“I’m not sure. I have to stay here for the next few days, just like you. We have a lot of questions to answer for a lot of people. I’ve taken a month’s leave of absence from work.” He hesitated, then went on. “They were good about giving me the time, but there’s something… demeaning in having to ask for time off after nearly twenty years, you know? I mean, they could have offered before I asked. And Jennifer could have arranged for the kids to take their finals some other time, had three martinis, and flown out here. My mother, who is seventy-two and not well, wanted to come out.” He lapsed into silence for a while, then said, “My wife started off predictably enough… great concern… terrible anguish. But ten minutes into the conversation I could already pick up the old line.” He pulled out another handful of grass and threw it into the breeze. “Things would be okay for a few months… We’d make the round of cocktail parties and country clubs, and I’d have to perform for everyone for a while. Then it would wear off…”
Sharon Crandall reached out and took his hand. “What do you want to do?”
He felt the pressure of her hand and returned it. “I’m not sure. But I’m going to stay here for a few weeks until I know. Sometimes I think I’d like to fly for a living. That’s what I wanted when I was young.”
“I don’t think anyone would doubt your ability to fly.”
“No.” He laughed. “It’s my ability to land that’s in some doubt.”
She sat up. “Do you have to go back to the hospital?”
“No. I’m discharged. I’ve got a hotel room at the Mark.”
She turned and looked at him. “Stay with me. I have a place in North Beach.”
He stared out at the sky for a long time. An aircraft came toward them, heading over the city toward the airport, and from a distance it looked like a Straton 797. They both saw it, but neither commented on it. John Berry thought about what lay ahead. Investigations, grand juries, courtrooms, news coverage. Like it or not, he and Sharon were going to be news for some time. “It wouldn’t look right. We have no private lives. At least for a while. It took me a half hour to shake the reporters on my way here.”
She released his hand and stood. “I have to get Linda back.” She slipped on her shoes and picked up her hat.
Berry stood beside her and took her arm. “You know I want to… It’s easier for you to…”
“Why? Because I have less to lose? You’ve got nothing to lose.” She turned to him. “What were your first thoughts when you got out of the cockpit and realized you were alive? How you couldn’t wait to go home and get back to work?”
“No… I thought about you…”
She stared at him for several seconds, then turned and called to Linda. “We have to go, honey.” She looked back at Berry. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess. I’m sorry if I put you in a difficult position, but
… I care about you. And I can see that you’re unhappy.” She watched Linda running up the hill. “I keep thinking about all the friends I lost on that flight. I think about Captain Stuart. He was a good man. A no-nonsense guy. You remind me of him. He once told me that he had family problems, too, and he couldn’t resolve them. Now he doesn’t have to. But you do.”
Berry thought for an instant about those he had brought back, the survivors who would never be able to go through more than the barest motions of life. Were they any better off than those who had died? He couldn’t decide. Was survival enough, or should there be more?
Linda scampered up the hill and ran toward them. “Are we going?”
Sharon smiled at her. “Yes.” She took Linda’s arm and began walking down the slope.
Just before she reached the bottom, Berry called after her. “Sharon.”
She stopped and turned. “Yes, John?” Linda was clutching her hand, and the two of them looked up toward Berry.
John Berry took a few tentative steps toward her. As he moved down the hill, he could see in the distance the tall towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. They stood majestically, bathed in the late afternoon sun, their rigid beams framing the scene in front of Berry. More than any other single moment, the first sighting of the Golden Gate Bridge towers had marked the beginning of their salvation, the beginning of their new lives.
He stopped halfway down the hill and asked, “Can we have dinner together tonight?”
“I can’t. One of my old boyfriends asked me to dinner.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“He’s picking me up at eight-thirty.”
“You won’t be there.”
Sharon laughed. “Do you know where I live?”
“I’ll find you.”
