Car Pool (6 page)

“Thanks ever so much.” She slammed the phone down. “Technical support, my ass.” Anthea realized her foul mouth from the nightmare commute was not limited to the commute anymore.

“Did you get kissed, or are they just going to respect you in the morning?” Adrian’s voice carried easily over the divider.

“The least they could do is pretend to care,” Anthea said. “I don’t suppose you’re hungry?”

“If you ordered me to eat, I guess I would have to.”

Anthea pursed her lips. “Wrong answer.”

Adrian’s voice took on a Homer Simpson quality. “Gee, boss, I’d really like to go to lunch now.”

Anthea laughed. “That’s much better.” She got her wallet and then glared at her computer. She hated that an inanimate object could make her feel so helpless. It was bad enough when people made her feel that way.

“This looks absolutely disgusting,” Adrian said, referring to his cafeteria tuna medley. “I’d pay full price if they’d improve the quality of the food. Not that I think NOC-U is really underwriting the cost.”

“Looks like dinner last night,” she said. “I’m so depressed.”

“Before or after you ate it? This place is crammed — over here.” They settled half behind a pillar partially out of the echoing noise of three hundred or more conversations. “This tastes disgusting, too. I’m getting too old for this kind of food. Not that you would understand.”

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 herself 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.