The Waitress

In The Beginning

November 2015

ANOTHER airport in a long line of international terminals – Brisbane this time – a new one to add to Tom Hiddleston's long list – had he been making one, well writing them down. In his head, he could probably recite them all, they were certainly stamped into his mind and his passport -passports, many completed passports in a life that took him around and around the world in a whirling dervish of work and more work.

But this one, this city, this airport was fresh, Brisbane, Australia's third city and second most northerly capital – nestled happily on a big winding river at the bottom of Queensland, Australia.

A city that was beautiful one day, likely to turn you into a raisin the next. Or so he'd heard.

But it was beautiful.

Apparently.

It looked it from the air at least but he wasn't under any illusion that he would see much of it even though he'd be living just down the road from it on and off for the next year.

Tom lived in a world of movie sets and car innards and this trip would be no different.

He'd left warm Hawaii and then cold London and now he'd landed in – well if the weather that greeted him when he left the new white monolith to modern travel that served as the terminal was any indication – hell.

There were plenty of warm places he'd visited, loved, but this was another step above warm. Above summer in America's south. Above shooting in a Tuscan summer, this was something altogether new. Dryer and yet more humid if that was even possible.

It was November, still officially spring here, and yet he could actually see the air he was breathing. Nothing unusual for a Brit at this time but instead of seeing the warm breath expelled from his lungs into the frosty cold London atmosphere Tom could see what he was inhaling but not in a smoggy, dirty way. This air was clean, clean and thick, carvable, chunky and warm like breathing in warm custard.

The sub-tropics they called it but there was nothing sub about this air. It was close, enveloping him like a blanket. Closing around him like an unwelcome, welcoming hug.

He was tired and the air made him more so, happy to have his driver load the guitar, backpack and small suitcase he had hauled across the planet and stow them in the back. Happy to slide in next to Liam, his ever-enthusiastic personal assistant, and sit quietly as said boy (because he was still a boy compared to Tom) prattled on about where they were going and what his schedule would be.

Punishing.

That's what it would be.

It always was.

Though he was two days early for filming and was hoping to take a breath.

Take two days to acclimatize, to get used to being upside-down and back to front at the other end of the world.

He'd been lucky though. He'd had the time in Hawaii to get ready for this but this wasn't Hawaii. Or was it? Really it was just another location for another movie. More buildings, more beaches, more landscape, just more.

He settled into the back of the car, tinted windows, more luxury seats. The luxury seats of a plane giving way to those of the car – a car he suspected he'd get very used to in the next month, in the next year. Two movies, two sets, two groups of casts and crews, one year, one location.

He let the air conditioning float over him, drift around him. He'd gone from the cool plane to cool terminal but the few seconds of outside had sapped any energy he may have had and he was happy to be out of the opaque, cloistering, cloying almost night air and in this little bubble of metal and glass.