She gave a frown. "We don't need to get into that again, do we?"
That, was the argument they'd had about her accompanying him on his journey to retrieve his new aircraft. Since it involved flying on a commercial aircraft to Chicago, Helen had absolutely refused to come along when he'd suggested it. She was apparently sticking to her vow of never setting foot inside a jet airliner again. "No," he said. "I guess we don't. I was kind of hoping to see you down on the flight line though. You did know I was coming in, didn't you?"
"I'm sorry," she said, sounding anything but. "I figured I'd wait until you came to get me. I don't like... you know... going out there by myself anymore. If that psycho bitch isn't out there with a sniper rifle than some of those goddamn reporters might be."
"I suppose," Jake said, although a sniper rifle didn't really seem Johansen's style and as for the reporters, they'd been almost obsessed with the story for the first week or so, following Jake, Helen, and Helen's father anywhere they went, but as of the plea bargain and Johansen's release from jail, they had seemingly lost interest. "What are you doing in here?" he asked. "Correcting papers and grading tests?"
"No. All of that's already done. I was just waiting for you. You wanted me to be here, didn't you?"
"Uh... yeah," Jake said, "but only if you want to be here."
She shrugged disinterestedly. "It's no big deal."
"I see," Jake said, his voice a little troubled. Helen either didn't pick up on this or didn't care. "Well... uh... do you want to go look at the plane?"
"Sure," she said. "Let me go get my stuff."
Jake waited patiently in the hallway while she retrieved her leather briefcase from beneath her desk and shut off all the lights. She then closed the classroom door and spent the better part of two minutes using three different keys to engage all of the locks.
"That should do it," she said with satisfaction once the door was secure.
"I would think so," Jake agreed. "Shall we?"
They made their way out of the building and across the flight line to the hangar complex. Jake's new plane was still sitting in front of the hangar door. Jake felt a sense of pride and joy just looking at it, just at the thought that it was his and he could fly it whenever he wanted, go anywhere he wanted in it. He had just flown it halfway across the country and already he wanted to take it up again. He had expected that Helen's face would reflect at least some of this joy. It didn't. She was looking at it with no more interest than she would have shown at a picture of the aircraft in a sales brochure.
"It's nice," she said blankly, running a hand over the left wingtip, touching one of the propeller blades. "I'm happy for you."
"Let's take it up," Jake suggested. "You fly it."
"You know we're not supposed to do that, Jake," she said. And this was technically true. Both of them were still in the process of accumulating enough solo hours in a twin-engine pressurized aircraft to achieve official certification. Until that happened, they were forbidden by FAA regulations from carrying any passengers other than certified multi-engine flight instructors. They were operating now under the equivalent of a learner's permit.
"Nobody's gonna know, Helen," he told her.
"No, sorry," she said. "What if one of those photographers is creeping around and takes a picture of us getting in together? I don't want to chance it."
"Helen, that rule is just a technicality. When they say we can't have passengers, I don't think they were talking about fellow students."
"A passenger is a passenger," she told him. "And if I get caught flying outside the allowances of my certification level, my teaching certificate might be suspended. I'm just not going to chance it."
Jake felt a surge of frustration go through him. Wasn't this the same woman who had seduced him, her student, in an Omaha hotel room not so terribly long before? She hadn't been too worried about her teaching certificate then, had she? No, he seemed to recall that she'd been screaming in pleasure and squirting her vaginal juices all over his face. He bit back on making reference to this episode, knowing she would simply refuse to acknowledge it was the same sort of transgression.
"All right," Jake said. "I get your point. Why don't you take it up alone then?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you," he said. "You've finished the classes, just like me. You're allowed to solo alone in type. Take it up and cruise it to Catalina. I'll follow in the 172 and we'll have dinner in Avalon."
"You want me to fly your plane to Avalon?" she asked, as if Avalon were on the far side of the Sahara instead of less than one hundred nautical miles away.
"Right."
"Just to have dinner?"
"Right again," he said. "It's one of those spontaneous things that people in love are supposed to do."
"It would take me thirty minutes just to pre-flight that plane and get familiar with it," she said.
"It's the same plane was fly for our cert," he said. "Just a different year."
"It's different, isn't it? And it has different avionics, doesn't it? And then there's the matter of insurance. I'm sure I'm not covered to fly it."
"Actually, you are," Jake said. "I had them include you as a primary pilot."
"Oh... I see," she said, almost as if she were upset he'd done that. "Well... anyway, I'm not really comfortable with the thought of just jumping in your plane and flying off to Avalon in it. I'm also a little bit tired."
"Tired?"
"Yeah, it's been a long day. Can we just go out to Ritchie's?"
Ritchie's was a small, family owned country restaurant in the small town of Winterland about five miles from Helen's house. They specialized in good old high-calorie, high-fat, home-style meals. The food was very good, but Jake and Helen ate there so much he'd already worked his way though everything on the menu twice now.
"How about we drive into the city?" Jake suggested. "I can call and get us a reservation at Finnegan's or Bogart's."
Helen frowned at this suggestion. "I'm not really in the mood for dressing up tonight," she said. "You know how much I hate putting on airs."
Jake knew no such thing. She had always loved dressing up and 'putting on airs' in their earlier days. He suppressed another sigh, knowing that trying to push her would only lead to an argument. "All right," he said, trying to sound cheerful. "Ritchie's it is."
They drove there in separate cars. Once inside, they were seated at a booth near the back. Helen ordered the chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes — the same thing she always ordered here. Jake went with the fried chicken and coleslaw.
Conversation during the meal was sparse at best and mostly one-sided. Jake tried to tell her about his adventures on the trip from Chicago to Ventura — he had several interesting tales (interesting to other pilots anyway) about strange landing patterns, air traffic controllers who could barely speak English, weather problems and turbulence, and problems arranging fueling and hanger space — but she didn't seem the least bit engrossed. In fact, she hardly seemed to be paying attention at all. When she did answer him, it was short and monosyllabic.
"Is everything okay?" he was finally forced to ask her.
"Sure," she said. "Why do you ask?"
"You just don't seem yourself lately."
A shrug. "I've been through quite a bit lately, wouldn't you say?"
She would speak no more on the subject.
After paying the bill, they left and drove to Helen's house. She drove right up to the perimeter of the motion detectors before using her remote to deactivate them. After parking, she exited her vehicle like a cop approaching a hostile scene — gun in hand, her eyes peering everywhere. Jake made no comment. This was standard operating procedure for her these days.
Once she was satisfied the immediate perimeter of the house was clear, she opened the front door, deactivated the alarm, practically dragged Jake inside, and then slammed and locked the door behind them. She quickly reactivated the house alarm and the motion sensors out front. From there, she cleared each room one by one, gun in hand, until she was satisfied that Jenny Johansen or some other psycho wasn't hiding in a closet or under the bed (yes, she looked under all of the beds, utilizing a three-cell maglight to assist her).