The Hot Pilots (11 page)

Her moans increased, as did her urgent bucking, and then her hot, wet mouth that had been pressed against his ear, lifted
away. She orgasmed with her spine arched and her head rocked back, so that he was able to see her flushed face. Her eyes were
closed, the lids tinged with blue. Her lips, which had been pressed together in a thin line—almost a grimace—abruptly blossomed
wide to free her shrill cry.

He held her—cradled her, really—through her diminishing throes and flutters. It was when she was lying limp and docile on
his chest that he cupped her ass and thrust into her, growling—then moaning—as he came.

“It’s always so good between us,” Linda whispered, sounding amazed. “Hasn’t it always been so good?”

“You know it has,” Steve said. They were lying side by side on the bed, sharing a cigarette. He had the black, plastic ashtray
from the nightstand balanced on his chest.

“Steve?” she murmured, lightly tracing around his nipple with her fingernail.

“Yeah?” he asked, exhaling smoke. As she tickled his nipple his cock stirred but stayed where it was: He wasn’t goddamned
Superman, for chrissakes.

“What would you say if I told you I was pregnant?”

“Holy shit!” Steve sat bolt-upright, spilling the ashtray to the bed.

“Hey!” Linda twisted away from the spilled ashes.

“Are you? Are you pregnant?” he demanded, thinking guiltily of the times—like just now—when he’d made love to her bareback.
Just one more chance
, he prayed.
Get me out of this one, and I’ll never do it again
—

“Of course I’m not pregnant,” Linda said, righting the ashtray and trying to scoop the ashes off the sheet. “I’d asked you
what
if
.”

“Well that was quite a scare you gave me,” Steve muttered, relieved.

“Excuse
me
,” she replied, sounding pissed off.

“What are you mad about?” Steve asked. He took the ashtray from her and ground out the cigarette.

“Who said I’m mad?” Linda groused. “I’m not mad …”

Steve shrugged.

“Okay!” she blurted, moving away from him to sit cross-legged at the end of the bed. “Maybe I’m upset over how you reacted
to my ‘what if.’ Like my being pregnant would be the worst thing in the world.”

“Well, it’s not like we’re married,” Steve pointed out.

“Well, maybe we should be,” Linda said carefully. “We’ve been together a lot this past year. And a lot’s changed … Like the
fact that you’re going to leave the Air Force, even if you have been dragging your butt about doing’ it—”

Steve frowned.

“What?” Linda demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Linda had been the only person outside of his family who he’d told about his decision to leave the military, and she’d been
happy over the prospect of his coming back to L.A., but then Jack Horton had recruited him for the spy plane project. Since
then, Steve had ben stalling Linda, making up all sorts of excuses to avoid telling her that he’d changed his mind. Putting
her off hadn’t been difficult because she was so busy in her own career, going off on assignment for months at a time, and
when they spoke on the telephone it was easy for Steve to rationalize that he ought to wait to tell her in person. Now, here
she was. He knew he had to face the music.

“Linda, there’s been a change. I’m staying in the Air Force.”

“What?” She looked shocked. “When did this happen?”

“A while ago,” he admitted.

“I see,” she said evenly.

“I know I should have told you sooner—”

“Yes, I think you
should
have …” She was acting calmly, but Steve knew that she was struggling to choke back her anger.

“I didn’t want to upset you …”

“May I ask why you’ve made this decision?”

This was going to be the killer
, Steve thought. He longed to tell her why he was staying in, but he couldn’t. She knew him better than anybody; she of all
people would understand why it was so important for him to successfully complete this assignment; what personal vindication
it would bring him—

But he couldn’t tell her: not her, not anyone. The spy plane project was ultra top secret.

“You seem to be at a loss for words,” Linda said bitterly. “Tell me this much, at least: Has the Air Force reassigned you?”

Steve thought about his cover. “No … I’ll still be with OPI.”

“Uh-huh.” Linda nodded. “So, what you’re telling me is that your situation is exactly the same, but that for some mysterious
reason you’ve changed your mind and decided to remain in the Air Force, here in Washington. Only you couldn’t find the decency
to tell me. All this while you’ve been lying to me, stringing me along with false hope …” She smiled thinly. “Now that I think
about it, I guess it isn’t such a mystery, after all …”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s obvious, Steve! You’ve decided to stay in because of me! It’s your way of keeping me at arm’s length! It’s all as clear
as day to me! You realized that once you were in Los Angeles we’d be seeing much more of each other, and that obviously frightened
the hell out of you, so you decided to stay three thousand miles away from me to avoid having to make a commitment!”

“Linda, that’s just not true!” Steve insisted.

“It isn’t? What
other
reason—besides avoiding me—
could
you
have
for remaining here in Washington doing what you yourself have admitted is a dead-end assignment?”

Jesus Christ
, Steve thought.
I’m totally framed. Only the truth will convince her, but I can’t tell her about the spy plane
…”I know how it looks, but you’re wrong. Believe me, you are—”

“Then prove it!”

“Okay! I will!” he said desperately. “Why don’t
you
move
here
?”

“Huh?”

“You move to Washington. Then we could be together.” He took a deep breath. “And then, eventually, I guess we could be … married
…”

Her anger momentarily lessened, but then her flashing blue eyes regained their frost. “You sonofabitch,” she hissed.

“Me?” he blurted, surprised and confused by her reaction.

“You think you’re
so smart
! You
know
I can’t move here! I’ve worked hard for years to become a senior news correspondent in L.A.”

“You could work for a newspaper here,” Steve said.

“Oh, sure!” she snapped. “Just that easy, huh, buster? It so happens that jobs for women journalists at my level are few and
far between, and don’t pretend that you didn’t know that!”

“I never thought about it,” he admitted truthfully.

“Right! You didn’t think!” She jumped off the bed and began pulling clothes out of her suitcase lying on the carpet in the
corner of the room.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting dressed and going to my hotel.”

“Aw, come on …” He tried to think of a way to delay her, to give him time to sweet-talk her out of her anger. “Don’t you even
want to take a shower first?”

“Oh, I’ll shower, all right! At the hotel!”

“Linda, don’t be this way! I
meant
it about you living in Washington. I’m sorry I forgot about your job. I was just trying to—”

“I
know
what you’re trying to do.” She was pulling on loose-fitting dungarees and a dark brown cashmere turtleneck. She’d been wearing
that outfit, and her mink coat—she’d called it her Katharine Hepburn look—when he’d picked her up at the airport on Friday
night, and she’d looked outstanding, turning heads as she strode through the gate and into his arms …

“You don’t have to say another thing—” She was at the mirror above the maple lowboy, simultaneously dashing through her makeup
routine and running a brush through her hair. “You’re going to get exactly what you wanted: rid of me!”

“This is just ridiculous,” he said lamely.

“I’ll say it is.” She gathered up the rest of her belongings, chucking them into the suitcase. “Our relationship has been
ridiculous right from the beginning, but let me tell you something now.
We are through.
” She said it calmly but firmly. Steve could tell that she was dead serious. “We’re finished. You won’t hear from me anymore.”
She pointed her finger like a gun at his chest. “And
I
don’t want to hear from
you
.”

She snapped shut her suitcase. “Oh, and Steve, darling,” she said sarcastically, “should we by chance run into each other
in the future, do me a favor? Pretend you don’t know me—” She dropped her steady facade to shout in a rage, “Because by then,
I
will surely have forgotten
you
!”

She grabbed her suitcase and stormed out of the room. Steve stayed in bed, feeling dumbstruck and helpless; like a man trapped
in a nightmare. He could hear her rummaging around in the apartment, gathering up her stray things, and then the closet door
opening and closing as she grabbed her coat. She left the apartment slamming the front door so hard the window glass shook.

And he was alone.

He got out of bed and padded nude and barefoot across the blue wall-to-wall carpeting into the living room. Like the bedroom,
the living room had brick walls painted white and a minimum of furnishings: He hated clutter. The living room contained a
floor-to-ceiling wall unit crafted of maple to house his television and hi-fi equipment. Arranged around the “sound wall”
was a dark blue tweed sofa and a pair of matching armchairs flanked by glass-topped brass end tables. A rattan chest with
sliding doors he’d picked up cheap in one of the antique shops on King Street was placed beneath the living room’s window,
which overlooked a brick-walled garden.

Steve used the rattan chest as his liquor cabinet, and that’s where he now headed. It was just a little after twelve noon,
but considering what he’d just been through he figured a drink was in order. He poured a generous shot of vodka into a tumbler,
and then went into the small galley kitchen to get himself some ice and tomato juice: He had no kitchen equipment beyond a
coffee maker but prided himself on keeping the refrigerator well stocked with mixers.

He mixed his Bloody Mary, and then stood in the kitchen, taking long pulls of his drink, thinking about how Linda was probably
standing on the corner, hoping to flag down a cab.
Good luck
, he thought. It wasn’t easy finding a taxi in Alexandria on a Sunday … If he wanted to, he could pull on some clothes, run
downstairs, and likely catch her before she was gone—

If
he
wanted
to …

He thought about it; how he felt. Goddamn, what he felt was relief.

He drained his glass, rinsed it out in the sink, then went back through the apartment to the bathroom off the bedroom, to
shower and shave. In the bedroom he paused to grab his smokes off the nightstand, lit one, and took it with him into the tiled
bathroom.

He switched on the light. “Shit!”

Floating in the sudsy water in the stoppered sink were her pale blue lace panties. He stared at the damned things a moment,
then sagged against the bathroom doorjamb.
She’s really gone
, he realized, closing his eyes, feeling tired and dizzy.

Has to be the drink, he told himself. Gotta be a damn fool to gulp down a drink like that on an empty stomach.
No wonder you feel so unsettled; so bad
…

The awful way he was feeling had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she was gone, he told himself.
Dammit, absolutely nothing!

He snapped his cigarette into the toilet bowl. Then, swearing savagely, he scooped the panties out of the sink and ran with
them dripping a water trail across the carpet into the kitchen, where he tossed them into the trash.

It was six-fifteen on a smog gray Wednesday morning when Herman Gold nosed his Cadillac into the Desert-Vue Diner’s lot. He
found a parking spot between a taxicab and a delivery truck, near the door to the aluminum and pink railroad car eatery. As
he walked toward the diner’s entrance he thought that whatever desert this joint might once have “vued” had long since vanished.

The diner’s rectangular patch of asphalt was bordered by a hardware store and a dry cleaner. Across the street was a used
car lot where a line of elderly De Sotos, Packards, and Ramblers sat quietly rusting under tattered, flapping pennants. Behind
the diner, green trash dumpsters had replaced the dunes.

As Gold went into the diner he was hit by the smell of burned grease and cigar smoke. Behind the counter a middle-aged waitress
was dishing out doughnuts and refilling coffee mugs while the short-order cook was frantic at his bank of toasters and sizzling
grill. The counter stools were all occupied by sleepy-eyed, quiet men in work clothes, eating or smoking, while hunched over
their coffee.

Opposite the counter was a row of red vinyl upholstered booths, their windows overlooking the parking lot. None of the booths
were occupied, Gold noticed, except for the one at the far end, where Tim Campbell sat waiting for him.

“Good morning, Herman,” Campbell said, standing up to shake hands. “Long time no see, amigo.”

“Yeah, it has been a long time,” Gold said. “You’re looking well.” Campbell was in his mid-fifties, short and stocky, with
a full head (damn the sonofabitch) of gray-tinged auburn hair, slicked down and parted in the middle. This morning he was
looking natty in a gray and black striped three-piece suit, yellow shirt, and too much jewelry: gold I.D. bracelet, gold watch,
diamond pinky ring, and diamond stickpin glittering in his purple and ivory paisley tie.

“Well, sit down, Herman,” Campbell said.

Gold hesitated, glancing down at the cracked vinyl to make sure there wasn’t smeared egg yolk, or something else on it. He
happened to be wearing a new blue cashmere blazer, and it was likely going to have to go to the cleaners just from absorbing
the odors in this place.

“Congratulations on your daughter’s marriage,” Campbell said as they settled in. “Don Harrison’s a great guy. I’m sure they’ll
be happy together.”