The Invitation Read online

  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?

  Chapter Six

  Would 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 pl