The topic of Chatterbox for December is waiting fulfilled. I couldn’t find a suitable scene on that subject in any of my in-progress or in-planning-stages manuscripts; and since I gather this really ought to be a Christmas Chatterbox anyway, and I figured it would satisfy my usual December impulse to write something Christmasy—in short (as Mr. Micawber would say), I have been inveigled into writing a piece of flash fiction again.
A few remarks. First, I find that I really love writing about winter weather. That’s writing something I do know, and it comes so easily! Second, I’m a bit fascinated with old-time aviation stories—I’m pretty sure reading Nevil Shute has helped with that. My lack of technical knowledge has kept me from venturing any writing of my own on that subject, however. I’ve tried to edge around anything too technical in this piece, and I hope I haven’t made any really egregious mistakes. And once again, this turned out much longer than I thought it would be. So long that I’ve put a decent portion of it beyond a click-here-to-read-the-rest jump break, to keep it from entirely swallowing up my blog. I am apparently unable to cram the passage of two hours into anything less than two thousand words.
Ted Grandy twisted the dial on the radio, in an unsuccessful attempt to tune the static out of the Christmas music coming faintly through. He shook his head. The storm was playing havoc with the radio tonight.
Outside the brittle ice-frosted windows of the tiny office all was a dim stormy shade of blue, the silent line of empty barracks and hangars half obscured by the blowing snow. Further out, the runway lights gleamed faintly on the edge of a wide expanse of field, the only thing that looked a bit like Christmas out there tonight.
As Ted slid off his headset and turned away from the desk he noticed there was someone in the narrow, bare semblance of a waiting-room that adjoined the office. It was a girl in a plain gray coat, with a dark-green scarf folded inside the collar. She was walking up and down the room, her hands folded under her arms as if they were cold—and they probably were; that room was always an echoing icebox. Ted wondered how long she had been there—he had not heard the car or taxi that must have brought her, with this wind. He glanced at the clock, which said five minutes past ten, and then opened the half-glass communicating door a little and leaned out. “Miss, would you like to wait in here? It’s not much warmer, but there’s a heater.”
The girl turned and looked at him for a second, without unfolding her arms. “Thank you,” she said, and walked slowly toward the doorway.
Ted held the door open for her and shut it once she was inside, the small evergreen wreath on the outside of the door swinging precariously on its nail with the motion. There was not much room to move about in the office, with the desk, the radio equipment, the heater and some filing cabinets crowding close, but the closeness and the bright electric light seemed to add to the impression of warmth that was mostly an illusion to begin with.
The girl sat down in the single swivel chair that Ted pulled out from the desk for her, and folded her gloved hands in her lap. She was an ordinary-looking girl with dark-brown hair, rather pretty. She sat quietly, but her eyes strayed to the frosted window over the desk with the fine-grained blowing snow sliding past the pane.
Ted, with a slight furrow of curiosity in his forehead, glanced at the clock again. “There isn’t another passenger flight until two o’clock, you know,” he offered tentatively—wanting to be helpful, and yet not wanting to come across as patronizing or prying if the girl was not there at this hour by a mistake.
“Yes, I know.”
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