The doctor crumbled, and quickly. "What the hell do I care if he's out flying a plane drunk?" he mumbled as he signed Jake's forms and gave him his certification.
And so, with everything nice and legal, the lessons began. Jake had paid a lot of money for them to be crammed into as many hours of the week as he could be there. John Brody had expressed trepidation at this at first.
"Usually we only have our students come in twice a week or so," he said. "That lets you spread things out and absorb the information gradually."
"I don't have that kind of time, Mr. Brody," Jake told him. "I want to be soloing before we start work on our next album or I won't have any time at all to finish what I started. I like to finish what I start, you know what I mean?"
Brody reluctantly agreed, probably figuring his rich rock star student would quickly lose interest or flunk out. To his surprise, Jake had proved to be an adept student in all aspects of the training. He had passed the ground school portion of the lessons with flying colors and had demonstrated an almost eerie ability to grasp the fundamentals of flying during the practical flight lessons themselves.
Day after day he would go through the extensive and repetitious pre-flight list for one of the Cessnas and they would take to the air above Southern California. Brody had started him with the basics, teaching him how to turn, how to navigate, how to ascend and descend, how to climb while turning, how to descend while turning. From there they'd worked on stalls and other emergency procedures, teaching him how to recover the aircraft when something went wrong. And then came take-offs and landings, at first just at their home field but gradually working their way up to navigating to other fields and utilizing the air traffic procedures in place there.
The elder Brody had been his primary instructor at first but as he'd watched Jake apply himself and had become a little more confident in his student's motivation and abilities he had started letting Helen take him up instead, gradually working it to the point where Helen was the primary instructor. As Jake practiced his touch and go procedures now, on this hot August day, he had logged just over sixty hours at the stick, more than enough under the law to solo for the first time, although neither Helen nor her father, who had final say in when he soloed, had yet authorized him to do this.
"Okay," Helen said now as he banked around into the landing pattern of Brannigan Airport and began to deploy his flaps to slow down. "Another good approach. I think you're starting to get the hang of this, Jake."
"It's just like learning a new tune," Jake said, concentrating on his controls and his instruments. "Keep doing it over and over again and it becomes second nature."
"Maybe," Helen said with a smile as he pointed the nose down and began to descend again. "But if you screw up one of your tunes you don't die, do you?"
Jake nodded respectfully. "Point taken," he said.
His relationship with Helen Brody made Jake a little uncomfortable at times. It wasn't because she was in a position of authority over him. It was because she was attracted to him. This had not been the case initially. The first time they'd met she had looked at him like he was a piece of bug excretement on her windshield. She had only taken over the role of flight instructor for him at her father's steadfast insistence. During those first few flights the cockpit had been as cold as ice and the conversation had been businesslike and nothing else. He had sensed the feelings of fear and disgust at him radiating off of her as surely as if she'd sprayed them on like perfume.
Gradually, however, her mood had lightened as they got to know each other better. The chill started to thaw when Jake had figured out the basis for her feelings toward him. She had snapped at him one day when he'd gone just a few feet over the altitude she'd told him to level off at — a common mistake among beginning pilots. Her reaction to it had been much more than he deserved.
"Hey, chill out a little," he'd said as he brought the plane back down to where it belonged. "I'm a student, remember?"
"And what if I don't chill out?" she'd asked. "Are you going to hit me?"
He looked over at her, seeing that her eyes were dilated with nervous adrenaline, that her face was flushed with the fight or flight response of fear. "Hit you?" he asked. "Is that why you're so skittish around me? You're afraid I'm going to hit you?"
"Keep your eyes forward," she'd barked. "You look at your instruments and your view, not at me."
He took a glance at both and then turned back to her. She was still withering under his gaze. "I'm not the person you read about in the papers," he told her. "I know you don't believe me, but I've never hit a woman in my life, nor have I ever raped one, nor have I ever thrown one off a boat."
She didn't respond to this. She simply told him once again to keep his eyes forward.
But after that her attitude seemed to change. Slowly, day-by-day, conversation began to occur between them that was separate from the flight instruction she was giving. It was just the mundane kind of conversation at first. They talked of the weather, of the state of the economy, of the upcoming elections and whether Dukakis stood an ice cube's chance in hell of beating George Bush. From there, the talk gradually grew more intimate. They spent many hours together flying from airfield to airfield, around in circles, or practicing various aspects of flight, and it wasn't long before Helen got to know the real Jake Kingsley, before she discovered his dry and witty sense of humor, his intelligence on political and sociological topics, and, most significant, his almost forlorn sense of emotional loneliness despite the wealth and fame he had at his fingertips.
"I was wrong about you, Jake," she told him one day after he'd successfully pulled the aircraft out of ten powered and twelve unpowered stalls. "I thought you were an elitist, sexist, abusive rich prick and I now know that you are not like that at all. I apologize."
"Apology accepted," he'd said. "And I thank you for giving one. Now what are we going to do now, Sensei? Can I try a few of those barrel rolls again?"
She'd smiled. "Go for it," she told him. "And after that I'll teach you how to loop."
The attraction she felt for him started to develop soon after. At times he would catch her looking at him in ways that teachers really weren't supposed to look at their students. He made a conscious effort to keep himself from encouraging this attraction. After his experience with Rachel the previous year he did not feel he was ready for another relationship with a woman, especially not a woman who had a say in whether or not he received his pilot's license. At the same time, however, he was finding himself increasingly attracted to her despite his best efforts to remain aloof.
Helen was not a gorgeous woman. She would never be asked to model clothing or underwear, would never get past the first stage of an audition for an acting job. She was also not an ugly woman. Cute was perhaps the best word to describe her. She was about five-six and maybe fifteen pounds heavier than what was considered ideal for that height. She didn't look fat by any means, or even chubby, she was just voluptuous, with larger than average breasts and a cute, chubby-cheeked face topped with dark brunette hair that was almost black. Her eyes were hazel and very expressive, very easy to read. She was not the kind of girl that turned heads when she walked down the street, but rather one that grew on you the more you looked at her.