Chasing Mercury

by Kimberly Cooper Griffin

  “The airline already told us about the maintenance,” said Nora, who couldn’t say more about it or talk about the settlement, since it was still in the works. “Your beer is on me, by the way. You’re the one who found us. It’s the least I can do.” Nora knew it was a useless argument. Deciding who would pay was an ongoing fight between them. They always ended up splitting the tab down the middle.

  “Not on your life. It isn’t every day my best friend cheats death. You can’t deny me the honor of buying drinks to toast to that!”

  “I can’t argue with that,” said Nora, with a resigned sigh. And she was about to tell him they were already being taken care of, when Crystal reached around her and placed Tack’s drink on the table. Crystal’s breasts pressed against her back.

  “These ladies’ drinks are on Lawrence tonight, Tack, old man,” said Crystal, with a quick rub against Nora’s back before she leaned away.

  Tack nodded his concession. “Next time is on me, then. Take your break and have a drink with us, Crysie.”

  “I told you about calling me Crysie. Do it again and you’ll be sipping beer through a wired jaw.” She glared at him and then checked the time on his watch. “My break is in twenty. I’ll bring another round then and have a drink with you all.”

  “Roger that, Crys-Tal!” Tack lifted his pint glass to Crystal’s back as she walked away. Then he leaned toward Nora. “She sure put me in my place, huh?” Tack rolled his eyes, but there was a gleam in them. “Table service? Taking a break? Looks like someone’s interested in the new girl, or jealous over the old one. Just an observation.”

  “Did you just call me old?” laughed Nora.

  “Who called you old?” asked 4B, leaning closer to Nora. “I can’t hear anything over the jukebox.

  “Tack did. But joke’s on him. He’s older than me by a month.” Nora laughed.

  “I can’t tell how old he is under all those whiskers,” observed 4B. “But you’re just the right age for me, whatever age that is,” replied 4B, looking Nora up and down. Nora felt 4B’s assessment like it was a warm caress. Again, thoughts of going home came to mind.

  “I’m thirty-five,” said Nora, scanning 4B’s face. Their respective ages hadn’t even crossed her mind. If she had to guess how old 4B was, she’d have said late twenties.

  “I wouldn’t have put you at older than thirty,” said 4B, and Tack pretended to choke on his beer. Nora punched him in the arm and 4B ignored him. “It makes four years difference, according to my license, if it’s real.”

  “Does an age difference matter to you?” asked Nora.

  “No. Besides, I feel like I’ve known you all of my life. I guess I have, actually, all things considered.”

  “What’s she talking about?” asked Tack.

  “Nora didn’t tell you I have amnesia?” asked 4B, glancing at Nora, who shook her head.

  “Amnesia means you can’t remember anything, right?”

  “Right. I have no memories from before the crash,” 4B explained.

  “Really?” he asked. “None at all?”

  4B shook her head.

  “My first memory is waking up to see Nora staring down at me when I first woke up after the crash.”

  “That would scare the memory out of me, too,” laughed Tack, his adolescent humor coming through in brilliant color. Nora gave him a warning glare. He laughed again and rubbed his arm. “Just kidding! Just kidding!”

  “I kind of like that her face is my first memory,” said 4B, looking at Nora.

  “I’m gonna get diabetes from all the sweetness over here,” groaned Tack, tipping his pint back and finishing the last half in one gulp.

  Crystal brought another round of shots to the table.

  “From Lawrence,” she explained as she doled out the short glasses, keeping one for herself. “Slippery nipples.”

  “Cheers! To being back with friends,” said Nora, tossing her shot back, while the others echoed her salute and did the same.

  Nora raised her empty shot glass with a smile at Lawrence, who was still at his seat at the bar, and raised his pint glass in return

  “I’ll be back in a few for my break,” said Crystal, gathering the empties.

  When Nora felt Crystal’s breasts against her shoulder again, she leaned away. Crystal had never been this obvious before. And her breasts may have been on Nora, but her eyes were all over 4B. Nora wondered whose attention Crystal was trying to get. Either way, Nora didn’t like it.

  “Yep. Definitely jealous, I’d think,” observed Tack, watching Crystal walk away. When his eyes returned to the table, he slapped his palm down. “Oh yeah. By the way, I meant to tell you. You have another thing to feel lucky about. There was a couple of bears skulking around that wing you was camped out under.”

  Nora and 4B looked at each other.

  “We chased one away the night before we were rescued.”

  “Well, it came back with a friend. The whole site had been trashed, when the crash analysis team showed up after you two was lifted out. Seems a tray of those in-flight meals they serve in planes was trapped under the wing. They must have smelled it and tried to dig under. Prints as big as my head was everywhere. They make Jerry seem like a runt.”

  A couple of hours later, Nora and 4B arrived at the house arm-in-arm, weaving slightly. Between Lawrence’s open tab and drinks bought for them by their friends, they’d had lot to drink that night. The walk back from the bar in the chill night air, with the bright moonlight to guide them, had helped a little to sober them up, but not completely. Tack had offered them a ride, but Nora was delighted when 4B had told him she looked forward to the walk home. They were all the way up the front steps of Aunt Mace’s house when they realized all of the lights were out. A small chalkboard hung from a hook near the door with a message on it saying Aunt Mace was sawing logs. Shushing each other’s giggles, the two women left the porch and walked around to the side path leading to Nora’s cabin. A basket of muffins wrapped in a dishtowel sat on the seat of an Adirondack chair on Nora’s front porch. A note in Aunt Mace’s handwriting was pinned to the cloth:

  If the bears don’t get these, they’re all yours. Ship made ‘em. They’re delish. XOXO

  They left the muffins on the table and 4B led Nora upstairs and slowly undressed her. They made love unhurriedly, and when they were done, Nora listened to 4B’s breathing grow regular, until it was deep and slow. Nora was still a little drunk, and she held 4B for a long time, attempting to clear her mind of the thoughts that tried to take her peace. Thoughts of how sick Aunt Mace was. Thoughts of 4B leaving when her family found her. Thoughts of 4B having to choose between an old life and a new life. Thoughts of saying goodbye. Nora pushed the unwanted ideas away and focused instead on how the smell of campfire smoke would forever make her smile. She thought about 4B lying on her bed, eyes dark as Nora came to her. She thought about the way 4B had said her name just before she’d fallen asleep that night, nuzzling into the circle of her arm. She absorbed the warmth of 4B’s body and luxuriated in the comfort of her embrace. Finally, she was at peace, but her mind still wouldn’t completely quiet down, so she slipped out of bed, shrugged into an old t-shirt and a worn pair of boxers and went downstairs. Java followed her and meowed conversationally, weaving between her feet, forgiveness granted for Nora’s long absence. Nora sat down at her desk and picked up the needy feline to scratch around her ears.

  “You can’t get enough love can you, little girl?”

  Java answered by rubbing her face against Nora’s cheek, greedily pressing her ears into Nora’s scratching fingers. After a few moments of intense love, the cat jumped down, temporarily sated. Nora knew the furry beast would be back within minutes. She reached for the silver sheathed laptop on her desk, flipped it open, and powered it up. It had been so long since she had logged on, that she had to wade through several update prompts and a slew of calendar reminders, none of which were pressing, since anything urgent was automated by a script or application she had insta
lled. She found a few things needing review, so she slid the items into the “To Do” folder on her desktop to deal with later. She wasn’t ready to work. Right now, she was just doing some housekeeping to wind down.

  Once the task of computer maintenance was completed, and despite her and 4B’s discussion about avoiding the media, Nora did a search for news about the crash. Over a week old, and the rescue of her and 4B being a few days earlier, the most recent story was a short article explaining that the crash was still under investigation and a passenger manifest had finally been released. The list of survivors and victims whose family had been notified gave names, ages, hometowns, and, for most of them, pictures. Her picture and 4B’s were among the survivors. There was also a picture of the woman who had been sitting next to her. Irma Santiago Vargas. Aged fifty-eight. From Long Beach, California. Her name was listed under the passengers who hadn’t survived. Nora felt a sharp stab in her heart to see the woman’s face again. She vowed right then to contact her family. She didn’t know what she would say, but it was something she had to do.

  There was a count of the victims whose families had not yet been notified. The names were being withheld until next of kin could be contacted. A phone number was posted for people to call in with questions or information about some of the unidentified victims.

  Nora spent time looking at aerial images of the area where the plane had gone down. It was an untamed wilderness with dense forest covering exceptionally varied terrain, which included mountains, ravines, and coastal inlets with rocky coastlines, all of it uninhabited. Markers showed the impact zone, the slide range, and where the survivors had been located. She marveled that they had even been found, and that anyone had survived. Planes had disappeared in the region before. No commercial jetliners. But what real difference did the size of the airplane make, when you were talking about millions of square miles of wilderness? The plane was off-course because it had been in the process of turning around. It could have gone down anywhere.

  She wondered what would have happened to them if they hadn’t been found. After Tack’s description of the site, now she knew the bear would have been back. Correction: bears. Would they have been successful at chasing them away again? If so, would she and 4B have stayed where they were? Or would they have left to find food and help? Would she have tried harder to find the others? She realized she was playing the what if game. The truth was none of that had happened and she and 4B and thirty-one others had survived.

  They had been lucky.

  Nora felt guilt edge into her thoughts. Yes, they had been lucky. Did she have a right to feel grateful? She thought, yes, she did. In fact, she felt obligated to feel grateful. It would be wrong to dismiss their survival in favor of the terrible alternative. It meant that she had to move forward and take what came with that reality.

  It was the middle of the night, and as it often happens when a dark thing starts to wiggle in your head, other dark things begin to give it company. She thought about what Aunt Mace had said, how Nora wouldn’t have been on the airplane if not for the cancer that was eating away at her. She desperately wanted to beg her aunt to try the new medicine. But it wouldn’t be fair. Aunt Mace didn’t want to do it, and as hard as it would be, she had to respect her wishes.

  Nora shifted in her seat and yawned. It was late, and there was a beautiful woman upstairs keeping her bed warm. She put her hand on the screen to flip the cover closed, but she didn’t close her laptop. Feeling a little guilty because she had told herself she wouldn’t do it, Nora typed the name Grace Trackton into her search engine and hit the “Go” button. The only strong hit she got back was the recent news article listing 4B’s name in the list of survivors. She added Massachusetts to the search parameters. Other than the crash articles she’d already seen, there were no other Grace Tracktons from Massachusetts. The results were disappointing, yet expected. If there had been other information there, the officials from the airline would have found 4B’s family by now.

  Ads for a few private companies promising to scour files across the web for a small fee filled the sidebars of the web page. She smiled with the knowledge that the logic for those ads targeting her needs was the base for the company she had once built. Even back then, she did it better, she thought. Her finger hovered over the first one displayed. But it felt too sneaky. The FAA and North Star Airlines were on the case. If there was a family or a past to be found, Nora knew they would uncover them. And if they didn’t, she’d figure out a search logic that would do it for them. As much as it scared her to unblock 4B’s past, she knew she and 4B didn’t have a future until she at least tried everything in her power to find out who 4B really was. But 4B hadn’t asked her to help yet. In the meantime, she would let the officials do the legwork.

  She logged off her computer and climbed the stairs, craving the warmth of the woman who filled her mind.

  Nora stood back and gestured for 4B to precede her through the automatic sliding door at the airport terminal. They’d been called by the airline that morning and asked to come down for a meeting. After a couple of days away from all of it, the distinct smell and sounds of the airport provided a visceral re-emersion into their recent experiences. Nevertheless, they were in good spirits as they made their way into the terminal.

  “Maybe they’ve discovered you’re the famous heiress of a vast fortune,” joked Nora. The apprehension she’d had the night before about finding 4B’s family was still with her, but in the daylight it didn’t seem so dismal. If it happened—when it happened—they would deal with it. In the meantime, she’d enjoy the time they had together.

  “I truly doubt it. If I were famous, someone would have recognized me by now. But out of all the possibilities we’ve come up with, I like the heiress idea the most. Oh! Maybe I’m a reclusive heiress, and no one has seen me without a scarf and a hat. I’m unrecognizable without a disguise.” 4B laughed, squeezing Nora’s hand. She swung their hands playfully between them as they stepped through the terminal.

  They had checked in at the North Star offices at the request of the home office in Anchorage the day they had flown into Juneau, but aside from meeting the local agents, there had been no need for them to go back. The agent who’d called that morning hadn’t given a reason for the meeting request, and Nora suspected it was to go over their settlement papers again. She had heard many of the other survivors had already signed the generous offers, and she guessed they wanted to get the rest of the holdouts to do the same. She didn’t blame the airline for wanting to get the whole thing behind them. Nora’s lawyer had already approved the contracts, saying if Nora was comfortable with it, there wasn’t anything to dispute, unless someone was out for the money, which Nora wasn’t. Overall, the airline had been extremely attentive, showing only deep compassion for them. So Nora didn’t worry about what was motivating them, as long as the airline continued to do the right thing. As they entered the terminal, they joked that 4B’s family had come to sweep her away.

  “My vote still goes to you being a criminal on the lam from the law,” said Nora. “It matches your bad girl vibe.”

  “That’s me. Public enemy number one!” 4B laughed and bumped Nora’s shoulder as they walked toward the corridor beyond the ticket counters to the private offices. This side of the terminal wasn’t as busy as the rest of the airport, and most of the offices were behind discreet doors. Nora was just about to put her arm around 4B, when a very distinguished woman in a sophisticated suit amid a group of officious looking people rushed toward them followed closely by a well-dressed man holding her hand. Nora’s first instinct was to get between 4B and the strangers, but their appearances threw her off. She and 4B had grown used to reporters trying to talk to them. These two didn’t look like reporters. In fact, Nora saw a striking resemblance between 4B and the couple. Her stomach dropped.

  4B’s family had arrived.

  “Elizabeth! My God!” they declared in unison, enveloping a very surprised-looking 4B in a double embrace. 4B held tight to N
ora’s hand and Nora stood there, uncomfortably close to the emotional scene, not knowing what to do.

  Elizabeth?

  When the woman Nora suspected was 4B’s mother pulled away, her cheeks were wet with tears, and she held onto 4B’s arms like 4B might drift away. A flurry of conflicting emotions whirled within Nora. She studied the newcomers, and a swarm of people in suits, some who Nora knew were with the airline, and some she’d never seen, surrounded the small group. Nora lost hold of 4B’s hand and, in the rush, Nora was shuffled to the fringes of the crowd. She tried to get back to her, but the group pressed in around 4B and Nora felt awkward and unsure about whether she needed to rescue 4B or leave her to her family.

  She was trying to make up her mind about what to do, when 4B’s voice rose above the sound of many people talking at once.

  “Nora! Where are you?”

  Nora heard fear in the call and the sound tugged at Nora’s sense of protectiveness, the one that had been there since the moment she’d first seen 4B. Nora caught sight of 4B’s face through a small gap in the crowd. Just as Nora was reaching for 4B’s hand, one of the men in suits stepped between them and Nora was once again forced to the sidelines facing a wall of backs. The small huddle of people tightened around 4B. Nora circled the group, trying to find a way back in. 4B needed her.

  “Ms. Kavendash?”

  Nora distractedly turned to the voice and with relief she saw Gina, their primary contact from the airline. Maybe she could help.

  “Is that her family?” asked Nora.

  “Yes. I apologize for the surprise. I would have warned you both when I called, but even I didn’t know what this meeting was about. They didn’t want the press to show up. It looks like it was still leaked somehow.”

  Nora looked where Gina indicated and saw a handful of journalists standing behind a roped off barrier, intent on watching the reunion. They must have been warned about taking pictures. All cameras were stowed, but most of them were speaking in urgent low tones into recording devices. Two tall men stood on the other side of the rope, facing the journalists.