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~ 30 ~
ARIANA
“Thanks again for coming!” I said, hugging my cousin tightly. “It’s so good to see you!”
Claudette’s embrace was stronger than most women’s, but just like her it was quick and efficient. She gave me a quick smile and a perfunctory nod, before retreating to her side of the little booth in the back of the Cantonese restaurant.
“I have to say I was surprised to hear from you,” Claudette said. “I thought maybe you’d moved away to join your parents.”
“Yeah, right,” I rolled my eyes. “Your mother and my father are cut from the same mold. Think you could live with them as an adult?”
“I could barely stand being a teenager,” Claudette agreed. She set her hat down on the table. “In fact, I counted the days until I could legally enlist.”
My cousin was in her dress blues, which meant she’d come straight from work. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled tightly and symmetrically back over her head, where her bun game was strong. Even before she’d joined the Navy, it always had been.
“So what do I owe the pleasure?” Claudette asked, picking up a complementary fried noodle.
I had a thousand things to tell her, but I couldn’t do it all at once. For one, it would probably overwhelm her. More importantly though, I didn’t want her to judge me. Looking into her blue-green eyes, I shrugged.
“I just thought we should finally catch up,” I lied.
“Yeah, right.”
I felt bad. We’d been close once, a long time ago. Almost sisters, in a way. But then we’d gone to different schools, found different friends, and went our separate ways once we graduated. I stuck around to pursue my own dreams of an art career, and she’d joined the Navy as a weapons specialist on a guided-missile destroyer.
When you looked at it like that, we couldn’t have picked more opposite career paths.
“So how’ve you been?” I asked, handing her a menu.
Claudette’s lips went a little tighter. “Do you really want to know?”
“Actually, yes.”
She nodded again. “Alright, well I’ve been put in charge of a team of people,” she began, “most of which couldn’t find their own head if it were up their own ass.”
I chuckled at the image. My cousin always did have a way with words.
“Every day I chase tiny bugs in an outdated weapon system, hoping to improve firing response time,” bemoaned Claudette. “We’re talking milliseconds here, Ari. But when you need to slam a harpoon missile into the side of a cruiser who may or may not have a lock on you, milliseconds are pretty fucking important.”
I knew enough not to say anything, at least not yet. Any such intrusion would be considered an interruption, and so I spent time looking Claudette over and imagining her as a child again. A smiling, carefree little girl who liked to play Uno with me, or sometimes even Clue or Monopoly if we could drag her older brothers downstairs as well.
“We can’t bother recoding any subroutines because testing and roll-out would take too long. And we can’t sit around waiting for the new system, because it’s still about two years away. Give or take six months.”
Claudette stopped for a moment, which apparently was my cue.
“So what the hell do you they want to do?” I asked.
“Honestly, I don’t even know,” she sighed, letting her shoulders slump. “There are little tweaks I can make, quick fixes here and there that improve things without changing the system outright. But damn, cuz. Everyone around me is content to sit on their hands. Everyone wants to do their time, collect their checks, and not make waves.”
“Wouldn’t waves be bad anyway?” I tried to joke. “I mean… after all you are on a boat—“
“A ship,” my cousin corrected instantly. “I serve on a ship.”
“Ah.”
“And no, I think it’s time for waves. Everyone is so complacent these days. No one has any ambition, or drive, or imagination.” She shook her head in disgust. “And I’m in charge of so many of these zombies now. Sometimes I wish I were an octopus so I could slap eight people at once.”
I laughed, and for those few seconds of laughter I was unfettered by guilt or regret. It had been a very distracted week for me. Ever since getting back from Calgary, I’d been going through the motions, spinning my wheels. Showing up to work and class, without even really being there.
