Her Last Flight(87)

I move around the nose to the wing, duck under the wing and lay my hand on the edge of the door, which is positioned near the tail.

Kaiko shifts on his crutches. “Say . . .” he mutters.

“How do you open this thing?” I ask.

“Beats me. You know something? I think we oughta—”

“Wait a second. She climbed in near the cockpit, didn’t she? There’s this photo . . .” I turn to the wing. If there’s one thing on this airplane that beats my idea of size, it’s the engine. There are two of them, large enough to hide a man inside, and the propeller blades stick from the front of this thing, long and curved and what’s the word? Deadly. I test the wing with my two hands and prepare to hoist myself up.

“Now, wait just a second!” says Kaiko.

“I won’t hurt anything, I promise. Just peek inside.”

“Hold on! I never said anything about—aw, come on, Janey—stop that, she’s gonna kill me!”

I pull the hatch open and drop myself inside. “Don’t worry! I’ll just be a minute. Take a few photos and . . . and . . .”

For a minute or two, I stand without blinking, the way the Magdalen must have stood inside the tomb of Jesus. Is that blasphemous? But the feeling’s the same, I think. When you step inside a space that is sacred, the way the inside of that Rofrano Sirius feels to me. I can’t explain it. I can’t tell you what queer, otherworldly electricity hovers in the air. As I lift my camera and take the first photograph, I flinch, because I understand I’m transgressing some taboo, I am crossing the boundary between profane and holy. Still I snap the pictures. I must. Because I have no flash, because I wouldn’t use one if I had it, I’ve got to open the aperture wide and hold myself still. Click, click, click. Outside the metal skin, Kaiko groans and fidgets. I emerge some minutes later and close the hatch behind me. Climb down from the wing and aim the lens at the exterior. Click, click.

“Now can we split?” begs Kaiko.

“Like a banana.”

“You’re not going to send those photos to some newspaper, are you?”

“My God, of course not! That would be a terrible waste.”

“Waste of what?”

“This is gold, Kaiko. Don’t you see that? Pure gold.”

We emerge into the sunlight. I grasp the edge of the door and slide it shut. Both of us look this way and that, to see if we’ve been observed, but the surroundings are quiet and green and motionless.

“Janey,” Kaiko says, in a serious voice, “I shouldna done that. You got to promise you won’t tell anyone.”

I tuck my camera and my notebook into my knapsack. My heart’s still thundering, my fingers shake. “Not a soul. You have my word.”

But I don’t ask him why, after a decade tucked in a shed, Irene Foster’s custom Rofrano Sirius should have not a speck of dust upon her skin, inside or out.



The cat enjoys riding in the basket of my bicycle as we trundle up and down the road from Kilauea to Coolibah, passing through Hanalei in between. Sometimes I check the post office again in the afternoon, before doubling back to Coolibah, but today I cycle straight back and calculate the hours until nightfall, when I can take out my developing equipment and turn that film into photographs. Already the whole episode has the texture of a dream, something my brain cooked up out of fantasy. Did I really just stand inside the cockpit of Irene Foster’s missing airplane? Did I really just climb down from its wing and snap a photograph of its snub nose?

So enraptured am I, I hardly notice that the ferry should be coming in about now, has probably already docked, until I’m skidding past the little pier, wobbling my bicycle around the few departing passengers, and hear my name called over the racket.

“Ahoy, matey,” I reply. “How was the sea today?”

“Wet and salty, like always. If you can wait a minute or two, I’ll give you a lift back to Coolibah.”

“What about my bicycle?”

He shrugs. “You can leave it here, if you like. Dad’ll pick it up on his way home.”

I wait for him to finish putting the boat to bed. The cat does not appreciate this interruption. I remove her from the basket and lean the bicycle against the railing. Leo climbs aboard his moped and I climb behind, one hand holding the cat and the other hooked around Leo’s waist.

I soon realize this was a terrible decision. In my present state of agitation, I should be anywhere on earth but straddling an engine with Leo Lindquist, while the Hawaiian afternoon rushes through my hair. I haven’t slept with anybody in almost a month, a terrible drought, and here is a fresh, warm body under my fingertips, already proven, smelling and feeling exactly right. When we round the point and start toward the Coolibah drive, I burst out, “Just stop here! I think I’ll go surfing for a bit.”

“Surfing? Now?”

“Why not?”

“It’s an hour until dinner.”

“I’ve been working all day. I need a little fresh air.”

He pulls the moped to the side of the road, where the path runs down to the beach. Because hardly anybody else ventures so far, the Lindquists keep a few boards in a small wooden cabana. I set the cat in a pile of towels and shut the door so I can change into a swimsuit. It’s one of Lindquist’s, and it’s a bit long, but it will do. I grab a board and open the door, and there’s Leo, sans shirt.