G
ood-byes. They were getting harder all the time, Erin thought as she sped home, the tape of the crash lying in her lap. She had gone into Addison’s apartment for the last time and taken the tape that had preyed on her mind for so long. Then she’d simply walked away.
But she wouldn’t think about Addison now. Not when her life was on the verge of coming together. Not when everything was working out. She was flying again, and Mick was cleared.
Somehow, none of that mattered when Addison was fading from her life. But did he have a choice when people were dying because of substandard materials? When the country needed men like him to fight for their safety?
Almost defiantly, she pulled the tape out of its protective box and jammed it into her tape deck. Her neighborhood came into sight, but she kept driving. Night began to invade the car, lending an eerie quality to the cockpit static that came across the speakers.
And then came the sound of Mick’s voice, as if he were right there next to her.
She drove aimlessly as the tape played, listened and embraced the calm confidence in his voice, the idle conversation with the first officer who’d replaced her, and with the flight engineer. She smiled when he made a comment that if “Erin weren’t so hardheaded, that bump she took in the accident might have done some damage.”
She found herself driving down Biscayne Boulevard, and wondered how she’d wound up there. Still she drove aimlessly, listening to her friend, her captain, engaged in the business of flying a plane.
The car seemed to head toward the airport of its own accord as the tape played on. She heard the routine checklists being exchanged, weather reports gathered, transmissions to approach control. Her muscles tensed with
apprehension, and her heart twisted with misery as Mick got closer to the point where the tape would end.
Just before Mick began his descent, tears streamed down Erin’s face. “It’s a bolt, Mick,” she whispered aloud. “Just a stupid little bolt. You can’t even fix it.”
She heard the first officer calling out the descending altitudes, the mention of the plane being below the glide path, the frantic cry to “Pull up! Pull up!”
And when there was nothing else to be heard, Erin pulled her car off the highway and slumped over the steering wheel. She was suddenly weeping for the losses she’d encountered in the last few weeks; weeping for the losses yet to be encountered; weeping over the guilt for believing, like everyone else, that Mick had panicked.
When the worst of her misery was spent, she leaned her head back on her seat and looked out the window. The taillights of a commercial jet caught her eye, slowly making its way through the pitch-dark sky.
With the eye of her heart, she could almost see Mick in the cockpit, smiling down at her and offering her a thumbs-up.
It’s okay, Erin,
she could imagine him saying.
It’s okay.
A sob rose up in her throat as that feeling of forgiveness from him, and from herself, overwhelmed her. Silently, she returned the thumbs-up gesture. “Good-bye, Mick,” she whispered. “Take good care of him, Lord. I can’t wait to see him again.”
She dragged a Kleenex out of a box on the floorboard and
blew her nose, then wiped the tears from her face. Still looking up at the sky, she whispered, “What now, Lord? I thought I could see your plan forming. I thought it was all working out. That the crash had led me to Addison, and so there was some way that it all worked for good. I thought I saw your hand.”
She sobbed harder, her heart pleading with God for some sign that he heard her. “I know you’re still answering prayers, Lord,” she whispered. “You answered my prayers about Mick’s guilt. And you answered my prayers about my flying. Could you just answer this one, too? Could you work it all out, somehow, so that I don’t have to say good-bye to Addison?”
Silence filled the car, except for the quiet sound of her weeping. As peace descended over her, her tears slowed, and she wiped them away and blew her nose. She took in a deep, ragged breath and leaned her head back against the seat, watching the sky as that peace poured like warm honey through her. A shooting star arced across the sky, and she sat up straight, watching it disappear. God was listening. He had heard.
And she would trust him, whatever his will was in her life.
She started the car and waited for a space in the traffic.
That peace stayed with her as she pulled back into the flow of life again. She had managed to say good-bye to Mick once and for all. And she was leaving it up to God whether she had to say good-bye to Addison.
W
ithout actually making the decision to do so, Erin wound up at the airport. She went to the Southeast Terminal, to Frank Redlo’s office, and knocked on the casing to the open door.
“Come in,” he mumbled.
He didn’t look up until she’d come all the way inside, and he smiled. “I took a chance on your being here,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Frank checked his watch, saw how late it was, and rubbed his bald spot wearily. “Yeah, I’m still here. I was kind of waiting to see how the negotiations went. The bargaining committee is meeting with Zarkoff right now.”
“I know. Lois is on the committee. I thought I’d wait for her and see how it went myself. Meanwhile…”
“You wanted to come see if you could still have your job back,” he said smugly.
She nodded. “Exactly.”
Frank shifted in his chair and leaned his elbows on his desk. “The next time I tell you what’s best for you, you’ll listen to me, won’t you? Storming in here, telling me you want to quit…”
“I was confused, Frank. And I was terrified. I’m over it now.”
“Are you sure, Erin? To tell the truth, you don’t look so good.”
Erin realized that she must, indeed, look awful after all the tears she’d shed. But fear of it being too late for her career invaded her hopeful heart. “Didn’t Addison Lowe talk to you? He said he was coming here today—”
“He came,” Frank said, nodding. “Talked to Jackson, and the chief says it’s time to put you back on the schedule. Says you’ve been tearing up the airways with Jack Griffin’s Cessna.”
She tried to smile. “Yeah. I’m ready to go back to work, Frank.”
Genuine pleasure softened the otherwise harsh lines on his face. “I’ll put you back to work this week, Erin. It’ll take a while to work you into the schedule, but I want to hurry before we find ourselves with a strike on our hands. Otherwise it could be a long time before you fly again—that is, if you even have a job left. You need to get back to work before the strike, so you can prove to yourself and everybody else that you can do it. If you have to wait until the strike’s over, you might lose your courage again. Let me get to work on it, see where I can schedule you. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve gotten you in.”
She stood up. “Thanks, Frank. I really appreciate your standing behind me.”
He shrugged, embarrassment making him resume his gruff facade. “It was nothing. I just don’t take kindly to losing my pilots. I only hope I’m not about to lose the whole lot of them. I just might, if Zarkoff doesn’t ease up.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “If anybody can get Zarkoff to change his mind, Lois can. It’ll be all right.”
B
ut Erin’s faith had precarious footing in the bargaining room that evening. Zarkoff sat like a hostile king on his throne at the end of the table. He was nursing a cigar whose smoke wafted through the room like a toxic fog designed to keep his subjects in line.
But the “subjects” were anything but passive. The five on the bargaining committee sat rigidly in their seats, unwilling to let the intimidation of his apparent indifference sway them.
“The first thing we’d like to address,” Ray Carter began, “is the issue of pay cuts. Our pilots have accepted pay cuts in the past, but this amount is—”
“Non-negotiable,” Zarkoff said, tapping his cigar ashes out on a tray and ramming the stub back into his mouth.
Ray glanced up from his notes. “Pardon?”
“The pay cuts are non-negotiable. Let’s not waste time here. What’s the next gripe?”
Stunned faces looked at each other, and Lois leaned forward. “Mr. Zarkoff, you can’t be serious. That’s what we’re here for. To negotiate.”
Zarkoff yanked the cigar from his mouth and leaned forward on the table, his blistering gaze directed at Lois. “Look at me, honey. Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“But if you won’t even talk, what are we doing here?”
Zarkoff focused his piercing gaze on Ray Carter. “Was there anything else, Mr. Carter, or is your committee just going to sit here whining?”
Ray’s jaw took on the hardness of granite as he bit out his next words. “Perhaps we could come back to the issue of pay cuts in a while. Maybe you feel more comfortable right now talking about work conditions. We’re particularly concerned with the cuts in sick leave and the longer hours.”
“Non-negotiable,” Zarkoff said again.
Ray slumped back in his seat, a look that was a mixture of both warning and astonishment on his face. “Don’t do this, Mr. Zarkoff. You’ll regret it. I swear you will.”
“Oh?” Zarkoff asked, looking amused.
Lois jumped up, unwilling to let Ray lead them right into a strike. “Mr. Zarkoff, our members are getting angry. If you don’t give us a few concessions, this committee can’t be responsible for what they might do.”
“Are you people threatening me?” Zarkoff asked, amused.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Ray’s and Lois’s answers came simultaneously, but Ray shot her a scathing look that said, “Let me handle this.” Lois bit her tongue.
“Yes, Mr. Zarkoff,” Ray said. “We are threatening you. There’s a lot at stake here. To you, it’s just another takeover, a bigger profit. To us, it’s our livelihood.”
Zarkoff studied his cigar. “And what a livelihood it is,” he said. “Some of you people have earned a hundred eighty thousand a year.”
“That was a long time ago,” George Vanderwall piped in. “Since then, we’ve watched our pay be chiseled on until it’s almost half of what we used to make.”
“It’s difficult to get public sympathy when you’re still making a hundred grand, Mr. Vanderwall.”
“We don’t
all
make that much,” Lois argued. “Some of us make substantially less. The point is, when we came to work for this airline in good faith, years ago, we had certain salaries and built our lifestyles in accordance with those salaries. There’s no security anymore. If we take a twenty-five percent cut, those pilots who were once earning a hundred eighty thousand and are now down to a hundred thousand will only be making seventy-five thousand. They have mortgages, Mr. Zarkoff. College expenses for their children. Are you saying that they’re wrong to have counted on their salaries and expected their dedication to this company to at least be repaid with a little security?”
Zarkoff chuckled, the raspy sound chilling her blood. “My heart bleeds for you poverty-stricken souls,” he droned. “Well, I can see you people feel pretty strongly about this. If that’s the case, then I guess you’ll just have to do what you have to do.”
Ray Carter’s eyes flashed fire. Lois’s flashed alarm. “What are you saying, Mr. Zarkoff?”
“I’m just saying that if you people want to strike, nobody’s stopping you. That way you can make your little statement, and I can get on with running my airline.”
“It’s our airline, too,” Lois said. “Are you seriously willing to jeopardize the safety of the passengers by bringing in new trainees to fill our cockpits?”
Zarkoff’s grin was all satisfaction. “I have three hundred pilots completing training in Houston right now. They can be here in an afternoon, and we won’t have to cancel a single flight.”
“You lowdown—”
“Ray!” Lois stopped the words coming out of his mouth and willed her face not to reveal the rage she felt. “Mr. Zarkoff, don’t you have the slightest concern for the people who have given their lives to this airline?”
Zarkoff stood up, his bulky frame dominating the small room. A cloudy haze of smoke hung like a royal aura over his head. “My concern is in making this into a profitable company, and if you people don’t want to play the game, then there are hundreds of others who will. And I assure you, none of them will expect to start at a hundred grand or even seventy-five. It’s about time for a housecleaning, anyway. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the press is outside waiting for a statement. I’ll be sure to pass along how pleased I am with the way negotiations turned out.”
Lois and the other four committee members gaped at him in shocked silence while he gathered his things.
E
rin waited with several others outside the bargaining room, which was really the pilots’ lounge, for the meeting to break up. It was too early, she thought. They hadn’t been in there that long, and there was a multitude of problems to be hashed out. But Erin didn’t want to go home. She wanted to wait for her friend so she’d have Lois to confide in. She wanted to spill out her heart about Addison, to hear her friend’s no-nonsense advice, whatever it might be. So she waited.
The wait was not long. In moments the door opened. Zarkoff was the first one out, still wearing the Attila the Hun expression he had worn the first day she’d seen him. Others filed out with grim faces.
When everyone had left the room except for Lois, Erin went inside. Lois was still at the table, her head buried in her arms, and her papers scattered around her.
“Lois?” Erin asked.
Lois looked up, misery evident in every line of her face. “Oh, Erin. It was awful. We blew it.”
Erin sat down across from her roommate. “What happened?”
Lois leaned back and focused on the ceiling. “He wouldn’t budge. He said every issue we brought up was non-negotiable. Finally, when we were getting nowhere, and tempers were rising, he said that if we didn’t like it, we were certainly welcome to strike. He said he’d replace every last one of us before the day was over if we did. And Erin, I know he will.”
“That’s it? No bargaining? No discussion? No nothing?”
“No. We’re sunk, Erin. Those pilots are going to demand a strike, and we’re all going to lose our jobs. I can’t cross the picket line if I’m on the negotiating committee! And you…you haven’t even had the chance to fly yet since your suspension! What are we going to do?”
Erin propped her chin on her hand and shook her head balefully. “I don’t know, Lois. How long do you think we have?”
“Are you kidding? I expect a strike vote by tomorrow. The most time we have is two or three days. I don’t know how to make them understand that he
wants
us to strike.”
“Maybe it’s the principle of the thing,” Erin said. “Maybe they’re all willing to lose their jobs to keep from working under his conditions.”
“It sounds real idealistic,” Lois muttered. “But when those bills come due and their kids start needing shoes, let’s see whose principles are strongest then.”
“You’re going to fight it, then? Try to hold off the strike?”
“I can’t do that, Erin,” Lois said, defeated. “Not without some solution. What I have to do is find some other way. Some way to wake that man up.”
Erin felt exactly the same sentiment, but not about Zarkoff. What she needed was some way to get through to Addison, but she feared it was too late. He’d already cast her off. And she couldn’t talk to Lois about her problem now. Not when Lois’s own concerns were so immediate, so burdensome.
Both downhearted, the two women went home, feeling like they might each wake up the next day to a world collapsed or entirely changed. They only hoped that Madeline’s usually high spirits could inject some life into their own.