Just Add Salt (2) Read Free Page B

“Well, you know, we do live near San Francisco.”
    “Very damned funny. Did you know about this?”
    “This what?” Her baby blues didn’t blink, but I wasn’t sold on her innocence. After twenty years as my friend she had learned subterfuge from the maestro of deceit.
    “Kuwait. As if you didn’t know.”
    “Oh, that this. I know that Lars and Jenks are working on a bid package for a project over there, but you knew that.”
    “Did not.”
    “Did too.”
    “Okay, so perhaps it was mentioned, but I didn’t know they were going there.”
    “Well, then, neither did Jenks. You know Jenks never lies. So, they’re going to Kuwait? Let me see that e-mail.”
    Jan unfolded—others stand, she unfolds—to her full five eleven and sauntered around behind me. I slid out of my chair at the dining table I use as an office, left her to read Jenks’s annoying e-mail while I went outside to watch the sun settling over San Francisco Bay. A tug chugged by, creating a wake that rocked Raymond Johnson enough so that I had to steady myself on the rail.
    As I fumed, silently wishing plague and pestilence upon the tug’s captain and Jenks alike, I heard Jan slide open the aft cabin door. Zigzagging slightly to compensate for the undulating deck, she carried a bottle of Shiraz in one hand and two oversized balloon wine glasses in the other.
    “Here,” she said, handing off the crystal. I held onto the not-very-practical-for-a-boat-but-I-bought-’em-anyhow glasses while she grabbed a corkscrew from the outdoor bar and deftly popped the cork. The two delicate goblets readily handled an entire bottle of wine.
    I took a long drink. “Ah, that’s good. But that Jenks! Damn him, you’d think he’d have the courtesy to call instead of dropping a bombshell like this via e-mail.”
    “A man with keen preservation skills, I’d say. Knows how to avoid verbal shrapnel. I didn’t even get an e-mail from that lily-livered brother of his, who, by the way, is quickly climbing to the very top of my shit list, so consider yourself lucky. I don’t know why we’re surprised. I mean, we know Lars and Jenks do oilfield fire protection work and all the big money’s in the Middle East right now.”
    “Yeah, but we have plans,” I said with a pout.
    “Yabbut, plans change. And you know damned well if we got an offer to make the big bucks we’d jump on it. Right?”
    I grudgingly agreed. We’re both self-employed consultants, Jan in accounting software, me in construction and engineering materials management. Because of that, we do understand you have to make hay while the sun shines, but dammit, we made plans with those Jenkins brothers.
    My name is Hetta Coffey: CEO, CFO, president and sole employee of Hetta Coffey, SI, LLC. The SI is my little phonetic prank on the pronunciation of Civil Engineer. An engineer by degree, I specialize in material management and, like ole Ben Franklin, leave nothing to chance. As he wrote, “For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.” My job is to ensure no project nail is late, or lost.
    But right now I had more than work on my mind. If Jenks Jenkins, my alleged boyfriend, didn’t return in time for a timely departure on our planned trip to Mexico, I’d have a cash flow crunch in my future. We had to leave and return as scheduled or by mid-January I’d be scrounging for my dock fee and boat payment. By February I’d be sunk, not a word one who lives on a boat uses lightly. What to do? What to do?
    A freshening breeze made me thankful for the protection of my aft sundeck, or verandah, as I call it. Side curtains cut the wind, allowing us to drink our wine in cozy comfort. Furnished in fake rattan Brown Jordan with fashionably faded blue-and-white striped cushions, the deck sports a small table for outdoor dining, a gas