Page 59 of Only One Tour Bus

“Okay, Wee Sunshine. But what would it help?”

“Why aren’t you madder? You’re all unhappy about everything and you hear about potentially getting fired and now you’re at peace with the world?”

“I am mad.” He says that, but he’s sounded madder when someone asked him where the bathroom was than he does now.

“Well, I’m madder!”

“Am I going to have to change your name from Wee Sunshine? Do you want to be Wee Rain Cloud?”

“You’re Rain Cloud, if anyone is.” Nothing about him is wee, though. I mean, I imagine. Too often in the last week and a half, from the privacy of lonely hotel beds.

“Call Rob if you want,” he says.

“Are you going to be on the call too, or do you want to be away from the confrontation?”

Callum sighs. “I’ll be on it.” Now he’s back to sounding grumpy. Back to normal, and the right amount of grump required for this situation, frankly. The only situation that has required grumpiness on this trip so far.

I get out my phone and find the boss’s number. “Okay, here goes.”

Rob answers right before the call goes to voicemail, sending me on an emotional roller coaster where I want him to answer so I can find out what’s happening and not wanting him to answer so I don’t have to deal with the situation.

“Hi, Rob. This is Asha and Callum here.”

“What’s wrong? Are all the tourists accounted for? Is someone in hospital? Prison?”

“No, nothing like that. Everything is going well with the tour. Someone said something, and we thought we should clarify with you, directly. Since it involves you. And us.”

“Ooh…kay.”

“Someone said you were looking to fire one of us at the end of the trip? And this trip, and its reviews, are the final deciding factors?”

The silence speaks volumes.

“Who said that?”

“It’s not important,” Callum says. “Are you going to fire one of us?”

Rob sighs. “Bookings are down. They’ve been down since smartphones made traveling easier, and it hasn’t picked up. I need to cut the budget somewhere, and you two are the most polarizing tour guides. You get some of our highest marks, but also some of the lowest, for the reasons we discussed. Everyone else has more even reviews.”

“Wow. So one of us is really going to be fired?” I thought this trip was weird from the beginning. It never made sense to have us combine tours when we could have just worked on our weaknesses separately after a warning.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?”

“I didn’t want it to spoil the tour.”

“What? If anything, wouldn’t it have made us work harder and made the tour better? With all that extra motivation?” And we would have had all the pertinent information.

“You should be giving great tours regardless. Listen, I have to go. I’ll talk to both of you when the tour is over.” Rob hangs up on us without giving us a chance to respond.

“That was weird,” I say to Callum.

“It’s a bunch of shite. He just hates confrontation and doesn’t want to deal with our complaints of imminent firing.”

“Apparently. I can’t believe I’m going to be fired. What am I going to do? What are you going to do if it’s you? I don’t understand how you’re taking this so well.”

He shrugs. “Nothing to do about it. We’ve both noticed the tours have gotten smaller since we’ve been here. Maybe I always thought something like this was coming, in the back of my head.”