THE ODOR OF LEMONS
IN THE MORNING, he called me Eve. While we still lay flesh to flesh, he looked at me, his eyes coated with the sort of blear I had sometimes seen in patients, and said, “My Eve.”
I burst into tears. Had I not held him as dear as I had ever held any person—in my heart, with my body, as dear to me as my husband and only lover had been? Had we not known each other—Adam and I—in every biblical sense? The fragrance of lemons was still on my hands. From the sunlit grass came the mingled perfume, close to rotting, of the rinds of all the fruits we’d ravaged. The grass itself, dappled with leaf shadow and sunlight, had the odor of wheat. Adam was unresponsive to my weeping.
He got up and walked away a short distance. In full sun, turning his back to me—the sun stroking his back with its warm dry light—he knelt in a sandy depression edged with grass. On his knees, he thanked God for granting his prayer for his rightful wife.
In the dark that had been ours together, all of his masculine attention had shaped itself to me and to our desire. He had seemed to be the only man and the first man. I had gloried in his strength and passion. Had this kneeling child-man been that tender lover?
When I rose and walked to him, my body, too, gave thanks for the plea-sure of the night and for the warmth of the morning sun. As he continued to kneel, I stood beside him and looked down at his dark eyelashes resting on his cheeks. At his beauty. While he prayed, I bent over him and smelled the odor of lemons in his black hair. When he stood up, I studied the two round bowls his knees had left in the fine, dry sand. He was gone from me. What we had shared had been real, and now it was over. He had become the confused soldier, ravaged by the acts of war. I was rested and restored, determined, but I could not stop sighing.
Adam asked where we were going.
“We’re going to walk along the road. To Baghdad. Carry the case for me, please.”
By tucking my blouse back into the waistband of my skirt and tying its drawstring securely, I devised a carrying pouch into which I dropped several oranges and apples, two pears, and a banana through the neck opening of my blouse. The fruit clustered around my waist and swayed against my bare skin when I moved. Pregnant with bounty, I felt mythologized, an earth mother—Ceres. Instead of a daughter, I had a large and innocent son whom I must try to protect. Perhaps he would come to me again, a stalwart man, all of a piece, strong and loving.
Beside the stream, we knelt to drink as much water as we could hold before we left the oasis. How foolish for us to have abandoned home empty-handed—no clay jugs, no sling satchels for carrying. Had I bought into the Genesis myth? Surely the biblical Adam and Eve had left Eden empty-handed.
At least as real people returning to the unmythologized world, we had clothes to protect our flesh from the sun and from the eyes of strangers. Under the bloused fabric, I could feel the round jostling of apples and oranges and the long curve of a banana, all held securely just above the tight drawstring of my skirt. I thought of Riley caught in the spire of a redwood tree and dangling from his parachute. The vision melted. The trees behind us turned to ash and sank down without a trace. I thought of the Twin Towers blazing and sinking in New York, though at that time, nearly twenty years ago, I had been a young wife in Iowa City.
Each time we crossed a river, the vegetation on the other side became more lush. With no way to test the potability of the flowing waters, we simply knelt, hoped for purity, cupped our hands, and drank before we waded across, but Adam was skittish and afraid. As we walked, he talked to God and prayed. I said nothing. Although I had become his guardian, the memory of his ardor and the shape of his body was fresh inside me.
As we walked down the road, Adam prayed for God to make him blind, and then he closed his eyes so that he would see nothing more of horror. Holding out his hand, he asked me to lead him, and I accommodated his fancy. Occasionally, I asked him to switch the French horn case to the other hand and changed also the hand I held.
For a while, we passed through what could surely be called a jungle or at least a subtropical forest with a canopy so dense the sky was obscured. Here the terrain grew flat again. Overhead I could hear an occasional airplane. Some were small planes and flew rather low. We were grateful for the coolness of the shade. Occasionally Adam stumbled in his blindness, but he easily regained his poise and followed happily, never releasing my hand. He hummed “Amazing Grace.”
Abruptly the forest ended. Full of wonder, I stopped and saw we stood at the edge of a cleared runway. In the distance, in the sky, a small plane, a Cessna, lined itself up with the strip.
“Look,” I commanded.
Adam opened his eyes but said nothing.
The grinding buzz of the Cessna’s engine meant the plane was coming closer and lower, would surely land. “Someone in the plane might help us. The army might have sent someone to look for … for Riley, or you.” The idea seemed unlikely—surely they would have sent rescue to Eden, where Riley had ejected, but I wanted to jolt Adam with hope.
“Are we afraid?” he asked.
“We should see who it is before they see us. I’ll go. You stay here. Keep the black case safe. Will you do that for me? And stay here. Hidden?”
His eyes tried to read my face. He asked, “You won’t leave me behind?”
I leaned forward and kissed him fully on the lips. Why not? Why not? The man had entered my body. “I’ll come back. Stay here. Don’t follow me.”
As I hurried away from him, I looked back to smile and thought he looked pleased. Bemused, but pleased, as though my kiss might have awakened a memory. A sense of how we had been together might have wafted through his mind. He dropped to his knees, bowed his head, and pressed the palms of his hands together. I blew him a kiss, but he had already closed his eyes in prayer. Then I heard him softly singing a Western tune he must have learned in Idaho:
Come and stay by my side if you love me. Do not hasten to bid me adieu….
The airstrip, I realized, had been only lately cleared. Uprooted bushes and trees pushed along the sides of the runway still had green leaves on them. The tarmac was freshly laid. In fact I saw no sign that it had ever been used. No tire marks. An unwritten page, a pristine surface. Who would go to such expense to prepare a landing strip in the jungle? Surely it was not far to fly on to what was still called Baghdad?
And how had bulldozers and trucks gained access to the heart of this wilderness? There was no sign of an access road. I felt the frightened thumping of my heart. Why be afraid now? Construction was a sign of civilization. The bulldozers, the asphalt, the structural steel—all of it must have been transported here by helicopter. Perhaps by a fleet of helicopters.
The plane touched down too fast and made a dangerous, even reckless landing. As it bumped past my hiding spot beside the runway, I saw that people were seated inside the Cessna, one an elderly bearded man wearing a black hat. The plane taxied on toward the end of the runway but then turned and came back. Watching the propellers turning more and more slowly, I calculated they would stop almost exactly where I stood. Perhaps my orange clothing had given me away, though I stood behind the trunk of a palm and thick vegetation rose almost to my chin.
The airplane stopped, the engines were cut, and gradually the two propellers lost their momentum. A door cracked open, hinged down, and a flight of steps unfolded.
The first man to clatter down the steps wore a gray cowboy hat and blue jeans, though he was approaching middle age. His face was worn, and his eyes darted about warily.
He was followed by the white-bearded man with the black hat I had seen through the porthole window of the Cessna. He was dressed in a black cassock cinched by a rope belt. Priest or rabbi, I thought, calm and curious.
The two men waited while the pilot took off his headphones. As he turned, I saw only the sleeve and shoulder of a distinctly European gray tweed jacket with black suede patches at the elbows. Through the narrow window of the cockpit, the pilot appeared to be straightening the knot of his tie. I had forgotten men did that. His gesture spoke of manners and civilization. As he appeared in the open door of the airplane, I was thinking no one but an Englishman would straighten his tie before greeting the jungle, and then I shrieked in recognition. “Gabriel!” I charged out of the clearing onto the asphalt.
His body jerked to attention, his face opened in joyful disbelief as he descended the stairs and ran toward me, a laptop computer case in one hand. The other arm flung open wide as a door. The asphalt surprised the soles of my bare feet, but I ran hard across the surface. The other two men drew back and turned their shoulders as though bracing against an assault. From my old friend of the proper British tweed, I had never received such a welcoming and joyful smile.
Could it be? Could it be? My arms were around his neck; he was saying, “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” and I inhaled the wool of his jacket. I could not restrain myself from sobbing. Here he was. He had come after me. A sane and capable man. An old friend, the essence of civilization. I was saved. How soothing the words he spoke, but I could not understand their meaning. His presence, his solid, well-clothed body. These were reality.
To the other men, Gabriel said casually, “You can get back into the plane.” I understood that much from his utterances. To me, he looked down and smiled. “Let’s get out of the sun.” With his fingers lightly on my shoulder, he steered me across the tarmac toward the edge of the jungle, into the shade.
“Now let me look at you,” he said, placing both hands on my shoulders. “You’ve made yourself something quite different to wear,” he teased. “And what’s this familiar cord?” He fingered the narrow black silk around my neck as he continued speaking. “Thom’s old flash drive worn like a millstone. I should have known. Didn’t you miss me a bit, Lucy, here in the wilderness?”
I laughed, tried to steady myself, and replied in a mirroring, somewhat British manner, “Gabriel, I simply can’t say how glad I am to see you. And very surprised. And thoroughly, completely, overwhelmingly grateful.”
His blue eyes sparkled with pleasure. He looked younger. There was nothing cynical in his face.
“Thank you,” I added. “Thank you very, very much.”
“I say, don’t I rate a kiss?”
I kissed him immediately and fully on the lips, and he kissed me back. A thoroughly satisfactory kiss for a daytime greeting. Appropriate. Reassuring. Nothing like Adam’s tender, lingering nighttime passion.
“I suppose I should do this more often,” he said, grinning. “But I am surprised—the way you just popped out of the greenery, orange as a pumpkin, onto the runway. To tell you the truth, I thought we’d have to hack through a bit of brush to get to you.”
“I saw the plane come in for a landing. A runway! In the middle of the jungle.”
“A bumpy one, to be sure. Don’t you have any luggage, my lady?”
“Luggage? How did you find me?” In my mind’s eye, I saw the French horn case, but how would Gabriel know of that? “You’ve come with a strange pair of fellow travelers,” I said with sudden caution. “Who in the world?”
“They are an odd duo, aren’t they? You can get acquainted as we fly back. A cowboy, American, of course. Actually he’s a broker. An ultra-Orthodox Jew of some sort.”
I felt sobriety rising up in my body like dark water in a quick-filling well. “They’re not scientists?”
“Nor is this Kansas,” he quipped. “Perpetuity. It’s a kind of club they work for.” He shifted the computer valise to his other hand.
“What do they have in common with you? A chartered plane? A runway materializing out of the jungle?”
“How did you get here?” he asked. His voice was full of sprightly affection.
“I think you must know,” I said soberly, with more wariness in my voice than I had intended to exhibit.
“You know, Lucy, I’ll tell you all about it on the plane. Where’s your bag?”
“The Cessna’s a five-seater, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes.” He eyed me curiously.
“I have a friend,” I said.
“Really?” Gabriel looked mildly shocked. “I hadn’t thought of that possibility. I don’t suppose you want to leave him behind, since you’ve mentioned him.”
All of my giddy joy seemed to solidify. I felt heavy as stone. Suddenly I remembered the baby crocodiles standing up in the corners of their pit, and a warning phrase came back to me. Fundamentalists of every stripe—hadn’t Pierre cautioned me about that? The cowboy would be the Christian stripe. I found I could not look at Gabriel as I slowly said, “He—my friend—has … the luggage.”
Not my friend, my lover, I thought.
“I’ve found you, Lucy,” Gabriel said. “That’s the important thing.” He reached toward my neck again and tenderly picked up Thom’s memory stick with his fingertips. “Whatever you’ve done here, whoever you’ve known—leave it all behind, Lucy. Come with me.”
“You’re not here for … the luggage?” I asked uncertainly.
“I want you, Lucy. Always have, always will. You’re right, my entourage, they’ve paid me—very well—to help recover certain texts that rightly belong in Egypt, but I came to find you.” He gave a slight tug on the flash drive. “Let me take this,” he urged. “Give up the past. Really and truly, my friend, you should let Thom go.”
“Tell me honestly,” I said, looking Gabriel squarely in his eyes. “Why do you want Thom’s memory stick?”
“It’s a kind of pun, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s symbolic for you. Your steely link to him.”
“Why should I let go of Thom’s memory?”
“To live.”
I said nothing. I had returned to life. I had been broken, but I had healed. I wanted to salvage what was available in the world for me.
Gabriel sighed. Then he added, “Thom didn’t deserve you.”
As I stepped back in surprise, Gabriel let the titanium case slide out of his fingers and lie against my flesh.
He returned my steady gaze. “If you don’t want to give this abomination to me”—he nodded at Thom’s flash drive—“leave it here, under a rock, like the snake it is.”
Abomination? Stunned, I looked around as though to find a suitable rock, but I said falteringly, “I haven’t seen the file. Not once again. Not since that last morning with Thom.” My thinking collapsed into incoherence—abomination? “Not since we were together in our hotel room in Amsterdam.” My knees felt wobbly. I needed to sit down. What did the word abomination mean? The word detonated like a bomb in my psyche. The pendant had been a talisman, a touchstone, not an abomination.
“Do you want to see the file, Lucy? Once more before you let it go?”
“I … I don’t know. Thom’s valentine. It was in the context of—”
“Aren’t all texts embedded in context?”
“The file had a valentine on it, just for me. We lay in bed and watched the universe—galaxies, stars, intergalactic dust—together, on the ceiling….”
“I brought my laptop. Just in case you needed to see it—”
“Needed?”
“Needed to be convinced to let go of Thom.”
I turned, walked quickly past a gigantic philodendron into the thicket, and sat down on a large, flat rock. The leaves of the philodendron, the deep incursions dividing the leaves into lobes, filled my mind. I felt spiked, lobotomized.
It was not the ancient texts but the flash-drive file that Gabriel wanted. Carrying his computer, he quickly followed me, sat beside me on the rock, and began to unzip the laptop case. I thought of Matisse, how Gabriel had promised to fly me to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to see his paintings. I thought of the painter Rousseau; I wanted to lie down on a bed of sand, to wait for a lion to come and lick my dreaming forehead. But here there was only rampant fecundity, split-leaf philodendron, a plant large as a room.
“I gave you his notes already,” I stammered.
“Thom thought on the computer,” Gabriel answered. “There may be something on the file not in the hand notes.”
Suddenly I did want to see the universe represented again as it was on Thom’s file. I wanted to lie on a bed in Amsterdam, weary with transatlantic flight, with Thom. I wanted to feel small and humble, to be in awe of vastness, to quote Emily Dickinson and claim, “The brain is wider than the sky”—I had believed that of Thom. I wanted to see his red letters, Thom’s valentine, emerge from the profundity of space bearing my name—and yet I did not want to see or prove anything.
When I closed my eyes, an image appeared to me of Adam on his knees, eyes closed, summoning from some distant corner of his mind a plaintive cowboy song: From this valley they say you are going…. And what of the Texan businessman, and the other man, stepping onto the tarmac as though they owned the world? Was that the image of sanity?
Gabriel took my hand and said tenderly, “Lucy, Lucy, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I love you, Lucy. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I want my heart to hurt,” I blurted. “That way I’ll know I’m still alive.”
Gabriel nodded. He released the lid, touched the power key, waited for the machine’s tonic triad to blare, and slipped the end of the flash drive into its port. I felt as though he had entered me. But when had he lifted the cord with its memories over my head? When had he unsheathed the working end from its metal case so silky to the touch? I saw the list of file names on the screen, Thom’s files, his work, dim in the mottled, penetrating light of the jungle. Gabriel made the cursor speed down to “Universal Valentine”; he adjusted the screen to daylight viewing, and there it was, on a screen only seventeen inches wide, the known universe.
There were the brilliant pinpoints of starlight; there were the clouds indicating probability—pink, red, magenta, royal purple for the most likely areas, according to spectroscopic interpretation of light-emitting molecules—the probabilities of finding life out there. As though they sensed my excitement, the mammoth leaves of the jungle stirred around me.
“It’s a view looking past the center of the Milky Way, past the black hole at our center,” Gabriel murmured.
A view? Just a view? Had he said that? So it was not the whole universe, of course not, just a certain perspective.
Sensible-sounding, I asked, “I wonder if he made pictures encompassing different sectors?” I thought of an antique cyclorama I had seen in Atlanta, a battle scene from the Civil War with its devastation encircling the viewer in every direction. That was the kind of view that lived in Adam’s brain. A different war. The same horror.
Gabriel said nothing. He had become totally absorbed in the residue of Thom’s genius.
I heard myself panting. Thom could be beside me again, the two of us seeing it together, dazzled and thrilled and happy. Thom: large, curly-haired, kind, brilliant, graying. Even when Thom studied the computer screen, he never forgot my presence; he kept a corner of his mind for me, if I was present. Here was Mesopotamia; here was a jungle of greenery; out there was an airplane with two strange men waiting; behind me was a single deluded man, my lover, praying and singing. Didn’t I smell the odor of lemons from his hair?
“The words are starting to emerge now,” I said, pointing at the bloodred dot on the screen. “See, ‘Valentine’”—I had forgotten the ‘a’ in Valentine was shaped like a schoolboy’s lopsided drawing of a heart. Had it been that way before? Now all the letters were emblazed across the starry cosmos:
A Valentine to all the Lucys in the Universe
Gabriel took my hand. “Shall we go on?”
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s the end. He promised he would stop it during his presentation. He’d stop it before they saw the inscription. That’s why it emerges so slowly, so he’d have time to cut off the file.”
The night sky faded from the screen, but it was replaced by an image of myself—younger, so much happier I was hardly recognizable. Quickly I glanced over at Gabriel and smiled. I watched myself coming toward the camera, holding out my arms, delighted, then blurred when I came too close to be in focus.
I exclaimed, “I didn’t know he—” Then I realized I must have kissed Thom when the image blurred. He had filmed me somehow; he wanted to keep my happiness and anticipation as I came to him. Yes, that had to be the reason he had filmed my joy. I began to cry.
When my image blurred and disappeared, then another woman, Italian perhaps, came walking toward the camera, happy, welcoming, younger—then blurred, and another woman followed, Japanese, equally excited and pleased, open, fresher and younger, and then—
“It’s Lucy Hastings,” I exclaimed. She, too, approached the lens, her face happy with unmistakable anticipation. “His assistant. Your assistant! The other Lucy.” Something detonated with a dull thud in my chest.
Lucy Hastings was quickly replaced by yet another welcoming woman. Gabriel touched a button, and the series sped up. Dozens of ever more beautiful women came rushing toward the lens, their lovely, intelligent faces aglow, arms lifting for embrace. I was speechless. And there I myself appeared again, and Gabriel slowed the speed to that of real time. I was in bed now, wearing a favorite nightgown, lime green, holding out my arms, happy, willing, alive, the camera coming closer. And then the Italian woman wearing black lace lying on gleaming sheets—
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop! Were they all named Lucy? Were they?” I felt hysteria rising.
“At first,” Gabriel said. “Later Thom just called them the Lucys.”
“My valentine,” I sobbed. I jerked the flash drive out of Gabriel’s machine and stood up. “You betrayed me,” I yelled. I had not been enough for Thom. Then I sobbed out the impossible words “Thom betrayed me,” but now I was whimpering and gasping.
“Give the flash drive to me, Lucy.” Gabriel closed the computer and slipped it back in its case.
“Why? To smear Thom’s name?” I retracted the tip of the memory stick and placed the cord over my head. It pleased me, despite everything, to feel the familiar metal against the skin between my breasts once again. “It’s a fraud. Those women couldn’t have happened. It’s something you already had in your computer. It’s an illusion, a computer trick.”
As he stood up, Gabriel said calmly, “You recognized Lucy Hastings, I believe.”
“She was your girlfriend. You could have made that video.”
“Actually, we shared her. Thom had a very small camera built into the corner of his glasses. Did you ever notice how carefully he positioned his glasses on the nightstand—as though they were looking at you?”
I thought of the heavy frames of Thom’s glasses, but the lenses were also thick and heavy. He had needed a durable frame.
“I’ve watched the videos. In the next sequence you and Thom are making love. And then the others and Thom—”
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop, stop, stop!”
Gabriel did stop. My chest heaving, I stood and stared at Gabriel, watched from my own detached distance the two of us standing in the tangled jungle, confronting each other. He held the computer; I closed my hand around Thom’s memory stick.
“Why would he?” I demanded. My mind whimpered, We were happy! My body whispered, I trusted him.
“Thom lusted after an integrated life; he liked to keep his best equations near his private life.” Gabriel watched me with remote curiosity. “Thom was a risk taker, a gambler.” Gabriel spoke in a dry, informative way. “It excited him. It spurred his thinking to have astrophysics and earthy sex dangerously cohabiting on his drive. He was so much older, Lucy. It made him feel alive, his collection.”
I marveled at Gabriel’s coldness. No. He looked slightly amused, disdainful of Thom and of me. “I won’t give it to you,” I said.
“I’m sure there’s something scientifically important there on the file. Something beyond the briefcase notes you gave me. Thom always finished preparing his lecture just before his presentation. Did you realize that, Lucy? You two would have lunch or dinner; then he would take the flash drive from you. I’d be sitting across the room from you—shop-talking with my colleagues. He’d open his laptop, take the flash drive back from you, fiddle around for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour at the table to claim the brilliant conclusions that were always there waiting for him at the edge of his brain. You’d have a chocolate dessert.” Gabriel chuckled with a sneer. “Thom never ate dessert. He wanted to keep his youthful figure.”
“Just like you,” I added, glancing up and down his lean, fit body. He was a serpent.
“Of course you hadn’t opened the flash drive before you came back. You’d been shopping, visiting a museum—”
“The Anne Frank House.”
“He liked the risk—suppose you’d lost the flash drive or were delayed?”
“No. He trusted me. I was trustworthy about punctuality.”
“About everything. He liked the pressure and drama that come with procrastination.”
“You killed him?”
“Whatcha got, boss?” the American voice asked: jeans, a Stetson, chewing gum. His body was relaxed, languid but alert.
“Where is the case of the French horn?” the old man in black asked in accented English.
“We’ll get it,” Gabriel said casually. “No rush. This wilderness is almost Eden, my friends. Let time stand still.”
“I want to go home, Gabriel,” I said. I forced myself to speak calmly. Nothing had ever been harder. I made myself swallow. I felt my own tears clinging to my eyelashes. Now I must focus, think, be smarter than all of them.
“Cool as a cucumber,” Gabriel said. His voice took on a cruel curl. “Do people have that expression in little Memphis?” The tip of his tongue wetted his thin lips and seemed to taste the air.
Although I felt a strong impulse to run, I hesitated. Could I start the plane? If I outran them to the plane—I was younger than any of them—if I could start the Cessna, I could escape. With the flats of my fingers, I pressed the memory stick against my breastbone. Could I come back for Adam? Would I? What constituted treachery?
“I’ve always wanted you, Lucy.”
“Wanted me?”
“All those years you were with Thom, the two of you growing older together. You always the trusting child to Papa Thom. I wanted you to look at me that way and then have the power to betray you. As Thom did.”
“Leave,” I answered. I tried to filter the hatred from my voice. “Just leave me here. You’ve got what you really wanted, Gabriel.”
“Oh, no,” the rabbi remarked. “We also want the texts, the Genesis parchments.”
I feared I might faint. I closed my eyes to steady myself and drew in a deep breath. Lemons! Distinctly, I smelled the odor of lemons.
Adam had followed me!
He had disobeyed.
At that moment, his voice rang out, “Run!”
As I spun around to run, I saw Adam burst into the clearing, swinging the French horn case at Gabriel’s head. Though the Texan lunged toward me, I evaded him and ran. In an instant, I was sprinting toward the Cessna.
At the edge of the jungle, without hesitating, I ran across the tarmac and up the steps into the plane as though they were the stairs to heaven. Freedom and joy canceled every feeling but determination. Panting, I rushed into the cockpit, sat in the pilot’s seat, and pushed the ignition square. The twin engines sputtered to life.
Certain of our triumph, I imagined Adam subduing his enemies as he wielded the French horn case, like Samson with the jawbone of an ass. Soon he would join me. Soon we would fly. Quickly, while I waited, I picked up Gabriel’s knapsack and looked in it. Yes, a wallet. Money.
I would fly to the cradle of Western civilization, to Greece; we would abandon the plane, buy new clothes, take the train to the south of France. Would they follow? Would they perish in the wilderness? Never mind. Money! New clothes! I laughed hysterically to think of dressing Adam, like Barbie’s Ken, in expensive casual clothes. Myself, too.
I was out of my mind with joy and foolishness. Run, Adam. He would look like a fashion model, strong and cruelly handsome. I could not stop myself from giggling; nonetheless, I fastened my seat belt in preparation for takeoff. People on the train to France would surely wonder how I had managed to snag someone so young and comely. Run, run! But he was mine, yes, he was mine! And I would marry him—I vowed it—and make him well.
Adam hurried across the tarmac toward the plane, but he did not run. The sleeves of Riley’s camouflage shirt were rolled up, and I admired Adam’s sinewy forearm and the hand that grasped the black snail of the French horn case. We would take the Genesis codex to Pierre Saad. I imagined Adam had knocked the thieves out cold. Now all three were lying crumpled together among the jungle greenery, stars orbiting the interiors of their skulls. Perhaps dead. Their venomous brains registering blackness. I touched the titanium case of Thom’s flash drive.
With perfect competence, Adam efficiently mounted the Cessna’s stairs, pulled them up after himself, bent to kiss my cheek, assumed the copilot’s chair, and buckled his seat belt as I began the taxi for takeoff.
Glancing over at Adam, I thought he had never looked so handsome. The plane and my propeller heart roared into the sky.