Page 24 of Starlight & Dark Nights

As they stand there, eyes in a deadlock, the men from the hangar end their lunch break and start to stream out into the afternoon sun, swinging lunch pails lazily as they walk off their midday meals.

Bill breaks his stare with Jeanie and watches them in silence. A few men smoke cigarettes, and some get into their open-top Jeep/truck vehicles, putting them in gear as they take off for different corners of the NASA property to do all sorts of things. They scatter like ants as Bill watches them. When he looks back at Jeanie, she is still staring at him with a look in her eyes that he can’t quite name.

“I won’t call that night a mistake,” Bill says. He leans against the wall again, but this time he doesn’t put his head back, he just folds his arms across his chest and turns his body slightly towards Jeanie. “I won’t apologize. But I will say that I understand what you’re saying, and I don’t want to make you the kind of woman who does something she deems inappropriate.”

Jeanie suddenly looks irked. “You’re notmakingme do anything, Bill. I’m not a puppet—or a little girl. I’m a grown woman. Iwantedto kiss you.” Her voice is rising as she gets more emphatic. Jeanie stops herself and glances around; there is no one nearby, but still she lowers her volume. “I wanted to, and I’m not sorry either,” she says in a near whisper. “But it can’t happen again. I can’t be coming to work every day, hoping to see you. I can’t get dressed in the morning and think ‘Will Bill like me in this dress? Will he sit by me at lunch?’ We’re not in high school.” Her dark eyebrows are knit together as she glares at a spot on the ground. “I need to grow up and move on.”

Something in Bill softens and nearly breaks as he watches her. He’s causing this girl real torment, and while he’s fine shouldering the burden of the mess he’s making, he isn’t keen on the idea that he’s making this beautiful, intelligent young woman feel the way that she obviously does.

“I do like you in that dress,” he says. His eyes linger on the way the black A-line dress grazes her torso and leaves her arms bare. Her long, brown hair is smoothed into a sleek chignon, and for some reason, she looks older today than she normally does. “And I like sitting with you at lunch, but I also know I need to stay away from you. I need to stay away from everyone and just catch my breath.”

Jeanie’s anger with herself seems to vanish as her face changes to one of concern. “What’s wrong?”

Now Bill does put his head back against the brick wall again, letting his eyes close. “I’m just having a tough time. The accident really threw me.”

“I know.”

When he opens his eyes, she’s still looking at him. “I feel partially responsible. Or completely. I don’t know.” Bill clamps his mouth shut; this is more than he’s said about the accident up until this point, and far more than he should be saying, according to his agreement with Arvin North. But there’s something so trustworthy about Jeanie Florence. It feels like—no matter what he has to say—Bill’s secrets will be safe with her. That he can unburden himself to Jeanie without fear of consequence. She is, above all, level-headed, rational, a thinker. Against his better judgment (and ignoring the fact that, a few months prior, he’d mistakenly thought she was the one who’d spoken badly about him at work), Bill exhales.

"I don't think you should," Jeanie says carefully. Two men in a Jeep drive by and wave at them. Bill nods back, but Jeanie keeps her eyes on him. "You didn't design the mission, the space craft, or have any hand in whatever caused the mishap. You weren't even officially on the mission anymore once the countdown started. The buck stops with North on this--or someone above either of our pay grades."

Bill feels relief to hear that she doesn't blame him, but then she has plenty of reason to feel guilty about her own actions that night, and her natural inclination might be to absolve them both of any wrongdoing on the evening of December thirteenth.

"But I could have been more forceful," Bill argues, though his heart isn't in it. He believes quite strongly that hecouldhave been more adamant, but at the moment, he's just exhausted. He hasn't gotten a whole night of sleep since mid-December, and on top of that, he's got a stack of magazines in his briefcase that are filled with his wife's stories. He's halfway through the first one and while it's good storytelling, it's already feeling far too familiar.

Jeanie is nodding and digesting his concerns about what he might have done wrong with regards to the Gemini mission, and when she speaks, her words are measured.

"Bill." She puts a hand on his upper arm tentatively and leaves it there. The feeling of her skin against his short-sleeved shirt sends a thrill through him. "I think we should just keep our focus on what comes next. There are whole other departments and committees whose job it is to investigate this accident, and they'll find out that--well, maybe they'll find out that you were right and maybe they’ll find out that it was something else, but that’s out of our hands.” She’s pleading with him, but it's nice to have someone else saying words that feel good to hear. “For now, the best thing you can do is to just come to work and think about what else we have going on. There’s work to be done here, and?—“

As Jeanie is talking, Bill sees a commotion from the corner of his eye. Several of the open-topped trucks have circled the lot and come together, where the men are parking and jumping out to rush towards one of the hangars.

“Hey,” Bill says, interrupting Jeanie. “Something’s up. Something’s going on.” He’s absolutely certain from the determined and tense look on most of the men’s faces that there’s a situation brewing.

Jeanie turns her head and follows his gaze to where, in fact, a group of men are all gathering. “What do you think it is?” She glances back at Bill.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should head back to the office and find out. I’m sure protocol wouldn’t have us out here just watching from a distance. If it’s serious, we’ll hear about it.”

Rather than waiting for the elevators, Bill and Jeanie rush into the building and up the stairs, emerging on their floor out of breath. The others are just coming back from lunch, and phones are ringing at several of the desks, including Bill’s.

He picks it up. “Booker.”

“Bill,” Arvin North says into his ear. “Situation out front. We’ve got protestors.”

Bill frowns. Jeanie is standing next to him, looking at him with open and curious concern on her face, but he avoids her eyes. “Okay,” he says into the receiver.

“There’s a group of people and at least one camera crew. They’re saying we messed up with Gemini, and there’s talk of too much funding going towards NASA and not enough towards the rest of the issues in this country.”

“I’m listening,” Bill says, hoping that no one nearby can tell that he’s talking to North.

“They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I’d beg to differ on that.” Bill can hear Arvin North exhaling cigarette smoke before he goes on. “This, Lieutenant Colonel, is bad press.”

“So it would seem,” Bill agrees.

“I want you to steer clear of news crews, you hear me? We’re not commenting on this—no one is commenting. Gather the rest of the team. We’ll meet in the conference room in fifteen minutes.”

“Understood,” Bill says. He hangs up and turns back to Jeanie. “Looks like we missed lunch and it’s not on the horizon for either of us.”

Jeanie says nothing, but arches an eyebrow in question.

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