Brace for Impact

by Becky Harmon

  If she wanted to she could spend most of the next morning exploring Los Angeles, but it made her too nervous to do something like that before work. With a noon departure to Albuquerque before heading back to Atlanta, she didn’t want to risk getting caught in traffic too far away from the airport. Tonight would be her best option for seeing the sights. She closed the directory and quickly changed into shorts, a T-shirt, and running shoes. Walking a short distance from the hotel, she purchased a ticket for the Ocean Express Trolley. Manhattan Beach looked like a nice place to explore.

  The trolley was a bright, cheery red and decked inside and out to look like a real old-fashioned trolley. Inside, wooden benches running along both sides faced the center where there was plenty of standing room if it was needed. Only three people were riding when she boarded, two male teenagers in swimsuits whom she wished were still in school and an elderly lady. The lady wore a purple and white cover-up over her swimsuit and clutched a large beach bag on her lap. The boys sat in the rear, laughing and occasionally punching each other. She sat near the front with the lady to avoid their frolicking. She clung to the brass pole at the edge of the seat to keep from sliding back and forth on the slick bench.

  She was the first one off the trolley and the smell of salt water invaded her senses. The long stretch of sandy, white beach was inviting and she almost wished she had worn her swimsuit. Next time. The number of people around was surprisingly low. Not at all what she was expecting. She walked the length of the pier, carefully avoiding the men and women fishing from the end. From the pier she could see bike and walking paths stretching in both directions, miles and miles of barely populated pavement. After only a few minutes walking along the path, she ditched her coffee cup and rented a bicycle, riding south to the end of the trail and then back north as far as Marina Del Ray.

  The white concrete bike path was separate from the walking and jogging lanes so she only had to dodge an occasional pedestrian. The view was amazing in either direction and her attention was split between it and the piles of sand on the path that threatened to pitch her from the bike. Huge, million-dollar houses lined the beachfront along with smaller condominiums and a few camping parks. The beach side was filled with sunbathers, swimmers, and volleyball players. Riding along the path was tranquil, and she was able to leave the occasional screaming children behind rather quickly.

  She wished she could go farther and see Venice Beach and Santa Monica, but the bicycle rental office would be closing soon. Not to mention her skin was turning pink from the sun, reminding her, way too late, that she had forgotten to put on any suntan lotion. She returned her rental and found a drugstore, where she purchased aloe lotion to apply after her shower. She caught the trolley back to the Marriott and was settled back in her room by ten p.m.

  She enjoyed the luxury of no alarm clock the next morning before taking a quick swim in the pool. The area was quiet and absent of children at this hour, so she was able to swim a couple of laps without interruption. After a quick brunch in her room, she headed back to the airport. She had flown with Carlos from New York to Los Angeles but had heard a rumor before leaving the office the previous night that she would be flying with Captain Mueller this morning. She hoped the rumor was true. Miranda Mueller was on the verge of retirement and had flown with Eastern since its creation eighteen years earlier. She was the first female pilot Eastern had hired and Dex had enjoyed learning about her career during her training.

  She arrived at the airport almost two hours before her flight. The time change had her awake before nine Pacific Time so she felt like she had already been awake for a day. She checked the flight manifest as soon as she arrived and saw she would be flying with Captain Mueller as far as Albuquerque. Her eyes quickly scanned the rest of the list, locating the names of the two air marshals flying with them. She knew how unlikely it would be to see Lucy’s name, but she couldn’t stop herself from checking.

  The Transportation Security Administration, otherwise known as TSA, would not release the exact number of air marshals, but they liked to brag about how many were actually in the air each day. The number sounded large, but when you compared it to the number of flights it amounted to an estimated barely one percent. Most were larger international flights, but some covered planes flying in and out of major hubs. Eastern was one of the three largest airlines operating in the US. With over eight hundred active planes, they flew almost five thousand flights a day. Combine that total with all airlines and she was looking at about forty thousand commercial flights a day. Finding Lucy again was starting to look like finding a needle in a haystack.

  “Good morning.”

  She turned at the voice behind her and smiled at Miranda Mueller. “Good afternoon, for those of us based on the East Coast.”

  Miranda gave her an acknowledging nod. “Have you reviewed the flight reports yet?”

  “I didn’t pull anything but the weather. Looks like a little turbulence over the Midwest but it’s clear into Albuquerque.”

  Miranda nodded again as she pulled the flight packet from her in-box and began flipping through it. “Everything looks in order. Our plane has just touched down. Shall we head that direction?”

  Dex quickly fell into step beside her. She was glad she had been ready with coffee in hand before Miranda arrived. She glanced at her as they walked through the airport. Miranda was several inches taller than her even with the flat-heeled shoes she wore. She had her own class of style. The Eastern Airlines pants and blazer she wore had clearly been altered to fit her figure. Her dark hair had a few gray strands, but that was the only sign that she had reached sixty several years earlier.

  Miranda’s career had started with an extremely wealthy father who believed his daughter could do whatever she set her mind to, including flying airplanes. He spared no expense with her education and possibly lining whatever executive pockets were necessary to put Miranda in the cockpit. Miranda had flown with a few different airlines before finding her home at Eastern. Her forty years of experience made Dex feel young and inexperienced. She found it sad that the travelers they passed had no idea of the icon in their midst.

  “So you’re new,” Miranda stated.

  “Uh, yes.” Interrupted from her replay of Miranda’s life, she struggled to find her words. “Uh, yes, ma’am.”

  Miranda laughed. “Please call me Miranda. At my age, you hear ma’am way too much.”

  “You can call me Dex.”

  Miranda tilted her head. “Military nickname?”

  She felt her face blush as she realized Miranda had looked into her background. She guessed that was understandable since she was new.

  “It’s a combination of my first name, Diane, and my last name, Alexander. My dad thought it was cute when I was little, but I think he really just wanted a boy.”

  “Don’t they all?”

  She wanted to ask Miranda more questions about flying planes in the seventies, but they had arrived at the gate and it appeared the attendants had been watching for them. Dex stood back as Miranda joked with them, waiting as they unlocked the jetway door. Miranda was friendly with a sophisticated style. Classy. Yes, that was the only word Dex could think of to describe the woman walking in front of her. The way she walked and interacted with others gave her a magnetic appeal. Everyone wanted to have her attention if only for a few moments. She looked forward to having Miranda to herself in the cockpit for the next several hours.

  “You good with outside?” Miranda asked. “I’ll head in and get started.”

  “Yes, sure. That’s fine. I can handle it.”

  She left Miranda standing in the airplane doorway and trotted down the steps to reach the tarmac. She hoped before she returned to the cockpit that she would regain her ability to have a conversation rather than stuttering and rambling. She slowly began walking around the plane. A quick look underneath told her there were no fluid leaks coming from the plane. Running her hand along the smooth, cool aluminum and steel, she focused her thoughts on the
job ahead.

  She checked the turbine blades to make sure there was no damage and that they spun freely. She looked between the tires at the brake wear indicator and then checked the tread on the tires. So far so good. All the hatches except the luggage storage were closed and the little wicks along the plane wings that drained static electricity and prevented a large static discharge were all in place. She checked the vents in the rear of the plane to make sure they could expel air properly once the engines began passing it through to the cockpit and the passenger cabin. She finished her checks and then spent a few minutes walking around the plane as she enjoyed the warm Los Angeles weather.

  She liked living on the East Coast and the humidity wasn’t too stifling if she stayed in the northeast. She had grown up in Michigan, but her family had moved around every few years. Her mother wanted to be near the ocean and her father seemed to have a wandering spirit. Together they had drug their family through six states before settling near Ocean City, Maryland. Her mother had passed away during her early years in the military and her father had moved back to his native Canada. He claimed it was because he wanted to, but she had soon learned it was for the universal health care. Neither she nor her sister could have foreseen how fast his condition would deteriorate. Apparently their mother had hid more than her illness from them.

  Dex’s sister, Deidra, had followed their father to Canada and now had her own family settled outside Toronto. It seemed right that Dex return to Canada as well when she left the army. Her small condominium in Toronto wasn’t really home, but it was comfortable and in the snowy season everything she needed was available in the underground mall beneath it. She didn’t even own a vehicle. Public transportation took her everywhere she needed to be, and if it didn’t Deidra was only a phone call away.

  She climbed the steps, slowly clearing her mind to everything but the task of flying. She wanted to be focused and efficient so Miranda would have no doubt Eastern had invested well. She tossed her coffee cup in the trash as she made a last pit stop in the restroom before heading to the cockpit. She greeted the flight attendants and then joined Miranda. Secured behind their cockpit door, they completed their paperwork and pre-flight checks. The passengers boarded quickly and before she knew it they were in the air.

  Miranda relaxed back into her seat. “Nice work.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. You too.” She hesitated for a second and realized she might never have another chance to talk freely with this woman. “It’s a pleasure to fly with you.”

  Miranda chuckled. “Thank you. I can’t imagine that this is the most exciting flight of your career, especially with your background.”

  Dex shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about her past. She wanted to explore Miranda’s history. “What was it like when you began flying?”

  “Besides scratching and clawing the administration?”

  “Were they worse than the close-minded men you flew with?”

  Miranda chuckled again. “Sometimes. Even though I was in the co-pilot seat I was asked by senior level management not to make the PA announcements. They were afraid the general public would be afraid to know a woman was flying the plane.”

  “Wow.” Dex couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  * * *

  Lucy was drinking her coffee on the porch when the contractor arrived at seven. The sun was barely peeking through the morning sky, but she could already feel its warmth. While summer was fading in Florida, the nights were seldom below seventy. She propped open the front door and watched as Dan carried his supplies inside. Her design for the laundry room was simple—a table to fold clothes on and a bar for ones that needed to be hung, along with a few shelves for supplies.

  Dan would be replacing the drywall and laying down a new floor. She had learned during his first day working for her that he didn’t like to be watched or even helped. She thought he might have a touch of Attention Deficit Disorder. The way he jumped from one task to another would have driven her insane, but it seemed to work for him. It was probably why he didn’t have an assistant helping him. In the end, he had finished every task and done an excellent job. She couldn’t have been happier with the finished product or the time it took him to complete them.

  “Morning, Dan. Coffee?” she asked as he made his third trip past her.

  “No thank you. Had a cup on the way in.”

  “Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Roger that,” he said, disappearing into the laundry room.

  Lucy sat back down on the porch and finished her coffee. She leaned against the step behind her as she thought about a future living in this house. She had always lived in the moment, never really planning for tomorrow. Watching how distraught her mother had been after she lost Lucy’s dad, she quickly decided that planning a future and losing it was more painful than never planning one. The therapist she saw in college would have said she was projecting her mother’s loss on her own life. And maybe she was, but she couldn’t see a reason to risk it anyway.

  She did get lonely sometimes, which was why she sought out women, but they never really filled the emptiness. She had considered getting a dog, but leaving it constantly would be hard on her and no life for the dog. A few of her fellow marshals had cats and she had heard their horror stories. Coming home to a urine-stained bed or clawed-up furniture was not something she could tolerate. In fact, it was almost worse than sharing a house with someone, and she hadn’t done that since college.

  Except during her air marshal training, that is. There were only four women in her class of fifty. So, for eight weeks at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in New Mexico, she had shared a bathroom with another woman. Thankfully they each had their own small, attached bedroom.

  The training centered on basic law enforcement techniques and included a lot of physical exercise. She had used her exhaustion as an excuse to close her door every evening and block the others out. Was she sorry she had never cultivated even a friendship? Not really. Okay, maybe sometimes. People wanting to get to know her stressed her out. The thousands of strangers in an airport were okay, though. They didn’t care who she was and didn’t even want to know. They didn’t ask questions about her past or her career. She could make up any story she wanted to about what she did for a living. And she didn’t have to pretend to care about someone else’s life drama.

  She pushed herself off the steps. Analyzing her life was not something she needed to do today. She gathered her paint supplies and began applying protectant to the porch. By noon she was starving, so she threw the ingredients Sheila had suggested into a pot and let it cook. She enjoyed the first dish so much she had a second and then took a bowl to Dan. She had never really cooked much so she didn’t have much confidence when she was in the kitchen. Sheila’s recipe had been easy and certainly worth the small amount of effort it had taken to create it.

  She finished the porch late in the afternoon and wandered around outside until Dan finished. After he left, she stood in her new laundry room and admired his work. The shelves were all accessible and held everything she needed them to. The floor was a white and gray tile that matched the light gray walls. She grabbed her dirty laundry from the bedroom and started the washer. Occasionally she would be called in early for work, so she went ahead and packed her suitcase for another five days. After eating the last of the tomato soup, she made popcorn and started an old DVD. She liked the no-brainer comedy from twenty years ago, and Sandra Bullock was the perfect date for the evening.

  * * *

  “Thank you, Miranda,” Dex said as she pocketed the card with Miranda’s cell number on it. “I really enjoyed our conversation.”

  “I did as well. Don’t let the few close-minded people in this industry scare you off. You are perfect for this job.”

  Dex smiled. Miranda had heaped praise on her throughout the flight, and she found it hard not to school-girl crush on the amazing woman. Miranda gave her a wave as she headed to lunch. Dex returned to the airl
ine office to gather the details for her flight to Atlanta. She tried not to be disappointed by Tom, the gray-haired man she was being teamed with for this leg of her trip. He seemed nice enough and didn’t try to micromanage her tasks. It was all she could really ask for. Not every pilot could be Miranda Mueller.

  The flight to Albuquerque had been quicker than she would have liked, her time with Miranda making it seem much faster than it really was. Miranda was a wealth of knowledge. Not only about their colleagues but also about the airplanes they flew. They weighed the pros and cons of each aircraft and joked about the experiences Miranda had been faced with. She realized quickly that Miranda liked to laugh and Dex knew she would be smiling for a while.

  She turned her attention back to Tom. He was no Miranda Mueller, but he was efficient. He was also nosy. Once they were in the air and the cruise control was set, he began a barrage of personal questions. She quickly invented a spouse and pushed every question back to him. She had discovered quickly in the military that most guys backed off quicker if she mentioned a male spouse rather than saying she wasn’t into men. Each one always believed they could be the one who changed her.

  She sighed as the airplane finally touched down in Atlanta. The conversation with Tom had exhausted her, and she couldn’t wait to get to her hotel. It was almost midnight and she blamed jetlag as she quickly signed out in the Eastern Airlines office. She left Tom checking out the other women in the office and hurried through the airport, her mind flashing to Lucy as she passed the gate they might have met at.

  She replayed the thoughts she had had that night. Clearly Lucy had chosen not to meet and to not even share an explanation. If there had been any interest at all, she would have offered something. Maybe Lucy had a partner. Or maybe Dex’s gaydar was off and Lucy was straight. Though she didn’t think so. Or at least, she hoped not. Her mock chivalry had been adorable and was perhaps one of the things that had endeared her to Dex.