by Chris Gilson
“Thank you all for coming, but there’s been a change of heart,” she shouted to the guests crowding the terrace in their path.
She nudged the stick carefully. The round gyroscope on top of the center mast tilted the propeller forward. With a lurch it thrust them ahead. The small wheels rolled and they began to hurtle down the long, narrow runway of her terrace, scattering the guests, who shrieked and threw themselves out of their path as they charged the far wall.
“Uh, Corny…”
The brick wall of the terrace raced closer.
“Pop the clutch,” she told him.
He disengaged the clutch lever and the rickety craft hopped up like a rabbit. Then, just as abruptly, it fell back onto the terrace, plopping down hard on its small tires. They raced faster toward the terrace wall, yawing from left to right. She could clearly see the bricks, then the mortar between the bricks.
“Pop the clutch again.”
And the ship lifted up a few feet before the wall. She felt glorious wind sting her eyes as the gyrocopter pointed to the sky and hovered, then felt heavy and shuddered. The lumpy drag held them a few feet off the terrace as though they were being pulled down by a giant hand. They would smash against the brick wall like two dolls in a matchstick toy.
“Corny…”
“I’ve got it!”
She bit her lip and angled the propeller just right. A rush of air swept underneath them, scooping them up and flinging them into the sky. They cleared the wall. Then, in a huge gulp of lost altitude, they dipped sharply down toward the street.
“Something’s wrong,” she shouted. “We feel too heavy.”
Kevin looked behind, then under them. “That’s because Tucker’s hanging on down there.”
“I’ll kill you, you little prick,” she heard Tucker scream. “Cornelia, help me.”
She leaned down. Her ex-bridegroom hung on to her airship’s axle by his elbows. She had to laugh at the figure in the wedding suit, caught in the severe crosswind that whipped past the tall buildings of Fifth Avenue. Tucker’s legs spread wildly in the smart trousers and his blond hair peeled back from his skull.
“Oh, keep still,” Corny yelled at him. “It’s just a little wind buffet.”
“What do we do with him?” Kevin asked her.
“Well, we certainly don’t want him along with us, do we?”
She whooped with the thrill of the wind in her face and shoved the stick. The little gyrocopter tore almost straight down into a dive toward the crowd, now fifteen stories below. While Tucker screamed and cursed, she looked back. His shiny black wingtips were visible wide apart behind the tail.
They plunged toward the doormen in uniform, the police, and a crowd of pedestrians who now pointed and shouted. They were one hundred feet over their heads… fifty… the crowd below gasped and ducked, making a human wave. She feathered the rudder pedals with her slippers and jolted the stick.
The airship made a wobbly dip onto its side and started up straight again, hovering twenty feet above the crowd.
She pointed behind them. “Kevin, look.”
The wedding doves had left the terrace and made a V-formation. All twelve doves, the downy little aviators, spread their white wings and swooped down to meet them.
“The dove man must have thought this was part of the ceremony,” Kevin said.
“Where shall we go after we get rid of Tucker?” she asked.
“How about the Palisades?”
“That sounds wonderful.”
She worked the stick and they whipped into a sharp left over the crowd. They passed over the stone wall separating Central Park from Fifth Avenue. A little low, they skimmed over the trees, scraping the ends of the tallest branches.
“Owww,” Tucker yelled below.
She leaned over. “I thought you loved aerobatics.”
Then she executed a nice, smooth banking maneuver toward the Central Park Zoo. Busy New Yorkers with their skates and boomboxes and baby carriages, and strolling tourists with their Walkmans and tote bags, stopped on the cobblestone path below. They looked up in shock, pointing at the quietly whomping little helicopter. Then they began to applaud. Who had sponsored this giddy, impromptu air-show? This soaring deb in her bridal gown with her doorman in uniform. Not to mention the guy in a suit dangling below.
“Tucker,” Corny yelled down, “you’d better let go when I tell you.”
She peeled off and made a snap turn to approach the zoo. Dipping down to twenty feet, she hovered briefly over a large round hole built into the ground.
“Goodbye, Tucker,” she yelled.
She lifted the nose sharply and the airship sprang up. They felt so much lighter now. There was a rude shout below. Then a splash and a round of barking.
“What was that?” Kevin asked her, busy with his rheostat.
“The seal tank. I’m glad they left some water in it.”
She made a lazy, confident bank west, and they climbed to five hundred feet. Beyond Central Park West, across Manhattan and the sparkling Hudson River, they could see the thin winter sun beginning to set over the cliffs of the Palisades. She pointed the airship at the rosy haze.
And as they cleared the skyscrapers of Central Park West and soared to one thousand feet, the Tesla Tower replica poked up from the roof of Corny’s Museum. She stared at the proud steel mushroom, blue light darting around the bulbous top in a spidery electric ribbon. So what if it didn’t broadcast electricity, and probably never would? It was a tribute, not some crazy experiment.
She looked at Kevin.
“Great corona,” they said together.
Chester Lord stood with his right hand gripping the railing of his terrace, as though afraid to let go.
Roni was at his side now, her arm around his back. Together they watched Cornelia and Kevin become a white speck somewhere above Central Park West and vanish into the cobalt sky.
“I’d say she looked very happy on her wedding day,” Roni told him.
He nodded dully, and felt something in his left hand. He still clutched the small disk that the gruff, bearded man from the helicopter had pressed into it.
“Corny recorded this before she planned to leave for South America,” the man had said. “I think you ought to see it.”
He looked around for the bearded man, but he was gone now. So he stared at the silvery disk again, shiny and alien as a tiny UFO.
“Roni, would you come inside with me?”
They found Tucker’s laptop sitting on his desk. Chester approached it gingerly at first, circling the enemy. He picked it up for the first time. It felt heavier than he expected, the tungsten case solid as a safe door. He tried to open the lid, but the clasp was locked.
“We’ll fix that,” Roni told him.
She removed a book from Chester’s shelf. It was a musty, leather-bound copy of Margaret Mead’s study, Coming of Age in Samoa. She looked at the spine and gave Chester a heavy-lidded, bedroom glance. “I read this once. Very sexy.”
Then she brought the heavy volume crashing down hard on the sweet spot of Tucker’s laptop case, breaking the clasp. It sprung open like a Jack-in-the-box, sprawled flat on Chester’s desk to reveal the mysteries of its wafer-thin keyboard and silvery diode screen.
“I could never figure out how to work these things,” Chester admitted.
He tried jabbing at a few keys. Nothing. They were tiny, the letters miniaturized for a younger person’s eyes. Squinting, he found the button that made a little compartment slide open. He inserted the ultracompact disk that the bearded man had given him. Then he located another small button and pressed “Play.”
The words faded up hazily on the screen.
To Mr. Philip Grace, Debwatch, The New York Globe.
He read Cornelia’s words slowly. Then he turned the screen to Roni to show her.
“In January, the New York Tesla Museum will open to the public. I was one of its founders, although nobody knows I helped to build it. Not even my own father.
/> “No history book really does justice to Nikola Tesla. He invented modern electricity, discovered radio and television waves, X rays, and even the particle beams that will become this century’s lasers. He lit the world’s darkness.
“I think you’re a real reporter at heart, Mr. Grace, even though asking me to ‘back up’ into the Plaza fountain the other night was rather paparazzo. Since I’ll be away and you’ll be seeking a new subject, I wanted to invite you to visit the museum and possibly encourage others to do the same.
“On a more personal note, I am not some wild debutante.
“I probably earned a reputation for being flaky. But I learned from watching my father that a person must take their responsibilities seriously, even when it becomes quite lonely. And my duty was to the museum.
“So I have dedicated my part of the Tesla Museum to my parents, Elizabeth and Chester Lord IV. There’s a small plaque near the Tesla helicopter.
“I hope it brings some brightness to my father’s life, which I’m afraid you and I have made rather glum lately just doing our jobs as Reporter and Electric Girl.
“Regards from Rio, Cornelia Lord.”
Chester felt a rush in his chest. But it wasn’t the dreaded old anvil rising up this time. This was a feeling so unfamiliar in its absence of burden or remorse, so kaleidoscopic in its sweep of pleasure and possibility, he actually laughed out loud, ferociously, for the first time in a decade.
Roni stared in amazement. “Chester?”
He settled down just enough to tap the laptop screen proudly with his forefinger. “Roni, this is my daughter.”
Acknowledgments
Stealing from one person is plagiarism.
Stealing from many is research.
Many people contributed their ideas to this first novel. I would especially like to thank:
My literary agent and friend, Robert Tabian, the real hero of this book, and those literary lions of song and story, Howie Sanders and Richard Green at UTA.
Discerning publishers Larry Kirshbaum and Jamie Raab at Warner Books. My unsung co-author through three revisions, Executive Editor Rick Horgan at Warner Books, as well as Executive Managing Editor Harvey-Jane Kowal, Creative Director Jackie Meyer, Deputy Director of Publicity Jennifer Romanello, Associate Editor Jody Handley, and copyeditor Fred Chase.
Lithe gourmet Lynn Harris at New Line Cinema, screenwriter Robert Kamen, and producers Mark Johnson, Elizabeth Cantillon, and Tiffany Daniel.
Stephen Fischer, for his guidance at the very beginning.
Sandi Gellis-Cole, wickedly accurate with her creative prodding and Glock nine, for her Boot Camp in fiction writing.
My earliest ally and muse Mandy McDevitt, who turned my handwritten swamp creature into a manuscript. Her belissima typing is, as advertised, A-1.
For their creative and professional support, those wild romantics Christopher Gilsons I and III; my singularly gifted assistant Debie Klein, with special thanks to Cynthia and Kacie; the world’s best-loved in-laws, Greta and Louis Zuckerman; the inimitable Caron K; Beryl Echlin; Gene Powers; George Pammer; Sue Barton; Joyce and Chuck Beber; Lieutenant Dan Hollar; James Degus; Avanti de Mille; Allen and Cheri Jacobi; Bob Gordon; Richard and Dina Nicolella; Peter Rodriguez; Stenya Lipinska; Kerry and Susan Sakolsky; Carol Taite; Evan Blair; Cindy Roesel; Noel Frankel; Tom Lopez; JoAnn Lederman; Mike and Martha Gilson; Jim and Rhonda Schoolfield; Elaine Terris; Peggy, Arnie, and Sande Harris; John and Barbara Kushner; Rick and Jennifer Schmidt; Kevin Smith; Dan Starer of Research for Writers, New York; Spencer and Calvin.
And, of course, Nikola Tesla for inventing the future.
I’m lucky to have all of you, but I’m especially lucky to be in love. To my wife, Carolyn, the truly talented half of our couple, thank you for being my heart, my life, my dance of light.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
CRAZY FOR
CORNELIA
“GREAT FUN… wayward and winsome… a truly good read.”
—FAY WELDON, AUTHOR OF BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY
“CRAZY FOR CORNELIA is a lot like the city itself: irresistibly smart and energetic, soaring with creativity, extremely funny and yet kindly sentimental, and populated with wonderful characters. CHRIS GILSON IS A FRESH VOICE.”
—LAURA VAN WORMER, AUTHOR OF EXPOSÉ AND ANY GIVEN MOMENT
“A ROMANTIC, WITTY, FAST-PACED ROMP… a lovely, funny fairy tale with a light but always wise and compassionate heart.”
—KATE CHRISTENSEN, AUTHOR OF IN THE DRINK
“Once upon a time, I believed that stories had the power to make the world seem new all over again. And then I read CRAZY FOR CORNELIA and saw that it’s still true: In wonderful stories love works and magic happens. CHRIS GILSON IS AS GOOD AS HOUDINI WITH HIS ROCKET SOCKS ON. Jump on board.”
—LES STANDIFORD, AUTHOR OF BLACK MOUNTAIN
“This screwball comedy of a fairy tale snugly fits our turn-of-the-century world… GREAT FUN TO READ!”
—DIANE LESLIE, AUTHOR OF FLEUR DE LEIGH’S LIFE OF CRIME: A NOVEL
“Chris Gilson’s heartfelt Cinderella story MOVES AT A BREAKNECK PACE to its triumphant, soaring, completely satisfying ending.”
—MAMEVE MEDWED, AUTHOR OF MAIL AND HOST FAMILY
“Like a gorgeous woman hiking up her skirt, you just have to look. YOU JUST HAVE TO READ CRAZY FOR CORNELIA.”
—RITA MAE BROWN, AUTHOR OF RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE