Her Last Flight(74)
“There you are! What’s the matter? You’re pale.”
Irene said, in a low voice, “Why didn’t you tell me about Sam?”
“About Sam? Sam Mallory?”
“I saw the newspaper. What happened?”
He swirled the ice cubes around the inside of his glass. “I don’t know any more than you do. I read the article, that’s all, right before I went to meet you at the airfield.”
“Is Sophie here?”
“Darling, let me get you a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink. I want to know what’s happened to Sam.”
“Sophie won’t know any more than—”
But Irene was already beetling across the room, searching for Sophie Rofrano’s blond head and pregnant belly. She found them on a sofa, positioned in earnest conversation with somebody’s wife. Sophie saw her and lurched to her feet.
“Don’t do that,” said Irene.
“Oh, I’m all right. But you! How’s your arm? Or are you just absolutely sick and tired of people asking?” Sophie said all this while embracing Irene, kissing her cheek, and Irene felt the strange intrusion of this big lump between them, the baby to which Sophie was due to give birth in a few more weeks, her fifth.
“Sam!” Irene pulled away. “What’s happened to Sam?”
Sophie’s face fell. “I don’t know for certain. You know how he does all these ridiculous stunts at air shows. Octavian was on the telephone with a few people he knows in San Diego. They think it was a mechanical fault.”
“Of course it’s a mechanical fault. Sam would never—he’s the best pilot—”
“Oh, darling, stop.” Sophie steered her to the wall of windows and pulled out a handkerchief. “He’ll be all right. You know he’s broken just about every bone in his body by now, and every time he bounces right back. He’s indestructible.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just tired, that’s all, and nobody told me about it, I just happened to see a newspaper on my way in—”
“He’ll be just fine, don’t worry. Octavian says he’s awake, he’s moving and talking.”
“What else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Irene stared furiously out the window. She couldn’t turn away and face the room, not with her eyes all red like this, her cheeks damp. Sophie’s handkerchief was now a ball in her fist.
Sophie said gently, “There’s nothing you can do, Irene. You have to let it be.”
“I realize that. It’s not like a light bulb you can switch on and off, that’s all.”
“Of course not,” said Sophie. “Of course it isn’t. Hello, George.”
Irene’s husband appeared at her elbow, blocking the sunset. “Nice glass of lemonade for you.”
“Thank you.” Irene took the lemonade and sipped. Her eyes were dry now. It was just the shock, that was all. With Sam, you expected some terrible accident every day, and yet when the news came, as it regularly did, you still felt that somebody had hit you with a sledgehammer. Sometimes Irene wondered if Sam felt the same way about her. If, when she experienced a crackup somewhere, broke a bone or just strained a tendon as she had in Fort Worth, Sam Mallory felt as if somebody had hit him with a sledgehammer.
It was now eight years since that historic flight to Australia, eight years since Irene and Sam had sat together under the coolibah tree; six years since Irene had set a coast-to-coast record flying from New York to Los Angeles in her own Rofrano Centauri and then flown solo from Boston to Paris a month later; five years since she had stumbled into a love affair with her business manager, George Morrow, and accepted his marriage proposal with certain conditions. She had been George’s wife for four years, and in that time she had set countless records for airspeed and endurance and distance, had flown solo to various points around the world, had circumnavigated the globe with a copilot and a navigator, had cracked up more times than she could count and been hospitalized in eleven of those instances, had gone on eight lecture tours and made one thousand six hundred and fourteen speeches, had designed her own clothing line, had appeared on a hundred and twelve magazine covers and in six motion pictures.
In all that time she had seen Sam Mallory exactly four times. The last time was seven months ago, at a restaurant in Burbank. Irene was having dinner with George and the Rofranos; Sam was there with a film actress in a sequined dress. They saw each other at exactly the same moment, as Irene and George walked past his table to join the Rofranos at the back of the restaurant, and the sight of his horrified face still wounded her. Later he’d come over to say hello, and it was clear he’d had a drink or two to fortify himself. He laughed and joked harshly, and he introduced the film actress, who was beautiful beyond description and didn’t seem to know the history of Sam and Irene. She just appeared girlishly starstruck to meet the legendary aviatrix and babbled on about how scared she was to fly in an airplane, how brave Irene must be. Irene replied graciously, without meeting Sam’s eyes once. She watched him walk away though, a little unsteady, the actress’s arm looped through his. What little she’d seen of his face seemed gaunt. Those ravishing good looks had been hollowed out by misery.
“Poor fellow,” said George. “A wife like his.”