“Not likely,” he says. “I work in the air traffic-control tower.”
“You do?” She feels embarrassed; she had assumed he was just a passenger, not a working person. “What’s that like? I heard that leads to heart attacks.”
“Only if you let the planes run into each other. We try to discourage that.”
“But how can you keep your eyes on everything at once? I think I’d be terrible at that job. I kind of freak out if the telephone and the doorbell both ring at the same time.”
“We have radarscopes. You should come up to the control room sometime and see. Ask for Steven Kant.”
She slows down to force a tailgater to pass. The windshield wipers are beating across the glass like a hypnotist’s watch, instructing her to feel very, very sleepy. Taylor tries not to think about Turtle sitting in Mrs. Chin’s dark apartment with no one to talk to, bearing mute witness to the flickering TV
while Mrs. Chin’s sewing machine plods through gaudy layers of satin. It would make Turtle’s day if she could go see an air traffic control center. “Okay, I’ll do that,” Taylor says.
“Well, great.”
The wide freeway is full of cars but empty of interest, merely blank and wet, the place where everyone on earth has surely been before. The air traffic controller doesn’t seem to have anything more to say, which is too bad. In Taylor’s opinion Steven Kant is probably the most upbeat passenger is the history of the Handi-Van corporation, and he’s handsome, besides. “I’m Taylor, by the way,” she tells him. “I don’t usually drive this route. I guess you know that.”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t usually go this route, either. My MG is in the shop.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“I don’t mind the limo service once in a while.” He catches her eye in the rearview mirror and smiles. “The service is friendly.”
“Only the best. You just sit back there, sir, and pour yourself a glass of champagne.”
“In my line of work they kind of frown on people showing up tipsy. But I’ll take a rain check.”
She looks in the mirror again, wondering if this is an invit-ation of some kind. She decides it is, but he’s made it so gently that if she overlooks it neither one of them will feel bad. She supposes living in a wheelchair might train you in that kind of skill.
“You really drive an MG?”
“Yep. Convertible. Canary yellow, with wire wheels and hand, controls and a very sporty wheelchair rack on the back.”
“You got headers on that thing?”
“You bet. Headers and a glass pack.”
“Whew. I’ll bet she purrs.”
“You know a lot about sports cars.”
Taylor smiles. “Not a thing, really. I just used to sell them, a piece at a time.”
Steven Kant laughs. “Sounds like a life of crime.”
“No, nothing so profitable. A car-parts store.” Taylor finds she can hardly remember working at Mattie’s. She can picture herself in the store, joking with the men, among all those organized metal pieces of dream. But that saucy salesgirl seems to Taylor now like a confident older sister, rather than herself. Someone with her life well in hand.
“How about when your MG’s fixed you can drive me someplace,” she says. “Not to work, though. My other job is at the world’s most hideous shopping mall.”
“Okay. How about the locks?”
“The locks?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you seen them before?”
“I’ve got about seven on my front door.”
He laughs. “The locks between the sound and the lake, where the boats pass through. Really, you’ve never been there?”
“I’m new in town, sailor.”
“Well, okay then, I’m going to show you the locks. And afterward I’ll take you out for the freshest salmon of your life. What do you think, next Saturday?”
Taylor’s stomach flips upstream when it hears about the salmon. Freshness is not the issue, either; right now she wouldn’t be above taking home a salmon if she found one dead in the road. She’s so tired of peanut butter she has stopped acting for Turtle’s benefit like she cares about the murdered peanuts.
“Saturday would be good,” she says, after pretending to think about it. “Only, I’m going to have to tell you right up front, I have a little girl that would love to come too. No husband or anything, but a kid. Would that be okay?”
“Two dates for the price of one,” he says. “That’s even better.”