Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

“Tanner is getting pressure from everywhere. She has to make a change – and despite what you might think, she doesn’t want you in Waco, or anywhere else but here. One option she has is to switch out the management for someone with more… authority.”

“Reggie, this is crazy. She is not going to fire you. I won’t let her.” And I’m not letting someone else get shafted because of me .

It’s fully dark outside the truck now. We’re trundling up a hill, still lurching and bouncing over torn-up rubble. There are more trucks in line behind us, headlights cutting through the gloom.

Now that I think about it, I should have known something was up. Reggie’s been so distracted lately. She’s been short with us, spending more and more time locked away with her Rig. And here I was, bumbling through my weird-ass life, getting ready to ask her to tell her boss that I wanted to take time off and go to cooking school. It’s like a bad joke.

There must be a strange expression on my face, because Reggie says, “What is it?”

I almost don’t tell her, but then think, Fuck it .

“Reggie, I know it probably makes no sense to tell you this now, but I… I want to go to cooking school.”

“Cooking sc—I don’t understand.”

And then it all pours out of me. “I love cooking. Like, really really love it. I mean, you know that, you’ve eaten my food before. And I just… I guess I just want to make it part of my life. Officially.”

“You want somebody to teach you how to cook?”

“Kind of. I can already cook, but there’s so much I don’t know how to do. Things that might help me when I own my own restaurant. Eventually. I’d just be doing the cooking at a night school, at least at first…”

“At first?”

I look away, then make myself meet her eyes. “You can’t stop me. I need other things in my life besides… this.”

She slowly shakes her head. “Oh, h—”

“If you oh, honey me, I will never make your favorite brownies ever again. But I know what you were going to say anyway. You’re fine with it; Tanner won’t be.”

She’s silent for a good few seconds. “It’ll be an… uphill battle.”

“Yeah, and the hill is Mount Everest. I get it.”

“You could say that. Sorry, Teagan, I know it’s not what you want to hear…”

I grunt. “Doesn’t matter. Pretty sure the school I wanted to go to doesn’t exist any more.”

“We’ll find a way,” she says, not unkindly. “After all, if I can play the Bard in my off-hours, then—”

“If you can what the what?”

“Play the Bard. Shakespeare?” A flicker of a smile. “I read once that the world can be separated into two groups of people: those who have played the Bard, and those who haven’t.”

“Cute.”

“Our troupe is doing The Taming of the Shrew right now. Or we were. Anyway, if I can do some acting on the side, then I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to do a little cooking.”

Neither of us state the obvious. Reggie acts for fun. She’s not planning a career change.

Somehow, that makes it worse. Reggie’s more than a boss. After everything we’ve been through in the past couple of years, she’s my friend. China Shop – her Rig, the Boutique, the job – means everything to her. Would Tanner really be so unkind as to take that away? Just to keep me in the field?

Yes. Of course she would. She’d do it without a second thought.

“Come on, motherfucker,” Annie mutters. “Just a couple more minutes. Almost got you…”

The truck comes to a sudden, shuddering halt. A soldier appears at the rear tailgate, reaching up to pop it open. “All right, everybody out!” he yells.

It’s a lot noisier out there with the truck’s engine off, a buzz of voices, other trucks hissing and clunking, the roar of helicopter engines. Africa takes Reggie, hefting her in his arms and climbing down from the tailgate. The rain has started again, because of course it has.

We’re in a parking lot at the north end of Dodger Stadium. If the entire baseball field is a huge V, with home plate at the bottom, we’re standing roughly between the two top points. The stadium looms above us in the cold, grey air. Most of it, anyway. The quake collapsed large sections of the bleachers, exposing concrete rebar, filling the air with the gritty taste of dust. An ad for Coors beer is torn in two – the C is still upright, but the oors part is twisted and broken.

The stadium is built on a hill. It’s at the centre of a terraced parking lot – the idea being that the people seated in the cheap seats behind home plate, at the top of the bleachers, can park their car on the same level, so at least they don’t have to use any stairs. I can see those seats from our parking spot. One of the sections is still largely intact, and it’s bustling with people. Like half of Los Angeles is here. Choppers hover on the horizon, blinking lights against the dark sky, buzzing over the smoke from downtown.

Annie is standing off to one side with the laptop, tapping away at it, ignoring the rain pattering on the screen and keyboard. As I look over, she makes a disgusted sound, slamming the laptop closed. “Piece of shit.”

“You get anywhere?” Reggie wheezes.

“I don’t think so. It’s the hardware, not the software.”

“He’ll be OK,” I tell her.

Nobody has to ask who I’m talking about.

There are more people coming into the parking lot, and huge scrums of them waiting to get into the stadium. There are lots of injuries – broken arms, legs, gashes and cuts. Everybody is soaked to the skin, shivering, with the kind of shell-shocked look you’d expect from a war zone. The soldiers shepherd us into one of the lines, just under the broken Coors ad. An oversized digital clock, somehow miraculously still working, reads 7:13.

“I came here with my dad when I was little once.” Annie sounds dazed. “Dodgers-Padres. Garciaparra hit a walk-off at the bottom of the tenth.”

“Don’t think there’s gonna be home runs here for a while,” Reggie murmurs.

Africa’s holding her, his arms under Reggie’s knees and shoulders. “I see it like this in Sierra Leone,” he says, almost to himself. “Not good.”

At least the lines are moving fast. Soldiers with clipboards take names, hustle people through. Those who can’t walk are pointed straight onto the field, the rest into the bleachers. “Right stands only ,” a grizzled-looking soldier bellows. “The left side of the field – yes, my left – is unsafe, and off limits. Walk, don’t run – hey ! Do not run! Food and water will be distributed. If you need medical attention, make yourself known at the front of the line.”

You want to know something weird? The soldiers remind me of the special forces crew that tried to bring us in last year, back when we were involved in the whole Jake thing. They’ve got the same blank, focused way of looking at you. The same condescending voices. Who knows, maybe I’ll run into Burr here, helping people check into Hotel Dodger. We can laugh about how he didn’t catch me last time because I broke his finger and then almost stabbed him with a piece of glass.

When we reach the front, I get my first good look at the field beyond. The diamond and the grass surrounding it are packed with white tents, soldiers and doctors rushing between them. The bleachers are already a heaving mass of people, and despite the soldiers’ best efforts, the crowds have started to spill out onto the field. Just past the far bleachers, helicopters are landing: big troop transports, touching down in the south parking lot and taking off seconds later.