The Girl in the Blue Beret

23.



WHEN THEY MET IN THE LOBBY OF THE PAN AM CREW HOTEL, Gordon Webb saluted Marshall and invited him for a drink in the bar. Wearing khakis and a polo shirt, he looked ready for a round of golf. At first Marshall didn’t notice a resemblance between Gordon and the resolute pilot of the Dirty Lily, but later he heard Lieutenant Webb’s voice in Gordon’s guffaw. The kid had a loud laugh, just like his father.

“Well, Marshall Stone,” Gordon said after they had been served drinks. “I tell you, right now I’m bored with airline flying. I miss all that shaky-do flying I did in ’Nam! I bet you miss those Big-Ass Birds.”

“The B-17 wasn’t very shaky-do, not like you mean in a fighter.”

“You’re putting me on. I’ve seen films of 17s damn near doing rolls.”

“Well, maybe,” Marshall said. “But you can bet those crews needed to wash out their shorts when they got back to base.”

“That’s a joke,” he added when Gordon didn’t respond.

Gordon said, “I’m thirty-eight. I did three tours in ’Nam. I signed on with Pan Am five years ago. After flying reconnaissance, the airline is like milk runs. Pretty dull.”

“Times have changed,” Marshall said, smearing water from his glass around on the table.

“I flew the fastest. I flew recon. I flew the Voodoo, the One-Oh-Wonder.” Gordon made sweeping, swirling motions with his hands, a bird angling and diving.

For a while, Gordon described his hairiest flights in the F-101, and Marshall found himself both envious and eager to quit the subject. He glanced intermittently at the TV screen—the largest he had seen in Paris—that hovered above the zinc bar. Gordon’s voice drowned out the TV and the quiet conversations of the others in the room. The waiters scurried past unobtrusively.

At last, with his second drink, Gordon asked about his father’s last flight. Marshall remembered how he had taken over the plane because he thought Webb had the jim-jams. This was not what he told Gordon.