Moonliner: No Stone Unturned (19 page)

              “Oh, he’s probably harmless,” Beau says.

              “Still,” Kendra says; “I’m glad.”

              “You were the one who wanted me to respond to him in the first place,” Beau reminds her.

              “I know,” Kendra replies; “I’m just glad he doesn’t know who we are.”

The two finish dinner.  Beau clears the table, rinses the dishes, and puts them into the dishwasher as Kendra goes into the living room.  Beau watches her out of the corner of his eye as she flips through channels on their remote looking for something to catch her interest.  Exhausted, nothing seems to.  Beau finishes loading the dishwasher, comes into the living room and sits beside her on the sofa.

              “Don’t forget we’re having dinner with the Volans tomorrow night,” Kendra tells him as she turns off the television.  “It’s why I asked if you had an interview; I wanted to see if you were going to be downtown tomorrow.” 

              “Oh no,” Beau answers; “I completely forgot.”

              “Why oh no?” Kendra asks; “you have to go.”

              “No, I know, “Beau answers; “I can make it, I just had completely forgotten about it, that’s all.”

              “Don’t you wanna go?” Kendra asks.

              “Of course I want to go,” Beau answers; “It’s just that I would prefer to go after I find a job.”

              “Why?” Kendra asks; “I doubt they’ll ask about work.”

              “Rich will,” Beau replies.  “He can be such a jackass at times.”

              “You had fun with him at the New Year’s party,” Kendra points out.

              “We were drinking,” Beau mentions.

              “Well Amber set this up and we have to go,” Kendra says; “or she’ll keep asking.”

              “Is dinner with the Volans something we’re gonna have to do the rest of our lives?” Beau asks.

              “Only as long as I work with Amber,” Kendra answers.  “Come on, she’s nice!” 

              “That doesn’t sweeten the deal,” Beau responds.  They both laugh.

              “What time and where are we meeting them?” Beau asks.

              “We’re meeting downtown at Red Robyn on the pier,” Kendra answers; “at seven.”

              “Red Robyn?” Beau asks.

              “I told Amber we want to keep it simple,” Kendra answers.

              “Oh, so they already know I’m out of work,” Beau says.

              “Stop worrying about it,” Kendra tells him; “no one’s judging you.”

              “I know,” Beau replies; “It’s just that Rich is always wound up in his career.”

              “That’s his issue,” Kendra says; “his insecurity.” 

              “Fine,” Beau says; “I do have an interview downtown tomorrow at five thirty.  It isn’t too far from the pier.  I can just go directly to Red Robyn from the interview and meet you guys there.”

Kendra smiles.  Her eyes are closed from the exhaustion of her long day and she’s on the verge of falling asleep.  Her fatigue only compounds the stress of Beau’s joblessness.  Kendra works so hard and isn’t left with a lot of energy at night.  Her life is being spent on her work, while Beau is left with all this time on his hands to figure out his next step. 

Doing what he can to counter Kendra’s fatigue, Beau clears the remaining dishes, rinses them, and starts the dishwasher.  He goes back into the living room and gently wakes Kendra from a sleep she’d slipped into while sitting upright.  She’d drifted to sleep with her head leaning sideways in an awkward position.  She was bound to have a neck ache had she stayed there long.

Kendra awakens, lifts her head and takes a deep breath through her nose.  Her hair has a cowlick where her head was resting against the sofa and her skin has a red divot where her temple had pressed against a button in the upholstery.  Half asleep, she stands.  She is completely graceless in her state of mind; she’s out of it.  Like a child, she gets to the bedroom with Beau’s help.  He helps her get undressed and tucks her in for the night under their goose down duvet, too exhausted to go through her nightly routines.  She smiles without opening her eyes, then almost immediately sinks into a deepening sleep. Beau watches her sleep for a few minutes, admiring her beauty, before going back to his computer to continue his job search.

Moonliner
4:03

Beau arrives almost half an hour early for his interview.  Not wanting to go in so early, he sits in his car in the parking lot enjoying the light and warmth of the sun, out now for its second day in a row.  The day is partly cloudy with a sky full of small, puffy, cumulus clouds.  Beau takes ten minutes to watch one move in front of the sun, then for the sun to break free from behind it again.  It draws him far away for a moment from this parking lot, this interview, and even this day.  A small delivery truck pulls into the lot and parks next to Beau’s Prius, snapping him out of his daydream.  He pretends to look over his notes just to appear busy.

He turns the radio on for a moment and catches a news brief.

             
“The search continues for Malaysian Air flight 370 which disappeared four days ago,” a reporter announces.  “Aviation experts are baffled and are now looking at a number of new scenarios.”

Beau shuts it off and just sits in silence.  After ten minutes, he goes into the building.  He finds the office of Seattle Systems Engineering on the fourth floor of a five story tower.  The office is nice but the commute takes him right through the downtown, a drawback that would come with the job. 

Beau is shown to a conference room with a whiteboard filled with sales projections.  There’s an intercom-style phone on the center of the table, and chairs lining two walls of the room.  The other two walls are glass, but hidden behind a long curtain that closes for privacy.

Very shortly after Beau takes a seat, in walks Steve Tran, office coordinator.  The two men shake hands and sit down.  Beau hands Steve his resume and Steve takes a long, silent look at it.

              “What makes you want to work for a software provider?” Steve asks Beau.

              “Your network to be honest,” Beau replies.  “I don’t necessarily want to work for a software provider, but you’re one of the few companies around that offer the balance of things I’m looking for in a career move,” he adds.

              “We provide highly technical software to engineers, engineering firms and schools,” Steve tells Beau.  “We have over five thousand clients and growing worldwide.”

              “I saw that on your website,” Beau says; “and you customize software.”

              “We have for many clients, but that requires a lot of additional resources,” Steve answers, “so we don’t mind doing it, but at a substantially higher cost than our standard work.”

Steve smiles and looks more closely over Beau’s resume.

              “I’ll be honest with you,” Steve says; “we recently hired a tech guy to handle our full system, but we may be doubling our servers soon, in which case we’d be hiring a second tech guy.  The guy we’ve got now is buried in work.”

              “How soon are you looking for someone?” Beau asks.

              “Not that soon,” Steve answers; “that’s the problem.  Not for a few months.  We could always place you in a tech-support position at our callback center until the position became available, but I can’t make any promises if or when the job would open.”

              “What are my chances of getting the position when it opens?”  Beau asks.

              “Good,” Steve answers; “looking at this resume.  It wouldn’t be up to me on this one, but I could recommend you for the position.”

              “I’ll give the tech support job some thought,” Beau says.  “Regardless, please keep my resume in the running for the additional IT management position.  I’m very interested in it.”

              “I will,” Steve replies.  “You’re resume looks good.  I wish there were more I could offer you at this time.”

              “No, you’ve done enough,” Beau says; “this is the most encouraging interview I’ve had yet.”

The interview was fast and to the point, just the way Beau likes them to be.  They shake hands and he sees himself out of the building.  A tiny round bird chirps from the highest limb of a leafless tree just outside, another sign of spring.  Feeling good about the potential job, Beau decides to walk to the waterfront to meet up with Kendra and the Volans. 

He arrives twelve minutes later at the pier, but forty-five minutes before their seven o’clock dinner plans.  Luckily Red Robyn has a bar.  Beau takes a seat at the bar and orders a pint of locally brewed ale.  Sunlight shines through the window and the beer, bringing out the ruddy hue of the roasted barley.  Feeling good about the day’s leads, Beau doesn’t waste a lot of time getting to the bottom of what he feels to be a well-earned brew, downing it in nine minutes.

              “Care for another one?” the bartender asks just as soon as Beau sets his glass down.

              “I don’t see why not,” Beau answers smiling.

Beau stares out of the restaurant’s large glass windows, watching two ferries gradually make their way across Elliott Bay; one outbound toward Bainbridge Island and the other inbound from Bremerton.  Seagulls hover, treading air over a trash can full of fast food refuge from Ivar’s.
[9]
  Another cloud moves in front of the sun, immediately darkening the bar.  The room suddenly grows noticeably cooler.

The bartender pours the pint of beer and places it on a new coaster in front of Beau, who now questions his wisdom in ordering a second pint on an empty stomach.  Then, feeling a little looser from his first pint and remembering that he’s about to have dinner with the Volans, he tilts his glass back to re-wet his whistle with another cold, fresh ale.

Moonliner
4:04

The view hypnotizes Beau so much that he doesn’t notice Kendra standing just behind his left shoulder. 

              “Have you been hear long?” she asks Beau.

              “Not too long,” he answers startled, turning around; “twenty minutes or so.”

              “Is that your first beer?” she asks him.

              “No,” Beau replies; “it’s my second.”

              “Well pace yourself,” Kendra tells him; “the Volans haven’t even arrived yet.”  She sits down at the bar next to him.

              “Do you have your name in for a table?” Beau asks.

              “Yeah,” Kendra answers; “they’ll come get us when it’s ready.”

Images of rescue choppers searching the Indian Ocean for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight show simultaneously on two separate TVs.  There is no sound to accompany the newscasts. 

Kendra orders a glass of chardonnay.