More stamps, yet.
“What happened to the batch from your first try?”
“G. P. had them imprinted with the words: ‘Held over in Honolulu following takeoff accident,’ or some such. These new ones will be marked in some special way... Ouch!”
“Too hard?”
“Yes... just rub in circles for a while, then maybe you can go after that knot again... I’m signing a new book contract. That’s the major reason for the trip.”
“What’s the book about?”
“The flight, silly. I’ll keep a diary along the way and when I get back spend a week or, two polishing it up, and, presto...”
“Another instant book.”
“We’re pulling out all the stops this time.”
“Sounds like you and G. P. are quite a team.”
She turned and looked up at me. “Are you jealous?”
“Of your husband? I don’t know why I would be. I mean, it’s not like you sleep in the same bed or anything.”
“Actually, we do... but it’s not like that between us, anymore. I think he has a sense that... well, he knows this partnership is winding down... Uh, that’s enough, that was wonderful, thank you... Listen... I have something for you...”
She scooted her butt around and, still seated before me, dug in her breast pocket. She withdrew something the size of a folded-up handkerchief, which she pressed into my hand.
I unfolded it and it became a small silk American flag. “What’s this for?”
She had an impish smile. “Just a lucky keepsake. I took it along on all my long-distance flights.”
“Don’t you think you should take it on this one, too?”
“No, no, I... I want you to have it now.”
I held it out to her. “Give it to me when you get back.”
She shook her head, no. “Better take it now.”
I frowned at her. “What? You have some kind of premonition...?”
Her eyes popped open. “No! No. It’s just... a feeling.”
“If you have that kind of feeling, Amy, for Christ’s sake, don’t go!”
She crawled up on the couch and nestled in next to me, again. “Nathan, as far as I know, I only have one real fear — a small and probably female fear of growing old. I won’t feel so completely cheated, if I fail to come back.”
“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk.”
“Nathan...”
“It’s fatalistic bullshit.” I held the little flag out to her.
“I don’t want it. Take it with you.”
She took and refolded it, placed it back in her pocket and was clearly hurt. Which was fine with me.
“What’s got you thinking like this?” I asked her.
“Nothing.” She had her arms folded now, and was still next to me, but not nestled, her back to the sofa. “I don’t really have misgivings... except maybe for Fred.”
“Fred?”
“Fred Noonan.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s your navigator?”
“And co-pilot if necessary, though I’ll do all or most of the flying myself.”
“What about that other guy — Manning?”
“He dropped out after Honolulu. Scheduling conflict.”
I bet that conflict arose about the time the Electra went skidding on its belly trailing sparks and fuel down the runway at Luke Field.
“So what’s the story with Noonan?”
“Paul recommended him. He’s experienced, easy-going... I like him well enough.”
“So why do I still sense misgivings?”
Her response was unconvincingly chipper. “He has a background in ocean navigation, and a great reputation for putting that to use in air navigation.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“He’s really a remarkable man... a merchant marine as a kid, joined the British Royal Navy during the war; one of the first flying-boat pilots for Pan Am, navigator on the China Clipper, its first year.”
I said, “Answer my question.”
“What was your question?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
The blue-gray eyes went hooded. “...He’s a drinker.”
“Ah.” Teetotaling Amy of the cups of cocoa, the little girl who’d been slapped by her drunken father, did not suffer drunken fools gladly. “Has it been a problem?”
Her smirk was humorless. “I think he got drunk the night before the Honolulu takeoff.”
Actually, it had been an attempted takeoff, but I thought not correcting her was the gentlemanly thing to do.
“Was he in some way responsible for the crackup?”
“No. No. Not at all. And he seemed quite clear-eyed and sober and lucid, that morning.”
“That’s all you can ask.”
“He and his wife... he got married recently, to a lovely girl, Mary’s her name... Funny, ’cause that’s what he calls me, too. It’s my middle name... Mary. Anyway, driving back from their honeymoon, in Arizona someplace, they had this head-on collision with another auto.”
“Good God.”
“He wasn’t hurt, but his wife suffered some minor injuries, though not, thank goodness, the woman driving the other car... or her toddler. Fred was cited for driving in the wrong lane.”
“Was he drunk?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Well, drinking, anyway.”
So I tried a conciliatory tone: “He just got married. Maybe he was celebrating.”
Now she looked at me. “Or maybe he was still upset about the Honolulu crackup. I know that upset him.”
“Why, if it wasn’t his fault?”
“Pan Am fired him for drinking. He apparently views this round-the-world flight as a last chance to vindicate himself... and make himself employable again. He says he has the backing to open a navigation school, if we pull off this flight.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Amy, can’t you find anybody else? Or is it that, you can’t bring yourself to fire somebody who needs this job so bad?”
“He’s really very good. Paul thinks the world of him.”
“Paul isn’t risking his life.”
“G. P. insists on Fred.”
“G. P. isn’t risking his life, either. Why does G. P. want Noonan?”
“...Because Fred’s... never mind.”
She looked away from me again.
I pressed: “What?”
“I think it’s because Fred’s an... economical choice.”
“Oh, Christ!”
She returned her eyes to mine and her gaze was almost pleading. “Nathan, most of the good navigators are military and they obviously can’t be accessed. Fred Noonan is the man who charted all of Pan Am’s Pacific routes—”
“Didn’t you say Pan Am fired him?”
“Please don’t be cross, Nathan. I didn’t look you up so I could spend the evening wallowing in my problems...”
This was one of those rare times when she seemed near tears.
I gathered her into my arms and kissed her on the forehead. “You mean, you were lookin’ for a good time? Did you find my name scribbled on a phone booth wall?... I’m sorry, Amy. We won’t talk anymore, about any of this.”
She kissed my nose and said, softly, “This is the last flight, Nathan. When I come back, I’m going to have a different life.”
Was she implying I’d be part of it? I was afraid to ask. I preferred to think she was. In my bed that night, city lights filtering through sheer curtains like neon stars, her slender white form had a ghostly beauty as she rode me, cowgirl-style. She seemed lost in the act of lovemaking, just as I was lost in her, and I like to think she found a joy with me, in our sexual flight, that rivaled whatever it was in the sky that drew her there.
When Amy began her around-the-world-at-the-Equator flight, she took steps to keep it from the press, telling reporters on May 21 that she was heading out on a shakedown cruise to Miami, to test the Electra’s special equipment. With Noonan, her mechanic “Bo” McKneely, and her husband, Amy flew to Tucson that afternoon, one of her engines catching fire shortly after landing. She requested an overnight checkup for her ailing plane, knowing that her Electra had a history of malfunction, having flown it in the 1936 Bendix race in which the oil seals leaked and the hatch blew off.