But getting translations up of the English-language podcasts was proving difficult.
Now, I was sitting on a plane ready to head to Kansas. There was a massive conference in Wichita, Kansas, and I was set to make multiple appearances and provide lectures. As I sat there staring out the window, it threw me back to the first time I’d ever met Abby. The woman with the long hair that slapped my face as I was trying to get off a grounded plane in the same city I was about to head back to for a conference.
It was all very nostalgic.
The memory of her pulled a smile across my face. I hated that I couldn’t see her while I was in Minneapolis, but that came with the territory. We were already two weeks behind on the podcast launch because of the multiple language barriers, and I still wasn’t sure we had all of them resolved. But I couldn’t miss the conference, so I would have to deal with the problems while I was on the road.
Then a ruckus rose up behind my head.
I turned around and saw a mass of brown hair and papers strewn all over the floor. There was a woman in her knees, trying to gather everything up and shove it back into her large tote bag. She was huffing and grunting, her hands clamoring for any piece of paper she could get her hands on. She was crunching them up and stuffing them into her bag, and it wasn’t until she whipped her hair around and met my stare that I smiled.
I was looking into the eyes of Abby herself.
“Fancy seeing you hear,” I said, grinning. “Need a hand?”
“Colin! Hey. Um—nope. I think I got it,” she said.
Even though she said she had it, she was creeping steadily closer to my feet. People behind her trying to board were becoming impatient, so I dipped down and started gathering the papers at my feet. I recognized the company logo at the top and shook my head, then picked up the rest of the papers at my feet.
Our fingertips brushed for just a moment and I felt that electric sensation tickle my wrist.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
I held the papers out to Abby as people started pushing by her to get to their seats.
“I—um—ouch. Watch it, please,” she said.
One guy came through and shoved her so hard she almost ended up in my lap.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said, as I stood up.
“What?” the gruff man asked.
“You shoved this young woman a little too hard for my liking,” I said.
“Colin, it’s fine,” she said. “I’ve got the papers. I’m okay.”
But all I did was stare at the man before he huffed in frustration.
“Sorry,” the man said.
“It’s fine. A simple ‘excuse me’ would’ve sufficed,” Abby said. Then to me, “And to answer your question, I was asked by my boss to P.R. the conference.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “Hadley doesn’t give that job to just anyone.”
“So I’ve noticed. But, I’m moving on up, and I like it,” she said. “Now—I need to find my ticket.”
“Miss, we need you to get to your seat. The pilot is about to board and we’re almost ready to taxi.”
“I just need to find my ticket and see where I’m supposed to be. It’ll only take a second,” Abby said.
I watched her dig around in her bag as the stewardess sighed. Everyone seemed to be in such distress today and I hated that Abby was taking the brunt of it. But if she was affected by it, she was doing a very good job of hiding it.
Because it looked like she wasn’t affected by it at all.
“Ah, here it is. Okay—um—it just says Seat 7,” Abby said.
She looked up at the numbers along the baggage hold above our heads.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” she said, grinning.
“Do you want your bag in the hold or at your feet?” I asked.
“For right now, she just needs to sit,” the stewardess said.
“Looks like I’m holding it,” Abby murmured, as her eyes grew wide.
She sat down next to me and it all seemed surreal. For almost two months, she’d been completely absent from my life. No phone calls or text messages. No meeting up or complaints about her work. She had dropped off the radar completely, almost as if she had never existed.
And now, here she was, only two months into the job, sitting beside me in first class, flying on the company dime to a conference.
There was a feeling inside of me that I could only recognized as pride.
“So, how many lectures are you slotted to give at the conference?” Abby asked.
“Five. Though I’ve cleared a couple of tentative times in my schedule for impromptu appearances. It all depends on how things go in Minneapolis.”
“What’s happening there?” she asked.
“You don’t know?”
“I know there have been some bumps in the road with regard to the podcasts, but you have to understand that I deal mostly with the media’s interpretation of everything. This hasn’t come across Hadley’s desk yet as an issue, so I haven’t put my time into learning about it.”
“Makes sense. The European marketplace has more language barriers to cater to. I think it’s very elitist to expect everyone to speak enough English to watch our podcasts. We got them translated into most every dialect in Asia, so why can’t we do the same with Europe, right? But, that’s proving to be more difficult than I’d originally anticipated.”
“There isn’t some closed captioning translation program you can use?” she asked.
“If we wanted to do sloppy work, sure. But part of what makes us good is
