West of Nowhere (12 page)

Too much fun today, Joy thought. Since they had only twenty-five minutes to turn this plane around, she climbed up into the cargo hold instead of calling him out onto the tarmac.

“Look, Robbie. I don’t know what you and Freddie were playing today, but a wing-walker has one job, and that’s to see the plane in and out of the gate without clipping something. You can’t do that when you’re horsing around.”

By his look of astonishment, her scolding was unexpected. “Joy…we were just—”

“I don’t care what you were doing. I care what you
weren’t
doing. These planes cost millions of dollars and these passengers have better ways to spend their time than sit around and wait on us to fix a mess that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

She didn’t wait for a comeback, jumping out onto the tarmac to load the bags Robbie had already sent down the belt. When the other baggage handler arrived, she returned to the front of the plane to ready the tow bar for pushback.

Freddie worked under another crew chief at the next gate, and it was all she could do to hold back from reporting him. Even after a week, she was still smarting from learning about Thomas’s incident. Reports like that drew attention from upstairs, which meant her whole crew would be under heightened scrutiny by StarWest brass and airport authorities until they were satisfied she had a handle on discipline.

The ridiculous part was that she trusted Robbie to do his job, even as he joked around from time to time with his co-workers. Every single member of her crew was careful, efficient and dependable. They had all the discipline of the
TR
air wing.

The person she’d lost confidence in was Joy Shepard and it had nothing to do with her ground crew, or her job at StarWest for that matter. It was that her mind wandered all day long.

Amber Halliday was the one who couldn’t handle her job, no matter how many times Joy had tried to train her. It took daily reminders to get her to scoop up Skippy’s business in the yard, keep the kitchen clean and hang up her towels in the bathroom. If that weren’t enough, she’d bleached her father’s dark blue sheets and set another ice-cold drink on the credenza to leave a ruinous ring.

Taken together, the mishaps and jobs undone were so frustrating that she even wondered if Amber was intentionally trying to push her buttons. Joy didn’t want to think she’d do that, but she’d all but admitted to a history of intentionally riling her bosses. Her saving grace was that she seemed to genuinely like her father, and the feeling was clearly mutual. He’d taught her to play backgammon and she’d introduced him to a couple of her favorite soap operas. As silly as that was, at least they were diligent about the physical therapy and he was distracted from actions that might injure his shoulder.

Joy considered the irony that she’d just chewed out Robbie for not concentrating on his job, and here she was mired in thoughts of Amber. She needed to knock it off and focus.

And she needed to apologize to Robbie for coming down so hard.

* * *

Amber craned her neck to see the front bumper of the big sedan as it cleared the parking space. She wasn’t used to driving a vehicle this size, since Corey hardly ever let anyone else behind the wheel of his “baby,” a black and chrome Chevy Silverado.

She still had the schedule Gus Holley’s road manager had handed out. The band was working its way down the East Coast, playing in Baltimore tonight and Raleigh two nights later. They weren’t due in California until mid-November. Shep told her she ought to get tickets in the front row so she could hold up a sign telling Corey to kiss her ass.

After a week of worrying the whole time about getting fired, she was finally feeling comfortable and secure in her new job. If only she got along with Joy as well as she did with Shep. Shep didn’t nag her over trivial stuff the way Joy did. He actually treated her like a person instead of just the hired help, taking the time to tell stories about the navy and what Joy was like growing up, as well as asking about her life back in Kentucky and Nashville. Joy came into the house for a couple of hours around dinner, but then disappeared into her cave for the rest of the night. Practically the only time she said anything to her was to point out something Amber hadn’t done right.

This was Amber’s third trip out in Shep’s car. The other two had been for groceries and dog food, but this was a special errand to the sporting goods store to pick up the dumbbells and stretch bands Shep needed for his next phase of physical therapy.

She’d had no trouble finding the place, since it was on the opposite end of the shopping center from the Safeway where she went for groceries. The tricky part was getting out of the parking lot. She found herself in a Right Turn Only lane, knowing she needed to be going the other direction. A swarm of traffic kept her from getting over to where she could turn around, and before she knew it she was on a road called the Nimitz Freeway heading toward Oakland International Airport and San Jose.

“Crap!”

She wasn’t that far from home, because Joy said it took her only ten minutes to get home from the airport. But then the airport exit looped her all the way through baggage claim and back out to the freeway, where she had no idea which ramp to take to get back to the neighborhood.

When she saw the big arena in her rearview mirror—the one where Gus Holley would play in November—she realized she had guessed wrong. At the next exit, she asked a gas station owner to direct her toward the Safeway.

“Which one?”

“Alameda.”

He didn’t know about the Alameda Safeway but he got her back on the freeway in what she hoped was the right direction. An exit sign pointed her to Alameda, but when the exit forked, there was no indication as to which way she should turn. Nothing looked familiar, or even remotely like a residential area.

A horn blasted behind her and she inched forward, turning right because it seemed the less seedy of the two. She’d gone only a few yards when the car began to sputter. It was the first time all day she’d noticed the gas gauge. It was on WWPE, as Molly used to say—way, way past empty.

There wasn’t a gas station in sight, only industrial buildings and warehouses covered with graffiti. Cars were parked on both sides of the street but the only way to get to any of the buildings was through gates that were locked.

It was no use to call Shep. Even if he could help her find her way home, she couldn’t get there without gas, and there was nothing he could do about that.

She got out and waved down a passing car, two men who appeared to be Mexican and didn’t speak English.

She dreaded calling Joy, but she was out of options.

“Is everything okay?” Joy asked, her voice anxious.

“Yes.” Except it wasn’t. “No, not really. Your pop’s fine, but I went to pick up some stuff he needed for his exercises and now I’m lost…and out of gas.”

Amber could practically hear her seething as she went through a series of questions to determine where she was. Then Joy gave explicit directions to what she thought was the nearest gas station—about half a mile away.

That’s when Amber let the other shoe drop. “I don’t think I can walk that far. I was just going out on this one little errand and I…I didn’t wear any shoes.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes!” Joy sighed heavily and went stone quiet for several seconds. “Just stay where you are. I have to find somebody to cover for me.”

Amber had no choice. It could be twenty minutes or two hours, but one thing was certain—Joy would be hopping mad when she got there.

* * *

Joy trudged through the back door, later than usual because she’d stayed to help Punch with his lost baggage logs. That was her payback for him giving up his lunch break to supervise her crew while she ran out to deliver a gallon of gas to Amber. What kind of idiot drove past a half dozen gas stations on her way to running out of gas? Apparently, it was the same kind who went to the store without shoes.

Amber was in her room with the door closed. That was the safest place for everyone concerned, Joy thought. She’d been so angry when she got to the car that she spoke only to give Amber directions home—left at High Street all the way to Garfield. A blind mouse could find it.

“Heard you had a little adventure,” her father said, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“It wasn’t funny. My whole crew’s under the microscope and instead of being there to supervise them, I have to play babysitter to somebody who wouldn’t even have enough sense to come in out of the rain.”

Joy shuddered to realize her father, his eyes wide and his forehead wrinkled, was looking past her in the direction of Amber’s door. Sure enough, footsteps crossed the room behind her into the kitchen, and she turned to see Amber rinse a glass and put it in the dishwasher.

Exasperated, Joy stalked out to the back deck, where she planted both hands on the rail and drew a deep breath. An apology was in order, but it would only be for saying something insensitive, not for thinking it. Amber would see through it, and it would probably make matters worse.

She’d already wasted enough time today worrying about Amber. There was no amount of instructing, demonstrating or reminding that could train someone to do even the most basic of tasks when she was just too lazy or careless to follow through.

Joy wanted to like her. Clearly her pop did, and he had to find her ineptitude just as annoying as she did. That probably meant it was up to Joy to change her attitude, not Amber to change her behavior.

Not yet ready to go back inside and apologize, Joy went into the camper and changed from her work clothes to gray sweatpants and a black tank top. A good workout at the gym was just what she needed to dump her frustration. She left through the back gate, yelling to no one in particular that she’d pick up dinner…something that wouldn’t dirty any more dishes.

* * *

Amber leaned against the bathroom door, staring up at the towel she’d thrown over the shower rod this morning. There was only one bar in the tiny bathroom and that was for a hand towel she shared with Joy, so it wasn’t as if she had any choice but to hang it up there. That said, it was dry now so she took it down and folded it along with her washcloth.

Back in the bedroom, she cleared a drawer in the bureau for all her bathroom items, and neatly lined them up. Next she returned to the kitchen and wiped down all the counters and swept the floor. Then she carried out the trash, making a special effort to police the yard for anything Skippy might have left.

“Hey, kid. Come in here and sit down a minute,” Shep said. He muted the TV, picked up one of the dumbbells and began a series of slow bicep curls with his injured arm.

Forgoing her usual seat on the couch, Amber dragged a stool beside Shep’s recliner so she could support his arm like the therapist had shown her as he raised the weight.

“Joy’s dealing with some trouble at work right now. One of her crew had an accident while she was gone and they wrote him up. That’s a pretty big deal in her line of work, and she feels responsible because it was her guy. That’s what’s under her skin right now, not you.”

“Do you really believe all that bullshit that comes out of your mouth?”

Shep laughed and, with his good hand, tousled her hair until it came loose and fell from its tie all around her face. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “You’re only part of the problem, and right now she’s off somewhere feeling bad about what she said. I know her. She’s gone to take it out on a bunch of weight machines, and by the time she gets back, it’ll all be over.”

Until next time, Amber thought. She had only herself to blame. Joy had made it clear from the first day they met that she was a perfectionist, and while Amber had sort of tried to keep the house and yard neat, she hadn’t tried hard enough. It was always clear her primary job was taking care of Shep, and she focused on that while sloughing off the rest. That was how she operated in every job—doing the very least that would get her by.

“No, she’s right, Shep. If I’d done what she asked me to do, she wouldn’t have gotten so pissed over what happened today. I don’t blame her. She gave me a chance and I let her down. All that’s going to change…starting right now.”

* * *

Sweat-soaked and rank from her workout, Joy entered through the back door and deposited chicken, potato salad, coleslaw and biscuits on the pristine counter. Her father was watching TV with Skippy in his lap, and she could hear the water running back in his bathroom.

“Dinner’s here. I’m going to grab a shower. You and Amber go ahead and start without me if you’re hungry.”

She collected fresh clothes and toiletries from the camper, and returned to find the bathroom scrubbed from top to bottom, and Amber’s personal items gone. A toothbrush hanging in the caddy was the only sign she hadn’t packed up to move.

Joy wasn’t unhappy at all to find the bathroom clean for a change, but she regretted how it had come about. She never meant for Amber to feel like a house slave.

When she emerged, two places were set at the table—hers and her father’s. Amber’s bedroom door was closed.

“What’s going on, Pop?”

“Looks like somebody’s trying not to poke the bear.”

She’d hoped to sweep the day’s events under the rug just by being polite and upbeat at dinner, but apparently it would take a full-fledged apology to mend this fence. After a few seconds of dancing from one foot to the other outside Amber’s door, she knocked and waited for a response.

“Hey…I got enough chicken for everybody. Come on and join us.”

Amber was on her bed with a magazine, and her room was as clean and neat as the rest of the house. “Thanks, but I thought I’d give your pop a break. He has to put up with me all day.”

A full-fledged apology. “Amber, I’m really sorry. I could make excuses about having a lousy day, but that wouldn’t make what I said okay. It was rude…and it was wrong.”

“I don’t know, Joy. It’s true I’ve been caught standing out in the rain before.”

Joy laughed softly, grateful to get a lighthearted response, but still unsure if her apology was accepted. “I bet if you asked around among my navy buddies, you’d probably find out I have too.”