Then she uncoiled the air conditioner tube from its caddy and dragged it along the underbelly of the plane to its socket. With each step, she counted under her breath to calm her flaring temper. Robbie Pascal, who hired on at StarWest two years before she did, parked the baggage conveyor at the rear compartment and swung the heavy door upward. Though he’d bristled a bit last year when she got promoted to crew chief over him, he was a conscientious worker and proud to be part of the team that got the highest performance marks nearly every quarter. He also was fun to work with. Too much fun today, Joy thought. Since they had only twenty-five minutes to turn this plane around, she climbed up into the cargo hold instead of calling him out onto the tarmac. “Look, Robbie. I don’t know what you and Freddie were playing today, but a wing-walker has one job, and that’s to see the plane in and out of the gate without clipping something. You can’t do that when you’re horsing around.”
