Page 28 of The Launch

And then things had gone south. At first, her moods had been charming, and he’d chalked them up to female tendencies: her jealousy, her need for constant reassurance. Things had calmed a bit during the preparations for their wedding, and Bill had secretly hoped that perhaps wearing his ring had given Margaret a sense of comfort that erased her need to give in to flashes of anger or despondency. And it had worked—for a while. Shortly after the wedding Margaret had gotten pregnant, and that shiftin hormones had caused a wild ricocheting of her moods once again.

One day Bill would come home to find his pregnant bride stroking her growing belly with a beatific smile, singing lullabies to herself as she cut potatoes in the kitchen. The next day he might find her curled up, fully clothed and in the bathtub, crying about a dead bird she’d seen on a walk that morning. Sometimes he’d walk in to find her poised and ready to throw things at him (a tomato, a pillow, and once even a teacup, which had shattered upon hitting the doorframe, just narrowly missing his head), but Bill could hardly figure out what had angered her before her rage morphed into something else. More often than not, these bouts of anger dissolved into passion, and they’d find themselves coupling heatedly on the tile floor of their tiny kitchen, all but erasing whatever had come before.

But the baby…the baby had been the thing that destroyed Margaret. When she lost Violet (they’d called her that in hopeful anticipation, and then never spoken her name to one another again), Margaret had become a shell of her former self. At that point, Bill and Margaret’s parents had come together and agreed that she needed more help than any of them could give. But it had broken Bill’s heart to do it. Driving his young, scared wife to Desert Sage and checking her in was the first time that Bill had been confronted with life’s fragility. No matter how strong he was, no matter how much he gave of himself, no matter how stoic he was in his life and in his job, the universe sometimes had other plans. He’d vowed then and there to hold himself to the highest standards, to keep his chin up, and to never let his guard down again—at least not entirely—just to make sure that nothing would ever again break his heart the way that leaving his wife at a lockdown facility had done.

“Booker,” Arvin North says that afternoon, intercepting Bill as he carries a paper cup of coffee from one meeting room to another. “Speak to you for a moment?”

Bill follows North into a small office, ducking slightly—though it isn’t necessary—when he walks through the doorway, which feels low. At six-foot-three, Bill is accustomed to being the tallest man in the room, but Arvin North can’t be much more than five-foot-six, so Bill feels particularly oversized in his presence.

“Sit, sit,” North says, flapping a hand at a chair across from his own. There is a wooden desk between them, and North sits, lacing his fingers together over his slightly rounded stomach as he leans back and assesses Bill. “I wanted to talk to you about Jeanie Florence.”

Bill sits up straighter. “Sir?”

Without breaking eye contact, Arvin North speaks. “I’ve noticed—and I’d anticipated—some level of pushback from the men when I decided to bring a female engineer into our pod, but I think it’s an important thing to do.”

Bill, well-versed in the art of listening to his superiors without speaking, simply nods once.

“I did notice, however, that you were completely without a visible response when Jeanie came into the room. You listened to her without reacting, and I would imagine that you also refrained from making the kind of…perhaps inappropriate comments that the other men would have made over beers at the Black Hole.”

“Sir,” Bill says again, this time as an acknowledgement of Arvin North’s words. On the wall above North’s head is an industrial-looking clock whose secondhand sweeps smoothly as the seconds tick by.

“Jeanie Florence is a brilliant scientist,” North goes on, hands still folded on his stomach. “Not to mention the fact thatthe future of NASA is here in front of us now. As a man of a certain age, I can tell you that I have spent many years in the workplace without women in skirts swishing around us—except maybe to drop off a fresh cup of coffee—but that’s all changing, Booker. I have three daughters of my own, and I want them to have every opportunity that my son has. If they want to work at NASA, then I want them to work at NASA. Perhaps you feel the same way.”

Bill holds his gaze steady until he’s sure that North is ready for his response. “I do, sir. I have two little girls of my own. They’re still pretty young, and I can’t envision them going to the moon just yet, but I want them to do that if that’s what they want. And a female scientist has just as much to offer as a male one, in my opinion.” Bill stops talking, confident that he’s gotten his message across.

“Good.” North gives a single nod and pats his hands on his tidy desk. “I’m glad we’re on the same page with this. I want to be sure that I can count on you to encourage the other men to treat Miss Florence with the utmost respect, and while the adjustment might take time, I’m confident that it will happen. Before we know it—although perhaps not during my tenure at NASA, given my age—this building will be split equally between men and women, and everyone will behave as though it was never any other way.”

Bill isn’t entirely sure that it will be as easy as North thinks it will be, but he doesn’t disagree. Times are changing, and while female golfers might not get as much coverage as their male counterparts, Bill feels strongly that a wave of strength is building beneath the women he knows, and that whether he and his male contemporaries want to admit it or not, that wave will break sooner rather than later and bring massive change to every part of their lives.

“Thank you for speaking with me,” North says. “You should head into the Russian lesson so you don’t miss too much.”

Bill stands up crisply and stands at attention for a moment; he’s never entirely shaken off his tendencies towards military precision. He gives North a long look in parting before he turns and walks out, coffee still in hand.

The Black Hole is crawling with Cape Cookies that evening, and many of them are wearing skirts so abbreviated that they leave nothing to the imagination. Bill politely averts his gaze as they dance over by the jukebox, sipping drinks, and making flirtatious eye contact with every handsome young man in the bar.

“Who invitedher?” Vance Majors nods at Jeanie Florence and another woman who is stuck to Jeanie’s side like glue.

Bill lets his eyes linger on the women. They look out of place in a bar dominated by male astronauts and pilots. “I’m not sure if anyone did, Vance,” he says drily. “I think bars are widely considered to be accessible to both genders.”

“Funny.” Vance gives a sarcastic bark and tips his beer back. “Who do you think the other broad is?”

Rather than answer, Bill sets his drink on the bar and cuts through the crowd without even looking at Vance again. When he reaches Jeanie and her friend, they stop talking to one another and look up at him almost reverently. “Bill Booker,” he says, holding out a hand to Jeanie. “I was in the group you spoke to the other day.”

Jeanie stares at him appraisingly before offering her own hand and giving Bill a surprisingly firm shake. “I know. Lieutenant Colonel William Booker. I know who all of you are.”

Bill feels somewhat ashamed at this admission; Jeanie has obviously done her homework and she takes the men—and her job—seriously. He wishes he could say the same about his fellow astronauts. “Very impressive education you’ve had, Miss Florence.”

“Please—Jeanie,” she says, a tentative smile spreading across her face.She looks so young and hesitant, Bill thinks. “This is Eleanore Welter,” Jeanie says, turning to her friend. “She’s been working for NASA in Houston for the past three years, and they’ve just transferred her here.”

Eleanore holds out a hand and gives Bill a similarly impressive handshake. “Nice to meet you, Lieutenant Colonel,” she says in a surprisingly gruff voice.

“Call me Bill,” he says to both young women. “And please come join us for a drink. I know that fraternizing between the sexes in the workplace can come as naturally as a bunch of boys and girls mingling at a middle school dance, but I think we’re all reasonably smart, accomplished adults. We can do this.”

The women laugh—albeit somewhat nervously—but Jeanie does not hesitate. “We’d love to,” she says, holding her chin high.

Bill takes a deep breath and leads them back across the bar, making a silent prayer that Vance, Ed, Todd, and Jay will be on their best behavior.

As Bill makes the introductions, he realizes that the men are at least partially fascinated by having women in the mix of their daily work lives, and perhaps the rest of their attitude comes from being uncertain about how the women will react to them. In a sense, it does feela bitlike a middle school dance, but Bill heads back to the bar and orders another round of beers, which he carries over on a tray and passes around.

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