The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [97]
“Graahhhh,” Marylou bellowed, hauling herself out of Freeze with her own angry voice, not even sounding like a human being, lurching to her feet and snatching up an empty candlestick—the old lady did it on the screened porch with the candlestick!—yanking open the screen door, letting the candlestick fly at the fleeing figure. It missed by a mile.
But she’d seen who it was. Now, at least she knew.
There’d been five tropical storms and only one named hurricane so far this summer—Ernesto—and Ernesto hadn’t amounted to squat. With a name like that, what would you expect? All predictions had been for Ernesto to swing into the Gulf, but by the time he rumbled over eastern Florida, he was only a mild tropical storm. Now Vic had a new friend: Grayson. Another wimpy name, but who knew? Grayson was passing over the Dominican Republic this very day, and all forecasts had him headed toward the Gulf.
The portfolio scoring was going swimmingly. Training sessions for portfolio scoring were over, and so for the scorers, the relative excitement of training and qualifying had given way to the drudgery of scoring, of just showing up and getting through the portfolios. Each had to be scored by two readers. Readers scored each essay on a bubble sheet and slipped the sheet into an envelope so that it wouldn’t influence the other reader’s assessment. Gigi had to be on call to answer the scorers’ questions and resolve nonadjacent scores, and Vic was back to overseeing all the trainers. This batch of scorers, surprisingly sane and reliable, were working quickly, and it looked like they’d be finished ahead of schedule. Ron, Vic’s supervisor, was as pleased as he’d ever been, and Vic expected a raise and a promotion when the project was over.
Nance was one of the stalwarts. She hadn’t missed a day. She was there every morning at eight thirty, carrying her lunch in a red oilcloth bag—turkey sandwich on whole grain bread, a ziplock bag of pretzels and another of baby carrot sticks. She either ate with some fellow senior scorers or ate alone and perused People magazine. She never gave Gigi or him any more trouble about scoring; in fact, she never said much to Vic at all, but sometimes when he was chatting in a corner of the room with Gigi, laughing with her, making plans for after work, he’d glance over and catch Nance staring at him. It was unnerving.
He and Gigi had taken to eating their own lunches at a picnic table outside, telling themselves it was because they were the only two people at FTA who wanted to deal with the heat. Inside it was so cold that at first the heat felt wonderful, and being alone with Gigi felt wonderful, too. The picnic table, an old wooden one, was back under some giant pine trees, always covered with pine needles and sap, but that didn’t deter them. It felt like time travel, like junior high, eating lunch with his girlfriend.
On this particular Friday, a week before the end of the project, they swept the needles off the table, plopped right down in the sap, and gobbled their brought-from-home sandwiches—his peanut butter and honey and hers chicken salad wrap—chewing and smiling but not talking. They both wore sunglasses. His wire framed, hers white-framed cat’s eyes.
Vic shared his strawberries and blueberries and vanilla yogurt, and Gigi shared her sesame sticks and Milano cookies, and then they drained their sodas, wadded up their trash, and, leaving their lunch boxes—his Scooby-Doo, hers Lily Pulitzer—went for a walk around the parklike grounds of FTA. By then