Falling(5)
He had told Carrie as much. But he didn’t tell her that Scott’s game hadn’t crossed his mind when O’Malley asked if he was available. Or that even if it had, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The phone rang and rang before finally, “Hi! You’ve reached Carrie. I can’t come…” Ending the call, he saw a family photo appear on the phone’s home screen before he pocketed it.
Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the window, Bill surveyed his dark, full hair. A betraying gray salted his temples. His eyes, a vibrant, deep blue.
* * *
Bill slapped the bell in the middle of the coffee table.
“Eyes. My eyes.”
“Final answer? This is for the win.”
“She said they’re like night swimming. When you can’t see the bottom. But it’s exciting. So, yes. My eyes. Final answer.”
Carrie’s jaw dropped.
Bill leaned forward. He could smell the beer on his own breath. “I overheard you say that to a friend on the phone once. I never told you, though. I love you so much, baby.” He blew Carrie a kiss.
The wives cheered, the husbands ribbed.
“All right, Carrie,” the party host said. “?‘His eyes.’ Was that your answer for what your favorite part about your husband is?”
Her cheeks turned pink. With a giggle she held up a piece of paper, her answer scribbled out: His butt.
The room erupted. Bill laughed hardest of all.
* * *
He adjusted his tie. I’m a good man, he reminded himself without wavering. His mind flashed to the image of Carrie’s look of disappointment as he walked out of the kitchen. He blinked, glancing away to follow a plane as it took off.
CHAPTER TWO
STEPPING OFF THE JET BRIDGE stairs onto the tarmac, bill squinted under his hand’s attempt to shield the sun. Fall leaves and frosty mornings covered most of the country, but in Los Angeles endless summer reigned.
The walk around: the standard aircraft inspection done before every flight. Look the aircraft up and down, check for irregularities, visible signs of a compromised airframe, or any other mechanical issues. To most pilots, it was just another FAA regulation. To Bill, it was church. Placing a hand on the engine’s cowling, he closed his eyes. Fingers spreading with a slow inhale and exhale, metal and flesh communed, both warm to the touch.
* * *
He would turn eighteen next month, but that day in flight school, Bill knew he’d met a more important rite of passage.
“Now, when we log a flight plan, do you know why we write ‘souls on board’ instead of ‘people on board’?” his instructor had asked.
Bill shook his head.
“We say it that way so that if we crash,” he explained, “they know exactly how many bodies they’re looking for. Avoids the confusion of different titles like passengers, crew, infants. Just how many bodies, son. That’s all they need to know. Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “And sometimes we carry dead bodies in the cargo hold so they need to know not to count them. So now, after you log in the souls…”
Bill couldn’t sleep that night. Lying on his back, watching the ceiling fan spin, he listened to his younger brother snoring softly from across the room. Cream-colored curtains and a warm Illinois summer breeze flirted through the open window, making wavy shadows dance on the wall.
With darkness still painting the room, he dressed and slipped out of the house, riding his bike alongside the cornfields to the town’s tiny airfield. Two planes sat on the tarmac; the air traffic control tower, empty and quiet, loomed in the distance. The planes were small single-engine pistons, the types of planes he was learning on. The types of planes he would outgrow, trading them in for bigger engines, greater loads, heavier aircraft. Bill leaned against the fence for a long time staring them down.
Or were they sizing him up? As the stars faded and dawn began to break with pink and orange streaks, it felt as though the questioning had turned.
Could he bear the burden of duty? Could he be the man the job demanded?
* * *
Everything looked good. Tire tread fresh, gears greasy, sensors properly positioned, no fractures, no fissures. Catching a movement from out of the corner of his eye, Bill took a few steps out from under the plane. Up in the cockpit, his copilot, Ben Miro, leaned forward with a wave, letting Bill know he’d arrived. Bill dropped his smile when the young man held his Yankees ball cap up to the window. Bill shook his head with a face of disgust. Ben kept on grinning, flashing the captain his middle finger.
Walk around completed, Bill climbed the stairs up to the jet bridge with a look back at his plane. The tail of the Airbus A320, proudly bearing the red-and-white Coastal Airways logo, filled him with pride—and then he remembered Carrie. Punching in the door’s security code, he checked his phone.
No missed texts. No missed calls.
His eyes adjusted in the fluorescent lighting as the door shut behind him. Tripping over a passenger’s bag, Bill apologized with a surprised chuckle while the man scowled down at him—which was impressive, considering the pilot himself was six foot four. Looking the uniform up and down as the captain stepped around him, the man returned a meager grin.
The line of passengers snaked down the jet bridge onto the plane and Bill skirted through the suitcases and strollers with an accommodating smile. At last he stepped on board with a glance toward the back of the plane through the pink-and-purple mood lighting, the hip airline’s iconic nightclub atmosphere.