My Professor(24)

What initial excitement I felt gets shoved aside almost immediately by big-picture issues that need my attention right away.

I grab my legal pad and impatiently bite off the cap of my pen before starting to scribble away on a to-do list. When we first landed the job consulting for the restoration work for Notre-Dame, we had to hire twenty new employees to cover the workload. We outgrew our old office space and expanded into a building in downtown Boston that Banks and Barclay had restored a few years prior. The top two floors were up for lease, and rather than allow some finance firm to swoop in and put their name on the side of the building, we put ours there instead. Fortunately, it’s big enough to handle this next round of expansion. There’s no way around it; we’ll need at least ten new hires, and that’s only counting in-office personnel. On site, we’ll need a slew of tradesmen: iron workers, stonemasons, painters, carpenters—each of them trained in the art of historical restoration.

“Can I get you anything, sir?”

I look up at the flight attendant, only belatedly realizing I can’t answer her with my pen cap still wedged between my teeth.

I remove it and shake my head. “I’m fine.”

She has a hard time dragging her attention away from my mouth as she continues, “No champagne to accompany your late night?”

“I’m not really a champagne kind of guy.”

I thought this was a polite enough sendoff, but turns out it was too polite.

She doesn’t leave, instead wedging herself in the doorway of my first-class suite and trying a different tactic.

“You’re the only one still awake, you know. Normally, if all the guests are sleeping, we’re allowed to go on break…”

Her tone doesn’t hold any hint of annoyance about still having to be up on her feet. I think maybe she’s just trying to let me know we could have some privacy if I wanted it.

If I weren’t so busy, would I take her up on her offer?

No.

“By all means, take your break. I don’t need anything.”

I’ve had dinner and a drink; now I want six uninterrupted hours of silence to work.

Her smile tightens as she nods.

“If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ring me.”

She points toward the intercom button beside my chair, but I’ve already refocused my attention down on my notes.

Tradesmen who’ve trained in this field are hard to come by. Any carpenter can go into a modern new-build project and throw up some crown molding and built-in bookshelves. What we do takes a dedicated, trained hand, someone fluent in the ways of old masters.

For past projects, we’ve brought people in from Florence, workers whose families have handed down knowledge in these niche fields for generations. I’ll have to consult with Christopher and see what he thinks is required. We might be able to train guys and avoid the expense depending on the timeline we ultimately negotiate.

I still haven’t toured the Vanderbilt estate myself. I don’t know what we’re up against.

Christopher has been keeping an eye on the project over the last few weeks. I sat in on meetings and gave my two cents as much as I could, but I’ve been majorly hands off owing to the fact that work has kept me in Paris for so much of the last year.

Consulting on Notre-Dame came about organically. When I first saw news of the fire, my heart sank for the people of Paris. It was devastating to watch a piece of history burn, and I was still glued to my TV, watching the live broadcast, when I got the first call from Emmett.

“My father is already moving funds,” he’d told me. “As far as contracts go, we’ll push for you and your firm. You’ll do it, won’t you?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Of course I would. But…Emmett, the firm must be French. You know that. Even if I had the time—”

“You’ll consult then. Give your input. There’s no one better at this.”

He sounded desperate, so I agreed, naively thinking it would be something I could give my time to here and there. That’s not been the case. I’ve flown to Paris sixteen times in the last year. I’ve sat in on countless meetings filled with builders, head architects, engineers, the Roman Catholic Church, the Parisian Architectural Planning and Design Board, and the French government that have stretched well past the point of productivity. Talk about too many cooks in the kitchen. I’ve never had a project move so slowly. There’s giving credence and care and respect where it’s due, and then there’s this. It’s a nightmare, all of it. Paris residents complain it’s too expensive and repairs are taking too long. Critics worry the new building won’t perfectly mimic what was there before. No one agrees.

All in all, it’s consumed too much of my life. I’m relieved to be flying home to Boston.

I’m not due back in Paris until spring. In the meantime, I’ll need to throw my full attention toward this Belle Haven Estate, attend to the course I’ll be teaching at MIT, and perhaps see about picking up the pieces of my personal life.

The flight attendant could have helped with that, but I’ve gotten to the point where my brain is starting to sabotage me. It works ahead three weeks, past the quick sex, past the shallow enjoyment of the chase, straight to the vapid, awkward ending, and then it just doesn’t seem worth it.

I tried giving it a real chance with Miranda this past year. We were introduced by Emmett while I was in Paris early last summer. She works at GHV, in the PR department, but she’s from our world. Boarding school bred, Ivy League legacy—it made perfect sense to everyone when she and I hit it off. Miranda is everything that should make me happy: smart, beautiful, driven, not too clingy, not too distant. She knows how to make a perfect French omelet, and she’s fluent in German and Mandarin. When I don’t call her back, she doesn’t seem to mind. She’s never pushed me to commit more of myself to her or complained that we’ve never established clear boundaries in our relationship. Every time we speak or find the time to see each other, it’s good, interesting, fun.