Different Circles

Ten minutes later, they were parked and going through the shutdown checklist. They powered down the engines and then the exterior lights and then the avionics before declaring that they were secure.

“Good flight,” Suzie told her copilot. “Sorry about taking that last leg from you, but I thought it best under the circumstances.”

“It’s your prerogative,” Njord told her grumpily, letting some of his true emotion show now that they were out of the sterile cockpit condition.

“Yes, it is,” she said simply. She did not like Njord one little bit—and the feeling was mutual, she had no doubt about that—but still, she had to work with him every day.

Njord looked like he wanted to say something else, but he did not. Instead, he turned and opened the cockpit door. On the other side were their seven passengers, all standing near the exit door, their bags in hand. All knew that they were forbidden from opening the door themselves unless the aircraft was actually on fire—”and even then,” they had all been told, “if at all feasible, you’d still better fucking ask one of us first.”

“Welcome to Milwaukee, everyone,” Suzie told them. “As you no doubt noticed by now, the snow we had in Minneapolis has converted to rain here. It’s a perfectly dreary spring day here on Lake Michigan, with a temperature of forty-two degrees and a north wind—presumably one of those icy-ass winds the Midwest is famous for—is blowing at twelve knots.”

“Wonderful,” Celia said. “Nothing like nice spring weather.” At their last two stops—Duluth and Minneapolis—it had been snowing, heavily in the former, lightly in the latter, and very cold for late April. Unseasonably cold, the locals all told them, usually in an apologetic manner, as if they had been responsible for not setting up nicer weather for their visitors.

“How is the weather in Chicago?” asked Little Stevie. They would be flying there tomorrow to do three shows over four nights.

“More of the same for tomorrow,” Suzie told them. “It is, after all, on the same lake and is being hit with the same storm system. But the forecast says that Thursday and Friday it will clear up and return to more seasonable conditions.”

“Which means wind off the lake in Chicago,” said Celia.

“Most likely,” agreed Suzie with a shrug. “But at least we won’t have to fly above the clouds to see the sun.”

“At least there’s that,” she said. “Good landing, by the way. I was starting to get a little nervous when I couldn’t see the ground yet after the gear went down.”

“That’s why they make ILS systems,” Suzie said with a smile. “It was nothing. Routine.”

“Yeah,” Njord said bitterly. “It was so routine she took the leg from me.”

Suzie cast an irritated look at her copilot. He had a habit of blurting out crap like that—disagreements between the two of them, his thoughts on Suzie’s abilities as a team leader, the fact that she would not give him any supervised PIC time to help build up his hours for his logbook—and it needed to stop. It undermined the confidence her passengers were supposed to have in their flight crew and it undermined morale.

“Anyway,” she said, “I saw when we parked that your limo is here. You are free to deplane and if we don’t see you at the hotel, we’ll see you here tomorrow for the Chicago flight.”

Everyone began to filter out the door and down the steps to the tarmac before making the rush through the rain to the waiting limo. Celia was the last to go. Before she stepped out, she turned to Suzie.

“Think you can scrounge us up a few cigars for tonight?” she asked.

This question served to alleviate a little bit of Suzie’s irritation with Njord. She was definitely up for a little balcony therapy in Celia’s room tonight, even if it was raining and windy. It had been more than a week since they had last done this. “I think I can probably come up with something,” she said.

Celia smiled. “I’ll be looking forward to it,” she said.

With that, she walked down the steps and out into the rain. She did not say anything to Njord or even look at him. He said nothing to her (though he did take a good long look at her ass as she walked away). This was pretty much the status quo between Njord and all of the female passengers and most of the male ones. They disliked the man and spoke to him as little as possible. The only one who seemed to enjoy his company in any way was Coop. The two of them liked to go to the hotel bars together and tell pussy stories to each other while trying to pick up women. The difference was that most of Coop’s pussy stories were true and most of Njord’s were embellishments at the least, out and out fabrications at worst.

“All right,” Njord said as soon as Celia’s derriere disappeared from his view. “How about we fuel this thing now, so we don’t have to worry about it tomorrow?”

Suzie thought this over for perhaps two seconds and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Let’s just get it secured for now and we’ll fuel in the morning. The weather might be better then.”

“Or it might be worse,” Njord said.