Her Last Flight(94)

“He just ended the search and released this final statement to the press—The time has come to let Irene go, forever honor her memory, allow me to mourn her in privacy, that kind of thing—and that was that. Never went out in public again. Sold his house in Burbank to Rofrano.”

Leo scrunches his face. “Rofrano.”

“Mr. Octavian Rofrano? The Rofrano Aircraft Company? He designed the airplane she flew. They were pretty close, the four of them. Socialized together. Lindquist says they used to keep . . .”

“Keep what?”

I turn back to the yellowing newsprint on the desk before me. “Keep the cat for her, when she was on her lecture tours and her . . . and her . . . .”

“And her what?”

I look up again. “Say. How did she get the cat back?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t around back then. I mean, I was, but—”

“Because if Sophie Rofrano was mothering the cat while Irene flew around the world . . .”

Leo spreads his hands.

“I know, I know. You don’t know nothing.” I wave my hand. “Thanks for the hooch, anyway. You’re a real pal, Leo Lindquist.”

“Janey—”

“I’m fine. I truly am. It’s just a cat.”

“Goddamn it, Janey Everett. Would you just for one minute admit that you care about something? Anything?”

I continue to stare at the newsprint, although it’s starting to blur. “Would you for one minute, Leo Lindquist, admit that I’m just passing through? Sure, I liked the cat. I like you. I like your whole lovely happy goddamn family. You’re a real nice bunch. But I’m here to write a book, that’s all. I’m here to get the facts, and maybe make some conclusions from those facts, and when . . . when I’m done . . . when I’m through . . .”

He lifts me from the chair and sits down on the edge of the bed, while I fall to pieces against his chest, like I have not done in some time, not since I heard that Captain Raoul Velázquez de los Monteros had died of catastrophic injuries in some field hospital just across the German border, two days after his airplane had fallen in flames from the sky.



Leo wakes me in the night and tells me I was having a dream. I already know this, because the dream still hangs around me, more real than the bed and the room and Leo combined. It was about Velázquez. To make it up to Leo, I snuggle my face into his chest and allow him to stroke my hair, the way he likes.

“When you leave,” he says, “I don’t want you to tell me first. You should just go.”

I can’t reply to that. I mean, I could, but it would come out all wrong, and I don’t want Leo to be upset with me. He doesn’t deserve to be upset, and I don’t think I could stand it. So I comfort him the only way I can, in the only language I really know, the only thing I have to offer him, which others may call a sin but to my way of thinking is a gift, this body of mine, this appetite for intercourse, this instinct I have for giving and receiving pleasure. I figure the only thing is to ride him to exhaustion so he goes right back to sleep, and an hour later that’s what he does, tucked inside the cradle of my arms and legs, lips still moving like he’s trying to tell me something. I’ve broken another rule, I guess, but by now I’ve broken so many, it doesn’t seem to matter.



I have only a moment or two to hold him close before somebody knocks on the door. I reach for Leo’s shirt and pull it over my head. On the other side of the door, Lindquist gives me a withering look. She holds a cardboard box under her arm.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“I need to speak with you.”

“At this hour?”

“It’s the only time we have. I want this to be the two of us.”

“What? Why?”

She stares at my face for a second or two. There is some faint light from the porch, and a moon that’s nearly full in the western part of the sky, so I guess she can see me all right.

I shift from one foot to the other and cross my arms. “Well?”

“I think it’s time to tell you about what happened to your father in Spain,” she says. “Pixie.”





Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)





April 1937: Spain



Four and a half hours after taking off from the airport in Alexandria, Irene landed in perfect weather at the El Carmoli air base on the southeastern Spanish coast, near Cartagena. Nobody stopped her or tried to intercept her, even though this was one of the major Republican air bases and the location of the high-speed flying school for fighter pilots. It was a landing strip in the middle of the desert, bleak and brown, tufted with long, skinny grass. The airplanes, lined up in motley rows, were years out of date. As she rolled toward a hangar, she felt all the amazed eyes on the airplane’s skin, and still not a single soul moved from the buildings or the shadows to stop her. Maybe they were all taking a siesta or something, Irene thought.

She brought the ship to a stop and turned off the switches, made notes in her log. She unbuckled herself from the seat and bounded to the door. Outside, a couple of men in flight suits stared at her, astounded. “Good afternoon,” she said, in her best Spanish. “I am looking for Se?or Mallory.” She made a gesture with her hand, indicating height. “American. Blond hair.”