Hard Landing (35 page)

I was still catching my breath, but I was breathing. I was taking in buckets of air, filling my lungs, feeling the oxygen flowing through me. I felt lighter, almost buoyant. I felt as if I could fly. "Put
myself
through it?"

"I know you've thought about the consequences of making accusations against me, "The Man Who Saved the Airline Business." The hint of a smile appeared. "Who's going to believe you, a lonely woman with no life beyond her career who slept with the boss and couldn't take it when she got dumped? And, of course, one of the most effective defenses is to attack the accuser-that would be you-and the victim, Ellen." He was sitting up straight now, gears grinding, getting into it. "Ellen had plenty of secrets, some you don't even know about. My defense team will dig them up. My PR team will get them out there. What about you, Alex? Is there anything about you that you wouldn't like to see in the left-hand column of the
Wall Street Journal?
Because that's where this will all be played out. My team is going to set upon you like a pack of wild dogs. It won't be pleasant."

He looked at me expectantly, but I wasn't biting. I was too worn out and besides, there was nothing personal in this. He didn't really hate me, any more than he had loved me. The curveball I'd just thrown him was nothing more than a twist in the road, another detour, and he was having fun with it.

"The best opportunities come from disaster," I said.

"What?"

"That's what you told me once."

He smiled openly, genuinely. "That's right. That's exactly right. I think this just might qualify as a disaster. Certainly for you it does." He stood up, stretched, and meandered to the other side of the desk. "I'll have to resign, which is inconvenient. But there's always a demand for people like me. Hell"-he reached down for his coat and briefcase-"depending on how all this plays out, it might make me more marketable. It depends on how we spin it. Now that I think about it, you have more to lose than I do."

"You can't take anything else away from me, Bill."

"What about your job? I know you. You'd be lost without it. You love this business, this company-"

"No, I loved you. And I quit."

I'd said it so fast, I wasn't sure the words had actually come out, so I said it again slowly this time and tried to feel it. "I quit, Bill. I resign, effective immediately." It felt good. It felt right.

He stared at me as I rounded the desk and reclaimed my seat, the one he'd just vacated. It was still warm. I flipped open the trapdoor on the answering machine and made sure the tape was still in there. He laughed. "You thought I took it? Where's the challenge in that?"

"Just checking," I said.

He put one arm through his coat, then the other, then paused to straighten his tie as if he were about to go onstage. Maybe he was. To him, all the world was his stage. "So you'll be available to come and work for me again. That's nice to know. It's tough to find good people."

"No one's going to work for you. You're going to go to jail."

"I'm not going to jail. When you're dealing with the legal system, the smartest one wins. I'm smarter than they are, and I still think there's a possibility you won't turn in that tape. I'm not counting on it, of course, I'm just working the probability into the equation. I'm liking my chances better and better."

"I don't think you're getting out of this one, Bill. I don't care how smart you are, or how good your lawyers are. But if by chance you do, it won't be because of me."

He turned to go, opened the door and stopped. "It's good to hear you say that you loved me. I'm not sure that you ever did."

"Love you?"

"No, say it." He smiled. "I know that you loved me."

I leaned back in my chair and watched him walk away, through the reception area and out the door. Then I listened to his footsteps as he made his way down the corridor. Ellen's note was still on the desk. I pulled it in front of me and read it again.

…
I
think about my life before him, about the work that filled my days and the ghosts that walked the night with me, and I feel myself going under and the only thing that keeps my head above water is the motion of reaching up for him. And I can't let go.

You should have let go, Ellen. I wish you had let go.

I put the note in one pocket and the tape in the other. Bill was wrong about me in one respect. I was going to turn this tape in. But he was right about me, too, as he had been so many times before. I had loved him.

But I had also let go.

I was born in Dallas and spent my childhood in Texas hanging out at the swimming pool in the summer and watching football in the winter. My parents were Dallas Cowboys fans, and they began taking me to games at the Cotton Bowl when I was three. When I was nineteen, I tried out for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader squad and made it. I spent one year in the vinyl boots, saw lots of great football from the best seat in the house, and performed at the Super Bowl.

Post-cheerleader, I earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, both in business, from Southern Methodist University, and took my first job working as a financial analyst for American Airlines. After several years of analyzing, budgeting, forecasting, and navigating around headquarters, I thought I might like to see a real airplane and moved out of my cubicle and into the field. My first airport assignment was at Memphis, Tennessee, a small operation that nonetheless taught me a great deal. The general manager's job in Memphis gave me my first experience running an operation, my introduction to labor unions, and my first time meeting anyone who had dated Elvis Presley. I spent a year in Memphis learning about airplanes and passengers and cargo, then bounced back to headquarters for a couple of years. My last assignment was as the general manager for the operation at Logan Airport.

I began my writing career in Seattle where I had moved to join a small engineering consulting firm. It could have been the new environment; it could have been the new job; it could have been the different life with a different rhythm. Whatever it was, something moved me to sign up for writing classes at the University of Washington's Extension Program. I was a complete beginner at writing fiction. I found it to be challenging, frustrating, exhilarating, humbling-and completely irresistible. I loved everything about writing and was at least smart enough to recognize that I was onto something and should make space for it in my life. How big that space could be and what form the writing would take were open questions until my employer decamped for California. Having moved five times in eight years, I decided to stay in Seattle.

A nice severance package materialized, and the opportunity to take a year off with pay to do something I really enjoyed felt like a gift from the self-actualization gods. It was too good to pass up, and I didn't. With sweaty palms and persistent tightness in my chest, I decided to attempt a novel. Being a responsible businessperson with a career in progress, I limited that commitment to a year. By the end of the first month, I knew I would never go back.

I stretched my severance much farther than it was ever meant to go. I attended writing conferences, listened to authors, and learned about the publishing business. I pitched my novel to agents and editors. I spent all of my savings, rationalizing the financial high-wire act as an investment in my new career. When I ran out of cash, I worked on freelance consulting jobs and lived on a credit card.

In August 1999, three and a half years after I had written the first words, I sold HARD LANDING to New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam, Little, Brown & Co. in the U.K., and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA in Italy. The second book in the series, TARMAC, was published in February 2002, followed by the third, FIRST CLASS KILLING, in early 2004. I'm looking forward to the publication of THE PANDORA KEY by Pocket Books in March 2006.

Today, I'm back in Boston where I moved to be closer to my family, and grateful every day to whatever it was that gave me the notion to take writing classes, and most especially to the engineering firm in Seattle that decided to move to California and left me behind with a severance package.

Document ID: fbd-b3a772-7683-ef43-bba9-9107-59da-f6c8aa

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Document creation date: 25.11.2009

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