"I'm leaving now."
"Rania." Hap's voice changed a little, not faster, but closer. "Keep an eye on the radar on the drive. If it beats you there, you call me before you set foot on that gangway. I don't need a pilot on a ship that's already off the dock without one."
"I'll call you," she said, and hung up, and turned around.
Her daughter Yasmin was standing in the kitchen doorway in a T-shirt that said ASK ME ABOUT OCTOPUSES, holding the remote control and looking at her with the expression of a child who knows exactly what that particular ringtone means. Behind her, in the living room, a nature program was explaining the hunting habits of the mantis shrimp to nobody.
"You're going," Yasmin said.
"I'm going. Baba will be home in twenty minutes. You can stay by yourself for twenty minutes, can't you? You're practically a grown woman."
"I'm practically nine and a half."
"Practically nine and a half is practically a grown woman." Rania was already moving: shoes, the canvas pilot bag from its hook by the garage door, the yellow foul-weather jacket, the hard hat with BAYARD PILOTS stenciled on the back in reflective letters. She texted her husband while she walked. Karim, called out early, squall coming, Yas alone till you get here, sandwich on counter, she says crusts are punishment. Then, after a second, she added: Love you. Pray Maghrib on time, I won't be able to.
She checked the bag the way she checked it every time, even though she had packed it the night before, because her father had taught her that the night before was when you packed and the moment before was when you checked. The portable pilot unit in its hard orange case, the laptop and the two GPS antennas that would sit on the bridge wing rails and tell her the ship's position to within a few inches, independent of anything the ship's own equipment said. Handheld VHF radio, charged. Her pilot's license from the State of Texas, in its plastic sleeve. Her TWIC card, the federal Transportation Worker Identification Credential that every person who walked onto a secured American port facility had to carry, on its lanyard. A flashlight. Water. And, folded flat in the inside zippered pocket, a thin travel prayer rug in dark green, the size of a bath towel, that had been her father's.
Yasmin followed her to the door. "Is it a big ship?"