Car Pool

by Karin Kallmaker

  Anthea smiled at his usual reference to her relative youth. Adrian, at forty-one, often and emphatically reminded her she should respect her elders. She was thirty-four, which made her a child. “I understand plenty. My plaster is completely cast.”

  “Some study showed that after twenty-nine you can’t change anymore,” Adrian said. He grimaced as he swallowed more medley. “I feel sorry for you, dear. I get to be an eccentric character, the aging queen. You’re just going to be an old —”

  “Ssssh! Hush,” she said intensely.

  “What’s wrong with a word? Meanings aren’t in words, O Sappha, they’re in people.”

  “I do not want to be the subject of common cafeteria gossip,” Anthea said. “It would get back to somebody, you know it would. And I’m not old. Neither are you. And besides, it isn’t fair that older men are sex symbols while older women are the butt of jokes. This muffin is old,” she added, spreading more butter onto her fingers than the dried-out corn muffin.

  “Haven’t you heard these are the Gay Nineties?”

  “Adrian, please don’t,” Anthea said. She didn’t like being pressured about being in the closet at work. She didn’t see Adrian wearing any lavender lambdas. Anyone with eyes to see could tell he was

  gay, but he didn’t advertise it. Anthea, in her suit and heels, was a harder book to read. Given her desire to someday have Martin’s job, the last thing she needed was another strike against her. Just being a woman was a big enough strike at NOC-U.

  “Ex-cuuse me.” Adrian’s eyebrows crumpled into an angry vee. His hair seemed to flare. He was offended.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m in no mood to be entertained.”

  “You haven’t been in a mood to be entertained for about two months. Ever since what’s-her-name left.”

  “She didn’t leave, I threw her out. Just ask the mutual friends who won’t speak to me anymore.”

  “And you’ve been so happy about it ever since,” Adrian said sarcastically. “If you’re better off, just get over it, okay? It’s getting tedious.”

  “Thanks for your support,” Anthea said, her tone grim.

  “There’s support and there’s indulgence.”

  “I just need a little more time. I think my moon is in the wrong house or something. God, I hope it’s not too late for me to change. I’m still smoking ten cigarettes a day and I want more. The only good thing to happen is getting a car pool again, even if it’s with this woman from groundwater protection who thinks she’s superior because she works for a living, unlike those of us who just pretend, hiding behind our desks and computers.”

  Adrian swallowed, then curled his lip. “A person who works for a living, how quaint.” He wrinkled his nose.

  Anthea laughed. “Some of my best friends work

  for a living.” What am I saying, she thought suddenly. She didn’t have any friends. Not anymore. Adrian was her only friend.

  The two of them had been in the cost accounting department the longest. They were the two who could never be laid off because they were the two who knew absolutely everything about the costing system. Therefore they worked the longest hours and, because they had so much invested in the system, they were the only ones who cared about the quality of work.

  She shrugged philosophically. “It’s been since before Christmas, and here it is Valentine’s Day. I can put up with anything at this point. I’m glad I found this woman before Lois did. I still can’t believe she had the nerve to suggest we go back to car pooling together — after she made me turn in the pass. God, I wish this place was near a BART line. NOC-U couldn’t give a shit.”

  “Disgusting,” Adrian said.

  “Well, yes it is,” she said, flattered by his vehement sympathy. Then she realized he was talking about his tuna surprise.

  Anthea was exhausted by the time she pulled into her carport that night. She hauled herself out of the car. Between the computer breakdown and an accident on 1-580, she was a dishrag. Medical emergency — beam me directly to the Bahamas. At least today was the last day she’d drive alone.

  As she fumbled for the key and let herself in, Anthea ignored the little voice that said Shay

  Sumoto could be a pain in the ass to commute with. What if Shay’s favorite topic was men? Could she really go back to pretending interest, making jokes? She remembered what it had been like with a woman she had car pooled with before Lois and Celia. It had been easy then to nod knowingly about everything from birth control methods to penis sizes. But it had been a while since she’d been forced to pretend.

  What if Shay was the kind of person who had confused sexual liberation with license to discuss the most intimate details of her sex life? If she talked about her boyfriend’s favorite technique, would Anthea be able to say in response, “I don’t need penetration to come. My lover used to make me come with her lips. Just her lips, not even her tongue. And when she did take me, one slender finger could drive me to orgasms that went on for days.” She started to blush, and knew she could never say anything aloud when just thinking it made her blush. Besides, she wasn’t about to admit to anyone that Lois had been a good lover.

  Lois, Lois, Lois, she chided herself. Can’t you think about anything else?

  She sighed to herself and went about her routine of hanging up her clothes and making a salad for dinner. Without someone else to cook for she couldn’t even indulge her love of working in the kitchen. Brownies from a mix didn’t count. The most she managed was salad dressings … today she would have lime poppyseed with fresh cilantro.

  Ole.

  She had only two cigarettes of her half-pack allotment left, and after dinner she savored both of

  them down to the last ember. She watched TV and thought about exercising while she polished off the rest of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. As she let the last bit melt slowly on her tongue, she had a revelation: she didn’t miss Lois. She did miss her presence, but she didn’t miss her. There seemed to be a major distinction between the two. This is what a therapist would call a breakthrough. She set aside the ice cream container and decided it was quicker than therapy even if it was hard on the hips. Adrian had urged her to go again, but she’d had enough for a lifetime … first after her parents died, then after the fire. Both of those times she’d been sure therapy would help, but this time she didn’t feel like talking to anyone about anything.

  Sex had been the only thing that had worked between her and Lois, and that had only worked for a while — not that Anthea had noticed nothing else wasn’t working between them. She had thought everything was fine.

  She missed stimulating conversation and comforting companionship. She doubted she would get either from Shay Sumoto, who certainly had an attitude. But anything would be better than what she’d been going through. Tomorrow she’d spare a pitying thought for Lois. Feeling pity instead of pain seemed like a step in the right direction.

  Shay looked up from her spot at Milvia and University, trying to see if any of the approaching cars was driven by Anthea. She should have asked what kind of car Anthea drove. Something expensive,

  she suspected. She yawned, despite the extra half-hour sleep she’d given herself. She’d been standing on the corner for almost fifteen minutes, having deliberately arrived early so she could stow a change of clothes in the pizza parlor behind her. For some reason she didn’t want Anthea to know she was working two jobs. She didn’t want to explain about her father’s death and suffer any chance of letting other people see how devastated she still was. That was one reason moving and finding roommates was not an option. There was too much pain yet.

  A pale blue Acura Legend was pulling up to the curb — yes, the driver was Anthea. Obviously she was entering Yuppie-land. She buckled up and answered Anthea’s smile with one of her own. She hoped it was genuine-looking. Maybe they could just forget about that little incident with the truck.

  Anthea asked sweetly, “Need a towel for the seat?”

  Or maybe not. Shay felt herse
lf flush a little — hopefully not enough to redden her olive-brown skin, thank goodness — and said, “No, but thanks for the offer.”

  “You’re welcome.” Anthea laughed, then said, “Just teasing.” She guided the Legend carefully out into traffic. It accelerated evenly and in almost total quiet, Shay thought, unlike her own ‘81 Horizon.

  “Are you always this cheerful in the morning?” Shay stifled a yawn.

  “An old roommate used to say I had obnoxious morning disorder.”

  That about covered it, Shay thought. Anthea was goddamned perky. She realized Anthea was still talking.

  “In my last car pool,” Anthea went on, “we took turns driving by week.”

  “Sounds good,” Shay said. “I’ll make an extra effort to be awake when I’m driving. “

  “Well, good, that’s settled,” Anthea said cheerily. “I’ll try to control my good mood in the morning. It’s my best time.”

  Maybe she’s an alien, Shay thought. “If you get too obnoxious, I’ll ask you to perk down.”

  “That’s a deal,” Anthea said.

  God, Shay thought. She was relentless with good humor. But they were already onto the freeway and it was too late to bail out of the car. And, before it seemed humanly possible, Anthea was navigating the interchange to 1-880 and working her way into the car pool lane which began just north of Hayward. The access roads that led to both the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges were backed all the way out onto the freeway, but their lane whizzed by without a slowdown.

  Anthea turned on the radio to get the traffic update. Shay found shutting out the unending stream of commercials easy — she was used to shutting out voices in the crowded field trailer. Especially men’s voices talking about their wives and girlfriends in disgusting terms. When one man had insisted that “happiness was a sticky crotch,” she had wanted to throw up. She had a very strong suspicion that he wouldn’t know what to do with a sticky crotch if he fell into one face first. Thank the heavens that Harold was a decent sort and didn’t join in on the guy talk.

  She distracted herself from anticipating the horrors of another working day by looking at the

  landscaping. Until now she had never really appreciated the ice plant California’s transportation department placed along the embankments at the freeway overcrossings. She knew the motive was erosion control, but just now, as the soil began to soften for spring, the ground was dusted with pale lavender and vibrant rose. She was going to like car pooling. It gave her a chance to look around her for a change.

  Anthea finally got a report that told her it was all clear on the 880-280 crossover and she switched off the radio. “So Shay, what exactly do you do for NOC-U and goundwater protection?”

  Shay looked slightly startled, as if she had been thinking about something else. Anthea was sorry she had intruded on her thoughts. “I’m a field geologist,” Shay said.

  Anthea arched her eyebrows and glanced at her passenger. “Really?”

  “I don’t look the part?” Shay sounded half amused, half-angered by Anthea’s surprise.

  “Most of the field geologists are men,” Anthea said.

  “Tell me about it,” Shay said. “I’m the only female field geologist on the site.”

  Anthea gave a little nod of acknowledgment as she changed lanes. “I’ll admit I haven’t processed the time survey sheets completely, so I’m not exactly sure what a field geologist does.” Not that she’d had time and it wasn’t as if Reed would do it since Ruben was gone.

  “We dig holes, install wells, take samples and perform analysis on the data.” Shay stopped.

  “For … ?”

  “Gee, you’re actually interested,” Shay said. “At this point most people are asleep. Well, groundwater samples are taken all over the refinery. They’re analyzed and the results are mapped to trace the movement of certain constituents … chemicals.”

  “Why groundwater? Wouldn’t soil be more accurate?”

  “Well, a groundwater sample can be two types. One type comes from wells, and the other from soil borings which, of course, are soil mixed with water. In both cases, it what’s dissolved in the water that matters. Xylene, for example, can’t spontaneously come to life in soil. It has to get there by some method. The production of petroleum-based products and chemicals has a lot of by-products, most of which are on the hazardous substances list. They leak into the groundwater because of rain, or pipe breakage — whatever — and the groundwater moves through the soil, carrying the toxics with it. So we’re tracking how the groundwater is moving and whether any toxic constituents are reaching public waters, like the bay, for example. It’s not too far to the wildlife refuge on the eastern shore.”

  Anthea said, “I’m not telling any secrets if I tell you GPG’s way over budget.”

  “Not on account of my salary,” Shay muttered, then she grinned at Anthea, who threw her a smile.

  “You’ll be good for me,” Anthea said. “I very often forget what we make at the NOC-U hell hole.”

  “Now, now,” Shay said in a mocking tone.

  “Remember that National’s image is important even among ourselves.”

  Anthea couldn’t decide if Shay was serious. She smiled noncommittally. Either Shay had been to too many safety meetings or she had no illusions about NOC-U’s relentless cheerleading. Anthea had forgotten how annoying she had initially found the meetings, just like she’d forgotten they were supposed to say National, not Knock-You.

  To fill the silence, Anthea said, “I’m having a horrible time with my computer.”

  “What’s it doing?” Shay’s voice alternated between sleepy and alert.

  “Parity check. I’ve replaced my batch files, the command.com and autoexec.bat and I think I’m going to have to reinitialize and lose all my files.”

  “Don’t do that,” Shay said. “Use Norton to recover a file … any file. See if that helps.”

  “Why would that make a difference?”

  “It might reset the root directory.”

  Anthea started to gape, but turned her head away to wave at the guard at Gate 12. What did a field technician know about computers?

  Anthea looked at the car clock as she turned off the engine. “Sixty-five minutes, not bad if I say so myself.”

  “Definitely,” Shay said. Anthea watched as Shay scrambled out of the low seat with a lot less fuss than Anthea did. Shay was … lithe. There was no other word for it. Anthea picked up her satchel and promised herself to lose five pounds as soon as possible. Then she mentally erased the promise — trying to lose weight was the surest way she’d found

  to gain it. She was better off promising to exercise, but then she reminded herself she was concentrating on quitting smoking. She realized she hadn’t wanted a cigarette during the entire drive, which gave her a really good feeling. She waved goodbye to Shay, who headed for the outbound shuttle stop, and then walked toward her inbound shuttle stop. She could see the little bus chugging its way toward her.

  When she got to her computer she remembered Shay’s advice. Well, maybe a field technician had unknown skills. She booted off her Norton recovery disk and recovered a small file. She turned the computer off again and crossed her fingers. “Look, you piece of junk, my life is improving. You load or I’m getting a Macintosh.” She flipped the power toggle.

  After a lengthy amount of grinding disk noise, she was able to get a directory and backup her files, then reinitialize her drive. She would have to tell Shay they were even over the nasty truck incident. It would take the better part of the day to reinstall Windows and her software, but she was well on her way. She shared her morning muffin with Adrian when he joined her for a congratulatory cup of coffee.

  “You’re just lucky,” he said. “Better call RTS and cancel the call or they’ll show up and break the thing again.”

  “Good idea. What do you think of the muffin?”

  “Love,” he said gently, “I know the cooking is therapy, but what possessed you to put pearl onions in
a cranberry muffin?”

  Anthea was devastated. “Well, you don’t have to eat it. Buy your own.”

  “Can’t afford it,” he said. “I’ll just pick out the onions. Did you cut the recipe out of the paper or something?”

  Anthea sniffed. “Gourmet Magazine, if you please.” She took another bite, then picked out an onion. “I do think they’re … an acquired taste.”

  “Tell you what,” Adrian said. “When payday finally rolls around I’ll treat you to blueberry muffins from paradise. I get them at a little bakery on Castro.”

  Anthea finished her muffin and threw away her accumulated pile of pearl onions. “I have to get back to the Castro someday.” Maybe it’s time I did.

  “You make it sound like you have to see a travel agent to do it. I’d be thrilled to be your guide,” Adrian said. “You do smell faintly of mothballs.”

  Anthea pursed her lips at him, adding her best glare. He went away.

  3 Slow Merge

  Shay carefully stepped to the very edge of the plywood plank. She knelt slowly, maintaining her balance. Today’s field buddy was her cube mate, Harold. He was on the other end, providing stability for the plank. Even though she was in a Level D protective suit with breather, and would not step directly on the soil underneath the plank, Shay was feeling paranoid. She tried to work quickly, but the soil sample had to be perfect. There was no room for

  sloppiness. And then she had to draw a water sample from Well B-A-146, a well she had installed herself the first week on the job.

  The immediate area was barren of any form of life — not even a weed or fallen leaf. The soil was cracked and it varied from a pasty gray ash to a coppery clay. When they left they would drive under and next to scaffolds riddled with pipes and conduit. Some of the pipes were flare points, and the flashes of flame created images of hell for Shay. It stretched on for a couple square miles.

  She drew the water sample out of the well, completed the label and added it to the Styrofoam cooler, which would maintain an even temperature for all the samples until they were taken to the lab that afternoon. She put her tools away, made sure everything was in place, then stood again, giving the “move out” signal to Harold, who stepped lightly forward and lifted the cooler easily. Shay had no trouble believing that he had, as he said, played football for the USC Trojans.