Compression Check

Anthea stomped on the gas pedal. The Legend surged forward, covering the unexpected two-car length gap ahead of her in moments. She slammed on the brakes and stopped a few inches short of tapping bumpers. "Only another fifteen minutes to the bridge at this rate," she said aloud, glaring in the rear view mirror. Behind her — and ahead as well — was the usual massive line-up to get on the frontage that bypassed some of the freeway leading to the Dumbarton Bridge. It was slightly faster than taking the freeway all the way. Even though there was no toll this direction, it still took longer to get on the bridge going home than on the way to work.

She fumbled in her purse on the passenger seat for a cigarette, then remembered her New Year's resolution. No smoking in the car. One after breakfast. One from car to the office. One at each of her two self-allotted breaks, maybe one at lunch. One when she got home and then after dinner whatever was left of her half-pack allocation. She could hear Lois telling her she was being anal retentive about quitting.

"Shut the fuck up, Lois," Anthea said to her reflection in the mirror. One of the many consequences of commuting alone was the habit she was developing of talking to herself and the dreadful language she was getting too accustomed to using. She reached the turn to the frontage road and quickly pulled out. The Legend settled down to a steady pace of twenty miles per hour.

She'd spent her afternoon going over the time survey data from the Groundwater Protection unit — something Ruben would have done if he'd still been there. The task had recalled the way she'd let that... that... technician treat her. She had only been doing her job — there was no reason to be treated like a leper. It was bad enough her unit didn't get any respect from upper management. It was bad enough that Lois had treated her like a doormat. But to let some complete stranger step all over her self-esteem like that... what had she been trying to prove, that Anthea wasn't up to the rigors of field work?

She'd been through every inch of that refinery at one time or another, back in her product accounting days, explaining time surveys, or learning the manufacturing stages, and she'd done it in heels and a suit when her tour guides and hosts had worn boots and jeans. She probably knew more about production than everyone in Groundwater combined. Accountants had to know everything about everything or they couldn't do their job. Something Ms. Superior Field Geologist obviously didn't think about. Something Lois had never believed. Accounting, she had said, was an exact and limited science. No creativity. Not like marketing, where it was tense, tense, tense every minute keeping up with competition. Marketing was an art form.

Hah.

Anthea turned the cassette player volume up, but it was already too late. She was thinking about Lois again. The BMW in the next lane began to merge over into Anthea's door. She honked, swore, yelled, honked again, and when the car veered off, she gave the driver the finger. She saw the older man's eyes widen in panic, as if he thought Anthea was going to pull a shotgun out and squeeze off a couple of rounds in retribution. I'm turning into the kind of driver I hate.

Traffic came to a complete halt, then sluggishly moved forward again. Anthea leaned on her horn when the driver ahead didn't fill up the gap in front of him, allowing three cars from the adjacent lane to merge ahead. Her car inched forward. Her pressure must be off the scale, she thought — partly the traffic, and partly because she was thinking about what Lois had said about her being a computer.

When Anthea had met her briefly to hand over some more clothing she'd come across, Lois had reiterated that fact, and added a few more along the same lines, accusing Anthea of being unsupportive during Lois's transition and summing her up as heartless and selfish. How was I supposed to be supportive... help her move? Pay the deposit on her apartment? And heartless is calling up CPS and saying the car pool was dissolved so I had to turn in the pass and park in the hinterlands again.

The bitch.

Maybe, Anthea thought, Lois was trying to deliberately provoke her. Make Anthea take her back again, like last time. But there was no going back. Okay, she acknowledged that ever since the first affair, she'd held a piece of herself aloof. She didn't want to get hurt again. She didn't want to trust again. So maybe Lois was justified in saying Anthea had cooled a little.

She hit the horn again for the fifth time in as many minutes and realized she had become a raving shrew. Still, she had to yell at someone. It was therapeutic. Adrian had expressed his opinion — in terms so plain as to avoid any misunderstanding — that she had been a virago lately. They both felt completely overworked and abused, and because she was the boss Adrian got to blame her, which made her feel worse. She blamed her boss, but Martin hardly cared, so blaming him lacked any psychic value. She missed Ruben's competence. She would cheerfully kick Reed's butt out the nearest window.

Martin had asked one day if there was something wrong, but what was she supposed to say? That she wanted Ruben back? It would have only pissed him off. That she was going through a divorce? She didn't have the right to say that. God knew she'd listened to him during his divorce. But because she'd never been — and couldn't be — legally married, she wasn't allowed the same sympathy in return. Somehow it wasn't supposed to be as big a deal if they'd never been married. There were no legal formalities to go through. But the house was just as empty, the rejection was just as painful, she hurt all day every day and it wasn't getting better like she thought it would. And because she'd been the one to insist on ending it, what friends she and Lois had had in common blamed her for the breakup.

When she reached the ramp to the freeway, she seized an opening to cross several lanes and position herself for the fast lane. After a mile or so, the pace abruptly increased, and Anthea floored the accelerator for the steep ascent. As she picked up speed, Anthea found she was able to let go of the memories again. As soon as the traffic backed up, she felt trapped. When she felt trapped, she thought about Lois. When she thought about Lois she went over the same stretch of road again and again.

She told herself to start thinking positively. Maybe she was entering a lucky period. Lord knew she was due. Maybe this week she would find out that someone else who worked at the refinery wanted to car pool from the East Bay.

And maybe today was the last time she'd think about Lois. The bitch.

Shay yanked her heel out of the grate and swore.