12. Bill
TWELVE
bill
Bill has his own cubicle at Cape Kennedy, and he likes to get there early each morning and sip a cup of coffee while looking through the memos that pile up in his inbox each afternoon, and which he purposely leaves for morning.
"Bill!" Jeanie Florence stops in her tracks. Her cubicle is about fifty feet away from Bill's, and she seems startled to see him as she walks across the quiet office space with a cup of coffee and a stir stick in hand. "I didn't think anyone else came in this early."
Bill sits back in his chair and gazes out at the way the sun is slowly climbing over the horizon. It's nearing the end of January, and the blazing orange ball of fire is rising quickly, spreading light across the flat Florida landscape.
"I like to come in and watch the sunrise," he says, taking a sip of his own coffee. "It's so peaceful out there before everyone is out and about, and it's so quiet in here before people start to trickle in."
"That's why I like to come in early," Jeanie says, stirring the cream in her coffee. "I love being here before anyone else."
"Have a seat," Bill says, sweeping a hand at the empty chair in the cubicle next to his. "We can watch the sunrise together."
"You sure?" Jeanie waits for him to nod. "Okay, then don't mind if I do."
They roll their chairs so that they're in the middle of an aisle between all the cubicles, facing the sunrise with cups of coffee in hand. They watch together in meditative silence for a few minutes, drinking coffee and thinking their own thoughts.
"Hey, Bill?" Jeanie asks, breaking the silence. "Do you think we'll get to the moon anytime soon? Do you really believe it?"
Bill looks at the rocket platforms outside the building as he considers her question. "I do," he says. "I believe it as much as Kennedy did. I think the moon is within reach, and I want to be one of the first people to see it with my own eyes."
"I wish I could see it," Jeanie says wistfully, her body leaned back in her chair as she rests her coffee against her chest. "But it'll be some time before women reach the moon."
Bill blinks a couple of times and then looks at her profile as the sun bathes her skin in warm, golden light. Of course he knows that Jeanie is a scientist who is fascinated by space travel, but it hadn't occurred to him that she might want to go to the moon herself. How could it not have occurred to him?
"I think it will happen," Bill says with as much confidence as he can muster. Because, after all, who is he to say? He sometimes feels like he wakes up and swims through his life just as much as the next guy, hoping to do and say the right things, to make the people around him happy, and to learn something along the way.
Jeanie nods next to him, both hands wrapped around her coffee mug. "In the meantime, I just want to be as much a part of space travel as I can. I want to discover things, be a part of the team, and help put our people on the moon. It's all I've ever wanted."
Maybe because they're watching something as magnificent as a sunrise as they talk about putting humans on the moon, and maybe because they're the first two people in the office, waking up together over a cup of coffee, Bill feels a real connection to Jeanie. There's an open friendliness to her that he appreciates. Over the past few months, Bill has conveniently forgotten how much of his imagination she'd captured during the trip he'd taken to Washington D.C. with his son Jimmy's sixth-grade class, and he hopes to continue to think of Jeanie as nothing more than an esteemed colleague.
"Bill?" Jeanie says, her voice soft and hopeful as the sky turns pink and then blue before their eyes.
"Yes?"
"I appreciate how nice you've been to me. I felt very welcomed here when I met you, and I think you're a really special guy."
All of Bill's intentions to think of Jeanie as some version of a male colleague with long hair and short dresses fly out the window and Bill flushes hotly. "Oh?"
"Yeah. Your wife is a lucky gal, and I'd really like to meet her sometime. I hope that when I meet a guy to settle down with, he's smart and forward-thinking like you."
It might be the tone of her voice as she says it, but Bill comes right back down to Earth when he realizes that Jeanie sees him as someone much older than her; a big brother figure, of sorts.
"I think when you land on the right guy, he'll be everything you want him to be, Jeanie. I can't imagine you settling for anything less."
He wants to say more, but just then Walt Wiggins, an engineer known for his cringe-worthy puns and a penchant for wearing pants that are about an inch too short, walks into the big office space and flips on the overhead lights. The fluorescent buzzing immediately drowns out the peacefulness of the quiet office and the beauty of the sunrise.
"Let's throw some light on this situation!" Walt says cheerily, striding across the office with a briefcase in one hand.
As he approaches Bill and Jeanie, she stands and pushes her chair back to the desk where it belongs. "Thanks for sharing the sunrise with me," she says to Bill with a smile.
Bill lifts his coffee cup in acknowledgement, then turns back to his pile of office memos so that Walt Wiggins won't catch him watching Jeanie as she walks away.
Jo has procured the typewriter she'd told him about, and Bill is working to make sure that his interest in her writing comes across as him being impressed--because he is--rather than him being amused. He doesn't feel patronizing towards her for her desire to put words on paper, but he is aware that it's a long-shot that she'll ever get something written and get it into the hands of an agent or publisher. But even still, he wants her to know that he's behind her one hundred percent.
"So, I'd mentioned to Nurse Edwina that I wanted to find a typewriter," Jo is saying as she bustles around the kitchen, pulling a pot from the stove. "And she said she had one in the closet at home that hasn't seen the light of day since about 1942."
"That's pretty specific," Bill says, sipping his morning coffee. He's got the newspaper on the table in front of him, and the sounds of the kids washing up and getting dressed for school comes from down the hallway.
"I thought so too," Jo says. She stirs cinnamon, brown sugar, and raisins into the pot of oatmeal, transferring some into three different bowls for the kids. "And she said that she got the thing in 1942 so that she could type letters to her nephew, who'd gone off to Japan in the war, but then he was killed almost right away, and so she packed it up and put it in the back of her closet, never to look at it again."
"That's horrible," Bill says with a frown. Jo is careful not to say too much about war--any war--to him, as she knows that it can redirect his train of thought, and therefore his mood, in an instant. He's known too many young men whose lives were cut short by the senseless acts of violence that go along with war. "No wonder she didn't want to look at the thing."
"Anyway," Jo says with a sigh. She sets two bowls on the table and then stands there, hands on her hips. "She said it was mine if I wanted it, so I dropped by yesterday afternoon and she put it right in the car for me. It's good as new. In fact, it is new. I tried to offer her money, but she wouldn't have it. She said I should just make sure there's a saucy nurse in one of the books I write, and that if I felt like naming her Edwina, all the better."
This makes Bill's smile quirk up on one side; from all he's heard about Nurse Edwina and her police detective husband, they're gray-haired and close to retirement, and between the two of them, they've seen the worst of pretty much everything that life has to offer. So imagining Edwina as 'saucy' is somewhat entertaining, if far-fetched.
"That's great, Jojo," Bill says evenly. She brings him a plate with a piece of toast and then sets a bowl of oatmeal next to his coffee. "Thank you." He picks up the buttered toast and takes a hearty bite.
As he eats, the children file in, the girls chattering as Jo braid's Kate's hair at the table, and Jimmy eats quietly. He's growing into a fine young man , Bill thinks, eyeing his son. Stoic, a good listener, and a good example for his younger sisters . It's all a father can hope for, really. When he catches Jimmy's eye, Bill winks at him and the boy winks back.
Bill flips through his paper contentedly as the kids eat their breakfast, accept their lunches and a kiss each from Jo, and then run out the door so that they aren't late for school. By the time he's ready to leave for work, Jo has the breakfast dishes washed and in the drying rack, and her typewriter is set up on the kitchen table.
"I'll see you at dinnertime," Bill says, leaning over to plant a kiss on the top of his wife's head as she places her fingers on the typewriter keys. "Happy writing."
Jo smiles up at him distractedly and wishes him a good day. Even with the door to the garage closed behind him, Bill can hear the clack-clack of the keys as Jo begins to write.