Airport (75 page)

Years later, that story changed a little, and it became a favorite gambit of Cindy’s to declare that she had sacrificed her career and probable stardom because of Mel. More recently, though, Cindy didn’t like her past as an actress being mentioned at all. That was because she had read in
Town and Country
that actresses were seldom, if ever, included in
The Social Register
, and addition of her own name to the
Register
was something Cindy wanted very much indeed.

“I’m coming downtown to join you just as soon as I can,” Mel said.

Cindy snapped, “That isn’t good enough. You should be here already. You knew perfectly well that tonight was important to me, and a week ago you made a definite promise.”

“A week ago I didn’t know we were going to have the biggest storm in six years. Right now we’ve a runway out of use, there’s a question of airport safety…”

“You’ve people working for you, haven’t you? Or are the ones you’ve chosen so incompetent they can’t be left alone?”

Mel said irritably, “They’re highly competent. But I get paid to take some responsibility, too.”

“It’s a pity you can’t act responsibly to me. Time and again I make important social arrangements which you enjoy demolishing.”

Listening, as the words continued, Mel sensed that Cindy was getting close to boiling point. Without any effort, he could visualize her now, five feet six of imperious energy in her highest heels, clear blue eyes flashing, and her blonde coiffed head tilted back in that damnably attractive way she had when she was angry. That was one reason, Mel supposed, why, in their early years of marriage, his wife’s temper outbursts seldom dismayed him. The more heated she became, it always seemed, the more desirable she grew. At such moments, he had invariably let his eyes rove upward, beginning at her ankles–not hurriedly, because Cindy possessed extraordinarily attractive ankles and legs; in fact, better than those of most other women Mel knew–to the rest of her which was just as proportionate and physically appealing.

In the past, when his eyes had made their appreciative assessment, some two-way physical communion sprang into being, prompting each to reach out, to touch one another, impulsively, hungrily. The result was predictable. Invariably, the origin of Cindy’s anger was forgotten in a wave of sensuality which engulfed them. Cindy had an exciting, insistent savagery, and in their lovemaking would demand, “
Hurt me, goddam you, hurt me!
” At the end, they would be spent and drained, so that picking up the skein of a quarrel was more than either had the wish or energy to do.

It was, of course, a way of shelving, rather than resolving, differences which–Mel realized, even early on–were fundamental. As the years passed, and passion lessened, accumulated differences became more sharply accented.

Eventually, they ceased entirely to use sex as a panacea and, in the past year or so, physical intimacy of any kind had become more and more occasional. Cindy, in fact, whose bodily appetites had always needed satisfying whatever the state of mind between them, appeared in recent months to have become indifferent altogether. Mel had wondered about that. Had his wife taken a lover? It was possible, and Mel supposed he ought to care. The sad thing was, it seemed easier not to be concerned.

Yet there were still moments when the sight or sound of Cindy in her willful anger could stir him physically, arousing old desires. He had that feeling now as he listened to her excoriating voice on the telephone.

When he was able to cut in, he said, “It isn’t true that I enjoy demolishing your arrangements. Most of the time I go along with what you want, even though I don’t think the things we go to are all that important. What I would enjoy are a few more evenings at home with the children.”

“That’s a lot of crap,” Cindy said, “and you know it.”

He felt himself tense, gripping the telephone more tightly. Then he conceded to himself: perhaps the last remark was true, to an extent. Earlier this evening he had been reminded of the times he had stayed at the airport when he could have gone home–merely because he wanted to avoid another fight with Cindy. Roberta and Libby had got left out of the reckoning then, as children did, he supposed, when marriages went sour. He should not have mentioned them.

But apart from that, tonight was different. He ought to stay on at the airport, at least until it became known for sure what was happening about the blocked runway.

“Look,” Mel said, “let’s make one thing clear. I haven’t told you this before, but last year I kept some notes. You wanted me to come to fifty-seven of your charitable whingdings. Out of that I managed forty-five, which is a whole lot more than I’d attend from choice, but it isn’t a bad score.”

“You bastard! I’m not a ball game where you keep a scorecard. I’m your wife.”

Mel said sharply, “Take it easy!” He was becoming angry, himself. “Also, in case you don’t know it, you’re raising your voice. Do you want all those nice people around to know what kind of a heel you have for a husband?”

“I don’t give a goddam!” But she said it softly, just the same.

“I do know you’re my wife, which is why I intend to get down there just as soon as I can.” What would happen, Mel wondered, if he could reach out and touch Cindy now? Would the old magic work? He decided not. “So save me a place, and tell the waiter to keep my soup warm. Also, apologize and explain why I’m late. I presume some of the people there have heard there is an airport.” A thought struck him. “Incidentally, what’s the occasion tonight?”

“I explained last week.”

“Tell me again.”

“It’s a publicity party–cocktails and dinner–to promote the costume ball which is being given next month for the Archidona Children’s Relief Fund. The press is here. They’ll be taking photographs.”

Now Mel knew why Cindy wanted him to hurry. With him there, she stood a better chance of being in the photographs–and on tomorrow’s newspaper social pages.

“Most other committee members,” Cindy insisted, “have their husbands here already.”

“But not all?”

“I said most.”

“And you did say the Archidona Relief Fund?”

“Yes.”

“Which Arcbidona? There are two. One’s in Ecuador, the other in Spain.” At college, maps and geography had fascinated Mel, and he had a retentive memory.

For the first time, Cindy hesitated. Then she said testily, “What does it matter? This isn’t the time for stupid questions.”

Mel wanted to laugh out loud.
Cindy didn’t know.
As usual, she had chosen to work for a charity because of
who
was involved, rather than what.

He said maticiously, “How many letters do you expect to get from this one?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes, you do.”

To be considered for listing in
The Social Register
, a new aspirant needed eight sponsoring letters from people whose names already appeared there. At the last count Mel had heard, Cindy had collected four.

“By God, Mel, if you say anything–tonight or any other time…”

“Will the letters be free ones, or do you expect to pay for them like those other two?” He was aware of having an advantage now. It happened very rarely.

Cindy said indignantly, “That’s a filthy allegation. It’s impossible to buy your way in…”

“Nuts!” Mel said. “I get the canceled checks from our joint account. Remember?”

There was a silence. Then Cindy asserted, low-voiced and savagely, “Listen to me! You’d better get here tonight, and soon. If you don’t come, or if you do come and embarass me by saying anything of what you did just now, it’ll be the end. Do you understand?”

“I’m not sure that I do.” Mel spoke quietly. Instinct cautioned him that this was an important moment for them both. “Perhaps you’d better tell me exactly what you mean.”

Cindy countered, “You figure it out.”

She hung up.

ON HIS WAY from the parking area to his office, Mel’s fury seethed and grew. Anger had always come to him less quickly than to Cindy. He was the slow-burn type. But he was burning now.

He was not entirely sure of the focus of his anger. A good deal was directed at Cindy, but there were other factors, too: His professional failure, as he saw it, to prepare effectually for a new era of aviation; a seeming inability to infuse others any longer with his own convictions; high hopes, unfulfilled. Somehow, between them all, Mel thought, his personal and professional lives had become twin testaments to inadequacy. His marriage was on the rocks, or apparently about to go there; if and when it did, he would have failed his children, also. At the same time, at the airport, where he was trustee for thousands who passed through daily in good faith, all his efforts and persuasion had failed to halt deterioration. There, the high standards he had worked to build were eroding steadily.

En route to the executive mezzanine, he encountered no one he knew. It was just as well. If he had been spoken to, whatever question had been put, be would have snarled a heated answer. In his office, he peeled off the heavy outdoor clothing and let it stay on the floor where it fell. He lit a cigarette. It had an acrid taste, and he stubbed it out. As he crossed to his desk, he was aware that the pain in his foot had returned, increasingly.

There was a time–it seemed long ago–when on nights like this, if his wounded foot pained him, he would have gone home, where Cindy would have insisted he relax. He would have a hot bath first, then after, while he lay face downward on their bed, she would massage his back and neck with cool, firm fingers until pain ebbed out of him. It was unthinkable, of course, that Cindy would ever do the same thing again; but even if she did, he doubted that it would work. You could lose communication in other ways besides the spoken word.

Seated at his desk, Mel put his head in his hands.

As he had done on the airfield earlier, he shivered. Then, abruptly in the silent office, a telephone bell jangled. For a moment he ignored it. It rang again, and he realized it was the red alarm system telephone on a stand beside the desk. In two swift strides he reached it.

“Bakersfeld here.”

He heard clicks and more acknowledgments as others came on the line.

“This is Air Traffic Control,” the tower chief’s voice announced. “We have an airborne emergency, category three.

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K
EITH BAKERSFELD
, Mel’s brother, was a third of the way through his eight-hour duty watch in the air traffic control radar room.

In radar control, tonight’s storm was having a profound effect, though not a directly physical one. To a spectator, Keith thought, lacking an awareness of the complex story which a conglomeration of radarscopes was telling, it might have seemed that the storm, raging immediately outside, was a thousand miles away.

The radar room was in the control tower, one floor down from the glass-surrounded eyrie–the tower cab–from which ATC directed aircraft movement on the ground and immediate local flying. The radar section’s jurisdiction extended beyond the airport, and radar controllers reached out to bridge the gap between local control and the nearest ATC regional center. The regional centers–usually miles from any airport–controlled main trunk airways and traffic coming on and off them.

In contrast to the top portion of the tower, the radar room had no windows. Day and night, at Lincoln International, ten radar controllers and supervisors labored in perpetual semidarkness under dim moonglow lights. Around them, tightly packed equipment–radarscopes, controls, radio communications panels–lined all four walls. Usually, controllers worked in shirtsleeves since the temperature, winter or summer, was maintained at an even seventy degrees to protect the delicate electronic gear.

The pervading tone in the radar room was calm. However, beneath the calmness, at all times, was a constant nervous strain. Tonight, the strain had been added to by the storm and, within the past few minutes, it had heightened further still. The effect was like stretching an already tensioned spring.

Cause of the added tension was a signal on a radarscope which, in turn, had triggered a flashing red light and alarm buzzer in the control room. The buzzer had now been silenced, but the distinctive radar signal remained. Known as a double blossom, it had flowered on the semidarkened screen like a tremulous green carnation and denoted an aircraft in distress. In this case, the aircraft was a U.S. Air Force KC-135, high above the airport in the storm, and seeking an immediate emergency landing. Keith Bakersfeld bad been working the flatface scope on which the emergency signal appeared, and a supervisor had since joined him. Both were now transmitting urgent, swift decisions–by interphone to controllers at adjoining positions, and by radio to other aircraft.

The tower watch chief on the floor above had been promptly informed of the distress signal. He, in turn, had declared a category three emergency, alerting airport ground facilities.

The flatface scope, at the moment the center of attention, was a horizontal glass circle, the size of a bicycle tire, set into a tabletop console. Its surface was dark green, with brilliant green points of light showing all aircraft in the air within a forty-mile radius. As the aircraft moved, so did the points of light. Beside each light point was a small plastic marker, identifying it. The markers were known colloquially as “shrimp boats” and controllers moved them by hand as aircraft progressed and their positions on the screen changed. As more aircraft appeared, they were identified by voice radio and similarly tagged. New radar systems dispensed with shrimp boats; instead, identifying letter-number codes–including altitude–appeared directly on the radar screen. But the newer method was not yet in wide use and, like all new systems, had bugs which needed elimination.

Tonight there was an extraordinary number of aircraft on the screen, and someone had remarked earlier that the green pinpoints were proliferating like fecund ants.

Keith was seated closest to the flatface, his lean, spindly figure hunched forward in a gray steel chair. His body was tense; his legs, hooked underneath the chair, were as rigid as the chair itself. He was concentrating, his face strained and gaunt, as it had been for months. The green reflection of the scope accentuated, eerily, deep hollows beneath his eyes. Anyone who knew Keith well, but had not seen him for a year or so, would have been shocked both by his appearance and his change in manner. Once, he had exuded an amiable, relaxed good-nature; now, all signs of it were gone. Keith was six years younger than his brother, Mel, but nowadays appeared a good deal older.