Chapter 7


"Find the perfume" is a fun game when the playing field is seventeen, freshly bathed and giggly. It is soft, warm, tasty, and rife with sudden bursts of ecstasy, and at the end it is very difficult to discern the winner from the loser. In our case, you couldn't have slipped a business card between us when we went to sleep.

In the morning I was drifting along between asleep and awake with outside light filtering into the room and the sound of Tina moving in the bathroom. The running water stopped, and I heard soft footsteps on the carpet. Then a soft touch and a shake. "Alan, baby," she whispered, then her lithe form slid into the bed beside me.

I was totally awake now. We kissed. "Good morning, love," I said.

"Mornin', babe," she said. "Let's shower and go find breakfast. You have to go look at my new magic carpet today."

"Magic carpet?" I shook a little grogginess off my brain, and it dawned on me. I replayed last night's conversation.

"Yeah," she giggled. "Come on! Get it in gear, dear!"

Oh, that I had to suffer through the horrors of a shared shower with Tina. An hour later we were being seated at a little restaurant for breakfast.

"Does this airplane thing make sense, babe?" she asked.

"Uh, well, depends on how you look at it. Do we NEED it? No. But it adds four hundred miles to our long weekend range. And takes us home in six hours. And the country is ours. A ten-hour day is almost fifteen hundred miles in that thing. That model is as close to a flying mini-van as you can get. But upkeep, well, there's insurance and annual inspections and maintenance, and that's expensive, so if you just run down the columns in a spreadsheet, maybe not."

There was a twinkle in her blue eyes. "Sometimes there are things you can't put numbers to, you know..."

I caught that. "Yeah, like seventeen and forty-one."

"Bingo," she said.

"So I take it that you're in favor of us doing this."

"If it's a good deal," she said. "You can fly? Really?"

"Really. It's been a while, but I flew that model before. I can fly it."

"I think we should do it, babe." Her eyes sparkled.

"And I'm thinking that just maybe a certain young lady might be interested in learning to fly?"

"It might be useful, don't you think?" She was propped on her elbows, smiling. Waffles and bacon showed up. And coffee.

After breakfast we had hours to burn, an easy task with a map of scenic highways and me driving and an analytic young mind plotting a circuitous route that would have us near the airport that was to be our after lunch destination.

We chiseled our way into a restaurant with the after-church crowd and at ten minutes to one we drove into the rural airport. Brad and Sandra and an unidentified third person were gathered in front of an open t-hangar. Inside was an unexpectedly sparkling jewel of a single-engined airplane. Okay, from a hundred yards a LOT of older planes look good, just like older women in dimly lit bars. I knew all too much about both.

We pulled up alongside Brad's SUV. Tina eagerly bounced out to stand beside Sandra.

Brad and the guy with him came to me.

"Alan, this is Charley Staples. He's the..." Brad started.

Charley stepped forward, extending his hand, "FBO, owner, flight instructor, mechanic, etc., etc."

"Hi," I said. "I'm Alan Addison. Brad wanted to show me this plane."

"And I'm the guy who's been taking care of it for the last ten years. I wish I had the cash to pull the trigger on it myself," Charley said. "Look 'er over."

I did. I poked around. I opened covers, peered underneath, inside the cowling, examined logbooks. To my eye, it looked good. But I wasn't the expert. And the expert in the immediate vicinity was Charley, who just MIGHT have a little too much interest in the sale. Still, I'd been in a lot of these things.

We walked aback to see Brad. "Brad, Charley, no doubt, that's a good-looking plane."

Charley beat me to my point. "Mister Alan..."

"Just Alan," I said.

"Alan. Okay. Look, if I was you, I'd get another mechanic to look 'er over."

"Yeah," Brad said to me. "Do you know one?"

"No, I don't," I admitted, but I was also thinking that this thing was priced well below market, too. "So what's YOUR recommendation?"

Charley said, "I already told you. If I was a little more liquid right now, we wouldn't be having this con-versation."

I looked at Tina. She was doing that smile thing again. I looked at Charley, then Brad. Gears were turning in my head. I don't usually take risks, and when I do, I do it on things I know about. Time for a risk. "Brad, can you help me with the paperwork?"

Brad 's eyes darted back and forth between me and Tina and Charley. "Are you sure? I mean, you're not going to get another mechanic?"

"Nope," I said. "Somebody takes the care on the outside that this thing has seen, they're not gonna neglect the inside." I slapped the logbooks against my hand. "Charley..."

"It's everything you want, Mister Alan. But..." He shrugged. "Most people would want a second..."

"He's right, Alan," Brad said. "Most people would..."

I looked at the two of them. "Because nobody wants to trust anybody else? I have an idea ... Let's go fly this thing. All three of us, right now..."

"Sounds fair to me," Charley said. "Brad?"

Brad said, "Well, guys, that sort of puts it in perspective, then."

Charlie jangled the keys. "You gonna leave Tina and Sandra here?"

"Yeah," I laughed. "If you guys are wrong, we need to leave survivors."

Charlie and Brad both laughed.

Tina said, "We can wait in the office if you're not gonna be long."

"Are you okay with that, sweetie?" Brad asked his wife.

"Sure," she answered.

We rolled to plane out of the hangar onto the apron. Yes, it was indeed a while since I'd played with a Cessna 182, but it WAS a pretty simple plane, and the preflight routine came back to me. Charlie tagged along beside me, listening to my running commentary on what I was doing.

"Just in case you wonder if I really know what I'm doing," I said.

"You seem to," he said. "Alan, between you and me, it IS a good plane."

"Yeah, I ran some numbers in my head. Even if I had to do an engine overhaul, it'd be a pretty decent deal. If the wings don't fall off..."

"I'll be sitting in the right seat beside you when they do," he laughed.

Brad took the back seat, Charlie took the right, and I took the pilot's seat on the left. Charlie handed me the laminated checklist and I ran down it, item by item. Finally, I opened the window and hollered "Clear!", then cranked the engine. It caught immediately. I watched the gauges. Everything worked exactly as expected.

We taxied to the end of the little country runway and I ran through the run-up checks. Okay, it's time.

"Last chance," I said. "If ya'll duct-taped the wings on..."

"Let's do it," Charlie said.

"Follow me close, Charlie. I'm out of a physical and a biennial review."

"I'm right here with you, Alan."

I ran the throttle forward and we rolled, then lifted off. At a thousand feet above ground I asked Charlie, "Where's the practice area?"

"Oh, south, about five miles. Give us five thousand feet above ground."

"Okay," I said. I trimmed us for climb, feeling for any unexpected tugs or unbalance in the controls, listening to the engine at full throttle, watching gauges. All good.

In the practice area, I trimmed for cruise, looking, feeling. Then slow flight. I dropped the flaps.

"Okay, I've seen enough." I turned to look at Brad. "Brad. Help me with the paperwork." And to Charlie, "Who's a good doctor for a physical, and when can I get my biennial?"

Ten minutes later I was on short final, working up the landing, Charlie's hands hovering, just in case. The landing wasn't as smooth as mine USED to be, but we were on the ground, all in one serviceable piece.

Sandra and Tina were walking out to meet us when I shut the engine down at the hangar.

Tina said, "If I can read that smile..."

I shook Charlie's hand. "Nice plane, for sure, Charlie."

"Told you so, Alan. And if you have anything major for the next six months that doesn't involve smacking stationary objects, well, Brad's a lawyer, so I won't say warranty, but..."

"I believe you, Charlie."

"Let's go in the office. I have that doctor's card." The group followed him into the office and I got the offered card. "Look," he said. "If you get your physical this week, come by Saturday and we'll get your review out of the way. Now that I've seen you fly, all we need to do is the oral review.

"I can do that."

Brad's turn. "And if you can get me a cashier's check and come by the office any day this week..."

Tina was giggling.

Sandra said, "Bradley, I think I was that excited when you bought me my BMW."

"So," Tina said, This next weekend? Wings?"

"Sounds like it, sweetie." I turned to Charlie. "Charlie, I hate to ask this, but you're two hours away from where we live."

"Oh, I understand that, Alan. Don't worry. I have a waiting list for these T-hangars. There's an airport twenty minutes from where you're at. I know the guy. It's got one of those big ol' world War II hangars. He's got plenty of space in it out there in the boondocks. I'll call 'im myself."

"Well," I said, "You're being awfully nice to us."

"Not a problem at all."

Tina HAD to sit in it. She did, after we rolled our new acquisition back into the hangar. And after a round of happy handshakes all around, we left.

In the truck, Tina was giggling. "Aren't you excited, Alan?"

"Yes, brown-haired girl, I guess I am. It felt good to fly again. And the idea of you and I being able to get away even further on weekends, well..."

Another giggle. "Alan, you said something about ME learning..."

"You're seventeen. You're old enough." I went through the procedure. "Most people, though, learn in something smaller, lighter, and simpler. But it's not unheard of to use one of these."

"Well, I don't expect you to buy me my own..." she giggled.

"Actually, that's NOT unheard of, little one. Planes like this are pretty much bottomed out and on the way up in value. You buy one, use it for whatever, like getting your license, then you sell it for what you paid, maybe a bit more. But I'm thinking, no, we won't do that."

"It's all just crazy, when you think about it, Alan. A month and a half ago, I was rock bottom, headed to Arkansas with a couple of criminals, and now I'm discussing learning to FLY." Her face was in 'full smile' mode, blue eyes atwinkle.

"Yes, little one, it does seem crazy. There I was, headed off into the woods for a few months work, all alone, and here WE are. Us. A couple."

"And that's a good thing, huh?"

I bent sideways and kissed her cheek. "The very best of things." And we drove out the gate, headed to the place we called home.

We took advantage of the return in late afternoon to take advantage of each other. The aftermath left me lying on my back with this auburn head of hair resting on my chest, fingers tracing patterns in the hair on my belly. She raised up and turned her face toward me.

"Dinner?" she said.

"I was considering it, sweetness," I answered. "Got a preference?"

"Shall we grace the halls of the local fried catfish emporium, sir?" she said.

"Oh, yes, why not? I hear there's this REAL cutie that shows up there from time to time with some old goat."

Giggle. "Let's get dressed and go, old goat."

"Okay, cutie!"

We managed to eat and get back to the park in time to get a couple of laps walking in the waning light of dusk.

Back in the trailer, I played on the computer while Tina ran through her schoolwork. She glanced up at me. "They had me sweating on this trig stuff last week, but I think I got a handle now."

"You didn't ask for help," I said. "I can help if you need it."

She chuckled. "If I hadn't gotten it on my own, I would've asked, Alan."

"Don't get in a bind, sweetness. You're in advanced placement classes. Catching up would be tough."

"I know," she said. "But according to the guidance counselor, I get three semester hours credit if I pass this class, and I AM passing this class."

"And the others? Science, English?"

"Piece of cake. I'm having fun in those. Physics? Come on. YOU do this stuff."

"I'm sure I do some of it, but you're a high school student."

"And I'm doing in it a classroom, and making a mistake means a bad grade. If you muff something..."

"It happens, baby. Some of the good ones make the news."

"Have any of yours?" She turned in her seat to look at me.

"Nope! The time I've had problems on my jobs is where they didn't build the way I drew it or they didn't install what I wanted the way it was supposed to be installed. Now I make good money making sure that those things don't happen any more. I don't do the designs myself, but I make sure that they're good and that they're installed correctly. And that's a whole lot different than your physics course."

She smiled. "So how many traps do you find because you know physics, and how many do you find because you know how things are supposed to be put together and how they're supposed to work?"

"Oh, little one," I said, "Part of it's physics and math and most of it's knowing the right way to do things because I've learned it from wise men who've gone before me."

Eyebrow arched. "No wise women?"

"There might've been some, but I never met them. I've known some female engineers, even electrical engineers, but not at the level we're talking about. Not that there couldn't be. Just weren't. For me, anyway."

"Maybe I ought to fix that." She smirked.

"Huh?"

"I was SAYING, just maybe I ought to fix that." She tossed her head. "I think I could, you know..."

"You could what?" I was grasping her intent.

"I could be an electrical engineer. Female, too." The smirk was replaced by the derisive extension of a pink tongue.

"Ohhhh, I see ... dumb ol' Alan can do it, then Miss Christina can certainly do it better..." I stuck my tongue out in return.

Giggle. "Seriously, baby! I've been thinking about a major. One of the heroes in my life happens to be an engineer, therefore just maybe that's what I might want to do myself." She closed her book and stowed it in her backpack, then crossed the little aisle to plop down in my lap. Her arms encircled my neck and her lips met mine for a peck. "And you're the smartest person I've ever known, anyway."

"Thank you, my Tina can do anything she sets her mind to do," I said, and I meant it. "I'll be at your side the whole way, and I will be sitting there watching when you graduate." That got me more kisses. I considered it fair trade, really.

"You know," she said, "Grandma wanted me to get an education. When she died and I ended up with Mom, I didn't know how that was gonna happen. I didn't know how anything was gonna happen, Alan." Her head rested on my shoulder. "And then we stopped for breakfast..."

"Yeah, funny how life hinges on one thing, isn't it?" I mused.

"Funny ... That's a good word. Spectacular is another," she answered.

"Nope! Can't use 'spectacular'. I save that one for you." I kissed the top of her head.

"You're so good to me, Alan." She snuggled into my chest and purred. "Why don't we get our showers out of the way?"

"One more kiss, and I'll let you go, little one." I saw her face from four inches in front of mine. My lips pushed her bangs aside and I brushed her forehead with my lips. She turned her face up a tiny bit and our lips met, softly, tentatively at first, then just melting into each other, our tongues teasing.

She pulled away, almost reluctantly. "One more like that, buddy, and we'll be showering late..." She bounced lightly. "And apparently part of YOU is having the same thoughts."

"Uh-huh," I admitted. "But..."

"But I'll be more comfortable if we're both bathed." She got up off my lap, undressing in front of me, allowing me to marvel at her youthful figure.

Okay, maybe just a little more than just marveling. I had to kiss and touch and caress.

"You make me quiver," she smiled. "Just keep that idea..." giggle.

Ten minutes later she was standing outside the tiny bathroom, drying off with a fluffy towel. When I stepped past her to get my own shower, she gave me a gratuitous squeeze. I responded with a kiss, then finished off the hot water for my own ablutions. Crap! I forgot. Now I get to shave with cold wa-ter. Oh, well, not like that's the first time. My complaints, though, were answered with only slightly sympathetic giggles as she stopped drying her hair to see what I was griping about.

When I stepped away from the bathroom sink, she was now clad in her nightshirt, stowing her hair dryer. I slapped her playfully on her upturned butt, causing a squealy giggle. When the cabinet door closed, she stood and turned around, wrapping me in her arms. I reciprocated.

"Poor baby," she chuckled. "Had to shave with cold water..." she kissed my cheek. "But I'm glad you shaved." Her nostrils flared. "Mmmmm! You smell good."

"Thank you, young lady! So do you!"

"Come sit down. Let's see what's on TV for a little while," she smiled. "Then nine o'clock. Bedtime..."

We were at opposite ends of the sofa, legs intertwined in the middle, TV on, me with a book at my end, her with a book at hers, both reading and watching something about whales on a nature show. The end credits were rolling when her foot started jiggling things. She closed her book and put it in the little bookcase.

"I suppose we need to go to bed, huh?" I smiled.

"You betcha, babe!" she stood up and stretched, her palms touching the trailer's ceiling, the nightshirt pulling taut over perky nipples.

I felt a familiar and happy stirring in my groin and closed my own book, standing up. I killed the lights at that end of the trailer as we filed to the bed at the high end of the gooseneck trailer. The little fixture over the head of the bed lent enough light so that loving this auburn-headed doll was also a visual experience.

That was a good thing, because I was pushed onto my back and straddled by a young female who was in the process of stripping a nightshirt up over her head and tossing it aside.

"Hah! YOU still have clothes on!" she giggled, sliding sideways off me.

Took me seventeen seconds to correct that error. Then all my senses were overloaded by what hap-pened next. Twice.

Still wrapped in each other's arms, Tina sighed. "Alan, I sooo much love you."

"Miss Tina, I love you too, you know..."

"Mmmm-hmmmm ... d'ya love me enough to hand me my nightshirt?"

I retrieved the shirt and passed it to her. I pulled my own t-shirt over my head, then we settled back into each other's arms.

Her nose wiggled. Giggle. "We're gonna need a quick shower in the morning, baby. I think everybody's gonna know what you've been doing..."

"And I do so love who I'm doing it with, sweetness."

"Put us some music on to sleep with." And a gentle kiss, and I rolled onto my back with Tina's leg thrown over me, and we slipped into slumber.

Six o'clock alarm. Two quick showers, a couple of bowls of cereal, a pot of coffee, and we headed in separate directions for the day. I climbed into my truck with the taste of her kiss on my lips and the sweet scent of a tiny drop of perfume still in my nostrils.

Twenty minutes later I was in my parking spot and heading to my office. Monday morning staff meeting, then out into the project's guts, talking with the electrical foreman and the crew and a couple of technicians, then back in my office, scratching notes on some field drawings, then copying them, one copy back into the field for the guys to work with, another copy for the record stack, and for me, a scanned copy on my computer.

Then a phone call to the bank. Something about a five-figure cashier's check made out to a lawyer in Tennessee. Easy enough. The administrator waited for my fax, I signed it, and faxed it back. The check was now in a Fed-Ex envelope headed to Brad's office. I called him and told him it was on the way.

Next phone call was to the doctor. Okay. Physical, Tuesday after lunch. That was enough of taking care of my own business on company time. I grabbed a coke from the refrigerator in the office trailer, took a long swallow and headed back out the door. The day's most interesting and critical activity was a short ride away on my golf cart.

Big hole in the ground. Well, an engineered hole. Here was one end of a set of pipes, a duct bank, through which cables as thick as your arm were supposed to be pulled. I stopped a safe distance away and climbed out of the cart. The foreman saw me and started walking towards me, his face grim.

"Mister Addison, we can't get a line though the pipes." The idea with these things was to actually blow a thin string from one end of the pipe to the other, several hundred feet away, then use that string to pull a heavier line, then that line pulled a strong rope, and the rope was used with a winch to drag the cable into the hole. And they couldn't get the line through.

This was matter of simple mechanics. "You tried ALL of them?" I asked.

"Hell, yeas," he said. "Can't get but a trickle of air. And no line."

"Crap!" I said. "Let's take a walk!" I had a suspicion. We put the stuff in the ground and supposedly the area was restricted to ONLY light vehicular traffic.

"You're thinkin'..." the foreman said.

"That some asshole ran heavy equipment over my ductbank, Jeff." It didn't take much walking to locate the heavy tracks across my route. "Shit!" I said. "Here's a week's delay, right here."

The foreman shook his head. We carefully paced to the next manhole, and I said, "three hundred feet. Do you have something you can push up the pipe to measure? If you find the obstruction three hundred feet from this end, we're going to have some fun..."

His chuckle came through clenched teeth. "Yeah! Fun! Because some asshole took a shortcut to save an hour ... Lemme get some fishtapes hooked together. I'll call you on the radio when we're done."

"Great!" I said. "I won't say anything to anybody until you get me a measurement."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Some days it sucks to be us..."

I hopped back onto my golf cart and rode back to the office. I was reviewing some reports when the radio broke squelch.

"Mister Alan, come in." I recognized the voice.

"Go ahead for Alan," I said.

"That measurement? Three hundred feet."

"That solves the mystery," I answered. "I'll be out there in a few minutes with the project manager. He's gonna love this..." I walked into the project manager's office.

He read my face. "Ohhhh, shit!" he said. "That's NOT a 'happy engineer' face. This cain't be good..."

"It's not, Carl," I said. "Looks like somebody ran the heavy crane across the main ductbank from the utility substation between our first and second manholes. It's collapsed. Wanna come look?" There were a dozen reasons every day that this guy lost his smile, and I dearly hated anything of mine to be one.

"Sure," he said, grabbing his hard hat. "Why the hell not!"

Five minutes later we were looking at the telltale tracks and the electrical foreman had laid out his tape, showing the obstruction was under our feet, right there where the tracks crossed.

"So I guess you have a path forward already?" Carl looked at us.

"Yep," I said. "We're gonna dig down to the concrete in both directions to where we find no damage, cut this section out, put a new section in, pour it again, and then cover it back up." I looked at my fore-man. "What do YOU think, Jeff?"

Jeff rubbed his chin. "It's not rocket science. Three, maybe four days from when we start diggin'."

"There's your answer, Carl. I don't like it. It's a delay. But if we don't screw up any OTHER big thing, we're not going to be your critical path."

Carl shook his head. "That's good to know ... You want to get with the civil bunch and get a trackhoe over here?"

"Got it," I said. "Jeff, I'm gonna let you put your crew back in the substation. You wanna make sure that trackhoe doesn't collapse anything else?"

And we went on from there. As they say, "That's why I get the medium bucks."

Driving Carl back to the office trailers, I told him that I was going to be out on Tuesday after lunch.

"Not a problem," Carl said. "Doctor? Something wrong?"

"Nope," answered. "Flight physical. Me and my cutie are getting a plane. I need to get myself current."

"Oh, yeah, your cutie. What the HELL are you doin' with a seventeen year old girlfriend?" The story had gone around and was common knowledge.

"Waiting until she's eighteen so we can get married. And having the time of my life."