Archives and Ashes

The red-eye into Portland landed at 6:12 in the morning. I remember because I checked my phone the second the seatbelt sign went off, like always. Five hours of sleep, maybe. Less, if you counted the guy in 14C who kept elbowing my cart.

Cass. Cass Murray. I'm twenty-eight, married to an architect named Bryce, and I've been flying for the airline for five and a half years now. I also work Tuesdays and Thursdays at a rare bookstore called Heller's Archive, which sounds weirder than it is. Flight attendants don't get rich. Bryce and I bought a house, the house had a roof, the roof held opinions about the weather. So, extra job.

Heller's specializes in aviation stuff. Old flight manuals, timetables, that kind of thing. I got the job through a posting on the airline's internal board. It felt like a sign, you know? Like, sure, dust, sure, minimum wage, but at least it's books about planes.

That Tuesday I came straight from the airport, still in my uniform. Navy skirt, red scarf stuffed in my tote. I figured I'd change in the back room. There's a little bathroom back there with a mirror that makes everyone look like they've been dead for a week.

Madeleine was already there when I let myself in at 7:40. She's the owner. Thirty-four, dark hair pinned up, always wearing something wool even in summer. She was standing on the little step stool, reshelving something, when the bell over the door went.

"You're early," she said, without looking down.

"You're here earlier."

"I live above the store. I have no excuse." She hopped off the stool. "How was the flight?"

"Long. Guy in 14C hated the pretzels."

"He hated the pretzels."

"Hated them individually and as a concept."

She laughed, and something in my chest unclenched a little, the way it does after a decent landing. And here's the part I keep coming back to. Up until that morning, Madeleine Heller was just my boss. A nice boss. A boss who remembered I didn't like shellfish, which, honestly, was already more than the airline did.

* * *

The morning went slow. Two customers. One wanted a 1950s stewardess manual for his daughter, who was, and I quote, "in hospitality." I didn't ask. The other guy came in to use the bathroom and felt bad about it, so he bought a bookmark.

Around eleven, Madeleine called from the back. "Cass? Can you come here a second?"

The back room is the good part of the store. Leather couch, a big library table, and shelves that go up past where a ladder reaches. It always smells like paper and radiator heat. I found Madeleine at the table with a flat wooden box open in front of her.

"Look at this," she said. "Tell me what you're seeing."

I leaned over. It was a flight manual, some early airline I half recognized. The cover was cloth, not paper, and the title was stamped in gold.

"It's a first edition," I said. "Of something old."

She smiled. "Of the very first commercial pilot's handbook printed on the West Coast. Nineteen twenty-eight. I paid too much for it and I don't care."

"Why are you showing me?"

"Because you'd know why it matters. The customers don't. They hold it with one thumb like a paperback." She turned a page, careful, using the whole flat of her hand. "You put your scarf back on wrong, by the way."

I reached up. She'd already reached, and her fingers brushed mine on the knot. Just a brush. Half a second, maybe.

But consider this about a brush. You know how after a red-eye, everything feels slightly turned up? Lights too bright, sounds too close. Her hand was cool and mine was hot and for a second neither of us moved. Then I fixed my scarf and she stepped back and picked up the manual like nothing happened.

"So," she said, a little too brisk. "Inventory. The new shipment came."

"Right. Inventory."

I don't know what I thought had happened. Something had happened. But I shelved boxes for an hour and didn't think about it much, is my story and I'm sticking to it.

* * *

Lunch. She made tea on the little hot plate and we sat on the leather couch with sandwiches from the deli on Fifth. I'd changed into jeans an hour before. My uniform was folded in a bag by the door like a costume from a play I'd finished.

"You know," she said, stirring her tea, "you're up for the lead attendant position."

"Promotions board meets in March, yeah."

"I know when it meets."

I looked at her. "Why do you know that?"

She set her cup down. That's when she told me. Plain as anything, like she was telling me about the weather.

"Because I own the airline, Cass. The charter division, all of it. Heller's is a side of it. I bought the building, the store came with the building."

I laughed. I thought she was joking. "Sure."

"Heller. My name is Madeleine Heller. The airline is Heller Regional. You fly for me."

"You're kidding."

"Would I kid about a nineteen twenty-eight handbook?"

"The airline is named after you. I have flown for five and a half years for a company named after my bookstore boss."

"Five and a half," she said. "And technically you fly for a regional subsidiary. But yes."

I put my sandwich down. My brain was doing the math it does, the work math. Lead attendant. The pay bump. The international routes. And my boss, sitting two feet from me on a couch, owning all of it.

"Does everyone know?"

"Everyone in the corporate office. It's not a secret, it's just not announced. I like the store to be mine. Do you understand? The store is where I'm just a person who likes old books."

"And I just told you a guy hated the pretzels."

"And I laughed," she said. "And I meant it."

So. That was the morning I found out. I want to be careful here, because the next part is where people would start guessing. But I'll tell it straight, the way it went.

* * *

The afternoon crawled. Madeleine took a call around three that lasted forty minutes, something about a leasing dispute, and when she came off it she looked tired in a way I'd never seen. Boss-tired. Owner-tired.

I was on the ladder, reshelving, when she came and stood at the bottom of it.

"Cass."

"Yeah?"

"I crossed a line this morning. With the scarf. I'm sorry."

I stayed on the ladder. "You fixed my scarf."

"I touched your hand on purpose and you know it."

"Okay," I said. "Yeah. I know it."

"I also need you to know the promotion has nothing to do with anything. The board scored you in January. You were first on the list before today."

"That's good to hear."

"Is it?" she said, and her voice carried something. Not flirt. More like she was setting something down on a table between us to see if I'd pick it up.

I came down two rungs so we were eye level. Ladder, so I still had a little height. "Madeleine. I'm married."

"I know. I've seen the ring. I've seen Bryce pick you up." She didn't back up. "I'm not asking you for anything. I wanted it said out loud, because I don't like secrets I can't account for. I watch you in this store and I like watching you and I'd rather tell you that than have you feel a hand and wonder."

The radiator ticked. Somebody's car alarm went off on Fifth and quit.

"Well," I said. "Okay. Thanks for saying it out loud."

I went back up the ladder. She went back to her desk. Inventory got finished.

And on Thursday, I came back. Which is its own thing to explain, and I'll get to that.

So Thursday. I need to explain Thursday, because it's the day everything tipped over.

Bryce noticed. Of course he noticed. He was at the counter making coffee at six in the morning when I came out of the bedroom already dressed.

"You're not flying today," he said. "It's Thursday. Bookstore."

"Right."

"You did Tuesday. You never did Tuesday and Thursday in the same week."

I put my badge in my pocket. "She needs help with inventory. New shipment. She asked."

"Uh huh." He looked at me over the mug. Bryce is not a suspicious man. He's an architect, so he notices things like load paths and not things like wives. But he's not stupid either. "You okay? You seem wired."

"I'm fine. Late flight Tuesday, that's all." And that was true, in the way half of things are true. He kissed me at the door and told me to check the receipt for the gutter guy, and I said I would, and then I drove to the store with the radio off the whole way.

* * *

Madeleine had the door unlocked before I even knocked. She was in gray wool again, hair pinned up, two mugs already on the library table in the back.

"You came," she said.

"You asked."

"I asked, but people say yes and then don't come." She handed me a mug. "I didn't know which you'd do. I've thought about it probably more than is reasonable."

We did inventory. That part was boring and I loved it. We counted crates, checked condition reports, argued about whether a water stain on a 1951 route manual was a defect or character. Around nine the store got dark outside, just the one lamp in the back room and the streetlight through the front window. She locked the front door at some point. I heard the deadbolt and didn't say anything about it, which I thought about later, that I didn't say anything.

Around ten we ran out of crates. She was sitting on the arm of the couch and I was at the table making a list, and the pen ran dry, and I shook it, and nothing, and I said a word I don't say at work.

She laughed. A real laugh, head back. Then she got up, came around the table, and stood next to me. Close. I could smell wool and the lemon soap from the bathroom upstairs.

"Cass."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to kiss you now, if that's all right. Say no and I'll go upstairs and you can finish the list and we'll never mention it."

My heart was doing something I don't have good words for. I said, "Bryce."

"I know. He'll be on the list of things you weigh. I'm not taking that from you. But I'm asking, right now, plainly. May I kiss you?"

And I didn't say no. That is the complete honest answer. I looked at her mouth and I didn't say no, and she took that as the yes it was, and she kissed me.

It was soft. Her hand came up to my jaw and it was soft and warm and I leaned into it for maybe four seconds. Then I pulled back so fast my chair squeaked.

"I can't," I said. "I'm married. I'm married, I can't."

She stepped back immediately. Both hands up a little, like backing off a horse. "Okay. Okay, Cass. Stop is stop."

I didn't leave. That's the part I keep turning over. I stood there with the dead pen in my hand and my face hot and I did not leave. I sat back down. I stared at the inventory list like it had instructions on it.

She sat on the couch across from me. Didn't push. Poured herself the last of the tea and waited. That's a thing about her, I was learning. She can wait like it's a skill.

"I'm sorry," I said finally.

"Don't be sorry. You said no. That's the system working."

"It doesn't feel like the system working. It feels like I kissed you back for four seconds and then panicked."

"Four seconds is a long time," she said, and I threw a napkin at her, and she caught it, which made me laugh, which made everything worse and better at once.

I put the pen down. "How long."

"How long what?"

"You said you watch me. How long, exactly?"

She looked at the lamp, not at me. "Sixteen months. Since your first shift. You alphabetized the entire pamphlet drawer on