blinked twice, glanced at his empty shot glass, then lifted his eyes to Joshua Weinstein. They were just a fraction brighter than before.
Around the edges showed a moisture that had not been there just a second or two ago. And his ruddy face was even darker now, more deeply lined around the mouth and eyes. There it is, she thought, his confession!
Then, Josh stood. 'Rebecca loved you,' he said. 'They shot out her heart and she died alone in a fucking parking lot in the rain. That's why you want to listen to me. Thanks for your time.'
He tossed a few bills on the table and was already through the saloon door by the time Dumars slung her purse over her shoulder, took one look into the pained gray eyes of John Menden, and followed Weinstein out.
CHAPTER 4
In the fall of 1971, John's father and mother bought an airplane. John was nine and he sat with his parents in the Martin Aviation office at Orange County Airport while his father signed the papers. The salesman was a slender, tanned, soft-spoken gentleman who John felt was welcoming his father and mother, even himself, to an elite club of aviators. The office had pictures of the salesman in various airplanes, some featuring a celebrity with him. From outside, the roar of passenger jets rattled the picture frames against the wall, and the buzzing tenors of the private planes cut through the air as they took off and landed. The salesman gave John a styrofoam glider with a weighted nose and short, sharp futuristic wings, which sat on his lap as he listened.
John understood that it was a small plane, a rather old one, but in superb condition and reasonably priced-the perfect starter craft for a middle-aged aerospace engineer bitten by the fly bug early in life and now able to assume the debt of curing what some people called 'the disease.'
'The only good disease a man can get,' said the salesman, glancing at John's mother. 'Or a woman. This little craft will open up a world to you that you only suspected was there. Every minute in the air is like dreaming for an hour.'
'Well put,' agreed his father, rapidly signing away at the purchase agreement. 'I wonder if we could dream our way into another six months of service?'
'I'll ask Herb, Mr. Menden.'
'Appreciated, Lew.'
His mother just laughed in the way that John had come to understand meant that she was humoring someone. In private moments, she had confided to John that her husband needed the airplane far worse than she did. John liked it when she laughed, the way her big teeth suddenly appeared and her rather stern face brightened up like the sun. His father was handsome, tall and exuded a majestic ego made charming by his cheerful good manners. Men always deferred to him, and John's schoolmates instinctively feared him. John liked the way his father and mother looked together.
He stood in the shade of the Martin building and watched his father taxi to the runway. The little Piper was painted bright yellow with red trim, and John's mother had opted for a tastefully theatrical costume-red silk scarf, aviator shades and a leather bomber's jacket-in which to make their maiden, craft-owning flight. John wondered why they couldn't have gotten a three-seater instead of a two, but he was used to the fact that his parents admitted him into their presence as a kind of formal offering. It was a warm formality, and John often sensed love in it. But it was never the kind of thing you just barged into.
His mother waved after she settled into the cockpit, and Lew helped them latch down. The propellor was a yellow, red-tipped blur. Accelerating down the runway, the little Piper emitted a determined, rising moan. It finally wobbled off the ground, looking to John as if it was lifting all the weight of the world.
For the hour they were gone, John threw his glider out on the tarmac, wondering if with just the right conditions it could rise high, ease into the slipstream of the Piper, and follow it wherever it might go. He decided the idea was dumb. It was hard enough just to get the foam ailerons to stay adjusted from one flight to the next.
So he sat on a bench and waited for the plane to return. He saw it when it was just a bright speck in the western sky, tilting its way down. After it landed he positioned himself on the tarmac and waved it in with the curt, martial motions of the ground-crews he much admired. His father smiled at him through the little side window, radio set still clamped to his head. The Piper rolled to a stop.
His mother climbed out, helped by Lew, and gave John a hug. Her face was warm against his and the silk scarf puffedlightly against his cheek. She smelled as always like her perfume-Chanel No. 5-and the leather of her jacket. She stood back as Lew helped John into the cockpit, where his father was assiduously making flight notes in a small book. His father extended his hand and John shook it.
'Off we go, son.'
'Into the wild blue yonder.'
'Get that shoulder strap nice and tight. Don't want my copilot falling out.'
The radio burped non-stop static which his father, amazingly, seemed to understand.
Five minutes later they were lifting up into the sky. John was surprised how the airplane moved not only up and down and went left and right, but kind of twisted, too, as if pivoting on its belly. The engine worked hard, he thought, and the view was not as good as it could be because the windows were a little high up.
Looking down on Orange County, John noted that all of the tracts and lots and groves seemed a lot more organized than they did from the ground. From above, they were all part of a grand design. He saw a kidney-shaped swimming pool and wondered if you jumped and managed to land in the deep end of the pool- feet first, body stiff, arms to the side-would you live or not.
His father guided the plane out over the Pacific. John was sure that if you jumped and did all the right things you could land in that and live. He looked down and saw the two jetties at Balboa, and the Wedge, where he had spent hours watching the bodysurfers ride the neck-snapping waves that build and lurch off the jetty rocks.
For a few moments he studied nothing but his father's forearms-one of John's favorite parts-and admired once again the stout arm emerging from the rolled-up shirt sleeve, the abundant hair that grew all the way down to where the wrist began, then reappeared behind the first knuckle of each of his father's fingers. Did it grow under the skin for a ways? He watched the wrist tendons flex when his father adjusted their course back around to the east. He casually ran a hand over his own wrist, assessing the wispy golden fuzz.
'What do you think, Johnny?'
'It's fine. Would you live if you landed in one of those swimming pools, but feet first and stayed real stiff?'
'I wouldn't want to try.'
'The wind would blow you onto a roof or something, probably.'
'Probably. Look down on that county, son. It's yours. That's a nice thought, isn't it?'
'It's not really mine, dad.'
'No. It is. It belongs to whoever puts down his roots there. Your mother and I have. You will. When you look down on it from up here, you see that it's not really such a big place at all. It's like a back yard. It's yours to play in and live on and take care of. Look at that ocean. Look at the mountains. It's a good place, John-you're lucky to grow up here.'
'I'll bet you could live if you landed in the ocean.'
'Maybe you could. Just maybe.'
John sat back, felt the drone of the engine and looked out at the sky. He listened to his father talking with ground control on the radio. He felt good being up here with his father, sitting beside him, a part of his world. A father was someone who controls things, he thought: a plane, a county, the sky.
John looked down at his thin dark legs, his feet, his shorts. Then he looked at his dad. He saw all the changes he would have to go through to become like his father, but he couldn't imagine them taking place soon enough. Everything grew so slowly, just a few inches a year. He tried to imagine himself as big as his father, with all the hair and the rough chin and the way air opens up easier around you when you're bigger. For a while he pretended he was his father's age, his father's brother, in fact. He relaxed into the seat with one knee lifted and his arm draped casually over that knee.
'Yeah,' he said. 'This county is mine.'
