“Think again, Co-pilot.”
I hadn’t spotted Tominbang as a deuce, but, then, I often fail to detect them. It made all the sense in the world, though. Who else would have come up with the idea of a flight to the Moon as a solution to a financial problem?
Sure enough, spotting us, Tominbang broke away from the fluid horde. “Greetings, crew mates!” He was smiling so broadly that he seemed deranged, an unfortunate image. Certainly he was, now that I had been alerted to it, clearly a deuce. “We are really rolling now!”
Paralyzed by the troubling sight of Tominbang’s smile, I could not respond. Fortunately, Dearborn was more resilient. “Where the hell did all these people come from, T?”
“I have been hiring them in Los Angeles for the past three weeks. Today was the day they were to report.”
I finally found my voice. “What are they supposed to be doing?”
Tominbang was like a car salesman showing off the features of a new model Buick. “That group,” he said, indicating a group of five examining the undercarriage of Quicksilver, “will perform mechanical modifications to the exterior of the vehicle.”
“Landing gear,” Dearborn added, helpfully. Obviously he had had more extensive conversations with Tominbang than I.
A smaller clump was busy looking into the open cockpit. “That team will modify the life support systems, and also the space suits.” I hadn’t thought about space suits. Obviously we couldn’t walk on the Moon in our street clothes!
There were other groups in discussion-legal, security and public relations, Tominbang said. I gave those issues zero thought at that time.
The smallest group-a pair of jokers, one an honest-to-God human-sized cockroach, the other apparently related, since he looked like a giant bee-stood nearby, watching us with what I took to be unnecessary interest. “And what do they want?”
“Ah,” Tominbang said, as Dearborn chuckled, “our trajectory team. These are specialists from Cal Tech who will program the maneuvers Commander Dearborn will make with the Quicksilver.”
“The nav system is primitive, but workable. Propulsion is the big question mark.”
“I thought propulsion was my responsibility,” I said, foolishly.
“Absolutely!” Tominbang said. “These two are your instructors!”
I have never done well in school. I have done spectacularly poorly with nat tutors. I could not imagine myself working happily with teachers who were jokers.
Before I could protest, however, Dearborn slapped me on the back. “You better get started, Co-pilot. We launch in sixty days.”
Before that day was out, I was introduced to Bacchus, the bee-like joker, who claimed to have been a professor at Cal Tech in an earlier life. The roach was named Kafka, and he made sure I knew he had no degrees of any kind. “I’m just a homegrown genius,” he said, without a trace of humility.
Bacchus took the lead in my education, hissing and wheezing his way through my first my first lessons in astro-navigation, making it clear that I, who could barely find the North Pole in the night sky, would need to learn the locations of twenty “guide” stars. (Navigation and propulsion-which is to say, my lifting-were linked, since the lifts had to occur at precise locations in space.)
It just got worse from that point on.
The only bright spot in that first two weeks was that I was able to keep Dearborn away from Eva-Lynne. Well, it was not so much a deliberate action on my part as deliberate inaction. Even though I hated being locked in a room with Bacchus and Kafka I began to prolong my lessons as late as I dared, and within the first week Dearborn was so frustrated that he went to Tominbang and said he needed a car of his own.
Tominbang obtained a 1959 Cadillac convertible with fins more suited to an airliner. It was painted pink. Dearborn, ever practical and obviously secure in his image, took it happily. He even went so far as to apologize to me. “Sorry, Co-pilot, but for the next few weeks, I’m flying solo. You’ve won your wings.” Sure enough, I saw less and less of him at my apartment, though he did actually make it home every night-sober. Now all I had to do was be sure to arrive at Haugen’s by six-thirty every morning, and linger there until I saw Dearborn ’s pink beast flash past.
While the extra time spent at the bakery caused me to gain weight (I was now averaging two pieces of Danish per morning), it also allowed me to approach Eva-Lynne.
It was slow going; she had to work the counter, and she was, it seemed, immensely popular. But over the course of a week I learned the following: she was 24. She lived with a cousin in Rosamond, the tiny community to the south of Mojave, at the entrance to Tomlin. Her favorite musician was not, as I had feared, one of the Monkees or possibly Simon and/or Garfunkel, but “all those Motown singers”.
And, a big surprise, she was not a refugee from a bad experience in Hollywood. She had, in fact, never been to Hollywood, and didn’t know if she wanted to go. “Everybody keeps asking me about it, so maybe I should.”
While she was beautiful enough to compete in that brutal environment, I could not, in good conscience, advise her to try. “You’re the only reason people come to Mojave.”
“Stop!” she said, blushing with what I hoped was pleasure.
What I didn’t learn was whether or not she would go out with me. Part of it was due to my own inability to utter an invitation. The sheer amount of foot traffic also made such a delicate conversation difficult.
It was on a Friday morning in early June, however, less than three weeks after Mr. Tominbang first approached me, that I felt I had my opening. I had arrived, as usual, at six-twenty, only to find Eva-Lynne with her eyes red-rimmed. I immediately asked if she was all right, but got no answer, because Fran was already yelling at her, a more frequent occurrence. “Hey, beauty queen, get your ass over here!”
I got my coffee and Danish and sat down at one of the small tables by the window, and witnessed no further outbursts. Imagine my surprise when, during a quiet moment, Eva-Lynne suddenly sat down with me. “Cash, do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Only if I can ask you one in return. The words appeared in my brain, but stayed there, stuck amidst the numbers. “Sure,” I said, pathetically.
“This new job you got-could they use a secretary or something? A girl to answer the phones, maybe?”
I had no idea of Tominbang’s staffing requirements. But at that moment, in a fit of arrogance, I decided I would pay Eva-Lynne’s salary, if necessary. He was paying me enough. “We sure do,” I heard myself say. “It’s only a temporary job, though.”
“Anything to get me out of here now.”
“What time do you get off work?” I was able to ask her a question like that as long as the next phrase had nothing to do with a date.
“Two.”
“Can you get a ride to the airport in Tehachapi?”
She got a look on her face that suggested a hidden power, one having more ancient roots than the wild card. “That won’t be a problem.”