1998
7
Cheryl Detrick emerged wearily from the long gray tunnel into the arrivals hall of Los Angeles Airport. The metal attache case dragged at her arm and she had a dull nagging ache in the small of her back. Airline seats were fine for ergonomic dolls, rotten for human beings.
She skirted a group of black youths wearing red bandannas who were playing craps on the worn green carpet, walked determinedly past an old man offering his hat for change, and tried to make it to the door without being accosted. Express bus or cab? The trip to Chicago had been paid for by Scripps, so legitimately she could charge the cab fare, though she objected to the expense: They'd take it out of her lab allocation and she needed every cent.
Oh, what the hell. She was bushed and desperate for a shower. At 6:27 there would be a mad stampede for the bus.
She was almost there, groaning inside at the thought of stepping from the air-conditioned arrivals hall--crowded with weirdos and dropouts as it was--into the late-afternoon steambath, too busy to notice the tall gangling man with thinning cottony hair until he plucked at her sleeve with a bony hand.
"Hi, Sherry, it's me! Bet you're glad to see me. I checked your return flight and decided to meet you." Gordon Mudie beamed down at her. Though married with a couple of kids, Gordon never missed even a half-chance to hang around, ever hopeful. Especially now that she was fancy-free and unattached again.
Cheryl had one question. Had he come in the car? That was settled then. Lead on, Macduff.
Once they were cruising at fifty on Interstate 5 with the radio turned low, Cheryl kicked off her shoes and stretched out in the seat, eyes drowsily half-closed. She didn't feel like talking, but Gordon of course did.
"I said the usual things and they listened and then made the usual remarks and we shook hands. It was all very routine," Cheryl told him in a monotone.
"That isn't like you, Sherry."
"What isn't like me?" she said listlessly.
"You make it sound as if you don't care."
"I do care."
"Sure you do."
"I do. I just said so."
"It was only some goddamn government committee after all."
What was he trying to do? Insinuate himself into her life by showing concern? Gordon had been reading the teenage problem pages again. "How to Gain the Object of Your Desire by Identifying with Their Problems." But as usual with Gordon (why was that?) her irritation was tempered with contrition. After all, he'd saved her the cab fare and rescued her from a tortuous bus ride. She sighed and said, "Yes, the trip was worth it. But whether it'll do any good, I don't know. Gordon, would you mind stepping on it. I'd like to get home before midnight."
The car speeded up at once. Gordon was apologetic. "I was just taking it easy till we cleared the basin. Visibility's down to two hundred yards today. They've had to ground the police helicopters."
Cheryl looked out and noticed for the first time how bad it was, though no worse than normal for this time of year. Headlights on the other side of the freeway appeared like dim glowworms in the thick sulfurous gloom. At one time it had taken about thirty minutes to get clear of the city, whereas now it took the best part of an hour.
The Los Angeles Basin was the most notorious thermal inversion trap in the world. That meant that the warmer air was on top, at about two thousand feet, and the cooler air underneath, so there was no natural upward flow. Sunlight acted on the lethal outpourings of five million car exhausts combined with industrial pollution to produce photochemical smog. This was the "air" that basin residents had to breathe, containing carbon monoxide, aldehydes, ketones, alcohols, acids, ethers, benzpyrene, sulfur oxides, peroxacetyl nitrates, and alkyl nitrates.
No wonder one hundred thousand people every year were advised by their doctors to move out in order to avoid--or at any rate relieve-- bronchitis and emphysema.
The irony wasn't lost on Cheryl that while this earthbound problem got steadily and inexorably more critical, the government was spending thirty million dollars a day on military space systems--the manufacture of which, at NASA's Space Division in nearby El Segundo, added to the miasma they were plowing through.
It was a relief at last to see the pale golden light of the evening sky, pricked by a few faint early stars. The Carlsbad sign went by. On their right the Pacific was a flat dark mass in the deepening twilight. Gordon switched off the filtration unit and Cheryl wound the window down to breathe in relatively fresh cool air.
"I really admire you, Sherry," Gordon said, playing the same old tune. "You never stop battering at those doors."
"Thanks, Gordon."
"No, I mean it! Really I do. Your father's work is vitally important, crucial I'd say. I truly believe that."
"If the people in Washington, New York, and Chicago had your faith there'd be no problem. Well, there would be a problem," she qualified, "but at least we'd be pulling together and finding ways to overcome it." Why hadn't she said "solve it"? Because she didn't believe there was a solution?
"You get them to listen. That's got to be important," Gordon said seriously. He frowned through the windshield. "But action by just one country, one government, isn't enough; it's got to be a concerted effort."
"That's what I keep telling them," Cheryl said, watching the dark ocean. "With a really staggering and spectacular lack of success. I'm just one more eco-nut."
"There you go again! Stop running yourself down like that. You've got guts, that's something 1 really admire."
"You mean it isn't just my body after all?"
"Come on, Sherry, you're an intelligent woman. I've always had the greatest respect for you as a person." He glanced across at her. "Women with both looks and brains are pretty rare."
Time hadn't changed him one whit, Cheryl thought, not knowing whether to be annoyed or amused. Over the years he'd merely retrenched his position as male chauvinist pig first class. She decided she didn't mind. It was the same old Gordy and she felt safe with him; she knew precisely which keys to press to elicit the desired response.
"Gordon, dear, you say the nicest things to a girl."
But even such blatant mockery sailed past Gordon's head and vanished in the slipstream--as she was quick to realize when he reached for her hand and said soulfully, "You know damn well how I feel about you, Sherry. Always have, ever since we were on the Melville together. Remember?"
Cheryl extricated her hand from his heated grasp. "Yes, Gordon, vividly. But in those days we were single. With ro kids."
"You're single," he said, as if pointing out a salient fact that had somehow escaped her.
"Yes, I am. You're not."
"Would it make a difference if I weren't married?"
"I like you, Gordon, and I appreciate your driving all the way to the airport. But let's leave it on those terms, shall we? As friends?"
He stopped outside the single-story wooden house on Borrego Avenue that she had once shared with her father. Now she lived here alone, since Frank, her live-in lover, had departed for Colorado--possibly the reason why Gordon was showing such concern for her welfare.
He tried again before she could get out of the car, clumsily gripping her elbow and sliding his other arm around her shoulders in an awkward embrace. "I want us to be more than friends. You like me, don't you?"
"I think I just said so."
"You need someone. You're all alone. If only you'd let--"
"Leave it be, Gordon, please."
"Sherry, I'm crazy about you. You need me." His face was near hers, his bony fingers on her neck. "Come on, Sherry, you do, admit it." He touched her ample breast.
Cheryl had to quell a rising sickness. Her body felt weak and she couldn't find the strength. His groping became more intimate and anger came to her rescue.