they had to turn awkwardly to speak. The tea and cookies-“biscuits” the Chinese waiter had called them –were on a low table between their chairs. “Tell me about the flying part. You really like that part of it, don’t you?” She sipped her tea, waiting for him to answer. Without her hat her face was rounder, softer; she seemed younger. Her hair, which she had neatly brushed out, was less curly.
The many voices in the spacious lobby reverberated, and Jake had to speak uncomfortably loud to be heard. “Sure, I like the flying.” Why had she brought up the goddamn war? “I used to think that I was the luckiest guy in the world-to be paid by the navy to do something I’d be happy to do for free.”
“You don’t feel that way any more?”
“Sometimes I do. Sometimes.” Jake sipped the tea. it needed sugar. He put down the cup knowing he would not pick it up again.
“Tell me more, Jake. What sort of feeling do you have when you’re flying?
Do you feel exhilaration? Is it like the feeling I get when I ride a roller coaster?”
“Sometimes it’s like a roller coaster. But that’s not the true feeling of it.” As Jake sought the words, Callie’s eyes peered at him above her teacup.
“Well,” said Jake. “It’s like when you were a kid and you pretended you were sick so you could stay home from school. The rest of the world is working, at school, in factories, in offices. But there you are, sitting in your cockpit, feeling like you’re getting away with something, flying smoothly along enjoying the sky and the clouds and looking down at the earth. You are free and unfettered and feel privileged you can fly.” Jake paused. “But on the ground a pilot is like a man waiting for a train. He’s restless, anxious to get away. A pilot just bides his time until his plane can take him away again, into the air. He feels like a visitor when he’s on the ground.”
Callie put down her cup. “I like the way you put that.” Jake had felt his voice growing hoarse as he talked “I’m awfully thirsty. Why don’t we move to the bar?
They could sit facing each other now, and the chairs were more comfortable than those in the lobby. Callie had ordered a gin and tonic, and Jake was halfway through a bottle of San Niguel beer. There were only a few people in the bar, and the piano was unmanned “I’m not sure you enjoyed the tea,” Callie said.
Jake smiled. “I guess I felt out of place. they don’t have many teas where I come from.”
“Where are you from?”
“A small town in Virginia, called Ridgeville. It’s in southwestern Virginia, not too far from the North Carolina border. Not a hell of a lot happens there. Jake took a swig of beer. “Where’re you from, Callie?
“Chicago. Hyde Park. The neighborhood around the University of Chicago.
My father teaches in the business school, and my mother’s in the foreign languages department.”
“Did you go there?”
“Most certainly. It was preordained. I did both my undergraduate and graduate work there-in foreign languages, of course.”
“A real family affair,” said Jake.
“That was the problem. Both Mom and Dad assumed that I would pursue an academic career. They were pretty upset when I took the foreign service exam and more upset when I passed it. They pleaded with me to go on for a doctorate, but-as the saying goes I wanted to see the world,”
“And you wanted to be your own person.”
“That was a good part of it, sure.”
“You must speak Chinese, then,” said Jake.
“Uh-huh. I speak Mandarin mostly, and I’m studying Cantonese here.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Chinese-spoken Chinese, that is-isn’t as difficult to learn as many people think. The grammar is easy Reading it, though, is quite a challenge.”
“Can you read it?”
“Only a little. It takes years to develop competency. Basically it’s sheer memorization.”
Jake looked at Callie’s glass. “Guess you’re not ready for a refill.”
“Go ahead. Please don’t wait for me.”
Jake merely looked up and a young Chinese waiter came immediately to their table. He pointed to the empty beer bottle. “Just mine.”
“I’d like to know about your hometown,” said Callie. “What do people do there?”
“They farm mostly, grow a lot of vegetables. Those who don’t farm sell stuff to those who do.”
“Tell me something that captures the flavor of the place.”
Jake thought a moment, then said, “The last time I was home on leave, the big news in Ridgeville, VA, was that the movie projector in the Plaza had been broken for two months. The guy who owns the Plaza, who’d been promising everybody for months that he’d buy a new projector, finally admitted that maybe a new projector was too expensive-and the Plaza’s the only theatre in town.”
“What a tragedy!” said Callie with a laugh.
“Yep- And the other big news was that Sam Chaplain’s sixteen-year-old daughter-Sam runs the Ford dealership-had gotten pregnant.”
“No!”
“For the second time.”
“Really?” said Callie, breaking up. “I bet I know when it happened.”
Jake grinned. “You do?”
“Uh-huh. It happened one night soon after the projector broke down at the Plaza.”
Jake laughed. “You got it! And you know what There were about fifteen other women in town who also just happened to be about two months pregnant.”
“I think we should drink to the Plaza.” Callie lifted her glass. “May it quickly get a new projector.”
Their glasses clinked.
“But be honest, Jake. Do you like Ridgeville?”
“Actually I do. I grew up there, went to high school there. I liked working on Dad’s farm, and I like the hunting and fishing, which I did a lot of. Maybe everybody knows too much about everybody else, an you have the feeling of living in a goldfish bowl, but the people are friendly and ready to help you if you’ve got a problem. Sure, we’ve got our bad apples, but most people are okay. I’ve got a few friends there who I’ve known all my life and I feel they’ll be my friends, and I’ll be theirs, until I die.”
She asked about his friends and he told her about the impromptu beer and skinny-dipping party at Caldwel Lake following a church-sponsored picnic; he told her about the time he lost his brakes in his ‘57 Chevy on Hodam Mountain when he and his buddies were returning from a hunting trip and how he wiped out an historic marker; and he told her some other stories that made her laugh.
She laughed easily. When she asked again about his flying he told her how he had learned to fly, not in the navy, but in a Cessna 140 at a grass strip on the edge of town. He’d taken his first lesson at fifteen and had gotten his private pilot’s license on his seventeenth birthday, the first day that he could legally take his flight exam. The next day his father agreed to go flying with him, to be Jake’s first passenger.
“Were you nervous?”
“I was excited, confident. Eager to show off.”
“What about your dad?”
“Well, he was pretty nervous at first. Kept asking me about the instruments and controls and whether I’d checked everything. But after a while he realized I Knew what I was doing, and he enjoyed the rest of the flight.”
“Was he proud of you?”
“I guess he was. I know I was.”
“That’s quite an accomplishment, getting your pilot’s license on your seventeenth birthday.”
“It’s not unusual, others have done it.”
“I think you’re just being modest.”
Jake gestured to the waiter for another round of drinks. He noticed the bar was busier, and he heard crisply enunciated British voices.
“I’m going to be in great shape for tonight,” said Callie. Jake looked at her quizzically. “A CODEL-A congressional delegation-arrived yesterday. The CG, sorry, the consul general-is having a reception for them tonight
