Amsterdam

He strides purposefully off the plane - an Aer Lingus-owned Airbus 321 - across the airbridge into the terminal building, pausing briefly to allow a member of the Aer Lingus crew in her neatly-pressed green uniform to hurry past.  On entering the terminal building, he stops for a moment looking around and smiling.  Schipol has always been one of his favourite airports; bright, spacious and clean, seemingly run with an efficiency that the Germans would be proud of.  He shakes his head slightly at the racial stereotype, smirking for a moment before carrying on to immigration.

It's a longer walk than he is used to in an airport, long distances between individual areas of the airport, and he takes the opportunity to look around at some of his fellow passengers.  "Everyone looks so tired", he notes with a smirk and picks up his pace, glad that he had arranged not to work the previous day and was feeling energetic and well-rested.

"Very quiet this morning", he thinks as he hands his passport to the pretty, petite brunette at the passport control desk.  He watches her face as she swipes the passport and enters some details in the seemingly antiquated computer system, a contrast to the rest of this gleaming, modern airport.  She looks up with a polite smile which freezes on her face as she realises that he has been watching her.  He smiles, holding her gaze and taking his passport from her outstretched hand, "Bedankt".  As a red blush begins to rise in her face, he winks and carries on to the baggage hall.

The size and space of the baggage hall surprises him momentarily as it always does, being used to smaller airports.  He scans the monitors for his flight number, murmuring "three" under his breath as he discovers that he needs to go to luggage belt number three.  Unusually, the luggage appears to be already unloaded from the plane and is rapidly appearing on the luggage belt.  He grins briefly, lighting up his face.  From the moment he woke up this morning, everything has gone so well.  He laughs softly to himself, relieving some of the tension, the nervous energy that has left a knot in his stomach.  He scans the luggage as it passes before him, looking past gym bags, cardboard boxes, baby buggies, even what looks like a wrapped umbrella, checking out each piece perfunctorily... wrong size, wrong shape, wrong colour.  He allows his mind to drift to her as the luggage floats by and the knot in his stomach tightens.

Her... she... Myra.  The one woman in his life that can raise him to heights of joy that he has never before experienced.  Never mind that he has never set eyes on her, he knows in his heart that he is in love already.  Her soft, sweet voice that can be at once so soothing and so sexy, driving him out of control with desire.  Her kindness, her compassion for others, her boundless sense of fun and wicked sense of humour that matches his own.  His stomach lurches at the thought that he might see her soon, the thought of being able to finally see her face to face, look into her eyes... 

He is suddenly jolted from his reverie as a small boy of no more than four years of age careens into his legs while struggling to pull a small bag from the conveyor.  He reaches down and with one hand, lifts the boy to his feet, catching the errant piece of luggage in his other hand and pulling it to the floor.  The little boy looks up wide-eyed, grabs the suitcase and rushes off, as fast he can while trailing the suitcase behind him.  Ruairi grins and turns back to the conveyor as his suitcase, still with his suit bag strapped to it's front, glides by.  He reaches out to catch the suitcase, narrowly missing it, dodging around an elderly couple with a trolley already stacked several levels high with bags before snagging the handle with his fingers.

Having obtained his luggage safely without knocking anyone over, he sets the suitcase on its wheels and strolls across to the exit, nodding to the security guard as he passes through the doors to the arrivals hall.  He quickly glances over the crowd from habit more than anything else but also what he knows is a vain hope that she might have decided to come to the airport to meet him off his flight.  He indulges the little fantasy for the moment, knowing though that even had she wanted to come she was working today, so it would have been out of the question.  He smiles wryly amused at himself and heads off across the airport floor looking for a coffee stand.  He has plenty of time to kill, check-in time at the hotel isn't for a while yet.

Having negotiated the purchase of his coffee, he finds an empty seat and lowers himself into it, pushing his laptop bag under the seat and pulling his suitcase to his side.  He chuckles, briefly amused that he will have to go online to see her again, even though he is finally in her city.  The matter of whether she would agree to see him on this trip was still not resolved, as he had wished to give her as much time as possible to make her decision.  He closes his eyes and daydreams for a while taking occasional sips of his coffee, allowing the memories of his time spent online with her to relax him, and sooth away the nerves.

Eventually, coffee finished, he makes his way to the exit and finds a taxi to take him to the Apollo Museum Hotel at the junction of Stadhouderskade and the fashionable P.C. Hooftstraat.  He admires the architecture of the city as the taxi speeds to the hotel, enjoying the contrast with Cork and Dublin, where many of the buildings are void of character having been built to purely functional design in the building boom of the 1970s.

On arrival at the hotels imposing facade, he pays the taxi driver and takes his luggage through the doors to the reception desk.  On announcing his name, the tall, blonde, 30-ish male receptionist hands him a check-in card and a pen to fill in.  He runs through the usual questions, name, address, phone number, requesting a non-smoking room and finally signing and dating the card and handing it back.  The same receptionist hands him a key-card in a paper wallet "thank you Mr. Newman, we hope you will enjoy your stay with us".  He walks to the lift towing his luggage and takes it up to the third floor to his room.

On entering the room, he looks around pleased at the decor, though the room appears a little small.  "Only to be expected in the middle of the city", he thinks and begins to unpack clothes into the wardrobe.  When he is finally finished, he opens his laptop bag and withdraws his MacBook Pro laptop, setting it on the desk, opening the lid and powering it up.

It's still early in the day and he knows she won't be finished work for some time yet, so he logs in to Second Life and to MSN and sets Busy mode in both, then settles down to read the book that he brought with him for a couple of hours, taking a bottle of spring water from the mini-bar.  After a little over thirty minutes of trying to read his book, he finally realises that he will not be able to concentrate until he has spoken to her again, and puts down the book.  Casting about in his mind for something to do, he decides that a couple of hours of sleep and a shower would be a good idea, having woken up almost 12 hours previously to get the early flight from Cork airport after only 4 hours of sleep.

He undresses, folding his clothes over the back of the solitary chair in his room, drawing the curtains closed and climbing into bed setting the alarm on his phone for two hours from now.  He drifts off to sleep as he has a thousand times before, dreaming of his arms around his wonderful Myra.

Two hours later, warm and cosy in the hotel bed, he wakes to the sound of "Miss Independent", his current alarm tone.  Smiling to himself, he rolls over and lets it play for a couple  of minutes before climbing out of bed and making his way to the bathroom for a hot shower.  Starting MSN on his phone, he turns up the volume and rests it on the bathroom counter-top where he can reach it from the shower.  He lets the water run for a few minutes, then steps in under the hot spray, relaxing as the high pressure shower soaks him from head to toe, warming him.  He shampoos his hair, closing his eyes and massaging his scalp with his fingertips, rinsing the shampoo thoroughly, turning then to the shower gel and snapping open the lid, squeezing it out onto a cloth with which to wash himself from head to toe.  Eventually, shower finished he turns off the water, drying himself in the large towel provided for the purpose.

Standing in front of the mirror, he brushes his hair, shaves and puts on some aftershave before putting on the bathrobe provided by the hotel and returning to the computer with his phone.  As he sits at the computer, tucking the bathrobe in behind his legs, he sees her come online!

He freezes for a minute, a full minute or maybe more.  Afraid to hear her answer but unable to resist talking to her once more, he opens the IM window to her, typing "Hey sweetheart!" accompanied by a smily face which uses the gesture she had given him one evening not long ago, when he had spoken to her on Second Life voice for almost four hours.  The memory makes him smile, as she types "Hey!", also followed by a smily face.  He types back "Oh my God, I'm finally here".  She pauses, and he guesses that she is getting her thoughts together, or perhaps responding to an IM, and waits patiently for her response, a nervous knot gathering again in his stomach.  "The moment of truth", he mutters to himself grinning as his heart pounds in his chest.  "Ru", she types, and stops again.  "Yes Myra?" he answers, and prays to a God that he doesn't believe in as she begins to type again.  He holds his breath and waits...