Test Flight

Carl rubbed his sweating palms on his pants as he approached the office door.  It was ajar.  Great.  What was it that David had said?  Just ask her if she wants to go get some coffee.  If she says yes, you can see how it goes before asking her out.  And if she says no, it's no big deal.   

 

Like flying a plane, said David, a recreational pilot.  Takes some doing to get off the ground, but once you’re in the air, it pretty much takes care of itself.  Think of it as a test flight. 

Carl hated flying.

With trembling hand, he tapped Lucy’s door.  A voice that was not hers sang “Come in.”  He pushed the door open and saw to his horror, not Lucy but Mary sitting in the guest chair.  She smiled broadly at him.  He tried to lean against the doorjamb casually but slipped. 

“Where’s --?”

Mary giggled again and glanced to the desk, which was partially hidden from view.  Lucy sat behind it reading some papers. She smiled up at him but said nothing.  Carl began to feel he would never even get into David’s plane.

“Hi,” he said.  His voice sounded far away and Carl noticed his palms sweating again.  Lucy said something that rushed by him before he could register it, but he saw her looking at him expectantly.  He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out, his words stuck on the runway.

“Carl,” came a voice behind him accompanied by a heavy hand on his shoulder.    “How come you’re here on your day off again?”  It was Robert.  Why couldn’t that man be like other bosses and just assume he was showing some initiative?  “I don’t want you burning out so don’t make this a habit, okay?”  He vanished out the door before Carl could tell him this had nothing to do with work.

“Yeah, Carl, what are you doing here on your day off?” asked Mary with a smirk.  His wiped his brow.

“Just catching up.”  He leaned back against the door more carefully this time and stared mutely into the office.  Mary made a show of checking her watch.

“Look at the time!  And I’m supposed to have lunch with Ray.”  As she brushed by, she gave a wink which Carl took to mean he was cleared for takeoff.  It was now or never.

“So,” he tried again.

“So?”  Lucy looked at a folder on her desk then back up.  She wasn’t smiling.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Listen, I was just wondering if you wanted to go to Jasmines and get a cup of coffee.”  For better or worse, he was airborne.

“I don’t drink coffee.” 

The words hit him like wicked turbulence.   His engine sputtered.  “Oh.”  He tried to read her face but could barely see.  “I’ll just --”

“What else do they have?” she asked.  Why she asked that, Carl didn’t know.  He only knew he was still flying.

“They’ve got all sorts of tea.”

“I don’t drink tea.”  That was it, the engine died.  But there was nobody to hear his distress call.  “What else do they have?”  Okay, so now he was gliding.

“A hundred kinds of soda.  It’s amazing.”

“I don’t drink soda.”  He’d lost his lift.  The stall buzzer screamed and he felt himself shaking all over.  His head was screaming Mayday!  “What else do they have?”

Why did she keep asking that?  Couldn’t she see him crashing and burning?  She should dive out of the way before he burst into flames in the middle of her office.  Carl wiped the sweat from his brow again.

“They, uh --” he had no idea.  He saw the ground rushing up to meet him.

“Oh what the heck, I’ll just come anyway.”  His engine roared back to life and he pulled out of the nosedive just in time to skim the treetops and shoot into the sky.  “Ready to go?”

It almost didn’t matter what she would say over coffee when he asked her out.  For now, she was walking out the door with him.  And Carl was soaring.