Flygirl

by R. D. Kardon

  Ann-Marie beckoned Tris toward a little-used conference room that one of the mechanics liked to smoke in. Every time Tris walked past it, she could smell the remnants of his last nicotine fix.

  They walked in, but Ann-Marie didn’t sit. Instead, she kept a hand on the doorknob and put her weight against the door. “I would be very, very careful if I were you.” Her tone was light, unlike the message. “Deter’s pissed. And, Ross, well…”

  “What? Why? What’s with Deter now? And Ross?”

  “Look, don’t tell anyone I told you,” Ann-Marie looked around the room and tightened her grip on the doorknob to make sure no one could walk in. “Zorn told Deter he’s not going to Gulfstream school for a while.”

  “What? I thought he’d go when I went to Dallas? No?”

  “No. They don’t have the money for it. Willett couldn’t get approval for two full training events and they chose yours.”

  “Oh shit. Wow, he’s going to be horrible on the Europe trip, isn’t he? Damn.” Surely Ross would be a buffer. “But what’s going on with Ross?”

  Ann-Marie looked surprised. “You haven’t heard?”

  “No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. What?” Tris wasn’t sure what she knew or didn’t know about these guys anymore.

  “Yeah, he’s having some real trouble at home. Devon is making all kinds of crazy threats.”

  “Like what? Why?” Ross hadn’t let on that anything was wrong when they talked earlier.

  “Oh, the ones she usually makes, according to him. That she’s gonna leave him, take their son, never come back. It’s always been just talk as far as I know. But it makes him…uh…a little erratic sometimes.” Ann-Marie looked embarrassed.

  “In what way?” Tris asked, although she had a good idea.

  The two women heard Zorn calling Ann-Marie’s name from the reception area.

  “Guard your six,” Ann-Marie replied.

  It was military slang for “watch your back.”

  Twenty-Nine

  “HEY, FLYGIRL. I’M in town. Want a donut?” The local Dunkin’ Donuts was halfway between Tris’s place and the two-bedroom crash pad Danny shared with seven other guys. He still hoped scheduling would call with a trip as he waited on reserve. Bored, he didn’t want to spend another night in his grimy apartment.

  For years, Danny had commuted to Exeter from his home in Columbia, Missouri. Now, he was chosen to fill Bron’s vacancy in the Clear Sky training department. Since he’d be in Exeter twice as much every month, he wanted something other than the crash pad’s Walmart plastic furniture and bunk bed existence.

  He flew his last trip with a co-pilot who had a wife and three kids. When the guy took his pilot hat off, Danny saw a picture of his family in the plastic-covered ID slot. Seeing the four smiling faces made Danny yearn for something he hadn’t known he wanted. After almost twenty years in the aviation industry, he wanted a family of his own. And he wanted it with Tris.

  Tris met him at the donut shop, and they walked over to a nearby park after they got their orders. A tree with branches just beginning to fill in shaded them as they sat side-by-side on an old wooden bench. The afternoon sun was high and bright, but not warm. They sat outside to make the most of the early spring day.

  “Yeah, I was supposed to go to Minneapolis,” she said, biting into her toasted coconut donut. “But it canceled. That’s a day off I wasn’t planning on. But hey, Zorn just gave me a training date. He said, ‘This is when you’re going,’ and then, like ‘Buh-bye!’”

  Danny licked frosting from his finger. “Ok, so let me see if I got this. You get your type and you’re a captain? Pay bump?” His eyebrows moved up and down suggestively.

  “Pretty sure,” Tris said. “Yeah, I’m psyched. I guess putting up with Deter has its payoffs.”

  Tris broke off a piece of the donut and held it between her fingers as she spoke. She looked fantastic in her jeans, black T-shirt, and scuffed tennis shoes. She’d worn her hair loose, instead of clipped behind her head or in a ponytail like she did when she flew. He liked her in casual clothes. But then, Tris in uniform always turned him on, especially when she wore her pilot hat. Something about the way her hair popped out from under the hatband…

  Danny had on his blue uniform pants and a golf shirt. A pilot sitting reserve was easy to spot. If his pants weren’t obvious enough, his black lace-up shoes surely gave him away. Since he could be sent out on a trip any minute, he could only pack a few non-uniform items. No room for tennis shoes in his small overnight bag.

  “You could always come back to the airlines. I’m livin’ the dream.” He thought this would make Tris smile, but she looked at him solemnly and swallowed.

  “Seriously, Danny, I’ve thought about it. After almost eight months, I still have, what, only a hundred fifty hours of flight time in the Astral? ‘Only experience leads to expertise,’” she said, mimicking Bron’s voice. Danny laughed, but the spot-on imitation made him uncomfortable. It was as if Bron sat right next to them.

  “Well, what about this upcoming Europe trip? Won’t that get you ready? What countries are you headed to?” Danny wanted to encourage Tris, keep her from waving the white flag. She’d quit her job at Clear Sky to become a captain. And if that’s what she wanted, he wanted it for her.

  “Geneva, Zurich, Berlin, Vienna, Luxembourg…” She recited the list of destinations she’d clearly memorized. “I haven’t been to any of those places. Have you?” Danny shook his head. “But I’m just an observer-crewmember, so I’m told. That means lots of serving the passengers, no flying.”

  They sat quietly for a while in the cool afternoon sun, eating their donuts and sipping their coffee.

  “You know, I was just awarded that job in the training de-partment. The one…”

  “Bron’s old job?” She looked at what was left of her donut in the small white bag.

  “Well, yeah…I mean, they held it open a long time. Out of respect.”

  “Yeah, they did. Or maybe they just couldn’t find someone as good to replace him until you raised your hand!” She smiled up at him.

  He couldn’t hold back any longer. “Look, Tris. I don’t even know why you and Bron broke up. One day you were together and then—” He stopped abruptly.

  All of a sudden, despite their close proximity, Danny sensed that Tris was no longer there. She had a look—not blank, exactly, more like vacant. Gone.

  “I knew we’d get back together. We weren’t done.” She wiped a coconut flake off of her lip and whispered, “We weren’t done.”

  Danny’s mobile phone rang. The caller ID said “Screw Desk,” his code for crew scheduling. He was still on call and had to answer. If they assigned him a trip, he had two hours to get to the airport.

  “Ok. Yeah. Three days? Ok. Ok,” Danny said before hanging up. “Three days, five legs, including a DC overnight. Not a lot of flying, but the overnight in DC is decent.”

  “Have fun at National,” Tris said, smiling at Danny. President Clinton had signed a law changing the name of the airport, but neither of them could bear to think of it by that other name. Politics was one of the many things they had in common.

  They both loved the DC overnight at Clear Sky. The crew stayed in a block of hotels near the airport, just a short walk away from a small downtown area that had tons of restaurants.

  “So we’re heading back, right?” Tris stood up and gathered their trash.

  “Yup,” Danny replied. “I’m on, Flygirl!”

  When they got to his car, Tris hugged him tightly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said.

  Wrapping his arms around her in a friendly hug would be somehow dishonest. He wanted to hold her with his whole heart, to show his feelings instead of tamping them down. As he gave himself permission to embrace the woman he was in love with, he gently raised her chin until their eyes met.

  “Tris, I want us to be together.”

  She froze. Her eyes were empty again, her face expressionless.

&nb
sp; “No.” Her voice sounded strangled, guttural as she pulled away.

  “Please, Tris.”

  She bent over slightly and started to cry. He stood powerless, his arms now dangling at his side.

  She mumbled something, but he couldn’t make it out.

  “What?”

  Tris looked up at him, her eyes red. Her left hand was balled into a tight fist.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…”

  “Why?”

  “Because I still love him.”

  Thirty

  TRIS FORGED A path in her bedroom between each of her three alarm clocks to confirm they were set for 2:00 a.m. Show time was 4:30.

  She needed rest but was too agitated to sleep. The Ball Buster launched the next day and everything seemed to have gone wrong in the week leading up to it.

  Instead of calmly explaining to Danny how much she cared about him, how she valued him, she broke down and blurted out the truth. She’d hurt him.

  A call to Danny’s mobile phone later that night went straight to voicemail. Tris hoped he’d missed it because he was out with his crew at one of the cool restaurants in DC. But that was days ago, and he still hadn’t called her back. Danny was so important to her; she couldn’t lose him, too.

  The very next day she flew with Deter. He was even more distant, more abrupt than usual. Tris assumed it was because his Gulfstream training had been delayed. She decided to treat it like any other trip. After all, he was still supposed to train her. At one point, she asked him something about the Astral’s hydraulic system, and he just detonated.

  “Goddamn it, who gives a shit,” he roared and walked away.

  Deter’s outbursts struck Tris the same way every time. Her arms tingled, her vision narrowed. Sometimes she forgot to breathe. Deter performed this particular rebuff right in front of Willett. They were both standing near the flight-planning computer and Willett passed behind her and whispered, “Let it go.”

  Tris stiffened in response to loud voices ever since she was a child, which made the effects of Deter’s belligerence harder to hide. She grew up in a family where conversations were just a lot of noise, people obsessed with their own needs. She could never truly express herself because no one was listening. And if no one was actually listening, why bother to speak?

  At almost thirty-five years old, she flinched at the sound of Deter’s voice raised in conflict. Sometimes, its sheer volume transported her right back home, to when she was eight years old and no one had heard her say her stomach hurt over loud family “discussions.” Or at twelve, when her mother was so busy arguing with her aunt about when to plant the tulip bulbs, her quiet pleas for help with her first Maxi pad were ignored.

  But, she wasn’t a child any longer; she was responsible for people’s lives. Out of necessity, her silent tolerance was evaporating.

  Later on during the trip, Tris flew an approach into Detroit and she asked for flaps. Deter refused to lower them.

  “Too soon,” he growled.

  Unless it was a matter of life or death, the flying pilot con-figured the airplane as they saw fit. She took a deep breath and made sure the aircraft was under control.

  “Flaps twenty-five. Now,” she commanded. Following an exaggerated sigh, Deter lowered them.

  If Deter had pulled that crap on another pilot—any other pilot—Tris was sure he’d have been spoken to, even at Tetrix. After that trip, once she was sure Deter had gone home, she went to Ann-Marie to vent her frustration.

  Ann-Marie saw what went on behind the scenes at Tetrix from her unobtrusive perch at the front desk. She’d been around even longer than Zorn. She took every call that came into the department, opened each interoffice envelope, even those marked “Confidential.” Tris had come to trust her.

  “Deter being a dick?” Ann-Marie asked matter-of-factly when Tris had finished, as if she were observing the weather.

  Tris didn’t hesitate. “Oh yeah. Why, is he like that to you?”

  “No way.” Ann-Marie laughed. “I do the schedule.”

  “Right. I think I have to say something to Zorn. Or Willett.”

  “Don’t do it,” Ann-Marie shook her head and crossed her arms in front of her in an “X,” the same signal a ramper would use to stop an airplane in its tracks.

  Tris hadn’t detected this sense of urgency from Ann-Marie before.

  “They don’t like him either, but, in a way, they kind of worship him. I mean, his military service, and all those carrier landings…” Ann-Marie let her voice trail off. She didn’t need to continue for Tris to get the point. She’d heard this before.

  “Seriously? So, he gets away with how he treats people because of that? I thought the navy fighter pilots were supposed to be jerks. This guy, what, flew supplies or something?”

  Ann-Marie nodded solemnly. “Just hang in there,” she said. “You’ll be going to school, and hopefully he’ll move on to the Gulfstream soon.” But both women knew that was unlikely.

  “So this really is the way it works. Sit down and shut up?”

  Ann-Marie put her finger to her lips and then motioned to Tris to follow her into the mechanics’ smoking room.

  “Tris, look, the way everyone is here, basically…you want to stay out of Zorn’s way. Seriously.” She hesitated for a moment. “Zorn and Willett will never do anything about Deter. If you were ever going to dump on Deter, it would have to be something big enough that they couldn’t ignore it.”

  “Like?”

  “I have no idea. I can’t imagine anything worse than what he’s already done!” They both laughed. Ann-Marie’s advice was based on good information. Unless Deter’s behavior escalated, Tris would stay quiet.

  And now, on her last night at home before the Ball Buster, Tris checked again to make sure her passport was in her bag. Finally, she grabbed a book. At 9:30 p.m., after reading the same three pages in Toni Morrison’s Paradise for the umpteenth time, she turned off the light and closed her eyes.

  But she couldn’t sleep. Danny, Deter, Ann-Marie—their words played in a continuous loop in her mind.

  Thirty-One

  “THAT’S THE THING about being a pilot,” Bron said as he slid his uniform pants over slim hips. “You gotta have a plan, a goal. Something to work for. How can you call it a career if you don’t upgrade to captain?”

  It was a cool, bright April morning and they had spent the past two days lying in bed together talking, eating pizza, and making love. Bron had to go back to work. He had a four-day trip.

  Bron had just been awarded Exeter as a crew base, and was about to leave regular line flying for a job in the Clear Sky training department. Now that Bron would be based in Exeter full-time, they wouldn’t be scheduled to fly together as crew anymore.

  They had discussed whether he’d find a place or move in with her. Bron wanted them to live together, but Tris wasn’t sure she was ready. So they did what pilots always do—they put it in the “for later” compartment.

  “Right,” she said after thinking for a bit. “But what about people who just think flying is fun? What if they don’t want the responsibility of command?”

  Tris woke up with Bron’s alarm at 5 a.m. and saw no point trying to go back to sleep. Might as well just make coffee and hang out before he left. She was on her last day off before she had to head back to the crash pad, to her Arkansas crew base. She didn’t have enough seniority yet to hold the Exeter base. Soon.

  Bron slid his starched white shirt over his broad chest and back, which looked out of place atop his long, spindly legs. Now in full uniform with four captain’s stripes on his shoulders, he sat down on the bed and put his arms around her. “If they don’t want command, then they’re not professional pilots,” he said and hugged her. “We’ll pick this up when I get back. See you soon, baby. I love you.”

  Her body began to respond and she countered it by turning around to face Bron. “Fly safe, young’un.” Bron laughed. He wasn’t that much
younger than Tris, but she still teased him about it. She kissed him, and he was gone.

  “I love you,” echoed inside her car as Tris sat with her foot on the brake. His voice, its scratchy, sexy tone, right there in the car. A freight train inched by in the pouring rain. Traffic was stopped.

  Tris hadn’t told anyone, not even Danny, that she still heard Bron’s voice. Random words, now and then, things he’d said before. A real-time replay, but his voice, the sound of it was present, audible, and unmistakable. She hugged herself against her memory.

  The Tetrix parking lot was pitch black when Tris pulled in at 4:20 a.m. Lights were on in the pilot area, and she could see Ross and Deter through the glass. She dragged her two black roller bags through executive parking, using the shortcut all the pilots took when Zorn and Willett weren’t around.

  By the time she entered the hangar, the two men stood in front of the airplane, drinking coffee. Tris waved at them as she tried to roll both bags to the Astral’s baggage door at the same time. Grasping one bag with each hand, the larger one kept tipping over, and she had to pull it along as it scraped against the concrete floor. Neither man moved to help her. In a way, she appreciated that. Generally, common courtesy would rule, but given the lack of professional duties she had on this trip, she was pleased to be treated like one of the guys.

  Ross called out to her.

  “Just a minute,” she answered above the sound of a 737 taxiing by the hangar.

  He leaned casually against the nose of the Astral.

  “Ready for your first big international trip?”

  “Oh yeah. I just wish I had more to do.”

  “Nah. You don’t.” Ross grimaced. “Seriously. I’m not looking forward to this trip. The last time it went out, the crew had maintenance trouble in just about every city. So, when we decided to take a third crewmember, Deter begged Zorn to let us take a mechanic.” He checked himself immediately. “Oh. Sorry.”

  So Tris wasn’t just an extra body, she was someone they were carrying instead of the mechanic they really needed.