The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [31]
Relieved, Ben responded in the same vein: "You're looking for pull from someone who took a demotion from civilian life, are you? Good thinking, Ice. Didn't I help you crib your way through the logic course any better than—"
Jake was holding up a hand for silence. He cocked an ear at the preliminary commotion from the piano. "It's bad luck not to sing this one. Everybody in." Swinging his beer bottle to the beat, Jake joined in mightily to the swelling roar of music that filled the building:
Bought the farm, bought the farm!
Crashing the plane leads to harm!
There was blood on the cockpit,
and blood on the ground.
Blood on the cowling,
and blood all around.
Pity the pilot,
all bloody with gore,
For he won't be flying
That airplane no more.
After the last chorus tailed off into drinking, Jake looked across at Ben. "You're not singing these days?"
"Frog in my throat."
"You really are off your feed. C'mon, Ben, it's just a song. Lets off the steam."
"I know what it lets off, for Christ's sake." He shoved back from the table and popped to his feet. "Just remembered, I need to check something in Ops. A VIP flight I'm supposed to keep tabs on in case there's any brass worth interviewing. Be right back."
He sprinted to the Operations building, slowing only as he walked into the room where the flight board covered one wall, hoping the clamor of his heart was not loud enough for the night Operations staff to hear. As ever, he whipped out his pad and stood there jotting random flight information, scanning the entire board like a good working reporter, but the chalked entry for WASP 1 midway down instantly had told him what he needed to know. Since meeting Cass he had never imagined looking forward to a bed without her in it, but the three white letters—RON—up there for blessed REMAINING OVERNIGHT did the job.
Back at the Officers' Club, he veered to the bar. "Fill the tray," he told the barman.
The bartender crowded beer bottles onto the round serving tray until there were ten or a dozen, Ben didn't bother to count. He picked it up and steered toward the table.
Jake surveyed the forest of bottles on the tray. "What's all this?"
"Anesthesia. I have something to tell you about Vic."
4
"I interrupted the greatest movie never made, didn't I," Cass's murmur came from the region of the hard-used pillow.
"Immortality will just have to wait," Ben's came from where his head blissfully rested on her.
"How many t's in that?"
"You are a merciless woman." Still hazed over with the spell of their lovemaking, he lay clinging to her in the wreckage of the sheets, every part of the two of them bare except for wrist-watches—they hadn't taken the time to unstrap those. Hers, the type with luminous numerals that was issued to pilots, showed she had slipped into the room at the Excelsior merely twenty minutes ago. Before he could even get up from the typing table to greet her she'd slid the bolt home on the door and turned to him saying, "I guess we have some catching up to do." In the next breath they were at each other, kissing every direction, and here in the aftermath the creaky room with its flung clothing and kicked-off bedcovers looked like the muss after a spirited rummage sale; the one spot their mess hadn't touched was the portable typewriter with the page of script Ben had been pecking away at, and he couldn't help knowing half of that was crossed out untidily as usual.
"Bulletin for you." She was stroking the back of his head with a motion tender and tense at the same time. "This'll have to be another short night. I fly out again at 0600."
"Why didn't you say so? I'd have moved the bed closer to the door."
She chuckled and swatted him behind the ear. "Fool."
"Probably."
Mustering strength enough to lift himself onto one elbow, he gazed down at this woman he should not be with as if committing her every feature