Flat Spin (6 page)

“I’m not much of a breakfast eater,” I said.

“All right. Lunch, then.”

“It’s a long way to go for lunch, Gil.”

“Not for a crackerjack pilot who’s got his own airplane.”

My head ran through everything I had to do tomorrow: Get up. Look for a job without success. Sink deeper into depression.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “I’m pretty booked tomorrow.”

“Well, I don’t doubt it, a man of your many talents. Look, Cordell, I’m just gonna cut right to the chase. How does twentyfive grand sound? You fly up to El Molino in that little ol’ plane of yours, enjoy a nice meal on yours truly, you’re back home come siesta time. No strings attached.”

Twenty-five grand. With no strings attached. I could pay off Larry and still have enough left over to cover the engine overhaul on the
Duck
.

“C’mon, hoss,” Gil Carlisle said, his voice as silky as a Texas waltz, “you got nothin’ to lose. What do you say?”

I said, “I’ll see you around eleven-thirty.”

I
rolled out of bed early the next morning and straight into my patented, ten-minute exercise routine. Push-ups, reverse push-ups, crunches, lower back spasms, quit. Endorphin rush is a cruel hoax. Anyone who’s ever played contact sports at the collegiate level can attest to that in later life. Aerobic exertion is nothing more than pain heaped atop pain. The only relief comes when you’re finally done with abusing your musculoskeletal for the day. Which I more than was.

I stood up and stretched my aching lumbar. A lizard skittered past me and disappeared under the deco pink Frigidaire that came with the apartment. Kiddiot liked bringing in lizards to play with them. The only problem was, after awhile, he’d get bored and go back outside to take a nap or a sunbath, while his reptilian friends invariably found their way under the refrigerator. I used to pull the fridge out from the wall to set them free. But they didn’t want freedom. They would go scurrying from under the refrigerator to under the matching pink stove to die there. Or under the bed to die there. Or under my pressboard, ready-to-assemble Ikea nightstand or dresser. Or under the purple Naugahyde couch that Mrs. Schmulowitz picked up at a police auction (“Nobody else bid on it! Can you believe that?”). Sometimes, the lizards Kiddiot invited in even managed to die behind the molded, one-piece plastic shower stall in my “bathroom,” which was really nothing more than a corner of the garage cordoned off by two flimsy stud walls covered with sheetrock. To make the garage feel bigger, Mrs. Schmulowitz had the entire place painted hospital ship white. To make it feel more homey, she’d put down braided rugs. Over the apartment’s lone window, which afforded a picturesque view of the alley, she’d hung frilly gingham curtains, more suited to a little girl’s room. The cumulative effect did little to obscure the fact that the place was still a garage. But what the hell. It kept the rain off my head on those rare occasions when it rained in Rancho Bonita. Plus, at $750 a month, including utilities and high-speed internet service for my laptop, it was a relative steal by local standards. Throw in the free brisket dinner every Monday night during football season, and I had no complaints.

After showering and shaving, I pulled on a pair of Levi’s and laced up my good Nikes. Hanging next to the stove in the freestanding metal locker that served as my closet were a half-dozen clean shirts. I picked a short-sleeve blue polo. Silk-screened on the breast was the “Above the Clouds Flight Academy” logo, and the silhouette of a high-wing Cessna. Some people said the plane looked like it was flying toward the sunset. Others said it was flying toward a sunrise. It all depended on whether you were a glass halffull or half-empty kind of person, I suppose. Stitched in cursive script below the airplane logo was the self-anointed title, “Chief Flight Instructor.” Talk about delusions of grandeur.

My review of job listings on Craigslist the night before had yielded no viable prospects. I walked through the backyard, down along the left side of Mrs. Schmulowitz’s house, through the gate of her picket fence, and fetched the morning paper from her lawn to review what few help wanted ads there were—a last-ditch attempt to hopefully find a job opportunity that would give me the legitimate excuse not to fly up to El Molino and accept a handout from my former father-in-law.

City of Rancho Bonita seeks Animal Control Officer.
Hell, I can’t even control an intellectually challenged cat. How could I possibly be expected to arm wrestle possums?

Grassroots Environmental group looking for organizers to help save endangered forests.
Yeah, right. Let’s cut down a bunch of trees and grind them into newsprint so we can get the word out about saving the ecosystem.

Couple seeking private chef to prepare fresh, organic meals 3 to 5 nights per week
. Forget it. I’m a cook whose idea of an oven timer is a smoke detector.

After three minutes of scanning the want ads, I concluded that there were no jobs to be found in the greater Rancho Bonita area that required my skills, such as they were. I refolded the newspaper, quietly propped it against Mrs. Schmulowitz’s door, and walked back to the garage.

Kiddiot was lounging out on top of the pink refrigerator like the Great Sphinx of Giza. The tip of his tail swayed back and forth, over the edge of the freezer. His eyes were closed, but I knew he was only pretending to be asleep, the way cats do.

I washed the day-old “Savory Turkey Platter” out of his bowl, of which he hadn’t eaten a bite, and replaced it with a fresh can of “Tender Ocean Whitefish and Tuna in Delectable Juices.” I set the food bowl down on the floor near the kitchen sink and waited for him to make his move. He got up, took his time stretching, and hopped onto the sink, then down, onto the floor. He approached his food bowl warily, like it was hiding an improvised explosive device. He sniffed the bowl from a foot away, flicked his tail a couple of times, leaped back on top of the counter, then up onto the refrigerator.

A wise man said once that the purpose of cats is to remind man that not everything in life has a purpose. He was wrong, at least so far as Kiddiot was concerned. Kiddiot’s purpose was to remind me that friends and wives may come and go, but furry, antisocial mooches never leave.

“Anybody ever tell you you’re less than worthless?”

Kiddiot bathed himself with his tongue and ignored me like some sort of lesser life form. I turned on the TV and dialed in
Animal Planet
so he could watch his favorite shows, grabbed my blue, sweat-stained Air Force Academy ball cap off a hook on the back of the door, and drove to the airport.

E
l Molino is up the coast and inland from Rancho Bonita. As the crow flies, it’s about 115 miles. As a Cessna 172 flies, depending on winds aloft, the trip normally takes about an hour—the operative word being “normally.” That morning, the winds came screaming out of the north, bucking my little airplane all over the sky, while reducing my ground speed at times to less than fifty knots. On Highway 101, 6,500 feet beneath the
Duck
’s wings, I watched cars passing me like I was standing still.

Bumpy air and pathetic ground speed aside, the extra time gave me an opportunity to think. I’d had a restless night, what with the heat and Savannah’s unexpected intrusion in my life. The wee hours had been spent sweating atop the sheets and staring up at the ceiling, with memories of her coursing through my head, the soundtrack of my insomnia, an old Bob Dylan tune about switching off your emotions to cope with the loss of that special someone forever embedded on your brain.

The Buddha teaches that suffering is the essence of life, that desire is the root cause of that suffering. Get rid of that which you desire and you get rid of the suffering. Easy. And yet, as I fought the wind on my way toward El Molino that morning, I realized my desire for Savannah had never left me. I’d just learned to turn it off.

The coastal mountains north of Rancho Bonita gave way to the Agua Caliente Valley, a loose patchwork of gentle hills studded with stands of oaks and vineyards. After about fifteen minutes, Rancho Bonita Departure handed me off to Oakland Center, followed by several minutes of silence on the airwaves. I checked in to make sure the
Duck
’s radios were still working.

“Oakland Center, Cessna Four Charlie Lima, how do you hear?”

“Loud and clear.”

All was quiet because nobody else was stupid enough to be out flying. The high winds had grounded every other private pilot in the region. Half an hour later, I radioed Oakland to report that I had the El Molino airport in sight, fifteen miles off the nose of the plane.

“Four Charlie Lima, roger. El Molino altimeter two niner niner seven. Radar service terminated. Squawk VFR. Frequency change approved.”

“Thanks for the help. Four Charlie Lima.”

I switched over to the number-one radio to listen to the automated weather recording at the El Molino airport. The winds were 330 degrees at twenty-eight knots, gusting to thirty-five. On my number-two radio, I dialed in the airport’s common traffic area frequency to listen for other airplanes coming or going. There were none. At seven miles out, I keyed the push-to-talk mic button on my yoke.

“El Molino traffic, Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, seven miles south of the field at 4,500 feet descending, landing Runway Thirty-One, El Molino.”

I eased back on the throttle and thumbed in a little forward trim to set up a 700 feet-per-minute descent, keeping Runway Thirty-One centered on the
Duck
’s nose. Off my left wingtip, about five miles away, was the tourist-friendly burg of El Molino, population 29,000, whose founding fathers made their fortunes selling tourists on the medicinal virtues of soaking in El Molino’s many hot springs and mud baths. More than a century later, with nearly 170 mostly ridiculously overpriced wineries and tasting rooms, the tourists were still being soaked.

The turbulence was severe enough that I twice smacked the top of my head on the cabin roof as I made my approach into the airport. Descending through 2,000 feet, I nearly collided with a seagull. He flashed below the
Duck
’s left wing close enough that I could make out the red dot at the end of his beak.

By the time I dropped down to pattern altitude, the air had tamed somewhat. The orange wind sock was standing straight out, angled off the runway by about twenty degrees. Turning final, I held my right wingtip into the wind and touched down on my upwind wheel first. A textbook crosswind landing if I do say so myself. I glanced at the clock on the instrument panel as I rolled out. It was almost twelve-thirty—nearly an hour late to my meeting with Gilbert Carlisle, thanks to Mother Nature. Nothing I could do about it now. He’d either be there or he wouldn’t.

There were abundant parking spaces across from the main terminal where the restaurant was located. The
Duck
, in fact, was the only plane on the ramp. I slid the gust lock into the control column on the pilot’s side, secured the nose wheel with the aluminum travel chocks I keep in the baggage compartment, and secured the tie-down chains on the underside of both wings as tight as they would go. I made sure the door was good and locked, then made for the terminal.

The tarmac was like a wind tunnel. I leaned into the blow, head down, holding onto my ball cap. My eyes burned from the gale-force winds. My shirtsleeves flapped hard against my arms. As I got closer to the terminal, I could see a man in Wrangler jeans, a blue-checked cowboy shirt with pearl snaps, and ostrich skin cowboy boots holding open the door for me.

“Get on in here before you get blowed into another area code,” Gil Carlisle said with a broad grin.

We shook hands as I slid past him into the terminal.

“I was starting to get a little worried,” he said.

“Wind held me up. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Hell, I’m just glad you could make it.”

Standing protectively close beside him was a tall, muscular Latino in his mid-thirties. Gray slacks, white shirt, the frigid scowl of an on-duty Secret Service agent. The grip of what looked like a .40-caliber Glock pistol dangled from a shoulder holster under his left arm.