Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
“We need to hear what’s going on.”
“I’m not turning on the audio. They should have privacy. It’s skeevy just watching it.”
“I could listen to the audio.”
It was Monday after my shift. I was in the control room with Knox, Moses and Jeff.
Knox and I were the ones backing and forthing about the audio.
The last one to speak was Moses, and I knew why he wanted to listen to the audio.
I’d had a word with Tito.
Tito told me he’d do what he could.
So now he was in the conference room with Shirleen and Marjorie, brokering a peace deal.
We were voyeuring the sitch.
Without audio.
As such, I was dying to hear what was happening.
At first, Shirleen had a lot to say.
Then Marjorie had a lot to say.
Gesticulating started to happen, and that was when Tito started to talk.
Surprisingly, both women piped down and listened to him.
That was what was happening now.
Moses reached to a switch, but as he did, everyone in the conference room stood up.
Marjorie and Shirleen headed to the door, talking to each other, nodding, and then they both started laughing.
Whoa.
“Fucking hell,” Knox muttered.
We heard the laughter in the hall.
I watched as Tito stood.
He looked to where the camera was and gave it an OK sign. He then gave it a hang ten sign.
The man was wearing yellow-framed sunglasses, a blue fedora with glitter on it, a Hawaiian shirt, board shorts, and red Keds.
How had he—I checked the clock on the bottom right of that screen—negotiated peace between those two women in twenty minutes?
Now we heard their laughter outside the door to the control room, then said door opened and Shirleen swung in.
“Gonna get an appletini with Marjorie, hon,” she said to Moses like this was the most natural thing in the world. “She’ll bring me home or I’ll get a Lyft.”
“Gotcha,” Moses choked out. “Let me know when you’re heading home. I’ll start dinner.”
She sent him an air kiss then said, “Hey, kids,” to Knox and me. “If I don’t see you before you go, have fun on vacation.” And with that, she disappeared.
Not so news: we were leaving for Turks and Caicos Saturday morning.
“Should we ask him?” I inquired, watching Marjorie return to the conference room to get Tito. “Or will the magic dissipate if it’s spoken of directly?”
“I think he’s going for drinks with them,” Jeff remarked.
We watched as Tito left the conference room with Marjorie.
We shifted to another screen.
And there they were, walking down the hall, Tito having tucked both their hands in his elbows, and connected, they walked down the hall, entered the outer office, and left.
“No asking him now,” Moses muttered.
“I say don’t question it,” Jeff suggested. “If that worked, let’s allow the fragility of it to strengthen so we don’t have to hear what section whatever, paragraph whatever, subsection whatever says as quoted to Shirleen all the time.”
“I vote for that,” Moses seconded.
Cody came into the room.
I took a good look at him.
We didn’t have a lot of Cody time. He mostly did second shift control room. He was also younger than all of us by several years. He might pitch up at a pool party or a bar, or the Super Bowl gig that just happened (something he did), but not often, partly because he was working during happy hour.
Still, he was cute.
“Did I see Shirleen and Marjorie linking arms with Tito wearing a glitter fedora in the hallway?” he asked.
“That man in the glitter fedora just created a tentative peace. Don’t speak openly about it. It might shatter,” Jeff joked.
“I’ve erased seeing them from my memory,” Cody replied.
Boy, that handbook recital must be getting old.
I didn’t doubt it.
“We’re out,” Knox said, pushing up from his chair.
That meant I had to push up from mine, and that was a bummer, considering it was fun hanging with these dudes and watching stuff I didn’t know why they were watching it (outside the Shirleen/Marjorie/Tito deal—I didn’t ask what was happening on the other screens because they couldn’t tell me), but it was important regardless.
Anyway, there were lots of knobs and buttons, and everyone knew when there were lots of knobs and buttons, it was fun.
See what I mean about this being the command deck?
Knox must have read my face because, after we said our goodbyes and headed out, he said, “It seems fun. Spend a whole hour in there, it will be very unfun.”
“Is Cody getting over being stuck in there?” I asked.
“Yeah. And Mace wants him in the field, training. He also wants to send him up to Denver for a while so he can work with Brody and Vance and extend his tech skills. So we’re recruiting again.”
“Ah. So you’ve alerted the modeling agencies.”
He gave me a startled look, then burst out laughing.
After that, he slung an arm across my shoulders and kept it there all the way to the parking lot, where we separated for him to go to his truck, and me to go to the Prius.