by Clyde Witt
Her eyes would not let him go. He wanted to get on with death, not life. He released his breath. “You eat right, get a good night’s sleep, exercise—die anyway. Life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Isn’t that what John Lennon said? Maybe that’s enough.”
“Enough is never enough, Eric. Maybe even too much is not enough.” Aston tapped her fingers on the side of her coffee cup and looked out the window, then turned back. “What are we going to do with you, my friend? You definitely need a plan, a map for your life. How are we gonna set you free from yourself?”
He thought, how mature Aston seemed, yet how naive. He twisted in his chair. She would not take her gray eyes off him. This was not going to turn out well, he thought. This was only the second time they’d talked, and already she was trying to change him. His mouth felt dry.
Aston cleared her throat. “Okay, sorry. Let’s back up to that bar pick-up stuff. My sign is Aries. What’s yours?” she said as she took a sip of coffee.
“Do Not Disturb.”
Aston pitched forward. Her hands slammed against the table. Coffee sprayed from her nose. She coughed, and laughed. He was afraid she might choke. He grabbed several napkins and tried to hand them to her. Each time she wiped her eyes with her fists and got control of her breathing, she looked at him and broke into another laughing fit. Her outburst was so loud everyone in the coffee shop turned toward them.
“Care to share the joke?” a woman at the table next to them asked.
That only made Aston laugh harder. She stood and hurried outside, arms wrapped around her sides as if holding her body together. When she returned, he noticed her hair sparkled with rain drops. She shook her head and slipped into her chair. “Never do that again,” she said, as she gasped for breath.
“What, tell the truth?” He thought she might break into another laughing fit. Instead, she smiled, wiped her face with the last dry napkin, and tapped her knuckles on the table.
“Eric, I’m not sure why, but I enjoy your company. You say a lot of things that make me think you’re depressed, or at least need some cheering up. I figure, there’s no wife, or partner, so it must be that things are not going so well at work?”
“Things are always tough at work when you’re the boss.”
Aston’s smile faded. “Really? You’re the boss? What do you do?”
“Well, it was my dad’s company. I inherited it when he died years ago. Tree Top Flyers Puzzles. Over on Route 8, south of the mall.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen the place. Makes jigsaw puzzles, right?”
“Yep. Best in the business of high-end puzzle making. We don’t crank ‘em out, like they do in China. Ours are all wood-based, laser cut, custom designs. No two alike. We count on a loyal following of people who bust their brains trying to figure them out. Always a challenge, though, coming up with new designs or structures to keep customers happy. Always a challenge to find the cash to keep us running, too.”
Eric explained the business and challenges of running a small company. With only a couple dozen employees, a workplace tends to evolve into a family, which made giving orders and firing people a task he did not like.
“Last week I had to fire a guy. He drank too early and too much. Screwed up too many times. We tried to warn him. Now I’m trying to find somebody.” His voice trailed off and his eyes followed a raindrop as it slipped down the windowpane.
“So, where do your designs come from? What’s your best-seller these days?” Aston asked.
“Two questions that I can give a single answer to. We hit a profitable niche ahead of the rest of the market a couple years ago. People send us family pictures, dog pictures, that sort of thing that we enlarge to any dimension. Like I said, we laser cut now, all CNC machines, and create some incredible challenges. Anywhere from five hundred pieces for kids on up to two thousand-piece killer puzzles. Factor in lots of straight lines, for example, that people think make them look easy. They’re wickedly deceiving.”
Aston peered into her empty cup then at Eric. “Well, self employment has its ups and downs, too. I get to wear T-shirts to work, but have to wonder if and when the check is going to arrive.”
“I suppose it’s not that much different from me, except I have a couple dozen people depending on me.”
Aston stood and pulled on her rain jacket. “Okay, Eric. Great running into you again. Always a pleasure.” She reached out to shake hands.
Eric stood and took her hand. “Like wise. Do you ride that battery-powered skateboard in the rain?”
“Naw. Too expensive to risk the damage. Just my plain old, trusty longboard, or my bike. Gets me where I need to go with no chance of electrocution.”
Eric smiled. “Okay. Play it safe.”
He watched her glide through the parking lot and across the street. When he turned to leave he realized an elderly woman had been standing next to him watching Aston as well.
“Oh, to be that young and free,” the woman said.
Aston jumped the curb in the strip mall where her favorite skateboard shop was located and coasted past the automatic doors of the Giant Eagle Supermarket. She enjoyed making the doors open as she skated past. At the end of the sidewalk she lifted the lid from the trash container and rummaged through the coffee cups and fast food wrappers until she found a copy of the day’s newspaper. The news in the paper was of little interest. What she was looking for was the meager list of jobs available, especially any within range of her skateboard since that, or her bicycle, were the only transportation options she had.
“Hey Aston, looking for lunch?” said another skateboarder exiting the shop with a new board still in the box.
“Not hardly, punk. I’m looking for a job so I can buy some lunch,” and flipped her middle finger in the kid’s direction. “See ya later at the park if you want to learn how to ride that thing,”
An ad near the bottom of the last column of the last page caught her eye: ‘QC Manager. Treetop Flyers Puzzle Company. Experience preferred. Reliable. Full-time position for drug-free individual.’ There was a number to call and an address to which you could send a resume.
She dug through her backpack for her cell phone and dialed Diane’s number.
“No more loans,” Diane said.
“Hey girlfriend, is that anyway to greet your best friend? Besides, the guy I did the campaign signs for last week paid me so I can give you back the forty bucks I used to fix my board. What I’m looking for is some advice, I guess.”
“Whoa. This can’t be Aston Leerie. She’s the girl that knows everything. Asking for advice?”
“Well, your right, I do know almost everything. But here’s one thing I don’t know: What the hell does a QC manager do and how much do you think it pays?”
Diane explained, as best she could, about the functions of a quality control manager, and had no idea of what a job in that field might pay. “What gives? Somebody in graphic design hiring?”
“Not exactly. The job’s over at Tree Top Flyers. The puzzle making company. I don’t know shit about making jigsaw puzzles, but I do know the dude that owns the company,” Aston said.
“Hey, sounds interesting, that’s the best place to start. Like they say, ‘it’s not what you know…’ If you need some help with a resume, I’m you gal. Let me know how it goes. I gotta get back to work.”
The next morning Aston propped her skateboard against a wall inside the glass door and scanned the lobby of Tree Top Flyers Puzzles. Her skateboard shoes sounded like mice running as she walked toward the reception desk. The wall behind the receptionist featured a mosaic of puzzle boxes, the colors of which cascaded across the glossy floor and glass doors on either side of the room.
“May I help you?” the top of a woman’s head asked.
Only blond hair, eyebrows and eyeglasses seemed to be attached to the voice behind the tall counter. Aston made a qu
ick assessment: Dullsville. Mid-thirties, two kids, a dog, a minivan, watches too much television, a husband who works late and probably cheats on her. “Yes. I’m Aston Leerie. I’m here about the QC Manager’s job.”
“Oh, right,” the receptionist said. She sprang from her chair and revealed a faded ‘Freddie Mercury Wembley 1986’ T-shirt. She shuffled through some papers on her desk and looked up at Aston, then over at the skateboard leaning against the wall next to the door.
“Ah, Ashlyn, I—”
“It’s Aston.”
“Right, Aston. Sorry. I don’t find your resume here—”
“I didn’t send one in. The ad in the paper made no mention of having to send one in, just an address to send one to. I’m a good friend of Eric’s so I just thought I’d drop by.”
“Oh, okay. Bit irregular,” the receptionist said and let her eyes drift over to the skate board, again. “Hey, are you the woman that rides the RazorX Cruiser in traffic over on Greenwood Parkway?”
“Yep, that’s probably me.”
“I’ve seen you and I’m just making the connection. You are a bad role model,” the receptionist said, and tried to repress a smile. “Every time my daughter sees you she tells me what kind of board you have, the brand of shorts you’re wearing and way too much other stuff. It takes three days for me to quiet her down. Nag, nag, nag about learning to ride a skateboard.”
“Sounds like a smart kid. I give free lessons to any kid with pigtails.”
“That’s her. I’ll let Eric know you’re here, Aston.”
Aston checked magazines on the lobby table while she waited. She glanced over at the receptionist and thought, don’t judge a person until you see the color of their T-shirt. She could not hear all of the conversation between the receptionist and Eric, however, she determined from the glances in her direction, saying she was ‘a good friend’ might not have been the best opening.
Eric entered the lobby, rubbed his hands on the front of his pants, and extended his right hand as he walked toward her. “Hey, Aston, surprised, I guess is the word, to see you again, so soon. Here.”
“Yeah. Well, I saw the ad in the paper, knew you were in a bind for a quick hire, and I’m way ahead in my other job, so, well, here I am.”
Eric shifted his eyes over toward Kate who watched, eyebrows arched, shaking her head.
“Well, okay. Let’s go back to my office and see what’s what.”
Aston hesitated long enough for Eric to take the lead down the hall to his office. When offered a chair she opted to sit in the one along side his desk, not the one directly in front of him across the desk.
She followed his line of vision to her shoes and could tell he was looking at her socks that didn’t match. He quickly turned his head to look out the window then shuffled some papers on his desk.
“Ah, let me see—”
“Well, do I get the job?” Aston said.
Eric cleared his throat. “Don’t you think I should know a bit more about you? Your job skills? That kind of stuff? Things like what kinds of work you’ve done in the past—”
“Look, Boss, the past is filled with too many misinterpretations. It’s a painful place where I choose not to dwell. Besides, for what purpose? Seems to me there’s a real fine line between talking about all that great stuff you did—and no one really appreciates—and boasting.”
As he was about to answer, Kate walked in with two cups of coffee. “Figured you two might need this,” she said.
Aston waited while Eric examined the thin cloud of steam rising from his coffee. “Well, I suppose—”
“Great. What time do I start? How long do employees get for lunch?”
“This is highly irregular. What do you know about quality control? Especially in the puzzle business?”
“Nothing, and that’s why you should hire me. What better could you ask for than a clean sheet of paper? I come in here with no preconceived ideas of what should be right or wrong with a puzzle. I look at every job like it’s the first and only.”
Eric showed Aston around the shop, and introduced her to humming machines and fellow employees. Each time he mentioned she could be the new quality control manager, the employee smiled.
They arrived back at the cafeteria, and while Eric poured coffee, she asked, “Okay, Boss, what’s the joke?”
“Joke?”
“Yeah. Every time you said, ‘quality control’ around those folks it made them smile.”
“Oh, I guess the joke, and it’s not all that funny, is that around here, our work is so accurate that there are never—hardly ever—any mistakes. Years ago, my old man, in one of his more articulate moments said, ‘We’re so good in what we do, we could train a monkey as a quality control inspector if we gave him enough bananas.’”
Aston slipped her hands into her jean pockets, rocked back on her heels, and stared at the ceiling. She lowered her gaze directly at Eric, “Maybe I don’t really need a job, in that case.”
“Wait. Hold on. I, err we, need a person with your, ah, approach to life. Granted, we do excellent work. Most of these folks, however, have been doing the same work for years. I need someone with fresh ideas, a fresh outlook. Someone who, ah, rides a skateboard to work, for example.”
“So, what do I do when I’m not inspecting the quality?”
Eric’s eyes searched the room. He rubbed his hands on his jeans and pointed at a table near the back of the production area. “See that table over there?”
“Right.”
“There’s what, six boxes on it? Those are rejects from a couple week’s production. Usually nothing wrong with the puzzle, you know, maybe things like scrapes or tears on a piece, maybe a scrape to the picture on the box. We take ‘em around to the various schools and assisted living places in town. Are you aware that working jigsaw puzzles helps slow dementia problems associated with Alzheimer’s?”
“I’ll try to remember that—when I get old.”
“Yeah. So, part of your job will be to take puzzles on that table to the schools and assisted living places. Sometimes we take them to day care places, kid’s stuff. We have a program we’re just launching with the library. People will be able to check them out, like books. You’ll deliver those, too. Still want the job?”
“Can I use my board for making deliveries?”
“Not when it’s raining. I don’t think our insurance covers electrocutions.”
They returned to Eric’s office and while he finished the paperwork required to hire her, Aston walked around the office looking at images of puzzles and old photographs.
Eric looked up. “Ah, I’m not trying to get personal here or anything, but I need, for the insurance stuff, I need your date of birth.”
Without turning from the photo she was examining, Aston said, “April First, 1990.”
“April Fool’s Day?”
“Yeah, no joke.”
Eric cleared his throat and went back to work on the form he was completing. He looked in Aston’s direction to see if she might be smiling. She had stopped in front of a faded picture of two young men in white T-shirts sitting on the wing of an airplane. Both had a cigarette dangling from the edge of smiling lips. The photo was so faded it was not possible to tell if it had originally be in color or black and white.
“Who are these dudes?” she asked.
“That’s my dad and his whacko partner, Russell Starke III. They founded this company back in the mid-1970s. That was taken, I think, in Viet Nam, where they were pilots during the war.”
Aston studied the photo then studied Eric. “So, which one is your dad? You look a bit like both.”
Eric chuckled. “The guy on the right is my old man. And you’re not the first to make that observation.”
“Where are they now? I mean, you said you father died, so where’s the other guy?”
Er
ic stood and walked over to the photo. “Starke died in a plane crash in 1978, not long after I was born. Never met him, obviously. I guess it was just a couple years after they founded this company. Dad never talked about it. He was an all-work, no-fun type of guy.”
Aston looked around the office again. “No pictures of your mom?”
Eric walked back to his desk. “What is this, question the boss day? I’m supposed to be asking you all the personal stuff, not the other way around.”
“Well, I gotta know what I’m getting into before I sign the contract, ya know. Hey, is there a signing bonus?”
Eric shook his head. “Hardly. In fact, I might have to ask you to take a pay cut next week.”
Aston returned to her chair. “So finish the story. Maybe, in a weak moment I’ll tell you my life story.”
“You mean, about my mother? Never knew her. She died in a car crash when I was just a baby. Dad said he didn’t have any photos of her so—”
“Whoa, okay, enough. I might have to tell you about my dismal child life to cheer you up if this goes on any longer.”
Eric turned and looked out the window then back at her. “Okay, one last thing before I send you out on the floor to start inspecting the quality. Around here we don’t have a suggestion box. If you have an idea, about anything, just say it. There’s no wrong ideas or dumb questions here.”
Aston smiled. “That includes hiring me, I assume.”
Eric returned the smile. “Well, I guess that remains to be seen.”
Chapter Four
1978
Russell Starke III leaned to his left and raised in his seat to better assess the desert fifty feet below the retracted wheels of the DC-3 C-47. A carpet of camouflage passed beneath him at 155 miles per hour. Flashes of tan and green—rocks and cacti—swooshed past too fast to be identified. The roar of the plane’s two Pratt and Whitney engines created pain behind his eyes. He smiled and thought, what a lovely way to die. He pulled back on the yoke and turned to his left, allowing the aircraft to climb. He planned a second pass at the spot where he wanted the plane to crash, only this time he stayed two hundred feet above the surface.