Star Dust (7 page)

“Start with this one,” Roberta said, picking up the first paper from the stack. “Locate the flights in the schedules, write them down on some scratch paper, and then find me. If everything is right, I’ll show you how to call.”

“Seems easy enough.”

Almost immediately, Anne-Marie wanted to revise her pronouncement. Nothing about this was easy. There were about five hundred ways to get from Houston to Istanbul, and none of them made any sense with the other items in the couple’s itinerary. Maybe they could drive up to Dallas instead. Anne-Marie could put together some notes on the best restaurants.

She glanced around. There must be ten people working for Mr. Chambers. Whatever Roberta might have said, Anne-Marie was confident they could all do this. So she could do it too.

At the bottom of the stack of books, she found a volume with explanatory notes and tables. Once she’d figure out how the columns were organized and the airport codes, she finally located the correct pages for the departures and then for the arrivals.

Within a few minutes, she had a series of flights that seemed to work. Newly humble, she crossed to Roberta. “Is this all right?”

Roberta inspected the notes and then looked up. “It’ll do.” She didn’t even try to keep the shock out of her voice.

Anne-Marie wanted to crow, but she swallowed the impulse. It wouldn’t help. Not really. All she said was, “Oh. Good.”

“Let’s call TWA.”

Once the call was half over, they were put on hold. “You should start with the next one while you’re waiting,” Roberta instructed.

Anne-Marie took the next page from the stack and shuffled through the rate books, trying to find the right one. “How long does each reservation take?”

“Once you get the hang of it”—Anne-Marie doubted that would ever be the case—“about forty-five minutes.”

Anne-Marie hadn’t taken much math since high school. The two years’ worth of home economics classes she’d taken at UT before leaving to marry Doug hadn’t included anything but the numbers used in cooking. But despite her deficiencies, forty-five times all those papers… was a big number.

For the rest of the morning, Roberta checked her work, for which Anne-Marie was grateful. The other woman might not want her there, but Anne-Marie would rather not make a mistake.

The morning passed quickly. After a nice, albeit quick, lunch with Mr. Chambers—who insisted on calling her Annie and suggested that things with Doug might still blow over—she tackled more of the stack.

She wasn’t sure how many weeks of reservations it represented, but she might not ever catch up, particularly not when people kept bringing more of them over to her.

Maybe it was a hazing. Maybe when she finished the last one, they’d induct her into the team.

Mr. Chambers came to usher everyone out just before five—so much for the idea of getting home early—and Roberta said begrudgingly, “Good job. You’re getting the hang of it.”

“I’m grateful. You’ve been so helpful.” Only one of those things was true.

She trudged out to her car. She’d never wanted a job. At school, she’d met women who did seem to envy their boyfriends. Bookish women who liked to talk about anthropology and who burned their cakes. Anne-Marie had been in awe of them even as she’d known she wasn’t one of them.

It made the current situation a tad funny. She was working. Outside the home. For money. And once she got the people at work to see that she wanted to be good at it, she wouldn’t even be sorry. It was one more important step toward independence. And for that, she’d put up with Roberta’s attitude.

When she pulled into the drive, her appreciation and gratitude burned up. For there in the front yard stood her mother, her children, her next-door neighbor, and his dog.

“Hey, Mom,” Anne-Marie said as she climbed out of her car. Gosh, she sounded even more weary than she felt.

“Honey! You neglected to tell me who your neighbor
is
.”

Anne-Marie had left that out purposefully. She’d hoped to omit it forever. Maybe he’d just take the partying and the blondes and the big blue eyes and the stargazing and the propositions somewhere else. Maybe she’d never have to tell them about his day job—

“Did you know he’s an astronaut?” Freddie demanded, all earnest shock and admiration. “Did you know that he held the highest altitude record in 1957? That he flew thirty-nine combat missions in Korea?”

Did he also mention that he’s a cad
? But all the frustration she felt evaporated when confronted with her son’s brown eyes. “Fancy that.” She pulled the boy in for a hug. Over his head, she said, “Good evening, Commander Campbell.”

“We’ve been over this, and I’m starting to get a touch offended. It’s Kit.”

His voice scratched in the right places and rubbed in the rest. As if he hadn’t been annoyingly kind and then made a pass. As if he hadn’t been a bother as she’d unpacked for a week.

“He’s going to go into space,” Lisa said, helpfully breaking into the moment.

“I didn’t say that.” Kit shook his head. “I’m the back-up for the guy who’s going to go into space.”

And how he must hate that. She smiled at the thought.

Freddie broke the hug and turned around. “But the next one, the next mission, that’s when you’ll go right? Tell me about the rocket. Is it true what I read about the modifications to the control panel?”

She glared at the back of her son’s head. “Where were you reading about the control panel?”

“In
Boy’s Life
. But is it true?”

“Well, you know, I didn’t read that article,” Kit said. Unease held his smile tight, a pause stretching as if he were searching for the next thing to say. “How about you tell me about it?”

Freddie launched into a breathless summary, with Lisa assisting with revisions now and again. Clearly she’d read the piece too. Anne-Marie watched the recitation skeptically. Kit nodded along, his smile sticking, although he didn’t look quite easy. At least not as easy as he had when he was teasing her the other day.
 

“How was work?” her mother asked eventually, proving that even when it came to impressing the astronaut next door, there were limits to how much technical talk she could abide.

“Oh, fine.”

“Where do you work?” Kit asked.

She looked up, feeling her cheeks heat. Something about him knowing, and wanting to know more, made feel self-conscious. “Uh, Lakeview Travel.”

“You’re a travel agent?”

“Well, I am now.”

She needed a little more practice talking about work. His question was a perfectly reasonable one, and somehow it brought out the worst in her. Which fit: pretty much everything about him brought out the worst in her. Though that bit might be mutual—she hoped he at least felt guilty realizing he’d hit on a woman with children.

“She’s decided to go to work since… you know,” her mother tacked on. The divorce was still incomprehensible to her mother. In the eighteen months since Anne-Marie had thrown Doug out, she hadn’t heard her mother use the d-word more than three times.

Anne-Marie rubbed her brow, half to soothe the headache that was beginning to boil there and half to hide her face from Kit. “Yes. Well. Let’s say goodnight to the astronaut, kids. You can talk to him about the control panel later on.”

“But we haven’t thrown the ball for Bucky!” Lisa whined.

She looked down at the dog, who’d wandered over and lolled at her feet halfway through the control panel discussion.

At the sound of his name, Bucky lifted his head. His tongue sprawled out and trailed on the ground.

And the children wanted one.

“Um, tomorrow maybe.”

“It’ll have to be later this week, kids,” Kit said. Was that relief? “Tomorrow I’m off for the Cape.”

“That’s in Florida,” her mother said.

“I know that.” Anne-Marie was a travel agent, after all. She had a handle on geography. “I hope you have a good trip.” At least this meant she’d be spared him, and his voice and late-night conversation and his come-ons, for a few days. Maybe when he returned, she’d have figured out how to keep him in the detached, neighborly box in which he belonged.

“What about Bucky?” Freddie asked.

“My friend Carruthers is going to watch him.”

Oh good. For once Kit was helping her out.

“The astronaut Carruthers?” Lisa asked.

Freddie said, “He’s a great pilot.”

“Does he live near here, too?” her mother asked. “This neighborhood truly is splendid.”

It was as if her family had never met men who wanted to strap themselves to big rockets and fly out of the atmosphere before.

Kit took all of this in stride. It probably happened to him all the time. “Yeah. He’s over on Harbor Wind.”

“Does he need any help with Bucky, do you think?” Freddie said. “‘Cause we could walk him.”

“I’m sure he’d like that.”

No. One astronaut was enough. More than enough. “Commander. That is, Kit?”

Despite the noise and the questions and all the people vying for his attention, when she said his name, he snapped up and looked right at her. “Ma’am?”

She wet her lips with her tongue, needing a moment to work up to it even though she’d already decided to ask. “If Carruthers could be persuaded… I, that is we, would be honored to watch Bucky.”

“Oh, Mom! Really? Can we?”

“Yes!”

“Anne-Marie, are you sure?”

Again with their Greek chorus bit. Anne-Marie raked a hand through her hair, messing it up, but who cared? She was losing her grip on reality—a few flat curls were the least of her problems.

“If Commander Campbell says it’s okay,” she ground out.

“I’d appreciate that.” He offered it with a smile she could feel as much as see. A smile she didn’t want to return, but she knew that she did.

The taste of it was stale, however. Kit might be—was, in fact—good at it. The charm. The convivial, public persona. But Doug had been, too. On a lesser scale, of course. In a minor key. But she’d seen that film, and once was enough. The kids might like him, and they might covet his dog, but she was keeping this friendly and remote. She was just going to watch his dog. She didn’t want to encourage his… inappropriate propositions, even if—especially if—they made her body tingle.

“All right then. I’m going to go make something to eat. Freddie, if it’s a good time, why don’t you head over to the Commander’s house and see what…” She looked down. Bucky was snoring loudly against her shoe. “… what the dog needs for a few days. Take some notes. And be home in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, Mom. I will. Absolutely. An astronaut’s house!”

Imagine that.

The capsule hit the water with a mighty splash, the great hand of inertia shoving Kit hard into his restraints before throwing him back into the chair. He took a few deep breaths, waiting for his brain to stop jiggling as the capsule bobbed in the waves.

“Reentry complete,” he said for the benefit of those listening on the radio.

It wasn’t really a reentry—Kit and the capsule hadn’t been orbiting the earth. Rather, the capsule had been dropped from a helicopter so he could drill on egress procedures.

Drilling, drilling, and more drilling. He hadn’t drilled this much even as a midshipman at Annapolis.

He disengaged the tubing attached to him, then freed his head from the helmet, finally stripping off the awkward gloves.

“Give me a few minutes to finish up my notes,” he said to the waiting helicopter pilot. The notes weren’t absolutely necessary; it was all part of trying to make it as real as possible. But Parsons never met a bit of data he wanted to leave behind, so Kit took readings, wrote his own impressions of the landing, and went through the dreaded checklist. God, he wished he had his Juicy Fruit. But no gum chewing was allowed.

He made one last notation, opened his mouth to tell the chopper pilot he was ready—

A loud thud rattled the capsule, followed by the
glug
and
whoosh
of water pouring into something.

Fuck me.

The hatch had blown. Much too early. He was supposed to blow the hatch manually, but only after the helicopter had secured the cable to the capsule. But whatever explosives Parson and his crew had put on the bolts had blown without him triggering it.

And that rushing gurgling? The waters of the Atlantic Ocean filling the capsule.

In the half second before his training kicked in, his mind brought forth the image of Anne-Marie’s hand clenched tight around the pocketknife, her injured finger starkly white. The snap in her voice as she’d said,
But can you fit me in?

Now what the hell made him think of that?

Then his mind became nothing but one sustained instinct—release this, disconnect that, grab that other. All the while, tickling at the very back of his skull, was the continuing rush of the sea, pouring into the capsule, pushing it down under the waves by inches.

With a scramble and a push, he was out.
 

The helicopter hovered above him, the blades chopping out a chest-drumming rhythm. He swam from the capsule, wanting to get away from the rotor wash and not be pulled down with the capsule in case it sunk. The chopper stayed with the capsule, the crew trying to snare it for recovery.