It's Too Late to Leave Early

By William Walling

It is lighter than air! Joseph Heller's remarkable novel, Catch-22, used black humor to illustrate the trials and tribulations of men at war. This humorous spoof of the modern U.S. aerospace industry employs plain vanilla humor to satirize the idiocies and frustrations afflicting individuals employed in a business the author, a former aerospace engineer, knew all too well. You'll encounter a plethora of outrageous characters, and some entirely lacking in character—a one time porn queen who’s into blackmail; the wealthy great-grandson of a Russian aviation pioneer obsessed with re-acquiring the giant aerospace corporation he insists was “stolen” from his family; an ex-Air Force lieutenant colonel who reinvents himself as a totally inept management favorite; a wannabe Western film actor who's never been within fifty yards of a horse; an ultra-paranoid executive vice president; a nymphomaniacal lady manager, and sundry others, all embroiled in pluperfectly Quixotic situations ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, and beyond. Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Walling
• Release date: Jul 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476196961

William Walling

Born at an early age of mixed parents, a man and a woman, early childhood was a disaster; my imaginary playmate would have nothing to do with me, though I myself thought the kid was great. Since then it’s been all downhill. Seriously, a former aerospace engineer with a keen interest in ancient history, classical music and speculative fiction—long jumps in interest, perhaps, but true—I spent decades designing flight systems hardware in Lockeed’s Space System Division, where a career high point was working on a recently declassified, five-year program codenamed AZORIAN that sucessfully retrieved a Soviet naval submarine from the deep Pacific north of Hawaii.

Book preview

FOREWORD

For the Brothers Kurilekutzatzov, the more things changed, the more they remained the same. The seventh sons of a seventh son, himself the seventh son of a seventh son, the fraternal twins were reckoned fabulously lucky by their fellow cadets in training at Petrograd’s Imperial Flying Academy. Alike as antelopes and anchovies, tall, spindly Andrei pictured himself as a paragon of aristocratic young Russian manhood richly blessed with Savoir-faire, while Nikolai, eleven minutes younger, was forever an embarrassment to his parents, close or distant relatives, and casual acquaintances, and gradually turning a squat mound of suet.

Caught up in a raucous revolutionary mob milling about on a bridge spanning the River Neva, where the electric atmosphere was amplified by brilliant searchlight wands sweeping across the overcast October sky, and the crowd noise punctuated by penetrant thunder from the cruiser Aurora’s naval rifles bombarding the Winter Palace. The twins’ cadet uniforms began to attract restless mutterings from the proletariat, that evolved into accusations of being Whites, and culminated in a scuffle that went badly for the outnumbered twins.

Nikolai was flattened by a badly aimed roundhouse punch his brother threw to subdue an emaciated wretch wielding a Bolshevik placard in the manner of a broadsword. Chased by the shrieking mob, the twins scrambled from the bridge, and sought to avoid pursuit by choosing devious routes back toward the academy, only to be intercepted by a frantic fellow cadet who warned them how vital it would be to flee Imperial Russia at once. It seemed the commandant had learned of their father’s arrest, and that his name was rumored to be on an execution list.

The twins made their way into nearby Finland by rail, but no record exists of how they reached France, and the supposed refuge of the Paris home of their Aunt Lena, whom they had visited as striplings. Literally arriving in the City of Light on their last legs, limping like cripples after the long walk from Rouen, they entered the Tenth Arrondissement and approached their aunt’s home, only to be blasted into the gutter by the roar and concussion wave of a nearby ear-shattering explosion. A dapper French passer-by dolefully regarded the twins’ remarkable states of disrepair, decided them beggars, or perhaps Gypsies, and explained how the Boche had been shelling Paris from a distance with a monstrous cannon called Big Bertha. Leaning on his ebony walking stick, the dapper Frenchman announced himself also a stranger in a strange land, and gratuitously offered the twins a few francs in the spirit of Gallic hospitality.

When at last the concierge ushered Andrei and Nikolai into her rococo parlor, hatchet-faced Lena de Groix was horrified to hear their father was to be shot, and his family hunted down by the Menshevik followers of that low-born bastard Trotsky. Aunt Lena accused the twins of running like frightened rabbits instead of acting like men, and ordered the twins out of her sight under the threat of a horsewhipping.

In abject despair, they shuffled aimlessly for blocks until encountering a French brevet lieutenant leading a squad of walking wounded scouring Paris to conscript volunteer civilians to defend the tottering Western Front. As foreigners mysteriously entering the French Republic during wartime, the brothers were arrested, and spent days in a clean, whitewashed jail cell, a welcome respite had the French authorities only known from battling the world, and losing. Interrogated by a detective who declared their claim to innocence nonsensical, since they had not yet been accused of any crime, they were coolly told of impending appearances before a magistrate, and a military tribunal. After which, if exceedingly serious questions were not answered in a satisfactory way, they would naturally be shot. At which point Andrei pointed to a bent photo clipped to a thick dossier on the detective’s desk, and told his brother the subject bore a strong resemblance to the kind Frenchman who’d given them money in the street.

Indecently flustered, the detective and demanded to know if they had actually witnessed the pictured individual’s presence in Paris. Quizzed by teams of other detectives, and at last by someone in authority whose trench coat collar was turned up despite the brilliant spring sunshine outdoors. During the course of an intensive, repetitive grilling, Nikolai mentioned their unhappy visit to Aunt Lena’s home, and Andrei offered her full name and address.

Returned to their cell, the twins languished for days until informed that a resolution to their plight was imminent, but only if they solemnly promised to never, under pain of death or dismemberment, for any reason whatever go near their aunt’s home, or try to contact her.

In mid-August, 1918, Madame Lena de Groix and her accomplice, who went by the ominous nom de plume Charnel, were convicted of numerous espionage acts on behalf of Imperial Germany. They smoked their last cigarettes, disdained blindfolds and gazed stoically into the muzzles of numerous rifles aimed their way.

True to form as the seventh sons of a seventh son, himself the seventh son of a seventh son, the twins were soon identified as the reviled traitress’ sole surviving relatives, and therefore jointly inherited the embarrassingly large fortune Aunt Lena had acquired by helping to sell-out the French Republic to the accursed Boche invaders.

Sharing a lavish first-class suite aboard the Mauretania, Andrei and Nikolai sailed to the New World months after the armistice, not to seek their fortunes, but enhance them. After flying the airmail through foggy, snowy, rainswept and occasional sunny skies, and barnstorming while they hobnobbed with Alexander de Seversky, Igor Sikorsky and other expatriate Russian airmen, the brothers used their ill-gotten gains to found Kurilekutzatzov Aeroplane & Airship Company, and engaged in a roller-coaster ride of elation and despair. The depths of the Great Depression found them pouring their dwindling resources into expanding their fledgling company in an enterprise cut short when the Tsar Nicholas, Nikolai’s huge, silvery dirigible wallowed into the smiling sky on its shakedown flight, and was never again seen by human eyes, and became famous for creating a paramount mystery of the newborn Air Age. Scant months later, Andrei’s prototype last word in biplanes abruptly transformed itself into a monoplane in mid-flight.

Two notes fell due, the proceeds of both loans had unfortunately been poured into expanding hangar space, and production facilities. Disconsolate in their office, the twins realized only a miracle could save their company from bankruptcy. The miracle arrived in the form of an official letter co-signed by the U. S. War Department and the British Air Ministry, which was proactively soliciting aircraft production facilities capable of aiding to build an aerial fleet capable of countering the diabolical Nazi air armada. Totally on their uppers, the twins scraped together enough pocket change to dispatch a telegram explaining how, per their test pilot’s shortening suggestion, their facility was currently the Kurile Aircraft Company, and would eagerly fulfill Britain’s requirements in every way possible.

During calendar year 1940, with the Battle of Britain raging, Kurile produced eighty-two medium bombers under license from another California aircraft company. Replete with red, white and blue RAF roundel insignia, the aircraft were ferried to embattled England via Nova Scotia and the North Atlantic, encouraging radical growth in once modest Kurile Aircraft, Inc. The United States entered the global conflict in December, 1941, and the day after Japan’s Pearl Harbor sneak attack Nazi Germany declared war on America. Swamped with contracts, Kurile Aircraft began a steady march toward quadrupling in size.

A major conglomerate, Vonex Corporation, invested heavily in Kurile during the early Space Age Sixties, and a pair of elderly financiers serving on the Vonex Board of Directors were quietly appointed to the Kurile board. Accompanied by widespread press and media publicity, the corporate image underwent a dynamic transformation when the name Aerospace General Corporation was chosen to more appropriately reflect the diversified, innovative product line of the new Vonex subsidiary.

Millionaires many times over, the Brothers Kurilekutzatzov each married and sired scads of children, but despite their success, wealth and prominence they were deemed incompatible with AGC’s glossy new image, and gradually eased aside. As the ultra-smooth Vonex takeover matured, efficiency experts and selected upper and mid-echelon Vonex executives flooded AGC’s front offices with the visionary talent believed necessary to comply with the new corporate motto: Look forever toward the future, where the horizons are absolutely unlimited.

Elevated to emeritus co-Director status, the twins steadily slipped further from grace, and retained solely to be held up as aviation pioneering icons. Control of the company they had fought and slaved to build was eclipsed by complex legal chicanery, intricate manipulations of preferred stock, and due to their advanced ages and failing states of health.

As befitted the seventh sons of a seventh son, himself the seventh son of a seventh son, the twins concurrently passed away at seven minutes after seven o’clock on the seventh day of the seventh month. Dozens of legal actions over behests, last wills and testaments, plus probate disputes occupied gaggles of judges, juries, accountants and attorneys for another seven years, seven months, and seventeen days, igniting white hot, all-out warfare within the extended Kurilekutzatzov Clan, few members of which had stooped to revise their six-syllable surname.

ONE BURTON

An exceptional motorcar crested the 405 Freeway grade on an unseasonable warm spring afternoon. Dipping its classic grille into summery San Fernando Valley air, the motorcar began a regal descent of the Hollywood Hills. Fiercely driven Priuses, Subarus and skittering VWs swept past on either flank, drivers and passengers alike examining the motorcar’s immaculate coachwork, and genteel lack of trim. Now and then a nouveaux riche Mercedes, Tesla or stretch limousine would cruise alongside the motorcar, suffer invidious comparison and slink away and lose itself in the moiling traffic flow.

The vintage Bentley Continental fastback coupé, a champion of many a concours d’elegance, had been lovingly restored to pristine splendor by its proud owner-driver, Aerospace General Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Claridge Mason III. His features as patrician as the restored Bentley’s coats of hand-rubbed silver lacquer, Mr. Mason prided himself on being a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Business School, a devout Episcopalian, a Republican of the first water, and an enthusiastic Freemason — no pun intended — who owed his ruddy complexion to golf and tennis, his exquisitely cut, tropical-weave linen suit to an excellent haberdashery in Rodeo Drive, his platinum locks to sixty-two years of gracious living, and his petulance to the fact that a companion on this occasion had performed as much less of a corporate executive than Mr. Mason had wished him to be.

Slouched in the passenger seat, AGC Research & Development Division Vice President Franklin Burton contemplated the unreeling freeway with watery blue eyes. Having accompanied Mr. Mason to a luncheon at the Beverly Hills Women’s Club arranged by socially prominent, painfully thin Mrs. Millicent Maddox Mason, Burton had scarcely touched his lobster salad supreme, opting instead to seek sustenance among skewered olives nestled at the bottom of several very dry vodka martinis, and therefore only distantly aware of his leader’s pique.

At the luncheon, Mr. Mason had risen to vigorous applause, eloquently regaling the captive audience with nuggets gleaned from his favorite topic, America’s Amazing Adventures in Space, leaving Burton to do his damnedest remaining on cordial terms with the overdressed matrons seated on his left and right whose interrogations demanded polite responses. Deciding that attending such extracurricular affairs should not include being subjected to inquisitions by aging dragons who drew him into their clutches, he had taken an obdurate stand. After all, coveys of grandes dames draped in bandoliers of glittering gemstones were not creatures with whom a mere veep should be expected to cope.

His gaze focused on the unreeling freeway ahead, Mr. Mason cleared his throat, and said with just the proper degree of executive resonance, Millicent told me you downed seven martinis during the luncheon, Frank.

Burton’s head rocked as if recoiling from a sneak punch. Say . . . what, Ben? The town coupé lacked air conditioning. Mr. Mason had specified that the vehicle be restored to precisely the condition it had enjoyed when originally handcrafted by underpaid mechanics.

"I said," declared Mr. Mason with curdling emphasis, my wife told me you apparently downed seven martinis during the luncheon.

Seven . . ? Lucky number, heh, heh!

Mr. Mason’s bulging jaw muscles suggested the onset of tetanus. Millicent, he added, also described your purposeful rudeness to Mrs. Lythgoe.

Not . . . purposeful, temporized Burton, thoroughly bewildered by the reference.

Let me remind you, reminded Mr. Mason, that Craig Lythgoe happens to be one of AGC’s senior directors.

Overburdened by the effort of holding up his end of a meaningless conversation, Burton wilted in the passenger seat, succumbing to torpor.

A barely visible tic began to jump beneath Mr. Mason’s left eye. Wheeling the Bentley around an off-ramp’s descending loop, he drove blocks westward through moderate traffic, with the heat sitting motionless at stop lights causing Burton to intermittently lose consciousness.

When the nebulous outlines of large gray buildings congealed in the haze, Mr. Mason turned the Bentley into a wide, divided drive cleaving through acres of vacant parking spaces, and approached the fenced-off AGC complex, where scattered vehicles broiled in the grayish sunlight. The motorcar rocked forward on its front suspension, halted beside the green-tinted windows of a slightly elevated security cubicle.

A gangling, loose-limbed older man clad in a rumpled tan uniform eased his weight down from the step. Affectionately known as The Sheriff to AGC employees, the veteran plant protection officer touched two fingers to the brim of his far from new Stetson. Aft’noon, Mister Mason, sir. Kinda nice day out.

I’ve seen better, Sheriff. Mr. Mason clipped to his suit’s breast pocket a scarlet-rimmed badge replete with un unflattering photograph of himself. Tapping an impatient finger on the steering wheel, he waited for Burton to stir from a semiconscious slump. Your badge, Frank!

Umm-m, uh, badge . . .

Would you prefer to remain outside?

Oh, badge . . . Sure, got it . . . right here, somewhere.

Mr. Mason abused the Bentley’s gearbox pulling away.

A speculative glint in his rheumy blue eyes, The Sheriff watched the silver Bentley coupé disappear behind the gray fortress of C Building. Slim pickin’s in store for that fella Burton," he muttered sauntering back to mounted the steps, where he sat down in the cubicle and clamped a cigar stub in his dentures.

* * *

Rather than turn into A Building’s executive parking area and slot bearing his stenciled name and title, Mr. Mason drove past the guarded entrance. The Bentley purred along the plant’s inner security corridor, its invisible bow wave causing delivery trucks, vans and a heavily laden forklift to frantically veer aside. Braking to a curbside halt at the rear of a windowless, two-story building, Mr. Mason switched off the ignition, worked the latch on the forward-opening door, emerged stiffly, and stretched.

Burton studied the unforeseen move with critical apathy. Floundering from the vehicle, he slammed the passenger door with a cah-chun-n-nk! that drew a wince from Mr. Mason. Why we stoppin’ here? he inquired drowsily.

In lieu of a response, Mr. Mason allowed his jaundiced gaze to take in patches of wilted ivy overspilling the sidewalk, a pair of discouraged olive trees, some withered shrubs, and a drought-stricken boxwood hedge. AGC’s landscape gardeners, none of whom spoke English, had set out all sun specimens in shaded areas, while shade plants battled for survival under the solar blows of an unexceptionally warm spring day. Tightlipped, he turned to Burton , loosed a drawn-out sigh of reproach. Frank, you paid scant heed to what I had to say during the drive.

A hunted expression crept across Burton’s clean-cut features. The only recent dialogue he could recall was a critique of his liquid lunch. However, the CEO’s way of gauging executive ability in direct ratio to executive attention span was legendary. Heard . . . ever’ word, Ben.

"I can’t believe you, of all the executives on our First Team, were daydreaming."

Notta chance! assured Burton.

It’s gratifying to hear that. Nevertheless, may I refresh your memory? At our last executive get together Bill Ladd spoke to us at length about . . . You with me, Frank?

Oh, sure! You bet! At the las’ Sunrise Service Ladd talked about . . . Sorry, I meant the, uh, you know . . . reg’lar mornin’ . . . meeting.

Frank, Frank . . ! His fruity baritone suddenly laden with benign harmonic resonances, Mr. Mason said defensively, Have I ever acted stuffy about you members of our First Team calling our pow-wows‘Sunrise Services’?

"Uh-uh, not once! Never, B.M."

The CEO’s slow smile parodied any hint of amusement. Simply not your day, is it, Frank? You know I simply detest being addressed in that scatological manner.

Burton paled.

Mr. Mason hawked and spat into the scraggly ivy, then used a monogrammed kerchief to dab his lips with executive finesse. As I’m sure you’ll recall, Doctor Ladd had just returned from Washington to announce that NASA and DoD had both seemed very enthusiastic about our proposal on the advanced, er . . . Space Shuttle. I believe the generic title is Aerospaceplane.

Burton tolled the statement syllable by syllable, took a random stab at comprehension, and came up empty.

Minutes ago driving in through the main parking lot, Mr. Mason went on to say, The dismal tale it tells of being half-deserted, and getting worse by the month, is in desperate need of a happy ending. Before the merger, and compounded by the employment attrition we have suffered, a parking place was hard to find out there. With the industry still backsliding, and the national economy recovering at a glacial rate, as overseer of our Research & Development Division you should be the first appreciative how critical it will be to bring in a major program of significant scope and duration. Late last year, the directors agreed to fund an in-house study that would hopefully lead to a major program award precisely like the one Ladd’s Advanced Projects team has labored with vigor, vim and unstinting dedication to bring in-house. Winning the Aerospaceplane R&D contract award would amount to an absolutely vital business coup.

Burton had concentrated his wavering faculties, striving to elicit some shred of meaning from the CEO’s solemn account. Understand, he lied, and bit back a hiccup.

Mr. Mason studied the featureless gray façade of G Building intensely, as if probing for weakness in the event of siege. Some time ago, he said, after the XF-49 cancellation, we were forced to vacate ‘G,’ then more recently seeded the ground floor with Ladd’s Advanced Projects Group, yet only as an interim measure. If and when this rich Aerospaceplane plum falls in our lap, I plan to install your entire Research & Development Division here in G and keep the Advanced Project’s diverse engineering, scientific and collateral functions conveniently together under one roof.

Suffering acute equilibrium dysfunction, Burton shuffled his feet. and barely avoided a plunge into wilted ivy. Ben, he pleaded, can you, uh . . . well, bring me up t’speed.

Pardon me?

Why’re we foolin’ with the . . . Space Shuttle? I mean, isn’t it . . . ancient history? NASA flew a fleet of those birds for years, then junked ‘em in museums and, uh . . . wherever.

The CEO’s head lifted smartly. You have no idea, he accused what I’ve been saying.

Burton teetered mutely on the sidewalk making spastic windmill motions with his hands.

Mr. Mason spun on his heel, marched stiff-legged to the silver Bentley, wrenched open the door and plopped inside. Before driving away, he leered at Burton through the open window, and hurled back an ominous, Humm-m-mphh!

The ominous humm-m-mphh! made Burton shiver despite the heat. Staggering to the sheer wall of G Building. Leaning against it for a spell to recuperate, he eventually summoned the strength to lurch across trackless expanses of asphalt and concrete to his deluxe, fruitwood-paneled office in A Building’s posh executive wing.

* * *

For his failure to stay abreast of corporate state-of-the-art conduct, nothing out of the ordinary happened to AGC Vice President Burton for one entire week.

Seven days to the day after the tragic luncheon, he trundled his near-new BMW sedan up to the secure rear entrance of A Building, rolled down the window, and confidently pushed his encoded plastic key card into the executive parking area admittance slot. The red-and-white-striped barrier refused to lift. He tried again and again, then yet again and again, working the card in and out until it bent.

Uttering a ripe obscenity, the veep let his apprehensive gaze rove along the rows of parked autos — Executive VP & GM Charles Allison’s crimson Porsche, Dr. Herbert Mauch’s sleek black Mercedes, Mr. Mason’s elegant silver Bentley fastback coupé, and the rest. He slowly backed away from the obstinate admittance barrier, and stared wistfully at the forbidding caveat posted alongside the nearby exit:

DO NOT ENTER

SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE MAY RESULT

A row of cruel, spring-loaded spikes angled above the asphalt, allowing only departing vehicles to exit with impunity.

Aghast upon reaching the sanctuary of his fruitwood-paneled office, he discovered that the key to his private washroom had vanished from his massive desk. After ransacking every drawer, he ordered his executive assistant to search her desk, hustled out and scoured the BMW’s glove box, trotted back inside and emptied his pockets, looked into vases and flower pots, peered under papers, and searched every square decimeter of carpeting underneath his desk. Staring disconsolately out the window, doubt settled around him like some poisonous vapor.

Burton drank too much that weekend. His wife threatened twice to leave him unless his vile disposition improved. His elder son, a Phi Beta Kappa candidate at a prestigious local university, was arrested Saturday evening and charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance. Late Sunday night his sunburned younger son returned from a waterskiing junket to announce he had contracted a common social ailment from a lovely girl he’d met in the middle of Lake Arrowhead.

Two mornings later Burton entered A Building’s executive row uneasily, in decidedly low spirits, and stifled a groan. On the textured wall outside his executive suite, the lettering on a walnut placard bearing his name and title had shrunk to graffiti the resembling Serbian italics. He startled his executive assistant by rushing past her and gingerly entering his spacious inner office. The cut-pile carpeting of a conservative russet hue no longer covered his floor. A nondescript sheet metal desk crouched in grim mockery, usurping the place of honor once occupied by his massive L-shaped model. The photos of zooming, fire-trailing, missiles, airplanes and spacecraft no longer graced his fruitwood-paneled walls.

And an hour later, at Mr. Mason’s executive Sunrise Service, Burton learned he might as well have been fashioned of clear, polished crystal.

The next day his office drapes had vanished.

Feeling traduced by life, not to mention overcome with dismay and remorse interspersed with sieges of red, foam-at-the-mouth fury, the beleaguered veep hunched behind his nondescript metal desk conjuring vengeful, Mittyesque images of himself barring Mr. Mason from the urinal until his bladder burst, picturing himself heroically defending the ravishment of his office by AGC maintenance men in grungy coveralls who bobbed and weaved and clawed to get past him and strip the fruitwood paneling from his walls.

The following day his executive assistant vanished along with her desk, computer terminal, file cabinet, and wastebasket.

Excommunicated from AGC’s inner world, he no longer received corporate memos and bulletins. His name had been expunged from the executive distribution list. No one was left on hand to word-process and dispatch outgoing missives, nor did the encrypted e-mail server any longer recognize his address and password. He had to slink to and from a distant washroom, jaunts the other executive assistants along executive row kindly pretended not to notice.

Unceremoniously deported to Siberia –– D Building –– Burton remained on the corporate overhead payroll for months, hanging on grimly with teeth and toenails for the best of excellent reasons: he continued to draw a weekly portion of his munificent per annum salary, plus stock options and management incentive bonuses, for doing absolutely nothing.

Well, almost nothing. While languishing in purgatory, he spent more than two hundred dollars on postage, plus thousands more on airline tickets, in order to either visited in person, e-mailed, or snail-mail professionally doctored résumés to every aerospace firm from Miami to Seattle, and from San Diego to Bangor. He contacted several executive placement agents, only to discover that most elite headhunters who had not yet closed their doors and walked away were too busy filing bankruptcy petitions to grant him an interview.

The lack of demand for his services astounded Burton. He persisted, managing to garner several perfunctory interviews, during which he learned two harsh facts of life: he was either overqualified or under-qualified for whatever executive position he sought to fill, depending on the interviewer’s whim, or in some cases the current efficiency of his or her digestive tract, and secondly that his lofty position with a defense oriented government prime contractor utterly doomed any faint chance of landing a similar executive niche in the vast wasteland of the private sector. The aerospace industry itself was not simply on its backside, as Mr. Mason had suggested, but moribund, a candidate for the crypt what with defense funding effectively sequestered in one squabbling congressional committee or another. The national economy had barely bottomed out, and was dragging its heels, struggling to recover. Former senior and middle-management aerospace executives now mingled with the unwashed masses of blue-collar unemployed, as well as the washed masses of white-collar unemployables.

Feeling outed, downsized and desperately sorry for himself, Burton sensed his artfully nurtured executive skills eroding daily, hourly. If only, he thought, staring in anguish at the acoustic ceiling tiles of his dingy office, those damnCIA loafers had done their job and supported the USSR’s Communist régime! With a minimum of foresight on the part of America’s lallygagging spooks and self-serving cloak ’n dagger bureaucrats, the lucrative Cold War would never have evaporated, leaving him and thousands like him high and dry, with zero prospects, or even less than zero prospects.

A stiffly worded letter from AGC’s bevy of corporate attorneys was eventually slipped beneath the door of Burton’s déclassé office, advising him that Mr. Benjamin C. Mason III had regretfully accepted his resignation. The fact that he had never thought about tendering a resignation sent Burton into a killing rage. His strident, table-pounding protestations and furious denunciations of the way he had been treated did little or nothing to ruffle the feathers of AGC’s legal eagles comfortably ensconced in their B Building aerie.

Rumors circulated after Burton’s departure. Some said he had suffered horribly by going against his attorney’s advice and contesting his wife’s divorce action. Some said he had fled California, a deadbeat fugitive from residual alimony payments, and was pouting in solitude far from any beaten paths in the wilds of New Mexico, changing tires and pumping gas in some off-brand filling station. Others reported that he had developed an affinity for New Mexico sunrises, as well as Tequila Sunrises, and spent his free time sitting in the shade, shaking his fist and swearing uncontrollably each time an AGC commercial jetliner painted condensation trails plying the brilliant Southwest skies overhead.

TWO HAM

Jolted awake in the throes of a triple-X-rated dream, Henry Alan Moffett became aware of the noble reflex distending his pajama bottoms. Assailed by a rerun of sensuous visions that had flooded into his subconscious during a plunge into virtual unreality, he resented the dream’s obliteration almost as much as the lengthy siege of unemployment he had endured. No remedy for the latter came to mind, but a cure for the former might be, well, wishful thinking . . .

Or maybe not. He opened his eyes, and was deluged by dim sensory impressions. Dawn light seeping through lined damask draperies glazed the mirror above a mahogany chest of drawers his dormant career had given him the leisure to refinish. Silver-framed photos of his son and daughter reflected the crepuscular glow limning his wife’s favorite Regency chair in ghostly outline. Light rain pattered on the cedar-shake roof, and from the corner of the house a gurgling obbligato played in counterpoint, reminding him the drainpipe he had promised to repair still needed attention. A miniature Niagara would be cascading down the stuccoed exterior, adding a brownish smudge to the cracks and sun checks already there.

Thoughts of neglected drainpipes were thrust aside. Punching the pillow, he prepared to slide back into sleep, but soon realized lingering randiness had eliminated that option.

He rolled over in the queen-sized bed. Audrey Lee’s petite, indistinct figure was skewed in her usual curlicue, one arm flung back over her head, stretching aside her nightgown to expose a partial hemisphere of dainty breast. Struck by the symmetry of its silvered outline, and the aureole peeking at him in the dimness, he welcomed a resurgence of warmth in his loins. His wife’s breathing continued slow, rhythmic and shallow. Encouraged, he snuggled next to her.

Audrey Lee stirred, whispered, You’re a lecherous lecher.

Is there any other kind? When no further comment was forthcoming, he pressed his tumescence against her thigh.

Honestly, she murmured, not withdrawing from the caress, when a girl isn’t safe in her own bed . . .

Safe . . ? Take your little pills, don’t you?

You know I do.

Then what’re husbands for? he wanted to know.

Husbands are for winning bread, fixing broken drainpipes. Why aren’t you up and about, looking for work?

How kind you are to remind me. But, you have a point right. It’s either that, or food stamps. He stroked her tummy with his fingernails until she squirmed. Got that screwy interview at nine-thirty, remember?

What time is it now?

Happily ever after time. He tugged her gently to him, nuzzled her throat.

He had to wait for her so that, together, they could enjoy the brief, transcendental explosion of pleasure. Afterward she lay in his arms, warm and drowsy.

He chuckled. Hypocrite.

Meaning . . ?

He stroked her auburn hair. I suspect you like sex even more than I do, Audrey Lee.

That’s a shameless thing to say!

Oh, don’t deny it. If not for your straitlaced Southern Belle upbringing, you’d admit it.

What led to that scholarly conclusion?

Almost a decade of research.

Shameless! Her head lifted from his chest. Uh-oh! She blinked, clearing the sleep from her eyes to read the bedside clock's glowing digits. Best get a hustle on, it’s five to eight.

Ouch! Poach a couple of eggs, will you? He slid from the bed, and sought his robe.

* * *

At breakfast, five-year-old Teddy Moffett sopped up oatmeal, while Audrey Lee and Ham took turns fending off the melting brown eyes of Ralph, the family dachshund, who played his favorite mealtime game: seeing whose resolution would weaken first when it came to doling out table scraps. The dachsie finally threw in the towel and waddled away, head down, indecently aggrieved.

Why’s Missy not up for breakfast? asked Ham.

You were dressing when she grabbed a bite, said his wife between mouthfuls, then went next door to do homework with Gracie. Ever learn who set up this mystery job interview?

Nary a clue. But with the employment abyss still deep, I couldn’t pass up that goofy invitation to e-mail AGC a résumé. A slim chance’ll beat no chance every time. Ham finished chewing a mouthful of eggy toast. For a while, I thought there might be a long shot at getting back into Sargent. Not now, according to Clint Dangerfield. He told me the company nosedived big time after Sarge went to his reward, and that his nephew may look important sitting his uncle’s office, but his summed technical knowledge could be tucked in Ralph’s ear.

Teddy looked up from his oatmeal. Sure better not!

Ham patted his son’s hand. Easy, Ted. It’s not what you think.

Sounding distantly troubled, Audrey Lee worried aloud about Aerospace General being such a huge company.

"According to Aviation Week," he corrected, it was before all the downsizing.

His wife wrinkled her nose. Well, it certainly isn’t small now. Let’s say you luck out and are offered a position. Wouldn’t you feel lost, a tiny minnow in a great big pond?

Ham shrugged. Beggars do very little choosing. He paused to spread orange marmalade on a slice of buttered toast. I’ve been on the street so long I’m ready to flip burgers and mow lawns, except all those odd jobs are handled now by immigrants or out of work adults. The economic recovery’s limping, and plenty of engineers and techs are still cutback victims. The prospect at AGC is far from dazzling, but an interview is just talk, and talk’s cheap.

Hook up with this fly-by-night missile outfit, and they could transfer you to only God knows where. Moving would mean selling the house, changing Missy’s school, losing our —

Whoa! You’re at it again, Audrey Lee, shopping for trouble. Don’t be so paranoid.

Only the paranoid survive, she declared. Now if you were to land something around Atlanta, Charleston or Memphis — even Nashville — it would be a different story.

Uh-huh, except you married a California guy, and that’s where he means to stay.

Her chin lifted. Uncle Nat was stationed in San Diego during the Iraq War, she said crossly. He says the country’s tipped a tad West, and everything loose rolled to California.

Ham grinned. Your Uncle Nat is astute, and the world needs stutes.

Accustomed to ignoring her husband’s awful puns, Audrey Lee said, I’ll ask one last time, if only to learn whether you’ve been listening. Should this highfaluting missile outfit offer you a suitable position, where did you say they had another plant?

I didn’t say, he told her with a twinkle. Oh, if you must know there’s a large AGC facility between Denver and Colorado Springs.

Colorado? Why, Colorado is the absolute back of beyond.

What makes you the leading household authority on Colorado?

Well, I certainly ought to be after flying over those parts two winters past to visit my sister. Mountains and snow, snow and mountains far as the eye could see.

Ham’s brow creased. Audrey Lee, can you please enlighten me about the topic of this conversation? Why in hell do we forever end up talking in riddles?

Shush! Tame your foul mouth in front of T-E-D-D-Y.

The boy had finished his oatmeal.Hell, he said brightly,

There! See now what you’ve done?

Ham lifted his palms in self-defense. The accused ate a hearty breakfast, and must now depart. He survived his wife’s accusative stare by pecking her cheek, brushed his teeth in the half-bath beside the entry, plucked his raincoat from the hall closet and called back a pacifying, Teddy, want to help me fix a drainpipe when I get home?

From the dinette, Teddy said proudly, Hell!

There! I certainly do hope you’re satisfied, was Audrey Lee’s parting shot.

Moffett escaped by easing the front door shut behind him.

* * *

The late season shower was blowing away. Breeze-blown droplets from the bougainvillea espaliered alongside the entry made Ham duck his head, and then catch his balance when the leather soles of his black oxfords skidded on wet, tissue-thin cerise petals littering the walkway. Mounded clouds formed battlements above Mount Gleason’s camelback to the east, but overhead the sky had the scoured look of a cerulean bowl.

The eight-year-old Ford minivan beaded with water droplets started easily, mostly he thought because he’d spent an hour Saturday morning tuning the engine. He backed the Ford into the street with the nebulous prospect of employment dangling before him again like a mirage that receded at a high mach number whenever he approached. During the past year he had taken dozens of interviews, e-mailed numberless résumés, and filled out countless applications. No more than a residual belief existed that AGC could or would offer him a worthwhile position. He and his family had gotten by due to unemployment insurance, reasonably prudent though now all but exhausted savings, and his wife’s penny-pinching genius for running the household.

Traffic was moderate on the freeway that steamed as bright spring sunshine evaporated the dampness left over from the light rainfall. Whistling tunelessly in time with the windshield wipers’ metronome, he bobbed his head to see through smeared spray thrown back by the preceding cars, swung the Ford around an off-ramp’s descending curlicue, and drove several blocks west, chafing at the red lights. The dashboard clock reminded him it was nine twenty.

Huge blue letters on a simulated missile guarded the entrance to a local landmark:

AEROSPACE GENERAL CORPORATION

An Equal Opportunity Employer

An expansive, two-thirds deserted parking lot surrounded the frontage on three sides of an intersecting maze of walkways between large, gray, monolithic one- and two-story buildings. Ham followed signs, guiding the minivan to AGC’s Human Resources Center, a single-level structure moderately divorced from the main complex.

Half a dozen discouraged looking applicants showed minimal interest when he entered a long, narrow room furnished with rows of molded plastic chairs. A Formica counter labeled EMPLOYMENT took up a major portion of wall space on the left, while on a second counter opposite an engraved placard read:

PROFESSIONAL CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

A severely thin Asian-American woman lifted her eyes behind the counter. Good morning, sir. She listened gravely to Ham’s recitation of his name and reason for being there. The woman nodded, tapped a computer keyboard. Yes, Mister Moffett. You’re scheduled for an interview with the engineering director of our Advanced Projects Group in ‘G’ Building, which is . . . here. She traced Ham’s prospective route on a wall map of the facility.

His interest perked up over the notion of actually talking with an authentic engineering director, not just another human resources individual. It also ignited a distant glimmer of hope, which he instinctively squelched due to almost a full year of turndowns.

Briefly Mister Moffett, there are two important points our HR Director insists be made perfectly clear to all applicants. Feel free to discuss anything at all with Doctor Ladd except salary. If and when AGC makes a professional offer, direct engineering labor averages must be factored into the equation, plus overhead expenses, points for previous technical experience, points for work-related college courses taken, points for obtaining an advanced university degree, and so forth. It’s a statistician’s nightmare, yet very necessary.

Fine, no salary discussion.

Secondly, you really should fill out an employment application prior to the interview.

Can I take the paperwork home, suggested Ham, eager to discuss employment with someone who spoke his language, fill it out there, and mail it back?

Of course, sir. That will be fine. Whipping a number of preprinted forms from a segmented file drawer, the receptionist stacked the papers neatly, with geometric precision, added Moffett’s résumé to the pile, deftly slipped the sheaf of paperwork into a white folder bearing the blue AGC logo, and handed it to Ham with a faint professional smile.

THREE ALEX

Clutching the telephone in a white-knuckled grip, Alexander Kurilekutzatzov — legally shortened to Kurile, an act acutely repugnant to the numerous relatives of his vast extended family — sat straighter in his high-backed executive chair. "Gumshoe, you telling me your dicks actually located the sumbitch? Bolshoi!" he bellowed, hurting the private detective’s ear and at the same time exhausting all acquaintance with the Russian language. So where’s he holed up?

The PI explained that former AGC Vice President Franklin Burton was working in some off-brand New Mexico filling station. We had to dig pretty deep to find him here where I’m calling from in Tucumcari. Want me to kind of sound him out, see if he’s willing to —?

No, hell no! Stay clear, but keep him right where he’s at. I’ll head over that way pronto.

Fine, Mister Kurile. But fly commercial, and you’ll have to change planes in —

Naw, no sweat. I don’t fool with that small time stuff, assured Alex. My Gulfstream takes me where I need to go. Have a limo pick me up at the airport in, say, two, three hours.

Having no use for salutations, farewells or small talk, Alex caged the handset murmuring, Floors me to ’think that loser could find his own ass using both hands. Not wishing to bother his personal assistant, who was probably goofing off somewhere anyhow, he punched the autodialer. After two buzzes at an unlisted Washington number, a hoarse baritone said, Gridley.

Hiya, Grid. It’s me.

Hey, great to hear from you, Mister Kurile! No longer hoarse, the lobbyist’s voice took on overtones of genuine interest. How’re things out there in God’s country?

Gave him the day off, said Alex. Knock off the loose chatter, and give ear to what the TV goniffs like to call late-broken news. The private dickhead I’m paying through the nose has turned up this Burton character I told you about. Guy’s gone and lost himself way to hell and gone out in New Mexico, where I’m heading now. Meantime, I want you to invent some juicy stuff for a sit-down once the guy’s back on his feet, ready to shake, rattle ‘n roll. Got it?

Got it, Mister Kurile! Fact is, I’m already a step or two ahead of the game. I’ve been talking to . . . The lobbyist broke off. Mister Kurile . . ?

Not one to mince words, Alex had rung off. Autodialing his pilots’ answering service

Reviews for It's Too Late to Leave Early

[William Walling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reply to [e-mail] Kirkus Media LLC

ITLTLE Walling, William
Edited excerpt NOOK 14 April, 2012:
Rebecca Cramer

IT'S TOO LATE TO LEAVE EARLY, An Aerospace Fable Virtualbookworm.com (388 pp.) $15.95 Paperback $9.99 e-book (1st Edition) July 19, 2002 ISBN: 978-1589392359
William Walling’s wild novel details the inner workings, corporate politics, government regulations and a potential hostile takeover creating turmoil at a large aerospace plant as it struggles to survive the vagaries of government funding and the underhanded machinations of a determined casino owner’s potential hostile company takeover. In Walling’s winning premise, his main characters’ various story lines parallel and intersect each other in the direction of a dark comedy, and allow laundry lists of tongue-in-cheek, stylistic phrases that have effect throughout —“depending upon the whim, digestive efficiency and competence”; “Feeling undersized, downsized, and desperately sorry for himself.” Casino owner Alexander Kurile does not simply put on a pair of designer sunglasses; he “slips the horns over his dirigible ears.” Executive Blair Sorenson’s every step is counted in paces-per-minute, presumably to reinforce his military background. Walling's description of a secretary may best sum up this delightful, insightful comedy of errors in the unique setting of corporate engineering: “she picked it to pieces syllable by syllable in order to unearth the kernels of meaning nestled within the convoluted, elliptical phraseology.”