The Invitation (8 page)

T
wo days later, after yet another restless night, Jackie knew she had to do something. Each night she seemed to turn over many times, and each time she awoke and listened for a sound from William. Of course she knew that he was two floors above her and she couldn't possibly hear him, but that didn't make any difference. She knew he was there; she could feel his presence.

On the morning of the third day, at about three
A.M.,
she awoke and had a mature, intelligent talk with herself. Her conclusion was that either he had to leave or she would go crazy. When she was younger, she always liked to know why she did something, and if she found that her behavior was based on something childish, like jealousy or envy, she tried to overcome the feeling. But with age came the wisdom to know that everyone was human. For whatever reason, she knew that she
had
to get rid of him. Suppose Terri came to visit and found her and William occupying the same house? She could hear all the snide hometown things that would be said about “robbing the cradle” and “wet behind the ears.” If this were Paris she might get away with what seemed to be occupying her every waking and sleeping thought, but this was backwoods, unsophisticated Chandler, Colorado, and a thirty-eight-year-old woman did not take up with a man ten years younger than herself.

And if the age difference wasn't enough, there was William's talk of the Taggie. She needed to stop that right now. William had the eyes of a zealot, of a do-gooder. He meant for her to win that race so she could enter the history books. With that sparkle in his eyes, he was likely to do something absurd, such as announce to the town that she was going to enter, hoping to force her to change her mind.

As she began to dress, Jackie couldn't help feeling sad, for she knew that what she was doing was possibly the stupidest thing she'd ever done in her life, but even that knowledge didn't keep her from doing it. Having a man with the money and business acumen of William Montgomery was something that every underpaid glory hound of a pilot dreamed of. William wasn't trying to steal the spotlight from Jackie, nor was he trying to take over the directorship of the business. He just wanted to stay in the background and do all the boring work of managing the money. He deferred to Jackie at every turn, saying things like “I'm sure you know best.”

It was infuriating. But what was
really
infuriating about him was that she loved being around his slow, deliberate ways. She didn't know how else to explain it: William made her feel safe.

The first day he had asked her where she kept her books, and they then had gone through an annoying hassle while Jackie figured out that he wasn't trying to get into her bedroom where she had her one and only bookcase. He had wanted ledgers telling who owed what and how much to her. “Oh, that,” she'd said, then began to rattle off to him how much various people in town owed her for the use of the airfield, for carrying a package to Denver, for begging a ride with her to Trinidad. She could remember who had paid her and how much was still owed. She remembered dates of flights and how long they took. She remembered who had paid her in chickens and who in cash.

After sitting spellbound while listening to this rendition of her monetary life, William blinked a few times and said he'd buy ledgers and draw up a proper set of books. Trying to be as flippant as possible, Jackie had swept from the room, tossing over her shoulder, “I hope you don't expect me to record every penny I make in some book.”

Jackie's plan was to make William say he was leaving; also she wanted to make it quite clear to him and to anyone visiting them that there was nothing whatsoever between them except business. So maybe in trying to reach this end she hadn't exactly been the most gracious of business partners. And it was indeed stupid to try to sabotage herself, but with every passing day she liked William more.

Nothing she said seemed to bother him. He was the soul of calmness. When three people had called in one day to cancel planned flights to Denver, she could have pulled the hair out of the nearest person, which of course was William. All day long she'd picked on him. “Of course, what would a kid like you know about disappointment?” she said. “You haven't been alive long enough to understand how difficult life can sometimes be.” William hadn't said a word to her, just raised one eyebrow in a way that made her want to crawl under a table. It would have been easier to believe he was a kid if he had acted like one.

With each passing minute Jackie could see the possibility of danger in being too near this young man. So she strengthened her resolve to stay away from him. The first night he had used her kitchen when she wasn't there, but the second night he'd asked if he could come down from the top floor and use her kitchen, since all he had was a hot plate. She didn't feel she could refuse him this request, and for one long, delicious moment, she thought of sitting at the table in the kitchen with a man and laughing across a bottle of wine. She had to shake herself to make the image go away. At dinnertime she had found that she had to make an emergency drive into Chandler to pick up a box of tissues.

While she was in the local diner having a plate of something the cook called the day's special, Reynata had come to sit by her.

“Do you mind?” the young, beautiful girl asked.

“Not at all,” Jackie replied.

After the girl was seated and had ordered a Coke, she looked at Jackie. “Are you going to be the first woman to win the Taggie?”

That had brought Jackie out of her melancholy. “Where did you hear something like that?”

“One guess.”

Jackie smiled. “I seem to remember that William did mention that. He has a bad case of hero worship. You know, a lot of young men feel that way about older women.”

“I'm not sure that's how William feels about you.” Rey was smiling and fiddling with her straw.

At that Jackie jumped up from the table. “Look, there is nothing between Billy Montgomery and me except a business arrangement, and anyone who says there is, is a damned liar! He's a kid to me and nothing more. I used to change his diapers. I can't even look at him without seeing him with a milk mustache on his fat little-boy face. I'm always wanting to pat his head and sing lullabies to him. I want to—” She broke off because every person in the diner had stopped talking and was looking at her.

Great, Jackie thought, where there had been no suspicion, now there was. “I have to go,” she had mumbled to Rey before practically running out the door.

So now, after three days of William's calm, of William's organization, of William's eyes, which sometimes made Jackie shiver, she knew that she had to get rid of him. But how? Insults didn't seem to affect him—they never had. When he was a kid, Jackie had said lots of rude things to him to try to get him to go away, but nothing had worked. And oddly enough, she had begun to enjoy his silent company. He was so rock solid, something dependable in her life that seemed to have no stability.

So, now, how did she make him go away? Make him go away before the whole town started talking about the two of them?

W
ould you like to go flying with me, Billy?” Jackie asked in her sweetest voice. “I'd like to see what you can do with a plane.” The smile she gave him made honey look poisonous. It had taken some thought, but she had remembered William's caution, his great love of safety. As a child, the only time she'd ever been able to get rid of him was one day when she'd pulled him onto a log stretched high across a cold, rock-filled, rushing stream. He'd walked the log, but later he'd said, “I don't like you anymore,” and Jackie hadn't seen him for over a week. Of course she wouldn't admit it back then, but she'd found herself missing him. In the end, she'd “stopped by” his house for a visit. His mother had pointed Billy out and Jackie had found herself walking toward him. They didn't say anything—nothing so ridiculous as apologies—but when she left, William was tagging along behind her, and it was four whole days before Jackie had told him he was a nuisance.

Today, she thought, this airplane was going to be another log across a stream. Only this time she wouldn't go after him and bring him back.

One of the Wacos William had purchased was equipped with pilot and student gear so the plane could be flown from both seats. William was in front, Jackie in the back. Pete, her mechanic, gave the propeller a turn, and Jackie gave a thumbs-up sign to William as he started down the runway.

Again she smiled at him. He looked so sweet, so innocent, sitting there, and his every gesture told her that he wanted to impress her with his flying skills. William was so methodical that she wondered if he'd taken lessons just because his heroine, Jackie, knew how to fly.

But Jackie knew that flying, like anything else in life, was a talent and talent could not be taught. You could teach a skill and a person could learn to fly by the book, but there were some who had the talent and some who didn't.

A few years ago a manufacturer had produced a beautiful little single-wing plane. He thought it was going to revolutionize aviation, and with great hope, he sent the first test pilot up. The plane performed better than anyone had expected, but a few hours later the pilot, for no apparent reason, crashed into a mountain.

The designer tried to tell people that the crash was the result of pilot error, but pilots, a superstitious lot, said the plane was jinxed. Another prototype rolled off the line and a second pilot took it up. Exactly the same thing happened. After the second crash, no one in the flying world could get near the plane without crossing himself or laughing, or both.

Desperate, the designer went to Jackie and offered her a large sum of money to take his plane up. Jackie felt that if your time came, it didn't matter if you were on the ground or in the air and she would much rather be in the air, so she accepted the man's offer. Many people asked her not to go, but she didn't listen to them.

In the air, the little plane was a dream. It handled beautifully, the stick so easy that she felt she could almost go to sleep while flying, and she wanted to stay up forever. Unexpectedly, the first tank ran out of gas about thirty minutes before it should have. The engine sputtered and died in the air. Without much concern, Jackie flipped the switch to the second tank and restarted the engine. Nothing happened. Either the second tank was empty or there was a blockage in the line and the gas couldn't get to the engine.

“This is it,” Jackie said to herself and for a moment she wondered how she could tell the people on the ground that what had killed the other pilots was a faulty fuel line. Oddly enough, considering she was facing certain death, her head was completely clear as she looked at the switch to the gas tank. On and Off, the little printed label said. Or did it read, Off and On? She flipped it the other way, tried the engine, and it started.

Laughing, she brought the plane to the ground and had the great pleasure of informing the designer that the only thing wrong with his plane was that someone had labeled the fuel switch wrong. The other pilots had inadvertently switched it off. No one but Jackie had thought of flipping the switch the other way. Talent. Instinct. Whatever. Jackie had lived because she
didn't
fly by the book.

After ten minutes in the plane with William, Jackie knew that he would never have thought to flip the switch the other way. William was an utterly perfect flyer. There was a rule behind every movement he made. He took no chances, was absolutely safe.

After thirty minutes, Jackie was bored to tears. Couldn't he understand that flying was creative? Airplanes had nothing to do with books. Airplanes moved through the air. What could be more creative than that? Yet William flew as though there were road signs stuck in the clouds. She fully expected to see him extend his hand and signal a right turn.

After forty-five minutes, she could stand no more. Motioning to him that she wanted to take over, she took the controls.

There were two ways to fly: with passengers and without. Usually Jackie tried to behave herself when she had a passenger, but now she wanted to make William say that he didn't want to be partners with her and maybe, too, she wanted to show off a bit.

First off: clean out the cockpit. Daredevil pilots loved to brag that they had very clean cockpits. All they had to do was turn the plane upside down and give a little wiggle to the wings. Simple. Of course you had to make sure the seat belt was fastened. It had happened that people had fallen out.

Jackie turned the plane upside down and wiggled, then did it again. Quickly she came out of the position to move forward and swoop upside down again. She didn't want to miss a smidgen of debris. Dust and dirt, a few chewing gum wrappers, flew past her face. In front of her, William's strong hands were gripping the sides of the cockpit as he held himself in.

Jackie had made a good living and a name for herself with barnstorming and thrilling crowds. The more chances she took, the more she got paid—and she was paid very well.

Twists came next. She flipped wing over wing over wing. Quickly she went into a loop, turning in a complete vertical circle. This was followed by her own special creation that someone had called a dippy twist loop, in which she did a twist and a loop at the same time.

When she came out of the dippy, she went into a stall and the world suddenly seemed unnaturally silent until she started the engine again.

Years before, when she was learning to fly, Charley had made sure that she knew how to handle herself in every emergency. He'd made her take off from beaches, roadways, ball parks, racetracks. She'd had to fly right-side up, upside down, in crosswinds, tailwinds, no wind. He'd taught her how to handle a fire on board and ice on the wings. When there was thick fog between her and the ground, he'd shown her how to orient herself by burning a hole in the fog with her engine heat. He'd taught her how to land on water and what to do if she was swept out to sea.

She decided to show William nearly everything she'd learned. She raced around tall trees, calculating the distance between them by inches. One miscalculation and the wings would have been torn off. The moment she was through the trees, she did a couple of snap rolls. Nailing the nose to the horizon, she did several three hundred and sixty degree lateral turns, one after another, coming out about a quarter of an inch before she would have flown smack into a mountain.

About a week after she ran off with Charley, during which time he'd rarely let her out of a plane, he'd said, “Kid, you got a gyroscope in your head. If you're upside down and backwards it's all the same to you. You know where you're going.” Now Jackie flew upside down for a while, maneuvering through the trees with her head pointed toward the ground.

She knew she was getting low on gas so she headed back to Eternity, writing her name in the sky as she went. Skywriting lost something with no flares attached to the tail of the plane, but the motion was the same.

As she hit the hard-packed runway in Eternity, the engine died from lack of gas. Perfect, she thought. She had calculated perfectly. Charley would have been proud of her.

After Jackie landed the plane, William stayed in his seat, not moving, his head back, his eyes closed, and she could see that he was fighting hard not to be ill. There weren't many people who could go through what William had just experienced and not lose a meal. But somehow he was managing to control his stomach.

Standing up, Jackie reached her hand out to him, and briefly—
very
briefly—he opened his eyes to glance at her, then gave a faint shake of his head. He was not going to accept her offer of a steadying hand when he disembarked.

On the ground, Jackie politely looked away as he somehow climbed down from the plane without anyone's help. When she turned to look at him his face was white, his skin clammy-looking, and he wasn't too steady on his feet.

“All right, Jackie,” he said solemnly, as he took a deep breath, working hard to control his nausea. “You win. I'll pack my bags and leave. I'll be out of here in a matter of hours.”

Now that she'd done what she planned, she couldn't help feeling bad. She didn't want to discontinue their friendship; she just wanted him out of her house and out of her life on a daily basis. “William, I…”

When he turned to look at her, his eyes blazed, and his white skin was tinged with the deep glow of anger. No, there was more in his eyes than anger; there was rage. Old-fashioned life-endangering rage.

When he spoke, his voice was very soft and very quiet. “So now I guess you'll tell me you want to be friends. That you've always had a high regard for me and you'll always treasure my friendship.” He took a step toward her, looming over her. “I don't want your friendship, Jackie. I never wanted your friendship. Since I was a little boy I've wanted your love.”

At that statement she made the mistake of giving the slightest smile, and that smile seemed to make something in William break. Even as a child he had been mild-mannered and sweet-tempered, but now he seemed to turn into something fierce, something dangerous. When he took a step toward her, she stepped back.

“Does my wanting your love amuse you? Is it something to make you laugh? Stupid little Billy Montgomery following tall, eccentric Jackie O'Neill around. Oh, yes, you've always been eccentric. Even as a child you were different from everyone else. The other kids were trying their best to be carbon copies of each other, but not you. Oh, I know you thought that what you wanted was to wear the latest fashions and be part of the group, but the truth was, you loved climbing on your mother's roof and hammering the tiles in place. You loved having an excuse to get away from the other kids in your class so you could do exactly what you wanted to do. When you were sixteen and no girl would be caught dead climbing trees and swinging on ropes,
you
were doing those things. You have always done what you wanted and the rest of the world be damned.”

He wasn't presenting a very pretty picture of her. He made her sound odd and selfish. She opened her mouth to speak, but he leaned over her until her back was bent.

“And I loved you for having the courage to be who you were. You didn't try to conform. In this town where everyone knows everyone else, you found a way, an excuse, to be who you wanted to be. You found a way to do what you wanted to do. And when an opportunity came for you to get out of here, you didn't hesitate, you took that opening. No fear, no second thoughts, not even a backward glance. You saw what you wanted and you went after it.

“I loved that in you, Jackie. I may have been a little boy, but I saw quite clearly what you were and what you were going to do, and I loved you for it. I'm a man now and I know that what I felt then wasn't puppy love. I don't have any way to explain it. I loved you as a man then, and that's the way I love you now.”

“Now?” she whispered, looking into his eyes. It certainly was difficult to think of him as a child at this moment.

“Yes, now! Maybe we're alike but in opposite ways. Since the first time I saw you I have loved you. I was just five years old when my mother opened the door to you. You stood there, fifteen years old, too tall, too thin, your hair hanging in your eyes because you'd been in too much of a hurry to tie it back. You were pretty in an obscure way, but you weren't going to make any man's heart stop beating. You very nearly made mine stop, though. I looked up at you and I fell in love with you, and I've never stopped loving you since.”

He seemed to grow taller as he leaned over her even farther. “I was the one who got my father to establish the Taggie, hoping to entice you back to Chandler. I was the one who had my father write to you after Charley died and ask you to start a flying service for our family. I anonymously sponsored six air shows for you and Charley at times when I knew that Charley had drunk your funds away. It was my uncle who pointed out to the president your good deed in saving the burn victims.”

She was blinking at him. “You?” was all that she could whisper.

“Yes, me. I have loved you always. Always. Without hesitation. Just as you took one look at an airplane and knew that flying was what you were supposed to do in life, I took one look at you and knew that you and I were meant to be together. I've dated very few women. I've never been to bed with a woman because I felt I would have been betraying you. I waited for you, and while I was waiting, I took care of you to the best of my ability.”