He showed his pilot’s license at the Teterboro security gate. The guard waved them in. Charlie felt the nerves in his stomach, rubbed his face with his hand. He wished he’d remembered to shave, worried that he looked sallow, tired.
“It’s the white hangar,” he told the cabbie.
“Two sixty-six,” the guy told him after they came to a stop.
Charlie ran his card, climbed out, taking his silver roller bag. The OSPRY was parked on the tarmac just outside the hangar. Floodlights from the building made the fuselage glow. He never got tired of the sight, a precision aircraft, like a gleaming thoroughbred, all thrust and lift under the hood, but smooth as butter on the inside. A three-member ground crew was gassing her up, a catering truck parked near the nose. A hundred and four years ago two brothers built the first airplane and flew it on a North Carolina beach. Now there were fleets of fighters, hundreds of commercial airliners, cargo planes, and private jets. Flying had become routine. But not for Charlie. He still loved the feeling as the wheels left the ground, as the plane surged into the stratosphere. But that didn’t surprise him. He was a romantic, after all.
Charlie scanned the area for Emma, but didn’t see her. He had changed into his pilot’s uniform in the bathroom at JFK. Seeing himself in the crisp whites steadied him. Who was he if not Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman? Wearing it now, he wheeled his roller bag into the hangar, heels clicking on the asphalt. His heart was in his throat and he was sweating like he was back in fucking high school, angling to ask Cindy Becker to prom.
Jesus, he thought. What is this chick doing to you? Pull it together, Busch.
He felt a flash of anger, the rage of an animal against its cage, but he ignored it.
Squelch that shit, Busch, he told himself. Stay on mission.
Then he spotted Emma in the second-floor office. His heart rate multiplied.
He dropped his bag and hurried up the stairs. The office was a catwalk overlook built into the hangar. Staff only. Clients never even entered the hangar. They were ferried directly to the plane by limousine. It was the strict written policy of the company that employees keep the behind-the-scenes process of GullWing Air invisible, nothing that would burst the bubble of the traveler’s luxury experience.
To reach the office you had to climb an exterior flight of metal stairs. Putting a hand on the grip railing, Charlie felt his mouth go dry. On impulse, he reached up and adjusted his hat, giving it a slight cock. Should he put on the aviators? No. This was about connection, about eye contact. His hands felt like wild animals, fingers twitching, so he shoved them in his pockets, focusing on each stair, on lifting his feet and putting them down. He had thought about this moment for the last sixteen hours, seeing Emma, how he would smile warmly and show her he could be calm, gentle. And yet he felt anything but calm. It had been three days since he’d slept more than two hours straight. Cocaine and vodka were what was keeping him smooth, keeping him moving. He went over it again in his head. He would reach the landing, open the door. Emma would turn and see him and he would stop and stand very still. He would open himself to her, show her with his body and his eyes that he was here, that he’d gotten her message. He was here and he wasn’t going anywhere.
Except it didn’t happen that way. Instead, as he reached the landing, he found Emma was already looking his way, and when she saw him she went white. Her face. And her eyes went giant, like saucers. Worse, when he saw her see him, he froze, literally, with his right foot hovering in midair, and gave a little…wave. A wave? Like what kind of idiot gives a faggy little wave to the girl of his dreams? And in that moment she turned and fled deeper into the office.
Fuck, he thought, fuckity, fuck fuck.
He exhaled and finished climbing. Stanhope was in the office, the coordinator who’d be working tonight. She was an older woman with zero lips, just an angry slash under her nose.
“I’m, uh, here to work Six Thirteen,” he said. “Checking in.”
“You’re not Gaston,” she said, looking at her logbook.
“Stellar fucking observation,” he told her, eyes searching the inner offices, visible through the glass wall, for Emma.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Sorry. I just—Gaston is sick. He called me.”
“Well, he should have called me. We can’t just have personnel swapping shifts. It screws up the whole…”
“Absolutely. I’m just doing the guy a…did you see where Emma…”
He peered through the glass, looking for his dream girl, feeling a little frantic. His mind was racing, auditioning scenarios, working double time to figure out how to rectify this whole disaster.
She ran, he thought. She fucking turned tail and…what the hell was that about?
Charlie looked at the desk troll, gave his best smile.
“What’s your name? Jenny?” he said. “I’m sorry, but we—it’s almost liftoff time. Can we figure out the paperwork when we come back?”
The woman nodded.
“Okay. We’ll deal with this after the flight.”