled over Joanna like pixie dust. Switzerland, she could tell everyone, was lush and