All through the flight from Newark, Lucy Talbot had been grilling the bemused man in the seat next to her about Edinburgh.  What should she see first, where should she go first, where should she stay, where should she eat, was it true that they fired a gun every day at one o'clock and no-one minded?  His initially monosyllabic answers about sleep and a lack of it in the past few days turned into long, eloquent explanations as he warmed to the subject of his adopted home town.

"Where to go first?  Your hotel.  Lose the bags, drop everything you don't need.  Don't take a camera, not on day one.  You don't want to look like a tourist."  He sipped his whisky, wincing, reading the lable.  "Ach, well.  If you're going to serve a blend..."  And he summoned the stewardess, asked for lemonade.  After adding that to the 'poisonous, blended muck', "That's better.  Right.  Where did you say you were staying?"

"The Carlton."

"Excellent.  Just off the Mile.  Ask if they've got a corner suite free, the upgrade's worth the price.  So.  First, to the Carlton.  Don't get a taxi, take the bus.  It gets you to Waverly Station, Carlton's just round the corner, up a bit.  You get to see a few sights on the way in.  Murrayfield Statium, the Zoo, Princes Street itself.  The Castle.  Worth seeing."  He closed his eyes for a second, thinking.  Lucy was on the verge of asking "And then?"

"Right.  Drop your bags, forget any plans of taking a taxi around.  If it's not within walking distance, you don't want to know.  Well, unless you're interested in skiing or butterflies.  You can walk everywhere in Edinburgh.  If in doubt, get a bus.  Never carry a map.  If you're going to learn anything about a city, get lost in it first."  He took a long look at her.  "You'll be fine.  We're landing about lunchtime, so you're going to need a meal to get settled in, get your body clock onto local time."  He fished into his flight bag, pulled out a battered Moleskine journal.  "This time of year, this time of day, best place to get something to set you right would be Kushis.  Simple, wholesome, Indian food.  Delicious.  Formica tables, tin plates, knife and fork optional.  Out the front door of the Carlton, hang a left, keep going until you get to Blackwells.  Another left just before Blackwells and it's just on the right.  I'd join you but I've got a meeting at the museum."

"Which one?"

"The National Museum of Scotland.  I'm curator of the steam technologies exhibition.  It's opening tomorrow, I've just got the finishing touches to add to it and we're hopefully golden.  Speaking of the museum, that's where you go when you've had your lunch.  Out of Kushis, hang a left, straight across the junction and we're halfway down the street on the left.  If you miss us, you've done really, really badly."

And on he went.  Extolling the virtues of Atrium and the Witchery as restaurants; Valvona and Crolla as a shop that had to be visited to be believed; The Castle, the Parliament, Holyrood House, and any number of other museums and historic buildings.

"And finally," he began as they were entering the airport buildings, heading for baggage claim, "if you see a Wynd - they're the lanes that run between buildings - and you don't know where it goes, follow it.  You'll usually be pleasantly surprised."

He breezed through passport control, almost pulling Lucy along in his wake.  It wasn't until she was boarding the Number 100 bus for the city centre that she realized she didn't know his name.

Her mind full to the brim with instructions, directions, destinations, and possibilities, Lucy pulled out a small notebook and pen to take notes on the sights along the bus route. 

"That's funny," she said, startling the young man in the seat across from her, who had somehow failed to notice her until she spoke up.

She was looking down at her notebook. A notebook nearly, maybe entirely, identical to the one owned by man she had met on the plane. Hers was newer of course, less frayed around the edges. Barely getting started in its role of capturing her observations and crude drawings. "How did I not notice the similarity on the plane?" Lucy shook her head to chase away any thoughts of senility creeping in so early in life, careful to keep her thoughts to herself this time. "And how did I completely fail to even ask his name? Ugh! Maybe I do need something to eat. What was the place he suggested? Comfy? Cushy? Kushies, that's it. Carlton, out, left, left again before Blackwells, and it's on the right." 

Her mind raced along, she replayed the conversation from the flight, visualized the walk to lunch, noted the stonework on a beautiful church, and let her eye get captured and held by the gorgeous flowers in a park.

She wrote furiously to keep up, but still wished the bus had a pause button.

In what seemed entirely too short a time, her bus reached Waverley Station. Lucy stood up quickly and dragged her bags out from between the seats. In doing so, she startled the young man again, who had, for no lack of trying on his part, failed to remember she was there at all. Lucy was used to being ignored. It had been terribly painful in high school. Depressing in college. Downright enraging while job hunting. But she had finally come to terms with it, or at least learned to accept it, cope with it, or maybe, probably really, still cried about it from time to time.

Lucy hopped off the bus and headed straight for the Carlton. She smiled and greeted the doorman, who bowed and opened the door to the lobby for her. She noted that the two bellhops she passed ignored her, their eyes going over, around, and past her as if they had just previously left unsuccessful careers as waiters who cared not a whit about getting more iced tea for their thirsty patrons. Lucy looked at them hopefully as she walked past them. They acted like she wasn't there at all, so she carried her own bags to the front desk.

The clerk behind the reception desk at the Carlton was reading something, her eyes scanning back and forth, but she looked up immediately when Lucy said "Hi, Lucy Talbot, I have a reservation. Oh, and I was told by a wonderful gentleman I met on the flight in that I should ask if one of the corner suites is free, preferably something up high. That I'd love the view. This is such a beautiful hotel. And I love that necklace. Where did you get it?" Lucy chatted on and on about the flight, the weather, and the bus ride over. She paused whenever the receptionist looked up, or smiled, or asked her for her confirmation number. Whenever the clerk looked down to her terminal again and read or typed, Lucy picked up the conversation again and talked about whatever her mind wandered about to.

"Let me just check for you, Miss Talbot."  The receptionist, Anna, clicked her mouse a couple of times, smiled across the desk.  "You're in luck.  One of our guests checked out earlier than expected, they're getting the suite ready now.  And it's on the third floor.  It will be ready in about an hour.  You can leave your luggage here if you like."

"Thanks Anna, that would be perfect," beamed Lucy. "I'll just grab a couple of essentials from my bags and take a nice walk before settling in," she said as she rummaged about her luggage and transferred a couple of items to her purse. "Oh, and before I forget, could you please give me a ticket for the 2 bags, then I'll be off to lunch and the museum and back in a couple of hours."

With a bounce in her step and a claim check safely tucked away in her wallet, Lucy set off to lunch, stopping only long enough to confirm the directions she had been given to Kushis and to the National Museum of Scotland with the doorman.

"This trip is certainly starting off well," she thought to herself as she walked briskly towards, what she hoped, would be an excellent lunch.

Though the museum curator probably had not guessed it from looking at her, Lucy was well acquainted with Indian food and was quite happy with both the Northern and Southern Indian fare. She half-hoped that Kushis would have a buffet open at this hour as buffets always made it easier for her to acquire food without having to constantly remind the service staff about her order. She sometimes wondered if she were the only woman in the world who just couldn't seem to get people to pay attention to her, but she quickly dismissed the thought as her overly-sensitive nature catching up with her again. She sped up her walking pace just a bit to put some distance between herself and her unwanted musings.

Kushis, it turned out, was as advertised. Simple. Unpretentious. Just the right amount of spice. Just the right amount of heavy cream in the curries. The papadums were crisp and peppery. The naan was hot, chewy, and buttery and it held up admirably as Lucy scooped up the rice and curried vegetables she mixed together on her plate.

After lunch, Lucy stopped by the ladies room to wash away the remains of the curries from her hands. Satisfied that she had cleansed the ghee and other scents from her fingers with the liquid soap, which she noted with a wry smile, it seemed that no matter where in the world she went for Indian food, the soap always smelled and looked like Dial.

Her food cravings now satisfied, and, she hoped, any lingering tiredness from the long flight now addressed, if somewhat indirectly via her stomach, Lucy set out for the museum. She hoped to have some time there to get acquainted with the exhibits and to brush up on her Scottish history a bit, but she felt her first order of business should be to see if she could find the curator who had given her such excellent advice on her accommodations and, of course, on lunch as well.

So, her plan firmly set in her mind, upon entering the museum, Lucy went straightaway to the information desk to see if the docent on duty could help her out.

As she approached the desk, she tried unsuccessfully to catch the eye of the middle-aged man working there. Failing that, but seeing that no one else was there being tended to, Lucy just started right in talking to him.

"Hi, excuse me, could you point me towards the steam technologies exhibit? I know it's not open yet, but I am hoping to get to say 'thank you' to the curator of the exhibit. We flew in together today and he was so nice and helpful and he asked me to drop by after lunch. Oh, and this is somewhat embarrassing and I hate to admit it because it sounds terrible just saying it, but, I forgot to ask him his name on the flight. Could you please tell me what it is so I don't have to try to find a way to work around to asking him for it when I find him?"

Lucy blurted out the whole thing, probably too quickly, but when she paused to let him take the reins of the conversation, she smiled her most hopeful smile at him.

"Miss Talbot!"  Someone tapped her shoulder gently.  As she turned, Lucy recognised the gentleman from the plane.  He looked younger than she remembered, but it was definitely him.  "I'm honoured!  I had thought you'd do what everyone else I've spoken to on the flight has done.  Listen politely to my ramblings and then ignore me completely.  How did you like Kushis?"  He put his free arm around Lucy's shoulders, guided her away from the desk towards a darkened doorway.  "Gerald there ignores anyone he doesn't consider attractive.  Needless to say, that rules out more then eighty percent of the world's population.  Let me point you in the direction of the big mammals, I have a phonecall to make and then I'm free until four.  Entirely at your disposal."

"But, I, uh, yes, Kushis, just a," Lucy tried valiantly to pull together a coherent sentence in the time it took to cross the museum floor. Failing that, she looked quizzically at the quickly retreating back of Mr. "steam technologies curator from the flight in." As he disappeared into the crowd, it occurred to Lucy that he may just, probably really, have called her unattractive. Her lunch, which had been settled warmly and contentedly in her belly until that moment, began to get a bit more animated.

The curator looked back over his shoulder, beckoned for Lucy to follow.  Once she'd caught up he stage-whispered, loud enough for the man on the information desk to hear, "Don't be disheartened, Miss Talbot.  Gerald's taste runs towards the late teens."  Slightly louder, he added "And boys."  He started laughing as a group of students swerved to avoid the information desk.  Gerald shot a nasty glance over at the curator but he was already striding off towards the mammals exhibit.

She sighed heavily and turned her attention towards the natural history section of the museum, the big mammals specifically. It had been a working theory of Lucy's some time ago that you could tell a lot about a society by studying the arrangement of stuffed mammals in a museum. For instance, she had theorized that patriarchal societies might well be more likely to show a male carnivore in a particularly aggressive, even heroic, pose. Whereas the same museum might show a female of the species tending cubs or eating berries. It was a good theory while it lasted, leading to some funny suppositions about societies with museums that showed a male bear asleep in his den in broad daylight. 

Her theory had fallen apart when she visited the Natural History Museum in Sydney, Australia. Wherein she noted that every carnivore, male or female, was posed having just caught, and often having begun to rather messily devour, some sort of applicable prey. While she might have been forced to admit that the saber-toothed tiger driving its canines through the skull of an Australopithecus as one might jam ones fingers into a six-pack was a  particularly memorable exhibit, she determined at exactly that moment that the displays themselves likely said more about the individual curator than the society as a whole.

The return of her saber-toothed-six-pack memory, however, tickled at Lucy's consciousness until the thought occurred to her that maybe she should steer her mysterious new friend toward his soon to be opened exhibit.  

She could hear the curator talking animatedly on his phone just around the other side of the hippo.  His phone was an unusual brass-and-gears design.

"Hey, Liz."  A pause as, presumably, Liz answered.  "Not forgotten the funeral?" Another pause.  "You're going to make it?  You're not far off, are you?"  He spotted Lucy watching him across the back of the large mammal, raised a hand and mimed 'blah, blah, blah' "You want me to send the car around?"  This time Lucy heard the "NO!" from the other end.  "Okay, okay.  I'll see you there, then.  Bye, sis."  He clipped his strange phone into a holster on his belt, clapped his hands together.

He looked around the mammals exhibit, sniffed.

"This is all well and good, but you should see the cryptozoology exhibit on the ninth floor.  That's excellent."  He dodged round a group of young kids being led by their school teacher.  One of the girls at the back of the group was clearly bored.  He crouched down beside her, whispered "You've seen Night at the Museum?"  the girl nodded.  "Then imagine your teacher in here at night.  With the doors locked!"  He straightened up and the girl began looking at the exhibits in a new light.  "Just got to fire their imagination, Miss Talbot."

"Right.  Follow."  He strode off in the direction of a door marked "Staff Only" palmed it open and slipped through.  The door was almost closed as Lucy reached it.  Pushing the door open, she found a broom cupboard.  Mops, buckets, brushes, chemicals.  No doors, no ventilation ducts and, most definitely, no museum curator.  On the floor, a small piece of paper caught her eye.  A ticket for Pepper & Ghost's walking tours of the Old Town.  Dated tonight, admit one.

"I'm sorry, miss.  That door shouldn't be open."  A museum guard took a bunch of keys from his belt, locked the door then looked around in mild confusion, failing to see Lucy completely.