Fly Me

by Daniel Riley

  Still, in spite of the fact that they’ve got tomorrow, she can’t deny the bright desire to see him tonight. She knows where some of the parties are and she’s done it before—filed out into the dark grid, as on the Fourth, followed the shrieks and squeals and melodies to find the party maker in the middle of it all. As she rides along, there’s a sudden onset of a countdown that strings together from balcony to balcony like telephone lines—“nine, eight, seven…”—though it must be for something else, since it’s hours to go still. At “one” there’s an explosion of noisemakers and fireworks, children on the Strand banging pots with wooden spoons, wet kisses consuming couples on balconies that look as though they might slip banisters and tumble to the concrete. Suzy pulls to the side, and through a ground-floor window notices a large television screen displaying the confetti raining over Times Square. The New York New Year, celebrated as though it’s their own—the first time she’s noticed a critical mass of Sela del Mar paying attention to the other coast.

  Moms and dads pick up extinguished sparklers and file back up the hill to homes on the back side. Pairs move in off the balconies like performers in cuckoo clocks and shut the sliding doors until the hour of the next countdown, the hour of Rachel’s Midwest, of Chicago Minneapolis Detroit.

  There’re just too many parties tonight. Not three or four, but uncountable gatherings in need of a bump. From here, near the pier, to the north end, where Suzy’s apartment sits quiet and dark, she rides her bike back slowly, wondering how Grace’s flight has gone and who Billy’s got on the hook. She slows her pedaling so that it’s just one single push, a long coast, followed by another, like when she rows her skateboard. The north part of town is darker, the number of Strand-front parties dropping off. And when she gets to her turn-up, she tilts her face west toward the fissure where she imagines the black sky and the black water meeting. She can’t really distinguish it. She sends out this weird thought to the whole scene, something she’s never done before—a sort of general gratitude and an appeal to the next year, a year she is certain will be filled with a shift. This thing she’s looking at will never ever change, but she’s gonna maybe change around it—that’s the idea, that’s the vibe she’s putting out there. Keep your eyes on the constant, keep the center fixed, and then maybe you can let yourself take a ride on the outer reach of the wheel.

  She doesn’t want to start sweating on the final steep climb to her apartment, so she walks her bike to her stairs, rests it against the rail, and finds her way through the front door. Inside it’s cold—a broken heater maybe. There’s so much to do and so many people in the periphery. But right this instant—9:37 is what the clock says—it’s the old anxiety, all the places she’s not, all the people who are with everyone but her. Right now—9:37, New Year’s Eve 1972—she is here, and she is so so alone. But then the spell passes, and the facts and memories and perceptions realign into high contentment, maybe even highest contentment, because who is Suzy kidding, where else could she be?

  Suzy drives. Up from the beach towns, through downtown, snaking along the Pasadena Freeway (“a former street course,” Billy tells her), and then they’re over the Arroyo Seco and filing slowly onto the golf course, which spreads out from the Rose Bowl. They park on the golf course, practically in a green-side bunker, catching shade from a walnut tree and the tailgate tent of the USC fans beside them. Before she’s got the ignition off—it’s Billy’s parents’ Volvo, and she’s careful to make sure everything’s where it needs to be—Billy’s out the back and has the tops popped on two Coors cans.

  The golf course is settled right down in a little valley at the foot of those omnipresent San Gabriels. The mountains are modest in a wider context of all geology but made marketable by the relative dullness of most stadium settings. The cars file in behind them, parking in rows that cut across the fairways. They sit on the back bumper and watch the makeshift lot fill up. Billy’s wearing an aloha shirt with a rep pattern of the interlocking S and C, the pair of tickets peeking over the edge of his pocket. He’s wearing corduroy shorts that hit him in the middle of his thigh, dark legs with blond leg fuzz. He sips his beer and quietly marvels at the cardinal and gold spilling out in all directions. Suzy watches him watch the fans: he’s laughing about something pleasant, a memory that he doesn’t share with her.

  “I still don’t get why you just didn’t go there,” she says.

  He shrugs—he’s answered the question before.

  “And I guess you couldn’t be more connected to all this anyway.”

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong: there’s a difference. And I am definitely not in the real club. I think about it sometimes.”

  “Go now, then.”

  “Twenty-five-year-old freshman?”

  “They’ll just think you’re in law school.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “That’s such a stupid thing to say. Twenty-five.”

  “I have thought about it.”

  “And?”

  “Then I get busy, don’t know what I’d do it for.”

  “I heard you graduated top of your class in high school.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Just a rumor that’s out there? That’s a pretty weird rumor.”

  “Number two. Catherine Engelbert.”

  “Sounds like a nerd.”

  “Totally,” Billy says. “She went to ’SC. Got cool.”

  “Got rid of her glasses or something?”

  “Right roommate in the lottery, I guess. Right sorority. In med school there, too, last I saw her. Commuting from Sela. Sold her some blow.”

  “Nice.”

  “I guess that’s the moment that sometimes catches me. Just being on the other side of that one. Selling versus buying.”

  “You think about college with the fantasy that one day you’ll be buying instead of selling?”

  “But then I wonder what the point is anyway—I mean, what do you get after all that time and money? What’s the life it leads to that’s inaccessible now?”

  “I’m not the best one to speak on this,” Suzy says.

  “What do you mean, you’re gonna be a pilot-senator.”

  “I think I’m gonna give myself till June. Five more months, a full year with Grand Pacific. Give myself till then to figure it out—to get my license, to see where my dad’s at, I don’t know. I just don’t think I can be a girl who’s flying more than a year unless I need the free flights.”

  “Not like your sister.”

  “Not like my sister.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you, all the news or whatever lately?”

  On the way out they heard another one—that Roberto Clemente had died in a plane crash the night before, just after takeoff near the coast of Puerto Rico. They hadn’t found his body yet.

  “It’s all the same odds. At least, that’s how I’m thinking of it. The same number of crashes.”

  “That can’t possibly be the case.”

  “It’s just been some famous people recently, is all,” Suzy says.

  “It’d make me nervous.”

  “But you’ve never been on an airplane, period.”

  “I don’t know, dude. Or maybe it’s the case that the more crashes there are, the less chance there is that anything could happen to you?”

  “But that’s not really how statistics work. They call that the gambler’s fallacy.”

  “Yale fallacy…”

  “The fact that something happened today has zero effect on whether something will happen tomorrow, is all it is. Each flight is built with the same long odds. Each flight’s either gonna go down or be fine. Its fate is preprogrammed in the machinery.”

  “That doesn’t factor in pilots,” Billy says.

  “Or hijackings.”

  “Or weather.”

  “True,” Suzy says. “I don’t know what it is—I just feel like every flight I work, it’s preordained. What’s gonna happen is gonna happen.”

  “Like you have no eff
ect.”

  “Maybe that’s why I like learning to fly. So that I can take some control.”

  Billy pops two more beers and lifts his for a toast.

  “So: nineteen seventy-three,” he says.

  “This is the year it all happens.”

  “You: pilot’s license. Me: college. Gimme another thing that’s gonna happen.”

  “Well, I didn’t really mean to mention it till after the game, but, I dunno, I really am done with the other stuff.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “And then I did another one. And another one. But it’s over.”

  “I don’t know if they’re quite ready, you know?”

  “I need you to just let them know,” Suzy says.

  “I’ll mention it. But before I do, you should really think about what you’re saying.”

  “I kind of said my good-bye to Cassidy. I made my last moves out there.”

  “You told Cassidy that you’re through?”

  “No. No, no. I just wrapped things up for my own sake. You’re the only person who knows. So you can handle it for me.”

  “Let’s just talk about it later. Figure it out for sure tomorrow, cool? They’re going to want to keep you going. Hundred percent. And they’re gonna fight it. But we’ll find a solution.”

  “It’s simple: I don’t want it anymore, they can’t force me.”

  “I’ll talk to them later this week. Next time they ask, I’ll make something up.”

  Suzy smiles even though it’s a weak assurance.

  Across the golf course there’s a balancing going on—the scarlet and gray of Ohio State evening out the proportions with the USC fans. Bent old men raise their hands in mock fisticuffs. Kids in both sets of colors draw up sides of a scrimmage to settle things ahead of time. Score predictions and turkey sandwiches and Bloody Marys. Kick’s at two, and so after finishing the six-pack, they start the pilgrimage to the stadium.

  They fall in behind a family split in their matching home jerseys—a pair of nameless cardinal-and-gold 22s and a competing pair of 28s. Lynn Swann and Anthony Davis, Billy explains; Davis scored six touchdowns against Notre Dame a month ago, including two full-field kickoff returns. Billy knows the numbers of all sixty-five Trojans dressed for today’s game, even though their names aren’t on the backs. They walk along a concrete river that bisects the golf course, and the bowl grows larger. USC fans in jackets to shell from the wind. Buckeye fans in Midwestern sweaters and Midwestern driving caps. Suzy thinks about Mike and his Big Ten town. They clop from the fairway to the rough to the meandering cart path back toward the clubhouse, directly adjacent to the stadium. It takes a while to file in, but they’re at their seats by the time the Trojan marching band is running through its routine of fight songs and formations. Suzy and Billy are halfway up the wall of the bowl, in a corner of the visitors’ end zone, a view up the gut of the field, the end zone letters appearing, from their seats, to be on their heads: OIHO. They have a view across the field of the seats filled with Buckeye fans, singing their song without the lead of the band.

  Suzy hasn’t seen anything like it before. The interior of the bowl is covered in a pointillist wallpaper—half cardinal and gold, half scarlet and gray—pierced only by the black eyes of the tunnels. Four colors tracking down to the emerald field that’s faintly crowned. The canary of the goalposts. The chalk a sharp-edged white. The field framed by the hundred and six thousand, which is some sort of record, Billy says. The First Lady is greeted with a shrug, but the parade’s grand marshal, John Wayne, pulls people to their feet. The national anthem is performed by the Ohio State University Marching Band. Flags are hoisted up flagpoles. A flight of four Thunderbirds buzzes the stadium in a diamond formation. Kickoff teams in motion and then there’s a brown bug of a ball tumbling end over end, high and short, to the far side of the oval, reaching the heights of the bowl’s upper lip, where it draws Suzy’s eyes to the Charlie Brown squiggle of a mountain range with pointed peaks at steady intervals.

  It’s warm and windy and the first quarter slips by quickly. Ohio State hardly attempts a pass—the “three yards and a cloud of dust” offense of Woody Hayes. They’re here for rushing and defense, the Trojans for flash scoring records. Billy had smuggled in a flask and nips at the intervals of the television time-outs. He doesn’t speak much, keeps his eyes leveled at the play—rarely involving himself in the hand motions of the fight songs or the roar of a third-down stop.

  The bands play at halftime after an evening-up: USC 7–Ohio State 7. This is part of the game as much as anything else. The PA announcer introduces each marching band with résumés attached—national championships, competitions claimed, unofficial accolades. Billy thumbs at the long list of important-sounding things and nods in suggestion that Suzy be impressed. The ’SC band plays the Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music,” Chicago’s “Dialogue,” Isaac Hayes’s theme from The Men. They accompany Diana Ross on the title track from Lady Sings the Blues. The song girls’ legs spill like water from their wool minis. The hometown fans cheer as loud as they do for a stop on third-and-short.

  By the middle of the second half, the game has broken wide and Billy has gotten drunk. Three rushing touchdowns—from Anthony Davis and fullback Sam “Bam” Cunningham—to Ohio State’s one. It’s like someone’s decided to stop sitting on Billy’s chest. The second half also begins to take the sun out of play. The klieg lights turn up the color on the field and in the stands, but what’s happening outside the stadium is the thing Suzy’s been promised. It’s that winter rose gold, the sunset she’s grown to rely on. It’s slapping the mountains over the lip of the bowl with a dumb lavender, a non-natural-seeming color. All those shades in the sky and the hills, they’re all for football. It’s just not the football Suzy knew on fall Fridays in Schuyler Glen.

  When Cunningham scores for a third and a fourth time, the colors are gone, the field and players darkened to muddy versions of their afternoon selves, and then the game is in the books. Billy stands at attention as the fans in the lower flats of the bowl storm the field and the players lift Cunningham and the band plays to the faithful home corner. Billy replays highlights on the walk back to the Volvo. He hands out high fives and loops around the golf course, looking for his parents. But it’s no use: the course is so dark it’s incredible they’re able to find their own car, let alone anyone else’s. It takes an hour to get going—a hundred and six thousand fans—but there are a couple beers left, and the radio’s celebrating. National Champions.

  When they’re back out of the mountains, back off the canyon roads and into the cream stream of the Harbor, they’re not far from home, but no way Billy’s letting her off yet. It’s too early. The waves of relief seem to compound.

  Billy wants to head to Howlers. Suzy could probably do without, but she feels like she owes him at least a ride. Owes him for the ticket. And besides, it really isn’t late. There’s a horde on the sidewalk out front that looks to have just left, smoke drifting from their numbers up into the neon. There’s no concert, but it’s crowded, holiday Monday out of the three-day weekend.

  “I’m surprised more people didn’t take it easy after last night,” Suzy says.

  “Are you really that surprised?” Billy says.

  Billy’s greeted by strangers to Suzy. She always forgets. She lets herself forget. She doesn’t repress it—it’s just not the Billy she seems to know, the one with whom she spent hours alone today. But these are the people who know him for the other thing. They seem to recognize that he’s playing a different role, that he’s not on tonight. He high-fives and shakes hands, shows the victory-V fingers. It’s halfway to a real party. A new band’s turning over and Suzy wonders if it’ll be J.P. and The Cover Band. She hasn’t seen him in forever and she wants to ask him about his training status. If he didn’t get booted, he should be close now. For Suzy: just thirty more hours. The thought makes her antsy—though it’s been a good day, it’s been a day without flying.


  They drink so much more. After the drive she was gassed out and ready to call it, but she’s riding higher with each beer. The band isn’t J.P.’s, but it might as well be. Allman Brothers, CCR, Eagles and Stones. There’s some method to the set of covers that’s turning the space, by gradual ticks, to a dancier place. Southwest stews on tabletops. An ’SC girl Billy knows climbs on the bar. Then the big Clavinet intro to “Superstition,” just like at the Garden in July. A big, heavy funk beat and a spot-on Stevie voice. When it hits, Billy grabs Suzy’s hand and leads her to the strip between the tables and the stage. It’s as crowded with dancing as she’s seen it. Billy has a strangely proficient rhythm. His slinky frame seems to drift all over the small space, but it hits on the beats, a lot of head swiveling, like a sidewinder in sand. He has Suzy laughing and he has Suzy spinning. Just the right amount to keep her on her feet. “Superstition” pushes toward a little countdown in Suzy’s head, the last round on the chorus, and she’s hoping by some fold in musical time that it’s only the first chorus so that they can keep going. Billy’s eyes are closed now and he’s standing taller than usual, supremely light. And when the song ends and the band announces the turnover, Billy smiles and leans down to whisper: “We won.” He opens his mouth and eyes wide, like how a child shows glee, and Suzy cracks up all over again.

  Suzy drives to Billy’s by zigging through side streets, hoping to avoid any other headlights along the way. She feels the Volvo rocking beneath her some, like she’s guiding a sailboat back to its slip. At a stoplight they pass a VW Bus that Billy recognizes, and he flashes a V out the window.