Flight Dreams

by Michael Craft

  Zarnik stands and turns toward David. Smiling, he tells him, “Indeed it is, my young friend. But alas, it is now too late. The demonstration, which depends on the simultaneous gathering and comparison of data transmissions, can be made only during a narrow astronomical oculus, for a few fleeting moments at noon.”

  David frowns, “I wish we’d seen it.”

  “And you surely shall,” Zarnik tells him. He explains, “There will be another prime oculus in two days, Friday at noon. Can you return then?”

  David turns to Manning, who stands, answering, “Absolutely, Professor. I’ll need to see the demonstration before I can draw any conclusions in print.” He notes the appointment in his date book. “That will leave me just enough time to finish the story for the weekend editions.”

  Zarnik reaches to shake Manning’s hand. “Thank you so much. That is all I ask. You will not be disappointed. But please take care to arrive a few minutes early, or the opportunity may be missed.” He also extends his hand to David, escorting both reporters to the door, which he opens for them.

  Preparing to leave the lab, Manning turns and says, “Excuse me, Professor, but something’s troubling me. You’ve just announced the biggest astronomical news since the thirties, when Pluto was discovered, and your claim has been met by the skepticism of your peers. Reporters everywhere, including the scientific press, are now clamoring to get to you. But when I phoned earlier, you said that you were eager to speak to me alone. I appreciate the exclusive—but why me?”

  Zarnik answers flatly, “Because you are known to be the best in your field.”

  David concurs, nudging Manning with his elbow, flashing him a thumbs-up.

  “I’m flattered,” Manning tells Zarnik, “but any science writer would be far better qualified to judge your research and interpret it for the public.”

  “Those hacks are mere leeches on the carcass of science, sucking the blood of knowledge from the work of others. Besides, they are read by no one, excepting other—how do you say?—eggheads.”

  Manning laughs. “You have a point, Professor. Even so, I’d be much more comfortable if Clifford Nolan, the Journal’s science editor, could witness your demonstration as well. He’s far more qualified than I.”

  “To the contrary,” scoffs Zarnik, “he struck me as a mere dilettante whose mind is ruled by crude skepticism.”

  Manning blinks. “You’ve met him?”

  “Of course,” Zarnik answers, as if Manning should have known. “He came here on Monday, shortly after my press release was issued. We discussed my discovery at length, but he left unconvinced. Fortunately, your paper had both the taste not to print his worthless words and the intelligence to remove him from this story.”

  Manning assures him, “The Journal did nothing of the kind. Cliff Nolan never delivered a story—that’s the only reason I’m on this assignment now.”

  The astronomer shrugs. “It matters not. As the great bard of your native tongue so aptly observed: ‘All is well which ends well.’” With a curt nod of his head, he dismisses the two reporters from his lab, closing the door with a thump.

  Working at home that evening on his notes for the Zarnik story, Manning taps a code into his laptop computer, sending the file by modem to his directory at the Journal. He wants to get a fresh start on a draft tomorrow, Thursday, even though he must wait till Friday to see the graphic realization of Zarnik’s discovery. The story will first run in the Saturday-afternoon “bulldog” edition of the Sunday paper.

  Manning closes the laptop, disconnects it from the modem, and begins stowing it in a carryall case. He turns in his chair to face Neil, continuing their conversation. “Nathan Cain is so hepped up about this story, they’re promoting it with a TV blitz.”

  Neil is on a step stool, barefoot, wearing only running shorts, pulling liquor bottles from a corrugated box and arranging them in glass-doored cupboards above a granite-topped bar. He says to Manning, “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you invite the big cheese himself to our shindig?”

  Manning contemplates the unthinkable. “Nathan Cain—in our home?” Then he breaks into a grin. “Hell, why not? All he can do is say no.”

  Neil plucks the last bottle from the box. “I didn’t think Cain took much interest in day-to-day stuff at the paper.”

  “He doesn’t, which makes this assignment all the more intriguing. Maybe he’s a closet astronomy buff.”

  “Speaking of closets, could you put this carton away, please, and bring me the next? God—seventy-two hours, and we’ll have guests pounding on the door.”

  “Everything will be fine,” says Manning, rising from the desk and crossing to him. “I, for one, can’t wait till the guests arrive. You’ve done a magnificent job with this place—people won’t recognize it—and I’m eager to show off your talents.” He hugs Neil’s legs, nuzzling his hips, then grabs the empty box and carries it toward the storeroom.

  The loft was little more than raw space three years ago when Manning bought it, one huge room with concrete floors and a semblance of a kitchen along the back wall. While the urban aesthetic had a certain appeal, it was anything but comfortable, and Manning’s challenge to “fix things up” became an uncharacteristic exercise in procrastination. Every attempt to sketch his ideas on paper ended in mindless doodles or fretful crosshatching.

  Then he met Neil, an architect who would eventually fill the void of Manning’s unfinished loft. He would also fill the void of Manning’s confusion, his long-repressed need to love another man.

  Neil’s detailed plans for the loft, a surprise Christmas gift a few weeks after they met, first struck Manning as overly ambitious, well beyond his reporter’s means. But Neil also surprised him by noting on the plans, “Together, I’ll bet we could swing it.” And so both of their lives, to say nothing of the loft, changed.

  They had met while Manning was embroiled in a high-profile investigation that brought a measure of celebrity to his career. His efforts were further recognized with a half-million-dollar reward for solving the case.

  Within months, his good fortune more than doubled when a gay uncle, whom he barely knew, met his demise and left to his handsome nephew a magnificent Prairie School house in central Wisconsin. Manning cherished childhood memories of the place, but he didn’t think twice about selling it.

  Acknowledging to Neil that “a million doesn’t go as far as it used to,” he was nonetheless able to forge ahead with the loft project, buy exactly the car he had always wanted (that big Bavarian V-8), and still have plenty left earning interest—monthly bills don’t seem to matter anymore.

  Now, after more than a year’s upheaval, the loft is finished, transformed into a sculptural network of platforms and balconies, a complex interplay of masses and voids. While the overall composition of the room is boldly artful, it is also functional, divided into distinct areas for conversation and reading, cooking and eating, sleeping and bathing. The aesthetic is modern but not sterile. To the contrary, rich detailing and Neil’s playful allusions to styles of the past lend an inviting, livable atmosphere to the design.

  Manning carries the empty box past the outer wall of the loft, where a double-high row of windows looks east onto a still-bright summer evening. The loft’s shadow rises like a black slab against brick walls glowing orange across the street. Between the other buildings, green wedges of Lincoln Park swarm with the after-office games of earnest young professionals. Beyond, Lake Michigan spills to the horizon.

  “Let’s take a run along the lake,” says Manning. “I’ll help with the bar later.”

  Neil protests, “Mark, I …”

  “Get your shoes,” Manning tells him. “It’ll take me only a minute to change.”

  Outdoors, along the concrete embankment at the water’s edge, Manning and Neil find their stride and fall into a comfortable gait, side by side. Their arms brush. Their breathing adjusts to the pace. In this shared act, a nightly habit during decent weather, there is a physical communion, vaguely erotic�
��often sufficient to inspire lovemaking upon their return home, though not recently. The pressures of finishing the loft, to say nothing of Neil’s various commitments to Celebration Two Thousand, have taken a temporary toll on their passions. During these runs, they usually pass the miles in silence. Sometimes they talk.

  “Cain told Gordon Smith to assign me an ‘assistant’ for this story,” says Manning. “Can you imagine?”

  The question has a rhetorical ring, and Neil doesn’t answer.

  Manning continues, “So guess who I got. David Bosch.”

  “Oh?” says Neil. He muses, “… sweet David.” Neil and Manning have shared fantasies starring the cub reporter. “We ought to invite him to the party.”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” Manning tells him. “Guess who else is coming.”

  A wary pause. “Who?”

  “None other than David’s uncle, Hector Bosch, the critic. And director Claire Gray. They’re coming to town for the theater festival.”

  Neil stops in his tracks. “Hector Bosch is David’s uncle?” He seems agitated. “I never made the connection.”

  Manning stops running, turns, and walks back to face Neil. “Neither did I. But they’re coming to town. And I thought I should invite them—sorry I didn’t clear it with you.”

  “No, that’s fine,” says Neil. “Of course they should be invited. But I wasn’t expecting them. I had no idea….”

  “Calm down, kiddo,” Manning tells him, placing both hands on Neil’s shoulders. “They’re just people—they just happen to be famous.”

  Their run is finished, so they begin the trek home at a pace barely faster than a stroll. Neil seems lost in anxious thoughts. Manning affects a casual tone to tell him, “Daryl—you know, the copy kid who’ll be at the party—dropped an interesting morsel of information today.” Then the bombshell. “David Bosch is gay.”

  “Right.” The news has not had its intended effect. Neil isn’t buying it.

  “No, really,” says Manning. “Daryl was serious. They were in college together. He knows. David’s butch act is just a cover.”

  “Oh?” Neil is now fully attentive. “And …?”

  “And … I thought you’d want to know.” Manning doesn’t mention that he’s high on David’s “most wanted” list. Such a detail would cause more trouble than the momentary ego-boost would be worth.

  “God,” says Neil, “if he ever gropes his way out of the closet, it’ll be open season. With that face—and body—he could bag any prey in his sights.”

  “Think so?” asks Manning, detached, now lost in his own thoughts. He doesn’t hear Neil’s answer.

  Back at their building, climbing the stairs behind Neil, Manning recalls a similar view of Neil’s body when they first ran together on a winter morning in Phoenix some two years ago. They had met in Chicago in the fall during a business trip of Neil’s. Manning recognized at once that their budding friendship carried carnal overtones that he both welcomed and suppressed. Confused but determined to resolve the issue, he accepted Neil’s invitation to spend a long holiday weekend with him at his home in the desert. They went running that first morning—it was Christmas. All was quiet as they wound their way along a mountain road that took them back to the house. Neil led the way, and Manning watched, mesmerized by the movement of his younger friend’s body, the clenching of his calf muscles, the trickle of sweat that soaked the crack of his shorts. When they arrived at the house, they walked without discussion to a concealed courtyard in back, where they made love under a pristine blue sky. Their drive was so urgent, they didn’t take time to remove their running shoes. They later joked about the kinkiness of that first torrid mating, but the memory—the images of it—remained etched in their minds. To this day, they have indulged in the private celebration of a mutual fetish.

  Arriving at the door to their loft, Neil inserts the key. There in the hallway, Manning nuzzles up behind Neil, pressing his nylon shorts against Neil’s rump. He grabs a shock of Neil’s hair and turns his head, speaking point-blank into his ear: “Let’s horse around.”

  Neil opens the door. “We’ve got work to do, pal.”

  But it’s a mild protest, and as soon as the door closes behind them, they’re at it—on the floor. It’s been a while, and both quickly succumb to the lure of impromptu sex. Their shorts are off by now, but neither has bothered to remove his shoes. They are transported to a warm Christmas morning when their lives first merged.

  Just as their senses begin to cloud, their frenzy is penetrated by the beep of a pager—it’s an arm’s length away, clipped to the waistband of Manning’s shorts.

  Neil catches his breath. “That better be important.”

  “Sorry, kiddo.” Manning rolls over and peers at the gadget. “It’s Gordon. I’d better return the call.”

  Neil lies watching, grinning, as Manning rises and crosses to the phone, his treaded soles squeaking on the polished wood floor.

  Manning dials and waits. “Hello, Gordon,” he says. “You beeped?”

  “Yeah, Marko,” the editor’s voice buzzes over the phone, “sorry to bother you at home, but Nathan just phoned. He wants to see both of us upstairs tomorrow—early.”

  “Hmm,” says Manning, impressed that he would be summoned to the top-floor office of the Journal’s publisher. Few lowly reporters have ever set foot in Nathan Cain’s penthouse lair—though tales of the walnut-paneled “inner sanctum” abound. Manning asks Smith, “Do you know what he wants?”

  “I assume it relates to Zarnik, but who knows? I wish Cliff Nolan had delivered that story as planned—we’d be done with it now.”

  “That reminds me,” says Manning. “Are you aware that Cliff actually interviewed Zarnik? They met on Monday afternoon.”

  Smith pauses. “What?” He’s incredulous. “Just wait till I talk to that guy….”

  “You mean you still haven’t reached him?”

  “Hell no—he’s missed two full days at the office.”

  Manning bites his lip, thinking. “Gordon, his apartment is only a few blocks from here. Why don’t I run over there and take a look?”

  From across the room, Neil rolls on the floor, laughing. He calls to Manning, “You’d better put some pants on first!”

  Five minutes later, Manning is on the street, walking through his Near North neighborhood toward Clifford Nolan’s apartment building. The long summer evening is a warm one, and the urgency of Manning’s stride has caused him to break into a sweat. He tells himself to slow down. Nothing is wrong.

  After all, Cliff Nolan has pulled these brief disappearances before. When he won the Partridge Prize a few years back, there was the traditional Friday-afternoon champagne toast in the newsroom. With uncharacteristic spontaneity, Nolan invited everyone to his apartment to continue the celebration that night. Manning was inclined not to go, but dismissed his reticence as base jealousy of Nolan’s award (known among reporters as “the coveted Brass Bird”), so he joined the festivities later that evening. Funky dance music was blasting from the apartment, and Manning laughed in astonishment as he climbed the stairs—at the office, Nolan never missed an opportunity to flaunt his ballet-and-opera tastes. Inside the apartment, the party was in full swing, and so was Nolan. His usual abstemiousness, which only rarely allowed a glass of port or an exceptionally fine Armagnac, was out the window that night, and he raced through the crowded rooms half-naked in pursuit of female coworkers who laughed hysterically at his metamorphosis. The next week, he didn’t show up at the office for several days, and when he did arrive back, he offered no explanation for his absence. Whether he was drying out somewhere, or shacked up with someone, or simply embarrassed into hiding was never known.

  The incident reminds Manning that there has been newsroom gossip of other parties, not attended by Manning, that also led Nolan to miss work. In the course of Nolan’s career, however, these aberrations have been rare, and Manning is willing to dismiss his colleague’s current disappearance as merely another brie
f escape from a repressed personality.

  Manning has reached his destination, standing now at the canopied entrance to the other reporter’s building. He tries the door, knowing that it will be locked, and indeed it is. He presses the buzzer to Nolan’s apartment, and predictably there is no response after several tries. Stymied, he stands there in the shade of the awning, wondering what other options he has. Perhaps he could try to reach the building’s superintendent. Then he notices an older resident approaching the building, a woman with two bags of groceries, packed high. As she steps up to the door, she struggles with her purse, fishing for her key.

  “May I be of help?” asks Manning, reaching for one of the bags.

  “Thank you so much,” she gasps, handing him the groceries. “Every day, it seems that life just gets more complicated.” She laughs at her futile complaint.

  When she unlocks the outer door, Manning opens it for her, steps inside with her, then opens the inner door. Inside the lobby, when she has recomposed herself, he hands back her groceries. She thanks him again and hobbles off toward her own apartment. Manning is already up the first flight of stairs.

  Arriving on the top floor, he walks past several doors to the one he knows to be Nolan’s. He pauses, listening. There’s a television playing somewhere, but it comes from another apartment. Otherwise, silence. He knocks. There is no response. So he knocks louder, calling, “Cliff? It’s Mark Manning. Are you in there?”

  Down the hallway, the door to the next apartment cracks open, emitting the sound of the television he heard—someone is preaching about moral decay. Through the narrow opening, a face peers out, wondering who’s in the hall. Manning turns to get a glimpse of the woman, and the door snaps shut.

  Returning his attention to Nolan’s door, Manning knocks louder still. “Clifford?” And still there is no response. So he tries the knob, knowing that it will be locked. But in fact, it clicks open, and Manning swings the door wide before him.

  Stepping inside, he remembers entering the living room on the night of the party. Even then, crowded as it was, the place struck him as lavishly furnished, expensively decorated. This return visit confirms that impression—the apartment is serene and tasteful, all velvet and crystal and dark hardwood, with framed old art (real art) on every wall. Air-conditioning wafts through the chilled but stuffy rooms, carrying the slightest whiff of something rotten. Then he notices that all the lights are on. The sun won’t set for another hour, and daylight streams in through west windows. So the lamps have been left on since at least last night.