'And then how long till we get there?'
'It’s a four-and-a-half hour flight.' He sighed. 'We’ve been through this before.'
'I don’t know why we’re doing this, anyway. I thought you were sick of the goddamned tropics. That’s exactly what you said before we left Brazil. Why do we have to go to Hawaii all of a sudden?'
'I want some quiet time in the sun, nobody else around for a change. I want some time to think, O.K.? And we’ve been through this before, too.'
She shot him a cynical look. 'Yeah, well, you just think you’ve been through everything before, don’t you?'
He stared back at her, incredulous. 'What do you mean by that?'
'All that crap about living your life over again, all that reincarnation shit or whatever.'
Jeff turned in the uncomfortable seat, grasped her tightly by the wrist. 'Where did you hear anything like that? I never—'
'Let go of me,' she said, shaking her hand loose from his. 'Jesus Christ, you can’t get it up for one little dolly bird, you freak out on acid, and all of a sudden you want to run away, you start grabbing at me—'
'Shut up, Sharla. Just tell me what you heard, and where.'
'Mireille told me all about it last year. Said you tried to lay some kind of mystical trip on her, told her you’d died and come back again. What a crock!'
The revelation struck Jeff with almost physical force. Of all the people he had known in any of his lives, there’d been some sense of empathy and understanding in Mireille alone that had led him to share his secret with her. He’d thought she wouldn’t make judgments about what he told her, would keep it as private as it must be kept …
'Why—' His voice cracked. 'Why did she tell you?'
''Cause she thought it was funny. We all did; everybody we knew in Paris was laughing behind your back for months.'
He put his head in his hands, trying to absorb the implication of what she was telling him. 'I trusted Mireille,' he said softly.
Sharla snorted with derision. 'Right, your special little girlfriend, uh-huh. I made it with her first, you know; who do you think told her to go hop in bed with you, get you out of that stupid moody funk you were in half the time? I was getting sick of you. I just wanted to have a good time and get laid. Mireille would have fucked a goddamn monkey if Jean-Claude and I told her to, so we did. Weren’t you the lucky one?'
A woman’s disembodied voice called their flight. Jeff made his way to the gate in a stupor of disbelief, Sharla beside him, a tight, satisfied smile on her face. They found their seats on the right side of the still-new Boeing 707, just behind the wing. Neither spoke as they stowed their carry-on luggage and fastened their seat belts. A stewardess came by, offering candy and gum; Jeff mutely declined. Sharla took a piece of orange hard candy, sucked at it with relish.
'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome aboard Pan American World Airways Flight 843 from San Francisco to Honolulu. Your pilot today is Captain Charles Kimes, and with him in the cockpit are First Officer Fred Miller, Second Officer Max Webb, and Flight Engineer Fitch Robertson. We’ll be flying at an altitude of approximately…'
Jeff stared out the window at the drab gray tarmac rolling slowly past.
In truth, he had no one to blame but himself. He had set the tone for this heedless, sybaritic replay when he’d gone to Las Vegas with the express purpose of seeking out Sharla.
'… be serving lunch about thirty minutes after we take off. Please observe the
What should he feel now, he wondered—anger, defeat? Neither emotion would do him any good; the damage had been done. Obviously, no one—not even Mireille—had believed what he’d told her in St. Tropez. At least the deception that she and Sharla had perpetrated didn’t present any threat to him; all it really did was leave him more alone than before.
The jet sped down the runway, lifted gracefully. He glanced toward the front of the cabin. No movie screen, of course; TWA still had exclusive rights to in-flight motion pictures. Too bad. He would have welcomed the distraction.
Jeff looked out the window as the jet climbed over the busy Bayshore Freeway. He should have brought along a book. Tom Wolfe’s Kandy-Colored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby had just been published; he wouldn’t have minded rereading—
The big plane shuddered heavily, rocked by a dull explosion. As Jeff watched in horror, the right outboard engine tore loose from its mounting and ripped a jagged hole in the wing as it fell away toward the city beneath them. Kerosene spurted from the wing-tip tank, then burst into a curling white flame that spat shards of molten metal.
'Look, the wing is on fire!' someone behind him shouted. The cabin filled with screams and the wails of children.
The outer third of the burning wing fell off, and the plane yawed crazily to the right. Jeff saw homes nestled in the pass between the hills, then the blue water of the Pacific, not more than a thousand feet below.
Sharla clutched at his left hand. He squeezed hers back, rancor and regret forgotten in the face of this appalling moment.
Only two years into this wasted replay, he thought with dread; would he return from a death so early, so violent? For all he’d cursed his repeated lives, he desperately wished now for life to continue.
The plane shook again, dipped further toward the right. The Golden Gate Bridge came into view, its towers shockingly close.
'We’re going to hit it,' Sharla whispered urgently. 'We’re going to hit the bridge!'
'No,' Jeff rasped out. 'We’re still more or less level. We haven’t dropped much since the engine went. We’ll miss the bridge, anyway.'
'This is Captain Kimes,' a studiedly calm voice said. 'We have a minor problem, ladies and gentlemen … Well, maybe it’s not so minor.'
They were limping back over land now, back toward the hills and high rises of San Francisco.
'We’re gonna try to—We’re gonna head for Travis Air Force Base—that’s about forty miles—because they’ve got a nice, long runway there we can use, longer than anything at San Francisco International. I’m gonna be pretty busy up here, so just settle down and I’ll put Second Officer Webb on to tell you what you need to know about the landing.'
'He doesn’t think we can make it,' Sharla wailed. 'We’re going to crash, I know we are!'
'Keep quiet,' Jeff told her. 'Those kids across the aisle can hear you.'
'This is Second Officer Max Webb,' said the new voice from the tinny speakers. 'We’ll be making an emergency landing at Travis in about ten minutes, so…'
Sharla began to whimper, and Jeff held her hand more tightly.
'… If we use the chutes, please stay calm. Remember, you will sit down to go out the chute. Don’t panic. When we do land, and if it is a rough landing—which is a possibility—please lean forward in your seats. You grab your ankles and stay down, or put your arms under your knees. Move as far forward as you possibly can. Do not move until we tell you what we’re going to do…'
The plane was losing altitude fast. As they approached the broad expanse of the military base, Jeff could see fire equipment and ambulances lining the longest of the crisscrossing, empty runways.
They began a long, looping circle, just a few hundred feet above the Air Force barracks and hangars. Jeff heard the wheels emerge in jerky fits and starts from the plane’s undercarriage. The crew must be cranking them down manually, he thought. The explosion had probably wrecked the hydraulic system.
Sharla was mumbling something beside him; it sounded like she was praying. Jeff took a last look out the window and saw a whirlwind kicking up dust at the near end of the runway they were aiming for. That could mean trouble; with the damage the plane had already sustained, a last-minute spate of
