I strap on my espadrilles and head to the Hanalei Tavern.
“So where’s Leo?” I ask the bartender.
“Bringing in the afternoon boat.”
I lay down my five dollar bill and ask for a pair of whiskey sours. By five o’clock, I’m good and tight, and Leo’s walking in the door, whistling.
“There you are,” he says.
“Here I am.”
“I’ve got something for you upstairs.”
“So I hear.”
“Bill,” he says to the bartender, “cover for me tonight, will you?”
What I left behind at Leo’s place last night was my necklace.
It’s not much, really. A small gold oyster shell containing a small pink pearl, strung on a fine gold chain, not worthless but not priceless, either. Still, it’s got sentimental value. Leo goes to fasten it on my neck, but I swat him away and fasten it myself. Leo’s got nothing to do with my necklace. That’s between me and the person who gave it to me.
“Suits you,” says Leo.
A word about Leo. He caught my eye on the boat from Oahu, not just because he was commanding the ship—there’s something about a sea captain, isn’t there?—but because he’s rather beautiful. I don’t think he’s altogether Polynesian, but he’s not wholly European, either. He has dark hair and hooded light brown eyes that turn up at the tips, and his skin is the color of wood drenched in sunlight. He’s not especially tall, but his proportions are divine, and the maritime life seems to keep his muscles honed. I don’t usually prey on fellows younger than me—in fact, the opposite—but this one made my mouth water, and as I said, it was no hard duty to take him under my wing last night and make him sing.
Now he regards me in the mirror, as I work the clasp of the necklace and finally catch the hook. Suits you, he says, when I turn around at last. He holds out his hand and pulls me back into bed. I’m wearing nothing but necklace, and he’s wearing nothing at all. He stretches my hands above my head and kisses the hollow between my breasts, beneath the tiny pearl snug in its tiny shell. He asks me why my fingers shook as I fastened the necklace.
“Need you ask? A girl doesn’t just snap right back to herself after a ride like that.”
Leo studies me for a bit. “If you say so.”
“I say so.”
“Hungry?”
“Starving.”
He lets me go and rises from the bed to pull on a few clothes. He says he’ll bring up sandwiches from downstairs. (He lives above the bar, you understand.) When he’s gone, I roll on my side and contemplate a search of the premises, but I find I haven’t got the strength to lift a toe. Instead I squint at his bookshelf, trying to make out the titles, and when Leo returns, plate piled high, I ask him if he came straight here from the pier when he brought in the afternoon boat.
“Like a shot,” he says.
“And this morning. When do you leave for your boat?”
“Early. A quarter to seven.”
“So you haven’t spoken to anybody? Just me?”
Though my mouth is full of ham sandwich, Leo reaches out to cup my cheek. “Just you,” he says.
The telephone rings. He doesn’t flinch.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” I whisper.
“No.”
“What if it’s important?”
“This is important.”
But when I reach for the buttons of his trousers, he stops me. “Hold on, sweetheart. That was my last rubber.”
“That was what?”
“My last rubber.”
“How can you be out of rubbers already?”
“Well, I don’t usually need so many.”
“Can’t you get more?”
He laughs. “Sweetheart, this is Hanalei. I can maybe buy more tomorrow, on Oahu.”
“Tomorrow!” I flop myself back down on the pillows. “Why didn’t you think of that today?”
“I did think about it. But I didn’t want to push my luck.”
I roll away and reach for my dress. He rolls after me and takes me by the waist and nuzzles my skin. “You don’t have to leave, you know. I’m not some one-trick pony.”
“I know that already.”
“Or we could go to sleep. I know how to make you sleep.”
I stare at my fingers, which have stopped trembling, at least for the moment. Leo pulls, ever so gently, at my waist.
“Don’t be scared, Janey,” he says. “I don’t bite.”
“Oh, yes, you do.”
“Not where it hurts, though.”
I shut my eyes and force myself to my feet. As I pull the dress over my head, I know he’s watching me, and I think how easy it would be, how comforting, to change my mind. To slide back into his bed and fall asleep between a pair of strong arms. He’s right, he knows how to make me sleep. That’s what men are for, to help you sleep, to form a barrier between you and your phantoms. If I return to my bed at the inn, I might lie awake for hours. I might never sleep at all.
On the other hand, there are dangers aplenty in Leo’s bed. There is the danger I felt when he took my hand an hour or two ago and led me up the narrow back staircase to his room; the danger I felt in my own disappointment when he stopped me at the button of his trousers. The fact that I want nothing more than to fall asleep with Leo is reason enough not to sleep with Leo.
He doesn’t try to hold me back, though. For such a young fellow, he’s got sense. He just sits on the edge of the bed, and when I’ve finished dressing he stands up to kiss me good night. He has this trick of smoothing my hair back with both hands, like I’m a cat.
“I forgot to ask,” he says. “Did you find Irene?”
“I did, as a matter of fact. We had a nice chat. And then we went to the airfield and watched a plane crash.”
Leo’s hands fall away from my hair. He steps back.
“What? When? Whose plane? Is she all right?”
“Oh, Irene’s just fine. It was the brother-in-law who got hurt. Kaiko? She flew him to the hospital on Oahu.”
“Uncle Kaiko?” he shouts.
The telephone rings again.
“I think you’d better get that,” I whisper.
Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
March 1928: California
The human brain does strange things in extremis. As Irene lifted her skirt and ran across the grass to the cloud of dust that obscured Papillon, she thought about Sandy, of all things. Who was going to take care of the kitten? Sam’s wife? What if she didn’t like cats? Irene’s legs pumped, her heart thundered, and she wondered if she could take Sandy home herself, if her father would care, and where was Mrs. Sam Mallory anyway, and then she arrived at the settling cloud, the throng of men, and saw a wing tilted to the sky.
Years later, after everything had passed, Irene’s fingers still turned cold at the memory of that wing. At the time, she was too shocked to be afraid. She saw the wing, saw where it attached to the fuselage, saw that the wheels had partially collapsed and that the other wing had folded neatly against the ground. None of that mattered, though. The only thing that mattered was the cockpit, and the cockpit—the cockpit—she couldn’t see, somebody was climbing on the wing, it was Mr. Rofrano—reaching his hand—grasping—the cockpit—an arm—a cheer, a roar from the crowd—and God save us all there was Sam, Sam Mallory, shoulders straining against an oil-stained flight suit, standing on the wing next to Mr. Rofrano, waving, jumping down to the grass. People started to climb on the wings. Sam shooed them off, but he was still laughing. Irene wiped the tears from her cheeks. He was talking to Rofrano. Another man shook his hand. A trickle of blood came down the side of his face. He took off his glove and wiped it with the back of his hand, went around to the broken wing and lifted it up, and Mr. Rofrano lifted the other wing, a few other men took hold of the wings, the fuselage, and Papillon started forward again on her remaining wheel, headed toward the hangars, trailed by her public.
Sam Mallory had a cut on his forehead and a broken fi
nger, which some doctor in the crowd splinted for him. They stowed the broken Papillon in the hangar, and Irene retrieved Sandy from the crate where they had left her, together with some newspaper and a dish of cream.
“He should have been killed,” Mrs. Rofrano said cheerfully, “but he’s just too lucky a pilot.”
Everyone had gathered in the cafeteria—everyone being the pilots and mechanics, the community of flight that was Rofrano’s Airfield—where the cook served up plates of sandwiches while Rofrano himself poured something that looked like whiskey from a plain, unmarked bottle. Irene had lost count of the number of rounds in Sam’s honor, the old war stories, the strange, overblown laughter that seemed to come not from the whiskey, as that kind of laughter usually did—at least in Irene’s experience—but from something else. Not that the whiskey wasn’t helping.
Irene stuck to coffee and sandwiches. She stared at Sam, across the table, and said to Mrs. Rofrano, “I guess he learned all that during the war. How to land with a broken rudder.”
“How to land with a broken anything, really. Look at him. You wouldn’t know anything had happened at all, would you?”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“What he needs is a real airplane. Not like that secondhand Lockheed he tried to fly to Hawai’i, but a new one with decent engines and modern design.”
“I hear your husband’s designed one.”
“Did you?” Mrs. Rofrano plucked a piece of chicken from within her sandwich and popped it into her mouth. “I guess Sam spilled the beans about that. Well, it’s still a prototype, but we like it just fine. Of course it would be ideal for Sam.”
“He says it’s too expensive.”
“It is expensive to build a ship like that. Heaps and heaps of money.”
“How much?”
“Thousands. More than he can afford, even with all the exhibition fees and the students and the movie stunts. That’s why he entered that ridiculous pineapple derby last year.”
Irene looked back at Sam, who held a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other. She thought how strange it was, to see the living Sam Mallory in front of her, a man of flesh and bone and three dimensions, who ate and drank and spoke and surfed and found small kittens in the sand dunes. He didn’t seem to bear more than a passing resemblance to the Sam Mallory of last summer’s ballyhoo.
“What would he do with an airplane like that?” she asked.
“Oh, he wants to do something big, like all the pilots, a groundbreaking flight somewhere. But the airplane’s just the start of it. You need fuel, you need equipment, you need a million little things. You see that fellow over there, next to my husband? That’s George Morrow. He’s a publisher, crazy for flying. Word has it he’s looking for the next Lindbergh.”
Over the top of her coffee cup, Irene peered at George Morrow. He had dark hair, brushed straight, and slight, lean shoulders under a gray suit jacket and sharp navy tie. He was in serious conversation with Rofrano. He seemed to be illustrating some point with an arrangement of soup crackers on the table between them. His fingers made quick, impatient movements. Irene thought he looked immaculate and intent and nervous, like a man who never took a vacation. At the other end of the table, Sam leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud. He still wore his flight suit, stained with oil and blood; his hair was curling and windblown. The white bandage had the same effect as an eyepatch on a pirate.
“What about Sam?” said Irene. “He’s a tremendous pilot.”
Mrs. Rofrano leaned her chin on her hand, as if she were thinking this over, and then she raised her other hand and waved it. “George! Yoo-hoo!”
Mr. Morrow looked up from the soup crackers and stared in their direction, first at Mrs. Rofrano and then at Irene, squinting a bit.
Mrs. Rofrano moved to the empty chair to her right and patted the one she’d left, between her and Irene. “Come join us, George. I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet.”
George Morrow settled himself in the chair between them like a pedigree cat. Down the table, Sam’s laughter had vanished, and Irene, glancing his way as Mrs. Rofrano introduced her—This is Miss Irene Foster, a friend of mine—caught him staring warily at the three of them.
George Morrow offered his hand. “Morrow,” he said. “Pleasure.”
“This was Miss Foster’s first flying exhibition,” said Mrs. Rofrano.
“Is that so? What did you think of it?”
“I thought it was thrilling,” said Irene. “I thought it was a magnificent example of piloting. Bringing in that airplane with a broken rudder.”
“Ah.” Morrow cast just a flicker of a glance in Sam’s direction. “Was it broken, though?”
“Why, didn’t you see? I mean, I don’t know much about airplanes, but everybody said it was the rudder, that the rudder somehow broke during the flight.”
Morrow had brought his glass with him. He tapped the side with his finger, lifted, drank, and set the glass down again. “Listen to me, Miss Foster. I haven’t looked at the ship since he brought it in. For all I know the rudder broke midflight, just as we saw, and Mr. Mallory brought it in by his fine piloting and the skin of his teeth. But I will say this. The public out there, the people who watch these things, what do you think they really want to see? An airplane looping the loop? A few thrilling aerobatic maneuvers? No. I’ll tell you what your average spectator wants to see, in his heart of hearts. He wants to see a crackup. Like that derby out to Hawai’i, you saw what happened. Everybody living their nice quiet lives, working in some office or driving some delivery truck, they want to see something horrifying, something life or death, and the best pilots know that. The best pilots give them what they want.”
Irene stared at his hand, which had lifted and settled the glass at least twice during the course of this speech, adjusting it one way and then the other. He had a funny way of speaking, an East Coast twang that spat out words like a machine gun, and like bullets the words were all precise, manufactured in advance, so you knew he had already delivered this speech many times. It took her a moment or two to realize what he meant by them.
“You can’t be saying he crashed that airplane deliberately,” she said.
“I’m not saying he did or he didn’t. But all the money in this business comes from publicity. You’ve got to keep the public interested, or you won’t make a dime. The books and lecture tours and racing prizes, that’s all because the public wants to hear about your daring escapes and your gory crackups. You’ve got to do something new and exciting. If you want to keep flying, you have to feed the public.”
“Feed the public.” Irene rolled the words between her teeth. “But that’s your job. You’re a publisher, aren’t you, Mr. Morrow? You feed the public.”
“It is my privilege, Miss Foster, to furnish the public with inspiring stories of human bravery. Aviation happens to be at the vanguard of all that’s daring and courageous in American manhood. They are the last remaining pioneers, these men, the last fellows willing to die to expand the frontiers of human capability.”
“Those are some grand sentiments, Mr. Morrow. But what about womanhood? Isn’t a woman capable of courage and daring?”
Morrow turned his shoulders an inch or two in Irene’s direction, as if she’d finally said something worthy of interest. “Do you fly, Miss Foster?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“But you’d like to.”
“Would you object if I did?”
“Not at all. I admire the courage and skill of our lady pilots every bit as much as that of men. Maybe more.”
“Why more? Because you don’t expect it?”
“No. Because there are no obstacles for a man to climb into a cockpit and learn to fly, except his own natural skill and courage. A woman who flies must battle not only the objections of certain backward elements of society but often the dictates of her own upbringing.”
“Why, Mr. Morrow. Are you a feminist?”
“Of
course I am. As every right-thinking man should be, in this modern age.” He smiled at her, a remarkable display of white, square-toothed dentistry. “It’s good business, after all.”
Mrs. Rofrano laughed. “Everything’s business to you, George.”
“It’s what makes the world go round. All a man needs to do is give the public what it wants, Sophie, and what the public wants now is novelty. It wants new heroes to worship. And if you ask my opinion, it’s the age of the woman, right now.” He stabbed his finger into the tablecloth. “The great story of our times isn’t this Volstead business, it’s the emancipation of the female sex.”
“Do you really think so?” Irene said. “Do you really think the female sex is emancipated?”
“I think a woman can do whatever she wants to do, these days, whatever she dares to do. She can vote. Why, she can run for office herself. She can walk into a speakeasy and order herself a cocktail, if she doesn’t mind breaking the law. She can show off her pretty ankles and drive a car and get a college degree and a job. She can race cars and fly airplanes.”
“Hear, hear,” said Mrs. Rofrano cheerfully.
Morrow lifted his empty glass, clinked it against Mrs. Rofrano’s glass, and rose from his chair. “If you really wish to fly, Miss Foster,” he said, straightening his cuffs and his tie, smoothing back his hair, “I hope most sincerely that you lay aside any reservations, any objections from friends and family, and simply do it. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to excuse me, I’m afraid I was supposed to be in Pasadena an hour ago.”
When he was gone—and this took some time, because George Morrow never left a room without shaking a least half of the hands inside it—Mrs. Rofrano slid back into her original seat and said, “Well? Are you going to follow his advice?”
Her Last Flight Page 7