The months passed in a flurry of activity. Al scarcely had time to think, so busy was he with training and team building and socializing. When duty requirements let them go early enough to do so the astronauts would get together for drinks or an evening at the ballpark or some night fishing. Wives were generally not included in these expeditions, but that was fine, because Elsa probably wouldn't have been interested anyway.
As both of their schedules accelerated in anticipation of December's launch, they saw less and less of each other. When he had leave, she was working. When she was off, he was on duty. On the rare occasions when they were home at the same time they were too distracted or too strained or too played out to engage in more than the rudiments of conversation. Al did not want to admit it, but his stamina was not what it once had been. He tired with embarrassing ease, and the more weary he became, the harder he had to focus to keep from lapsing into old patterns—and to save himself the humiliation of being caught in such regression. One night at a burger joint up the coast he had actually started rolling French fries into the cuff of his shirt. Clem Jacobs had caught him in the act and taken it at face value: Commander Calavicci clowning around again. Al, however, could not so easily forget the slip. Even now, ten weeks after the fact, his cheeks burned with a bewildered shame when he thought of it. He hadn't tried to hoard food since his eighth or ninth month Stateside.
Despite such incidents he was happier now than he could remember being in the better part of a decade. His work was fulfilling and fascination. He had a definite goal in view, and nothing could have been loftier. He was respected, valued and appreciated. Both his boys and the support crew were daily becoming more like real buddies and less like hostile competitors. The press still hounded him with unreasonable questions about his years of captivity and ridiculous allegations about Elsa's political allegiance, but Yardley was always ready to palm him a fresh battery of rebuttals when needed.
September rolled around, and NASA began to step up the pre-mission publicity. For the first time since Apollo 12 there was actually a market for it. The astronauts started coming out more often for press conferences and radio spots. Al made appearances on each major television network, explaining the mechanics of space flight in oversimplified layman's terms. Whenever possible the men ant their families were cast in the most appealing light possible. Newly six-year-old Daphne Jacobs was billed in papers across the country as the Shirley Temple of the space program, and precocious little Jeremy Taggert was well on his way to becoming the most photographed baby in America.
What was weird was that although candids of the kids with their fathers abounded, the staged photo shoots always featured Al. A picture of the mission commander in a white flight suit, sitting meekly as Daphne, clad in a miniature lab coat and a stethoscope, pressed a depressor paddle to his tongue and peered critically down his throat graced the cover of Life. Not to be outdone, Time ran a genuinely muckraking account of Al's ignominious childhood the very next week. The cover shot came from a spacesuit session, and showed Commander Calavicci with his helmet in one arm, and a laughing Jeremy in the other. If this bothered Jim and Clem, they gave no sign of it.
The one star in the sky that was off-kilter was his sex life. It was still nonexistent. He and Elsa might as well have been strangers for all the affection that passed between them. This was getting to be a burden. Though he tried to control it, the lack of passion was making Al testy as hell. There were men out there cut out for celibacy, but Albert Calavicci just wasn't one of them.
Not that he would cheat on her. That just wasn't nice. But it was harder not to look at other women when you weren't getting any at home.
Nevertheless, though he might not be sleeping with her, he had to get her something stellar for their first anniversary. So it was that he was zipping along the freeway into Orlando, bound for her favorite gaudy jeweller's to buy her a ruby necklace.
It was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now. The day had been a long, difficult one spent in the LEMS—which in spite of a year of therapy that was delivering what it promised on most fronts was still ineffably constrictive. Al had spent most of his time keeping Jim on track and compensating for the lieutenant's exhausted errors. Jeremy had colic, and his parents hadn't slept for a week. Now Al was taxed, tired and sore, stiff from fighting the harness to flip switches on Jim's side of the module. All he wanted to do was head back to the house for a hot bath and fall into bed, but today was his wedding anniversary, and he couldn't return home without a gift and flowers for his tanned, taloned and painted wife.
He was lost in such thoughts, and so did not see the car trying to merge without a shoulder-check. There was a shudder that shook the Ferrari, and a sound of metal grating on metal as the sides of the two vehicles grated against one another. Al tensed, making a conscious effort not to swerve into the lane to his left as the old brown station wagon fell back behind him. Anger welling up into his throat, he pulled over onto the shoulder and watched in his rear-view mirror as the offending vehicle did the same thing. The driver bent over the wheel, her face in her hands and her blonde hair spilling in every direction.
Al rolled his eyes. God damn it.
He got out of the car, taking a deep breath and trying to quell the urge to ball the stupid woman out. He rounded the corner to check out the damage. Thick scratches ran the length of his bodywork, there was a deep dent in the front fender, and the mirror was flattened against the window, its glass shattered.
He approached the other vehicle. The door opened, and the woman got out. She was trembling so violently that he could actually see her knees quivering in their grubby blue jeans. She was swimming in a grease-stained sweatshirt that she scrubbed at anxiously.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" she wailed, closing the door and clutching at her mouth.
"What the hell—" Al froze as she raised frightened, tearful eyes to meet his. "Ana Fefner?" he gasped.
"O-o-o-o-oh!" she wailed. Then suddenly he had his arms around her and she was sobbing on his shoulder, clutching the front of his uniform. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
He patted her back consolingly. "It's okay, it's just a scratch. Are you all right?"
She glanced at the scraped and dented side of her vehicle and started to cry again. Al rocked her back and forth, until abruptly he realized that there were three pale, frightened little faces staring at him through the windows of the station wagon.
"Your kids?" he asked. Ana whirled in his arms and stared at them. She nodded frantically, and Al drew her back, smoothing her matted hair away from her bruised face.
Her bruised face?
"Ana? Are you okay?" he asked, and now he didn't mean had she been hurt in the collision.
She shook her head. "I don't know what to do!" she sobbed. "I've got nowhere to go—oh, what am I going to do? My poor kids…"
Al opened the driver's door and eased Ana down onto the seat, crouching in front of her to get a better look at the ugly purple marks. It looked like someone had punched her, once in the jaw and once on the cheekbone. He brushed away her tears with his thumb as a van thundered past behind him.
"Ana, who hit you?" he asked, stroking one bruise.
She sobbed a little.
"Wayne did!" a little voice piped up. A boy of perhaps four years poked his head between the front headrests. "Wayne hit Mommy!"
"Shh, Elmer, be quiet!" the little girl scolded. She was seven or eight, and her clothes looked rumpled and slept-in.
"But he did! He did!" the little boy protested. "Are you a police-man? Are you going to take him away to jail?"
"Quiet, Elmer!" the girl gasped. "Don't talk to strangers!"
"H-he's not a stranger, Pauline," Ana said, daubing at her eyes. "This is Mr. Calavicci. He grew up in the same place Mommy did."
"Ana, just tell me what you need," Al said. "Should I take you to the hospital?"
"No… no, I'm okay… I'm…" She sobbed again.
"Where were you headed?" Al asked.
"Peer!" Elmer said. "We're gonna go to Peer to see Mommy's friend. Maybe Mommy's friend will let us stay with her, because the Sheriff took away our house and Wayne's mean. Wayne hit Mommy, and he hit Paulie, too!"
Al noticed abruptly that the little girl had a dreadfully swollen black eye. Ana's tears redoubled.
"D-don't cry, Mommy," the other boy begged. He must have been about six, and his face was streaked with grime and tears.
Al stroked Ana's unwashed hair. "Honey, come on, now. What can I do to help?"
"Nobody can help!" Ana sobbed, as if he was offering her a long-craved outlet for her hopelessness and anxieties. "I've got no money, no job, nowhere to go, now my car… my car… oh, what am I going to do?"
Giving up on trying to get information from her, Al hugged her tightly and turned towards the kids. "Elmer, I want to help out," he said. "Don't you have a place to stay?"
"We stayed with Wayne," Elmer said. "After the Sheriff took our house. But Wayne's mean, so we left!"
"I want to go home!" the other boy sobbed. "I want my room! I want my toys! I want my tire swing!"
"Quiet, Ian," Pauline scolded. "Be quiet. You'll make Mommy cry."
Ian's tears redoubled. "Don't cry, Mommy! Don't cry!"
Al held Ana tighter, even as Pauline started trying to comfort her brother. They couldn't do this here, on the side of the road. He cleared his throat and spoke, calmly and levelly and as confidently as he could.
"Ana, I'll take care of everything," he said. "What we'll do is head up to a hotel. I'll get a room and we'll get some supper in these kids, and you can tell me everything. Okay?"
She looked up, her tears abating a little. "Really?"
"Really," he promised. "Don't worry, honey. Everything will be okay."
She tried a feeble smile. Al petted her cheek. "Now, I don't think the car is too badly banged up," he said. "You just stay close and follow me. Don't worry, darling. Al the Pick will take care of you now."
She laughed a little, as he had hoped she would. "You're a good man, Al," she said.
"Hell, it's no more than any officer would do," Al said dismissively. "Just follow me. Hey, kids? What do you say we find a nice motel and order some pizza?"
"Pizza! Pizza!" Elmer said, clapping his hands. Ian's expression brightened marginally, and even Pauline seemed a little happier. Ana swung her feet into the vehicle and started the engine.
Al returned to the Ferrari. As he looked back before climbing in he reflected that this must be a cursed stretch of road. Just before the merge a tourist in Bermuda shorts, carrying a Nikon camera on a strap around his neck, was also parked on the shoulder, leaning against the open hood of his midnight blue Mustang.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAl found an out-of-the-way motel with no problem. It was a decent place on the edge of a residential area, and soon the kids were piling into the largest suite. Ana took a battered carpetbag out of the trunk, and Al picked up a stained pillowcase full of clothes.
"Is this all?" he asked softly.
"We… we left in a hurry," Ana said.
Al nodded gravely and closed the hatch of the station wagon. Then they headed to the door together. On the threshold they paused.
"Oh, Al, thank God I hit you… I mean… I…" Ana flushed a brilliant red, and her tears brimmed up again.
Al grinned and took hold of her head, kissing her brow. "Thank God you did," he agreed. "Thank God you did." He pecked her cheek just to the left of her pallid lips and ushered her into the room.
After the kids were bathed and fed and curled up together in one of the two double beds, Ana and Al sat down at the table in the kitchenette, and slowly the whole sordid story poured out. It had been one hell of a bad year.
It wasn't easy to make ends meet on a driver examiner's salary, especially after Isabella's stroke, when Ana had had to start paying for childcare. Then Ian's appendix had got infected, and the operation was so expensive, and Tim wasn't paying the alimony, and she didn't have any money to hire a lawyer to go after him. Then there had been cuts to the DMV budget and she'd lost her job. Slowly she had sunk further and further into debt until she couldn't even pay the rent on the house, and they'd been evicted. She had nowhere to go, so she'd moved in with her new boyfriend. It had seemed like the perfect arrangement. He was romantic and considerate, and he had lots of money.
As soon as she'd moved in she had found out she was wrong. Wayne was only interested in the convenience of having a live-in maid, he was an angry, abusive man, and he hated the kids. But she had no money, no family, and no one to help her, so she had to stay. Wayne also had a problem with coke, and when he was high he was really dangerous. Then last night he'd hit Pauline, and finally Ana had decided she had to get away.
"So where are you going?" Al asked. "Elmer said… Peer?"
"Pierre," Ana said, with a tiny smile. "You know, the capital of South Dakota? Remember that day you came in for your license?"
"Yeah," Al said softly. Thank God for that day, or he wouldn't have recognized her out on the freeway, and they would have just gone their separate ways.
"Remember Josie?"
"A real tart," Al said, then caught himself and grinned sheepishly. "Sorry."
"She's a great woman," Ana said. "She moved up there last year… I phoned her and she said that me and the kids… that we could stay with her… so that's where we're going."
Al petted her cheek. "You're going to drive to South Dakota in that old wagon? With three little kids and no money?" he asked.
Ana's lip trembled again as she nodded. "I have no choice," she said. "It'll be good to have a fresh start…" She wiped her eyes frantically. "I… I'd like to go and have a bath," she said.
"You go ahead," Al said. "I'll watch the kids."
"You're awfully good to me, Al," she said. "Why are you doing this?"
He shrugged. "Us kids from the neighborhood, we've got to watch out for one another, don't we?"
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMIt didn't take Ana long to fall asleep after she finally got into bed with her children. Al sat in the darkness and thought very hard about the whole thing. At last he made up his mind what had to be done.
Ana couldn't drive all the way across the country like this. She would just have to sell the wagon and fly out. He'd buy it. Ten thousand ought to be plenty to help her start fresh. She wouldn't want to take the money: no one was prouder than kids who had grown up on charity. He knew he'd rather die than take help like that, but if he phrased it as an offer for the vehicle… he could bullshit about him and Elsa wanting to have kids and needing a family car. She couldn't turn that down. God knew she needed money. Yeah, he'd offer her ten thousand for the wagon. Then he'd take 'em to the airport and get them tickets to Pierre. Once they were out there the hard part was over. Ana was confident that Josie would help her, and somebody also had to get on her deadbeat husband and make him do his duty to his kids. A lawyer who would treat Ana right, not take advantage of her or charge her an arm and a leg, but one with enough clout to get things moving.
A lawyer who was actually a decent human being, and knew what it was like to have kids to look out for. A lawyer who lived in South Dakota…
The Information operator wasn't terribly helpful, but in the end the Calavicci charm prevailed and the phone on the other end rang.
A drowsy female voice answered. "Hello? Simon residence…"
Al's throat seized up inexplicably. That voice… "Can I talk to Dirk, please?" he asked hoarsely.
"Sure, hang on."
Al frowned. There was something about that voice… but then Dirk Simon came on the line and the eerie crawling on the back of Al's neck vanished along with the strange twisting in his intestines as he turned back to the problem at hand.
He explained, and Dirk listened with incredible patience for a man who had been woken up at one in the morning. At last Al got around to the request.
"Sure, no problem," Dirk said, yawning involuntarily. "I'll get the bastard, I promise. Just tell her to get in touch with me when she gets into town. Don't worry about money, I—"
"I'll pay," Al said. "I'll give you my number and you can call when you've worked out a fair fee—"
"I don't want your number!" Dirk said, rather abruptly. Then his voice levelled out. "I don't need money. It won't kill me to help her out pro bono. The guy's obviously in the wrong. These sorts of things—no, honey, no. It's nobody you know. Just a client I met in D.C.—are pretty cut and dry."
They worked out a couple more details, before Al was satisfied that Ana would be amply provided for. Then he thanked the lawyer profusely and apologized for the unorthodox call and the inhuman hour. Dirk reiterated that he was only too happy to do it.
After that he went outside for a cigar, roaming the motel parking lot and admiring the sleek lines of a gorgeous midnight blue Mustang parked two doors down. Satisfied with a good night's work, he went back inside and lay down on the other bed. He was soon asleep.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAna protested at first, but Al didn't budge an inch. The sorry truth was that as proud and self-sufficient as she wanted to be, she couldn't turn down the help because of the kids. She wouldn't take any more than five thousand, though, no matter how much Al argued. The ride to the airport and the tickets to Pierre she accepted gratefully, weeping and repeating over and over again that Al was an angel in disguise. The heck he was. He was just a completely unremarkable human being, and he wasn't going to let an old compatriot and her kids starve in the streets or fall prey to an abusive druggy.
After seeing Ana and the kids through security, Al drove the station wagon to a second-hand dealer, where he unloaded it for two hundred and fifty bucks. Then he caught a cab back to the motel to pick up the Ferrari, which was going to need some very intensive bodywork. He could have taken care of that right away, too, but he was unreasonably tired, and wanted to go home.
Home. Oh, damn it. God damn it. Elsa.