Flying

What Stella did would never hang in a museum, but there was an art to touching up photos. Smoothing the lines of concern in a forehead. Erasing blemishes bad enough to leave scars. The scars themselves she never took away, unless the client had specifically requested she do so. Consequently, photos that came in with a lot of scars ended up in her queue, and that was fine with her. She knew too well how scars could define a person, no matter how ugly.

Today, her job was to touch up a family portrait taken for a church directory. A set of graying parents, a sullen teenage girl. A young marine son in uniform. The parents and the girl made a triangle, the son slightly separate despite the mother’s clenching hand on his shoulder. Her grip had a somewhat desperate look to it that Stella wouldn’t be able to do anything about, but she totally understood.

The marine had clearly seen some action. The right side of his face had been burned. The ridges of his scars were still purple and red, the curve of his eyebrow bare of any hair, the lashes missing from that eye. His mouth pulled down on that side. But he stood straight, gaze fixed firmly on the camera. Not smiling, not frowning. It was impossible to tell if he was resigned, ashamed or simply bored.

The clients had requested some shadow removal, along with the standard pimple erasure and taking away the reflection on the father’s glasses. The last one was the hardest thing to do, so she left it for last. Stella focused on getting rid of a few flyaway hairs and bulges, things not even checked on the client’s list and that they wouldn’t even notice had been improved. But they’d notice if they weren’t, she knew that much.

Her gaze kept coming back to the marine’s face and the digging curve of his mother’s fingers. Stoic, she decided. That’s how he looked. Not bored or anything else. Simply stoic.

His mother, however, looked faded and tired, her mouth pursed, her hair limp. Maybe she’d sat by his bed while he recovered from his injuries, holding his hand. Or maybe he’d suffered alone, healing enough to be sent home. How terrible it must’ve been, no matter how it happened, the first time his mother had to look at that ravaged face.

Stella closed her eyes suddenly, fingers stilling on the mouse she’d been manipulating. She took her hand away and folded both in her lap while she gathered herself together. Slow breath. Deep breath. Counting to five, then seven, then ten.

It would never stop haunting her, she thought with a mental shake she echoed with a physical one. Opening her eyes, Stella let out an embarrassed laugh when she saw her coworker Jen peeking around the edge of her cubicle. Wordlessly, Jen held up a coffee mug and an e-cigarette.

“Sure,” Stella said. “Give me a minute.”

Stella had taken up smoking in college, but quit when she got pregnant. She’d never stopped missing it. She sometimes took a cigarette when she was flying, depending on the situation and who was offering her the smoke. So far as she knew, Jen didn’t really smoke either, other than the e-cigarette she’d bought a few months ago and used with nicotine-less cartridges. They’d simply both figured out last year that smokers got breaks and nonsmokers didn’t.

Grabbing a fresh cup of coffee from the break room, Stella pushed through the back doors of the building and found Jen waiting. Phone in one hand, coffee in the other, she lifted her chin in greeting as Stella came out.

“Chilly as fuck out here,” she said around the e-cigarette tucked between her lips. “My nipples could cut glass.”

Stella rubbed at her arms, grateful she’d grabbed a cardigan today. She sipped hot coffee, making a face. “This is swill.”

Jen laughed and pulled the e-cig from her lips. “No kidding. I guess they think if they make better coffee we’ll drink more of it? And then spend more time in the bathroom, therefore getting less work done?”

“Diabolical.” Stella laughed, though it made sense. “Remember when they had the coffee and sandwich service?”

Jen sighed wistfully. “Yes. That guy was so cute. I spent more money on shitty, stale bagels than I made in this place.”

Stella didn’t want to sit at the splintery picnic table, so she settled for leaning against the brick wall while she warmed her hands on the already cooling mug. “I don’t know why they stopped him from coming.”

“Because they can take a percentage from the vending machines,” Jen said matter-of-factly.

Stella hadn’t thought of that.

Touching up photos for the Memory Factory was far from a terrible job, especially if you could get past the deathlike near silence in which they worked. The hours were good, and the pay based on completion of training levels meant that Stella was earning the top rate. More than she’d make in an office anywhere else. But it was no secret that the company itself, which had started off as a small mom-and-pop photography service and was bought by a national corporation, was money hungry. Famished, actually.

Jen drew again on the e-cig, blowing out a plume of mist into the October chill. “I heard Randall’s going to be pulling people in for performance reviews soon. Guess we got too many complaints this past quarter.”

“I’m not worried about that. Are you?”

“Girrrrl,” Jen said with a grin, “no way. But some of the temps are shaking in their boots. Which is good, because maybe they’ll get fired, and we can get some hours back.”

The previous holiday season, the company had hired on a bunch of temps to handle the extra workload that always happened around Christmas and lasted until just after New Year’s. For whatever reason, four of the temps had been asked to stay on. None of them were any good, none had passed more than the basic level of training and none of them got along with anyone else in the office. Stella was sure two of them spent most of the day getting high in the supply closet, when they weren’t fucking in there. She wouldn’t have minded, if their presence hadn’t meant, as Jen said, a cutback in some of the overtime that they and the other eight people who worked in their department had come to count on over the summer during vacations.

“They’ll just hire more next month anyway,” Stella said.

Jen snorted softly. “True. But different ones. Maybe ones that aren’t assholes.”

Stella laughed at how unlikely that would be. Her coffee had started off bitter, but now it was cold too. She dumped it to the side of the concrete slab and watched it make a stain in the gravel, already thinking ahead to the evening. She was going to dig out her flannel sheets tonight.

“...with me?”

“Sorry, what?” Stella looked up.

“I said, what are you doing tomorrow night? Jared and I are going to hear one of our friends sing at open mic night. Want to come along?”

Stella lifted a suspicious brow. “Are you trying to set me up again?”

“Oh, c’mon. One time. One!” Jen held up a finger. Then another, and after a hesitation, a third. “Okay. Three times. But you have to admit, all three times it was totally legit.”

“Jen. I can’t date guys who are just a few years older than my kid. Anyway, I told you, I’m not interested. Too much effort.” Stella shook her head, looking at the sky, which had gone gray with the promise of rain. Too early for snow, right?

Jen sighed. “How can you not be interested?”

“I’m just not. Boyfriends take up too much time. Too much work.” Stella shrugged. “I don’t want to deal with a guy on a regular basis. I’m happy being alone.”

“Nobody,” Jen said darkly, “really wants to be alone.”

Stella shrugged again. “Not forever. No. But right now I have enough to deal with at home. Tristan goes to college in two years. I’ll have plenty of time to put up with bullshit then.”

“It’s not all bullshit,” Jen said.

“That’s because you’re in looooooove.” Stella grinned and made kissing noises that had Jen ducking her head with laughter. “Things are different when you’re in love. You put up with all kinds of shit you’d never tolerate from someone else. Love makes people lose their minds.”

“So does great peen,” Jen said solemnly.

Stella carefully kept a straight face. “All the more reason to avoid it.”

“If you’re not careful, your vajayjay’s gonna dry up like a tumbleweed and blow away.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Stella said.

CHAPTER FOUR

At birth, Tristan had weighed six pounds, four ounces. He was sixteen inches long. He had no hair, bald as an egg, and had cried nonstop, round the clock, insatiable and inconsolable for the first month and a half of his life.

Sixteen years later he was taller than both his parents, outweighed Stella by about sixty pounds and had the same insatiable appetite, though fortunately he’d replaced the constant screaming with incessant commentary on the world. At least, he used to talk all the time. Now, instead of the hugs and the “love you, Mamas,” Tristan’s conversations had become stilted and intermittent. He’d replaced his formerly goofy sense of humor with a more sarcastic edge that sometimes bordered on cruel but was nevertheless bitingly funny. Stella hated to laugh at him but usually did, especially when he was making fun of his stepmother.

“That’s not nice,” she murmured at his demonstration of how Cynthia’s mouth was always slightly parted. “Eat your grilled cheese.”

She’d made his favorite with thick slices of rye bread and cheddar, along with a few strips of crispy bacon and thinly sliced tomato. Not the healthiest dinner, but Tristan had grown up and stretched out so much she figured he could stand the extra calories, especially with all the running he’d been doing. For herself, she had a grilled chicken and spinach salad.

Tristan looked at the plate, then at her. “Can’t I have what you’re having?”

She paused with her fork ready to stab the spinach. “You love grilled cheese.”