“Maggie, you can’t take it upon yourself to do that.” I’m not nice about it as alarms sound in my head.
I’m being fired.
“Last I checked, all of us answer to the health commissioner, yourself included,” she says, the George Washington Masonic Memorial ghostly up ahead, its holiday red and green lights barely visible. “He needs to see you in Richmond.”
That’s who she was on the phone with in the corridor earlier. I suspected as much, and it’s all I can do to keep my temper in check.
“What’s so urgent that it requires my showing up in person?” I ask, knowing the answer.
He wants to fire me to my face. Probably before an audience. And he’ll make sure his pet journalists blast out the story everywhere. In fact, they probably already know it’s coming.
“What I can tell you is it’s important enough for him to rearrange his impossible schedule,” she says as if she really might still work for him. “He’ll expect you at ten A.M.”
“It will take forever getting to Richmond that time of day,” I reply. “He knows that better than anyone, and so do you.”
I end the call, angrily dropping my phone in my lap.
“That’s it! I’ve had enough.” My frustration boils over.
“We’ll have to leave before the sun comes up.” Marino assumes he’s going with me, and I won’t argue.
“As if I have time for this!”
“Nobody does. We’ll be in the car most of the day, and that’s exactly what he wants.”
“To harass, to show how powerful he is, ordering me around. All right then, if that’s what he wants?” I check the weather app on my phone.
“Yeah, I think we know the drill. We’ll show up with our hair on fire only to have him make us wait until hell freezes over,” Marino predicts, and I wish he wouldn’t rile me further. “Then he’ll take maybe two minutes to say whatever it is to dress you down, make you squirm, trying to put you in your place for once.”
“That’s enough. You’re going to make me crazy.”
“Payback’s a bitch, right?”
“Paying me back for what?”
“For being you, and not kowtowing to him. Most of all, he can’t stand it that you can’t be bought.”
“Well, he’s about to like me a lot less,” I decide. “It’s looking like tomorrow is predicted to be clear and mostly sunny with a high of forty-eight degrees. It will be nice but windy until evening when we’re supposed to get light showers.”
I EXPLAIN WHAT I’M considering while sending Lucy a text, wondering if her helicopter might be available early morning. If she wouldn’t mind giving Marino and me a lift, especially if we can use Reagan National, as it’s just minutes from home.
“Of course, that will require a TSA ride-along because of the restricted airspace around here,” I’m saying to Marino. “But she’s used to that.”
“I just hope she’s not rusty.” He slows to a stop at the railroad crossing near the metro station, the ground fog moiling like a witch’s brew. “She hasn’t been flying all that much since moving here. Not like she used to.”
Looking both ways to make sure nothing is coming, he crosses the train tracks, slowly bumping over them. They’re the same ones that several miles north of here parallel the Mount Vernon Trail where Cammie and Gwen used to jog.
“Since when have you ever doubted Lucy’s piloting skills?” I ask Marino, and it’s not easy for him to talk about how bad he feels.
He’s known my niece since she was ten, and taught her everything she knows, to hear him talk. All of us have been through a lot together but he’s never seen her this deeply hurt, and it’s intolerable to him that he can’t make the pain go away.
“Look, let’s be honest. She’s not been flying as much since the pandemic started, Doc. You know, she’s not been herself.” What he means is that after she lost her family, she seemed to lose her mojo.
That’s the word he’s used repeatedly to describe her lackluster interest in what she used to be passionate about. Like flying the helicopter that spends too much time in the hangar. And riding the motorcycle she keeps in Marino’s garage. Or driving her supercars that currently are in storage. Like so many things.
Roger that, she texts me back with a thumbs-up emoji, and I’m happy about it for multiple reasons.
“I believe we have a flying horse lined up for the morning,” I announce.