Dean Ing - Flying To Pieces Read online

  "The Phantom of Shangri-La," Lovett supplied. "And don't think he'll ever let us forget it, either."

  "Did you know he sold his story to the tabloids?"

  "Never read 'em. But I know he'd sell his eyes if he got the right price," Lovett said.

  Chip tooled the Mercedes down Capitola Road, shaking his head and uttering little bursts of merriment. "Oh, man. There I s this book with a whole chapter on Benteen. Really neat shit. According to him, he'd been working undercover for the British for years, keeping tabs on French interests in the Pacific; and when he got famous again, they dropped him. Too much exposure. So he really gave them exposure. Bitchin'," he said again, and laughed. "Only 'A' I ever got on a history paper. And Elmo Benteen is a friend of yours," he marveled. "That is so cool."

  "Elmo's like the Brits," Lovett said. "He doesn't have friends exactly, he has associates. Big sign on his hangar: BENTWING ASSOCIATES. Believe it."

  Chip turned up the long, curving drive past Monterey cypress and flowering ground cover that, Lovett thought, must require a lot of upkeep. "Huh." Chip shook his head. "If he doesn't have friends, why is he throwing a party?" And there, at the back of the house, was Roxy waiting with pruning shears in one hand and an armload of flowers, and in medium heels she was as tall as her father and as splendid as Tess had ever been, kissing Lovett with genuine warmth. "Let's get you out of this breeze," she said, taking his arm protectively. "That must be quite a trip alone for a man your age. How are you feeling?"

  Abruptly, Lovett realized that she was equating his physical condition with that of his ex-wife Tess who, he'd been told, hadn't aged well. By now Tess was in stationary orbit around Jupiter in a region called Alzheimer Land.

  He realized suddenly that Roxy had asked him how he felt for the second time. "Never ask an old guy how he feels, honey. Because he might tell you. He will give you details until you wish he were dead and in hell. Thank your lucky stars I'm not quite an old guy just yet. Tomorrow for sure, but not quite yet."

  He was happy to have his daughter on his arm on any pretext, though, and they strolled into the solarium while Chip toted his luggage. "... so even if Chip won't visit this summer, I knew he'd enjoy nothing more than showing you off here. You're," she paused to find a metaphor her son would like, but it crashed and burned: "the Mark Foo of the air."

  "Bummer," Chip said, aghast. "Mom, Mark got the liquid hammer awhile back. Must'a tried to ride a real whale-choker. Augered," he added with an eyebrow lift toward Lovett.

  "I can never keep it all straight," Roxy said with a helpless smile. "My son lives a double life-triple, if you count those little airplanes. Domenica?" She hardly raised her voice at all. "We'll have tea out here."

  Lovett's glance swept past Roxy to Chip and he saw the youth's quick gesture, forefinger aimed into his mouth in a comic display of distaste. Chip might sip Herbal Heaven for his mom but he shared Lovett's preference for beer.

  Their long-time maid, Domenica Sotomayor, sailed into the fern-hung solarium with the tea tray moments later and beamed at Lovett, who gave her a hug. "Guapa as ever," Lovett winked, and Domenica flushed with pleasure. She could never fit her rump into a washtub but she might fit nicely into a registry of great chefs.

  Roxy poured, making a ceremony of it, and made polite enquiry about business in Kansas. "Okay, I suppose," Lovett replied, hoping to avoid shop talk. "I don't worry about it much so long as I can pay the bills."

  Her glance sharpened. "Is it, um, becoming much of a bother, Dad?" Unspoken but hanging there: at your advancing age.

  Some imp of perversity made Lovett lie: "The arithmetic's getting tougher. Maybe I should hire Chip to do it."

  Her dropped gaze and nod said she had taken him seriously. "Not much of a career for a concert pianist, Dad," she murmured with a sad little smile.

  They both glanced at Chip who, understanding Lovett's jape perfectly, was now trying to sip tea without laughing. "Hey, I've gotta push," he said, glancing at his watch. "Nap time. Honest.

  "We just got here," Lovett protested.

  "Yeah, but I'm gonna sweat buckets tonight," Chip said, and moments later he had disappeared into the bowels of the house.

  To Lovett's puzzled look, Roxy said, "Pianists have to train, Dad. He spent this morning with his Czerny exercises and he's winding up the program tonight with excerpts from Mussorgsky. After his nap he'll study the score."

  "You mean he doesn't have to practice?"

  "No, just read the score. His teacher, Karen Kincade, always says if it's in his head, it will be in his fingers. After he studies we'll dress and then drive to the auditorium."

  "I brought a black turtleneck and sport coat. That okay?"

  "I suppose it'll have to be," she said, and then her eyes grew round. "Oh my God," she said, and put down her cup as she rose. "His dinner jacket's still at the cleaners, and they don't deliver. Just enjoy yourself, I'll be back in a jif." And with that, she hurried out to the Mercedes.

  Lovett sat quietly, watching windswept trees flex in a late summer sun, but looked up when Domenica padded into the solarium again. She had watched Chip grow from a stripling, from a "groan" in the boy's parlance, and evidently something of Tom Mason's regard for Lovett had rubbed off on Domenica during his earlier visits. "That kid has outgrown us all,-" Lovett remarked with a smile, referring to Chip's height.

  "Childress outgrows many things. Not you," she smiled back, meaning something else entirely. "And not the ocean, as we had hoped."

  "Give him time. He got a girl?"

  Domenica made a pfuh noise, hands on hips. "Those girls wno risk their necks on surfboards," she admitted. "Surfettes, he calls them. At least he is not named in any paternity suits. But that might be less cruel than the ocean," she said.

  "C'mon, Domenica, if it were that dangerous, Roxy wouldn't let him do it."

  Oho," she crooned, rolling her eyes. "She has tried. I will tell you this, because you are the abuelo, even if your daughter or your grandson would never tell you. Two years ago she put her foot down; no more surfing. And he put his own down; no more piano. Then she forbade him this and that and I the other thing."

  "Turning up the heat, upping the ante. You women know how to do that," Lovett conceded.

  But Domenica went on in stealthy tones, almost a whisper: "And one evening they were arguing in the kitchen while I had antojitos on a hot griddle, and she told him again how painful it would be for him to continue his... ah the word, defiance, yes; and he reached out in front of me and made a spider of his right hand, and put all five fingers down on the blistering steel of that griddle, as if playing a chord to deafen the devil, and kept them there until we could both pull him away."

  "God a'mighty," Lovett said, and swallowed hard. "Maybe Roxy doesn't understand pain as well as she thinks."

  "Childress told her much the same," said the old domestic softly, "while she was being sick on my clean floor and I was wrapping the boy's hand in ice. He wore a bandage on it for weeks."

  "Don't tell me: when it came off, he went surfing again.' "Yes, but also practicing again. He is gentle, almost girlish in some ways, but if a thing is important enough to him," she said, and paused. Then she ended with a hands-out gesture and nod, an "as you see" clearer than words.

  Lovett let his shudder pass, then began to chuckle almost soundlessly as he looked at the old woman. "Well, Domenica," he said through his tiny snorts, "he didn't get it out of the iground. I'm surprised it took her fifteen years to learn that." 'He laughs about it, too, when we are. alone," said Do menica. Then, "Bastardos machos," she muttered.

  Lovett did not know if he was included in the imprecation and he didn't intend to ask. "So Chip still surfs, and he still puts on a monkey suit to play the piano," Lovett said. "Something for everybody. I think we've all gotten off pretty lightly, considering."

  "He is a good'boy," Domenica agreed, and took Lovett's empty cup. "But his mother wishes he would grow up. So does her suitor, for what I suspect are his own reasons, but I should not be mentioning him. It is enough that she feels that way."

  "And so do you."

  "And so do I," she echoed, moving toward the kitchen.

  Later, Lovett couldn't recall the early part of the evening's program because he kept drowsing off, prodded now and then by Roxy's elbow when he snored accompaniment to a young girl's Pachelbel or another youth's Chopin. He had no problem staying awake for Chip, though; the best and last on the program, young Childress Mason swept through his Pictures at an Exhibition with the Promenade and Limoges, then ripped and pounded through The Great Gate at Kiev with such fervor that Lovett felt gooseflesh down his arms.

  At the reception afterward, Chip stood a head above his surrounding throng and swilled pink lemonade, accepting his due, smiling mute apologies to Lovett who stood well out of the way with a plate of hors d'oeuvres. It occurred to Wade Lovett then that his grandson, erect in that spiffy dinner jacket, seemed to fit into the culture vulture crowd like patent leather. He could not say why that depressed him so.

  Roxy introduced her father to a few of the adults, among them a smallish fellow with a pencil mustache, a faint accent and matching handshake, carefully slicked-down hair and a title of sorts: one Alexis von Wurttemburg. Perhaps it was the excess of jewelry on von W. that set Lovett's personal radar to jittering, or maybe it was the deep-set eyes or the fact that the little man seemed to be studying Lovett while wolfing thumbnail-sized sandwiches. He was among the first to leave the reception.

  Lovett perked up when Chip introduced him to special friends as the Wade Lovett, test pilot. Chip seemed surprised to find'his surfing buddy David Guerra, a sturdy compact model-builder, at a recital of classical music. "No choice, man, if I was gonna slap palms with your gramp," David admitted. "Hadda mee
t this dude." Lovett found himself describing his swept-wing Varieze to David, as Chip went for a refill of lemonade. "They're pretty common now but when I built mine, people thought it was a secret weapon," Lovett concluded.

  "On the phone this afternoon Chip's like, dropping a lot of hints about secret stuff," David mused, rubbing a chin that needed a shave. "He's like, 'My pops on some mysterious mission to meet a retired spy,' and I'm all, 'You been warping on the wrong comix again,' and he's like, 'Naw, my pops the real deal.' " David may have sensed their language gap when he noticed Lovett's eyes glazing over, and fell silent at this point.

  Don't call your grandson a liar, Lovett told himself. "Well, that's a bit strong," he said. "But you never know what'll happen at a reunion." Beyond a bunch of drunks doddering around a stripper, he added silently.

  "I don't suppose you could take me and Chip," said David wistfully. "It's a weekend."

  "Afraid not, David. Anyway, why would you want to?"

  David's gaze glistened with intent. "Oh, it'd be neat shit," he grinned.

  "Sorry. The only outsiders will be waiters of voting age," Lovett said, "and uh, catering ladies."

  "Catering to what," said David with a sly glance.

  Lovett stared at the youth, dismayed at his adult grasp of things. "What hath TV wrought," he murmured.

  Chip returned with a cup in each hand. David reached for one but Chip shook his head. "Hey, I'm parched, Dave, gopher your own. You don't drink liquids before a recital so I'm tanking now." To Lovett's quizzical look he added, "It's hard to keep your mind on Moussorgsky when you need to drain your lizard." Then, as an inside joke for his grandfather: "They don't put relief tubes on Steinways, Pop."

  And of course Roxanne happened along with Chip's teacher, Karen Kincade, in time to hear Lovett explaining to David how you relieved yourself in an airplane. Lovett would have gladly spent the next few weeks getting to know the shaking Kincade, even if she did tower above him, on the theory that the taller they are, the nicer they fall. But while Kincade seemed to enjoy the moment, Roxy's jaw-muscle twitch said, 'I might have known,' and soon afterward she was driving her little group home before Lovett could embarrass her further.

  "Interesting guy, this von Whoozis," Lovett said at one point, just to cut the silence. "I was hoping we could talk awhile.

  "Alex isn't much for small talk," she said. "He's very charming but quite focused."

  "On what?"

  "Oh-finance," she said.

  Lovett merely nodded. He didn't bother to point out that there's another word that defines finance: money.

  By the time they'd shared two cups of decaffeinated coffee at home, Lovett sensed he'd been forgiven. Then Roxanne went off to bed and Lovett communed with his grandson for another hour.

  Apparently his social radar had lit up a bogey in von Wurttemburg who, according to Chip, was an occasional fixture at the house. The youth was quick to dismiss von W., happy to talk about other things: his decision to study at the U ' S.C. School of Music, for example, since surfing was nil near Juilliard and, around Eastman-Rochester, the only action was Niagara Falls. Lovett found himself impressed with Chip's progress, yet somehow uneasy at the boy's willing immersion into his mother's lifestyle. I wish his father were still around, he thought after a final midnight hug from Chip, and, I wish I lived nearer.

  But before sleep overtook him, Lovett's thoughts took another turn. Old Elmo Benteen hadn't called a National Emergency in years. It justified Chip's question. If Elmo Benteen didn't have any real friends, why was he throwing a party?

  Lovett launched southward early on Thursday, to avoid making Chip late for his first class. To make the trip deductible he intended to use part of the day to check on aircraft advertised in the trade papers. The moment he found something interesting, of course, his schedule went into an inverted spin and crashed. He might as well have tried to cruise the Srm'thsonian in five minutes.

  There were bargains out there but, having written a few ads himself, Lovett's eye had developed a case of jaundice. RESTORATION 90% complete might mean that the owner had made 90 percent of the mistakes possible and hoped to dump this abortion on a complete idiot. LOW TIME could mean the engine had been overhauled by a cross-eyed maladroit who worried over those funny new noises coming through his firewall and was hoping to sell this deathtrap before the pistons started swapping holes. ALWAYS HANGARED could suggest the 1. aircraft hadn't been flown since 1947-for good reason.

  And the guy who said, "History is bunk" may have just bought a secondhand airplane. NO DAMAGE HISTORY sometimelq meant the owner had a convenient memory for little things like. scraped wingtips and propellers with an acquired taste for seagulls. When a prop went south while you were going north, you instantly had a glider, or pieces of one.

  He landed at Taft to check on an acrobatic Aero Sportheld together by its paint, if Lovett was any judge, and not worth the money-then stopping again at Corona between mountain ranges that bounced the Varieze around. The tiny Wittman single-seater at Corona was worth a second look, a checkout ride and, on Saturday after a more thorough inspection, his personal check for the down payment. Once he got the little plane ferried home, he could renovate it himself; the little screamer might even entice Chip back to Wichita.

  He flew to Santa Ana just in time for Bente,@n's National Emergency, an entire day behind schedule, only a short hop but in skies so crowded with air traffic that he felt like a gnat in a roomful of fly swatters. What do you call fifty Southern California lawyers flying joyrides? Air pollution, he reminded himself, taxiing to refuel before seeking a tiedown space. Some of his old colleagues would be tanked up on Benteen's booze already, though the real festivities wouldn't begin 'til dark.

  It was sundown when Lovett strolled toward the hangar of Bentwing Associates, flight bag in hand. The assortment of aircraft towed outside, safely out of the reach of partygoers, looked as though someone had evicted a museum of flight. Elmo's Monocoupe, a long-distance racer of 1935 vintage, needed work. The Tiger Moth was older still but looked flyable. The Sikorsky flying boat, a genuine 1920s antique, was small by modern standards, lovingly rebuilt. Created chiefly from wood and fabric, such flyable relics brought top dollar and Lovett doubted if Benteen owned them outright.

  Lovett entered the hangar unnoticed, his heels echoing a ghostly tattoo on the concrete floor. Someone had unfurled the B.O.F. motto, in gleaming satin a yard wide, to hang from a shattered propeller high on one wall. Four long tables had been shoved together, doubtless for the bimbo runway, faced by three more tables surrounded by folding chairs. God, that's depressing, Lovett thought. There probably won't be enough of us to fill those three tables. Two young guys resplendent in black had their backs to him, setting up the bar in a far comer of the hangar, strategically placed far from the chairs. Elmo's theory was, if you couldn't make it to the bar, you didn't need a refill.

  In years past, dozens of men would have made the place more festive than bunting by now, lounging at the tables, scarfing down cold cuts with imported beer while they waited for the real action to begin. Now, Lovett could hear faint echoes of it all, which he discovered wasn't just his imagination. The earlier arrivals had all convened with beer in the hangar office, away from those hollow echoes. Pretty soon we'll be able to do this in a phone booth, Lovett thought as he entered the main office.