“You like my boobs, Charlie?”
“I do love them.”
“You don’t think they’re too big or too small or too high or too low or something?”
“Passion flower, your boobs are the most perfect little boobs I’ve ever seen in my life. Just absolutely positively perfect.”
“What do you mean little, you son of a bitch?”
Laughter explodes from him. They struggle for the soap.
When he’s finished shaving and she’s putting on makeup she says, “There are some things I’ve got to buy in town. Child things. You know. Diapers and such. I don’t imagine we want wet upholstery in the airplane. I’ll take a taxi. Meet you at the airfield no later than ten-thirty.”
“All right. That’ll give me time to do the paperwork, make sure the crate’s topped up and ready to go.”
He’s dressed now. Flying boots and khaki chinos, a lumberjack sort of shirt. He finishes shoving things in his suitcase and comes to her; he rests his hands on her bare shoulders and watches her in the mirror. She leans her head back against his abdomen.
“Are you going now?”
“Get dressed and close up your suitcase and I’ll take it with me.”
“I feel strange, Charlie. Like there’s something wrong with me. I ought to be scared to death right now and worried about my kid. I just want to leap back in bed with you.”
“Natural enough, honey sweet. Biology of the beast. Primitive instinct. Happens when we’re just about to go in harm’s way. We get scared and that sets all the juices to flowing. Battle anticipation-combat nerves. Why do you think the birth rate booms in wartime?”
She gets to her feet and turns into his arms, wanting to be held.
44
She knows she’ll be lucky to pluck Ellen away with as much as the clothes on her back. There’ll be no time in that house to stop and gather blankets or toys. She’s going to need everything: baby food and spoon and bottle and toddler clothes sufficient to last several days. She’s got some of these things in her suitcase but there didn’t seem any point weighting it with Gerber jars or thick packages of disposable diapers.
Speeding on the hypodermic of nervous energy she whirls through a supermarket tossing things into a wheeled basket.
Now then. Stop. Breathe. Think. Forgotten anything?
To hell with it. If I did it’ll just have to wait.
There’s only one register open and she has to wait in line behind two matronly customers who are comparing at length the excellences of their respective teenage sons. Each of them has a cart piled high with purchases enough to equip a family for the entire season; and the check-out girl appears to be suffering from a case of terminal inertia.
She has to restrain herself from screaming at them but actually there’s loads of time; it’s only half past nine when she emerges from the store with her loot and settles into the back seat of the taxi.
The driver says, “That was quick. My wife never gets out of there in less than an hour.”
It’s turned into a clear summer’s day, a few cirrus clouds floating high; good flying weather at last.
A few minutes after ten the taxi decants her at the seedy little flying field. The rented Jeep, painted a dark forest green, is parked next to a motorcycle in the shade of what passes for a hangar; the place looks as if it may have seen previous service as a cow barn. Beyond it she sees Charlie in a row of pegged-down light planes, talking with a skinny little man in a cowboy hat. She waves to Charlie, pays off the cab driver and lugs her packages across the dewy grass runway. By the time she reaches the parking area her feet are soaked.
The man in the cowboy hat turns out to be not much more than a kid-Adam’s apple, peach fuzz and acne; he gives her a startled bashful grin of white buck teeth, nods his head several times with jerky nervousness and plunges toward the nearby glass-sided shack in full ungainly retreat.
She says to Charlie, “The grass is wet. Do you think we’ll have trouble?”
“Probably.”
The flat tone of his voice brings her eyes up to his. There’s a mask down over his face; she doesn’t like what she sees.
He says: “You didn’t tell me we’re going in against the fucking Mafia.”
45
The shock of sudden fear makes her furious. “What did that kid tell you?”
“He said it may rain again tomorrow.”
Charlie is very cool. He’s got his arms high, testing an aileron at the back of the wing, moving it up and down with his hands, watching the control yoke inside the plane move from side to side in response.
She keeps her voice low. “What about the Mafia, Charlie?”
“Says he never heard of any Albert Hartman. But one Albert LaCasse fits the description-twelve-room house, so forth. The kid says everybody knows him. Seems they know him just well enough to stay clear of him.”
He drops his arms to his sides. His eyes are narrowed; he’s fuming. “Who is he? Who’re you?”
“Names don’t matter, do they?”
“Jesus. The Mafia.”
“He’s not Maf-”
“For God’s sake don’t do a J. Edgar Hoover number on me and pretend there’s no such thing as organized crime.”
He walks around the nose of the plane to the far side and performs the same experiment with the aileron there. She follows him around.
“I’m trying to tell you he’s not in the Mafia. He’s not even Sicilian. Do we need to talk about this? I’ve been trying to forget all of it. Hell. Albert and his friends-they’re people who do business together.”
“That sounds like his words. Not yours. Rationalization.”
“You couldn’t call it an organization. It isn’t the Mafia.”
“Drugs and murder. That kind of businessmen.”
She hesitates, then gives way. “All right. Yes.”
“But it’s not Mafia. It’s not Syndicate.” He makes a face.
“There are thousands of people smuggling drugs, Charlie. This isn’t the twenties or the thirties. They’re not just thugs and gangsters. They’re normal people.”
“Normal?”
She can’t decipher his expression. In front of the wing strut he kicks the right-hand tire and then gets down on one knee to inspect its tread.
She says: “You probably won’t believe this but I didn’t know he was involved in anything besides building construction. Not until after Ellen was born. I only found out by accident.”
At the tail he stoops to inspect the elevator surfaces. He’s not looking at her when he speaks. “You married the guy and you didn’t know who he was?”
“I thought I knew. I didn’t realize how much I couldn’t see.”
“Funny. Everybody up here seems to know about him.”
He moves the rudder from side to side, feeling for cable tension and smoothness of movement. He glances at the sky.
She says, “I’m not trying to excuse my stupidity but all this is beside the point. It’s got nothing to do with you. You won’t have any contact with him. They’ll never lay eyes on you. He’s probably in New York today anyway.”
“Sweet Jesus.” He closes his eyes and draws a deep breath. “Ellen. That’s your kid’s real name?”
“I’d planned to call her Wendy from here on.”
He walks forward, ducks under the strut, kicks the second tire and looks back at her. Having followed, she tries to touch his hand but he retreats a pace and bangs his head on the strut; he utters an oath and wheels out from under the wing, sidestepping to keep his distance-as if he can’t stand the smell of her.
“Charlie, doesn’t it help you understand why I have to get her away from there?”
“You could’ve told me, you know. You could’ve.”
“Why? So you could lie awake worrying?”
“Come on. You were afraid you’d scare me off. You had to have me to fly the fucking airplane and you calculated just how much you could tell me without risking that I might take a walk.”