Her Last Flight(89)

I had come to like them all too much.

I kissed him one more time and clambered to my feet.

“Believe me,” I said, “you shouldn’t take that chance.”



Five hours later, when the black night presses against the windows, I’m regretting this moment of high-mindedness with all my might. My God, what I wouldn’t give to have a Leo lying next to me, equipped and willing to give me oblivion.

Instead I climb out of bed and prepare my makeshift darkroom. I move as silently as possible, the way I learned to do when I was small. I remove the film and clip the ends and load the reel; I sink the reel into the tank and fill it with water from the sink and swish it from side to side. Then the developer, the stop bath, the fixer, the rinse. Hang the negatives on their clothespins and clean the trays.

But despite these comforting rituals, I’m still restless. Something nags me. I’m thinking about that airplane I saw today, and about that last flight from Alexandria, and the search for Irene Foster that dragged on for weeks.

I find my way to the little table that serves as my desk, and I pull out the stacks of articles sent to me in batches by my old friend Bill at the Associated Press, in response to my saucy telegrams. He’s been a good sport, Bill Cushing, and I owe him a drink or two. I’ve organized them in neat manila folders, according to subject, and I take out my penlight so I can read the labels. Alexandria, reads one.

It’s now three o’clock in the morning. I climb back into my cold bed with a stack of decade-old newsprint and read without comprehension until my eyelids droop, until I can’t go on. I set aside the clippings on the nightstand and that’s all I remember, until some erotic dream takes shape in my sleep, as it often does.

But this time it is not Velázquez who fucks me furiously in the grass of some airfield, while a series of propeller engines scream over our heads, one after the other, each louder than the last.

It’s Leo.



In the morning, I bring the prints and the negatives to Lindquist and set them down on the tablecloth next to her breakfast plate.

“There you are. Now talk.”





IV




The first lesson is that you can’t lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can’t win a war if you haven’t.

—Jimmy Doolittle





Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)





April 1937: Egypt



Having reached Alexandria just before midnight, Irene was now a full two days ahead of the next competitor. She’d been lucky, of course, but she had also flown with the kind of cool, single-minded confidence she hadn’t felt in years. The monsoon in Delhi, for example. When everyone else had remained on the ground, Irene had taken off in her gleaming, rebuilt Rofrano Sirius, tore right through the rain and clouds to the calm above, and built a lead that was essentially insurmountable, barring accident. You might even call it a classic Foster maneuver: the gutsy, calculated risk, relying on a thorough knowledge of geography and meteorology, allied with her characteristically precise piloting and sound instinct. The old Irene was back.

Now there remained only the final hop to Casablanca, where George waited for her in a suite at the Anfa Hotel. He had cabled her an hour ago to congratulate her on her safe arrival, her expected victory. The telegram slip lay before her now, on the desk in her hotel room, fluttering a little in the draft from the ceiling fan.

Irene rose from the chair and walked to the balcony, which overlooked some market square. At this early hour, just before dawn, the streets were empty and dark. Still, she sensed the echoes of the noontime bustle, the dust and heat and the smell of manure and hot, spicy meat, and it awakened all her curiosity. That was the trouble with these races, these stunt flights, with barnstorming generally. You sped along from point to point without any regard for what lay between. You cared only about the destination, about reaching some point on a map in the shortest possible time, and never about this vast, fascinating globe you sought to shrink.

At precisely five o’clock, a set of knuckles rapped on the door. Breakfast. Irene was specific about this meal: two eggs poached firm—you did not want to fall sick on a flight like this—served on buttered toast with a large pot of coffee. In some of the more exotic ports of call, these eggs might not necessarily come from what you’d call a chicken, but that was all right with Irene. The nutritional properties of the egg were more important than its lineage. She took the tray from the waiter at the door and handed him a tip, and then she settled to eat. She didn’t rush. She knew this was her last moment of peace until she went aloft.



As she crossed the hotel lobby to meet Mr. Fish, the American ambassador in Egypt who would accompany her to the airport, the desk clerk called her name respectfully.

“Another telegram has just arrived for you, Miss Foster,” he said.

Irene opened the telegram envelope with the tip of her fountain pen, which she kept in her pocket in case of autographs. It was from George.

GALA DINNER TONIGHT FRENCH AND AMERICAN OFFICIALS STOP FLY TO PARIS TOMORROW THEN RETURN HOME SS NORMANDIE 2 MAY STOP POSSIBLE TICKER TAPE PARADE ON ARRIVAL NEW YORK STOP WILL ADVISE STOP LOVE ALWAYS GEORGE





She stuffed the telegram back in its envelope and folded the envelope into her pocket. “Let’s go,” she said to Mr. Fish.