A Fortuitous Meeting (5) "Okay," said Anne. "That's God's truth." He clipped his safety belt into place. "Straight home?" she asked, "or breakfast." He let a minute pass while he contemplated that idea. "Well, maybe breakfast if it's a quiet place. I'm usually kind of a rowdy person sometimes, but I don't think my head can deal with my usual life style." "Oh? Had some sense knocked into you?" He chuckled warmly as they merged into traffic. "Perhaps." Back in the car, after breakfast, it was obvious to both of them that this had been a bit too much. He was quiet, his movements less quick as he fastened the belt across his lap and settled into the shoulder harness. Anne reached into the purse that was on the flor between them, fished out some medication and handed it to him. "Here, this should help. Just close your eyes, we'll be home, soon." Reaching behind her in the back seat she retrieved a blanket and a small pillow and gave them to him. He took them greatfully, arranged his head so that it was comfortable, and closed his eyes. Anne drove smoothly through some heavy traffic, finally reaching a stretch of open highway, flanked by dairy farms. She glimpsed the pilot's limp form in the pasenger seat, his head drooping against the window. A wave of compassion coarsed through her. He didn't stir when she took the exit to his house. She didn't have much trouble finding it. She sat for a moment looking at the wrought iron gate that surrounded the sprawling stucco house. Roses grew up along the bars, a neatly groomed patch of lawn invited Anne to wake the pilot and bring him into its comforting embrace. She reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. He turned slightly, gave her a startled look. She noticed behind the glasses the softness of brown eyes, long lashes. He looks so much like a child just waking, she thought, her heart contracting within her. She slipped her keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. He did the same. "Do you know where we are?" He stood, looked about him, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, put them back on, shook his head as if to clear it. "We're at your house." He followed her up the grassy path, lifted his hand to open the gate, led her up three wooden steps, onto a large porch nicely decorated with flower pots. Anne pushed aside a stack of newspapers with her foot. She turned to the pilot. "Where are your keys?" Standing on the door step, he finally seemed to come to his senses. He took his keys out of his pocket, slid them into the brass knob. They jingled against the wooden door. Anne watched him turn them, heard the click as one lock turned, then another one. This house was a far cry from her modest dwelling back in a crowded city. Here he had plenty of space, a sprawling yard, a house with white trim. He stood there, fumbling with the keys, finally the door opened, and they were met by a cool draft, the smell of freshly waxed floor meeting them. He seemed to hesitate for a moment. She took him by the hand and led him through his own door. She stopped in the impressive entry hall, looking for a chair. She caught a glimpse of a large living room, and led him to it, sitting him down on the couch. She left him there, retrieved his keys and returned to find him sobbing quietly, composed, seemingly mindless of the stitches under his eye. He didn't seem to mind her presence, or perhaps it was that he just didn't see her anymore. She sat down next to him, waiting patiently while the sobbing slowly turned to quiet and the tears dried. "I remember now," he said, holding his head, "I remember the distress call and the course correction. I was going to pick up a passenger for a charter flight, to meet him at an airport when the engine gave out. It's kind of funny my first clear memory is of waking up and you asking me if I knew my name and showing me the picture of Rachel and her husband and her two daughters. I don't remember anything before that. I remember calling about the weather, the engine giving out, and then, nothing." "You don't remember me coming up to you and you telling me where the phone was?" "No." He didn't dare shake his head, he was feeling a bit dizzy. "Why don't you lie down here. Rest here. If you want to tell me any more of it, I'll stay for a while." He was too tired, he decided, to argue with someone he hardly knew. The pain medicine she had given him was starting to kick in and he was a bit groggy. "Perhaps you want to go to bed?" "No, no, this is fine. Perhaps later, but not now." She helped him arrange the pillows so that he was comfortable. It was a large couch with plenty of room for him to stretch his tall body. She helped him with his shoes and placed them beside the arm of the couch. She sat down on the floor beside him, watched him relax. After a moment, she got up. She looked around the room. She saw the tv, the remote control. She turned it to a channel which sent quiet music softly emanating through the room. Then she went into the kitchen, large and inviting. She had the oddest feeling of always belonging to this house. She rummaged through the freezer for some ice, and filled the ice pack she had bought from the hospital pharmacy. She found a towel neatly stacked in the cupboard and then returned to the pilot, putting the icepack on his head. He opened his eyes. "Thank you. That was very kind." She looked around her again, saw pictures on the wall, Cessnas, B24s, a Piper cub, a Mustang. "Is this an airport or a living room?" she asked him, suddenly feeling as if she belonged in this room, sitting next to this man, wanting to reach out and touch the strands of soft blonde hair. She curled up beside him on the floor. He smiled despite his headache. "This room reminds you of an airport?" "Well, maybe not quite an airport," the girl amended, "but if I didn't know you were a pilot I'd know you liked planes. I love this room. I...well, it's funny I like things like that on the walls. It's very nicely done." She got up again, went out to the car, retrieved the bag the hospital staff had used for the possessions from the plane. As she passed the roses, climbed the stairs and organized the newspapers into a neater arrangement, then bent to pick them up and bring them in, that feeling assailed her again, and she let it overwhelm her, warm her, welcome her. She came back into the dining room, put the chart case on the floor, took some clothes out of the bag, put them in his hamper. His watch, and a ring she placed on the table beside him. She found an outlet, moving a lamp, and plugged in the charger for the cell phone. Hearing the cell phone click securely into the charger, she turned back to find that he had fallen asleep, a medicated sleep, and she watched him again, wanting to reach out and touch that strand of blonde hair, the one that fell over the stiches above his right eyebrow. She curled up on the floor beside him, put her head on the cushion, and unable to resist, she touched the strand of warm, soft hair. "If I didn't know any better," she thought, "I'd say I love you. But that's so crazy. I hardly know you. I don't even know what you're like." As if in response to the gentle finger tips caressing his hair, his hand dropped down from the couch, covering hers. She let it lie there, feeling the unmistakable sense of belonging flooding over her again. Dear God, she prayed, is this some kind of sign from you? The pilot woke later, she was still sitting beside him. The icepack was melting, she gently removed it, wiped the condensation from his hair. He turned his eyes to look at her. His gaze was easy, not surprised. "Feeling better?" "A little. Thanks for staying. You didn't have to." I couldn't leave you, she thought incongruously, not yet. They both heard a key turning in the lock, and Anne jumped up, gently pushing the pilot back down. "Easy, it's your sister. Don't aggravate that head of yours. I'll meet her." But Andrew was smiling. He gently pushed the restraining hand away from his, gently holding hers. "I have to go to the bathroom." She glanced at him with concern. "NO, I'm not sick. Not this time." The summer passed. Anne Chambers went back to her little house across the street from the site of the accident, the same high school where she taught freshman English. She saw her friends. She trimmed her roses, she kept up her correspondence, she entertained. But she didn't forget the house out in the country, and the ease she had felt in Andrew Crance's presence. Some of her friends noticed her distraction. "It was strange," she told one of her best friends, Angela, "I could swear we'd always been together. I hardly know him." Rachel Kennedy cared for her brother, two years her junior, saw him successfully back on his feet. His head cleared. The doctor told him six weeks after the accident he was fit. "You can fly again if you want." "I do want to." "That accident didn't knock the living daylights out of you?" "That, it did. It didn't knock the fever out of me." He had worked through the fence dreams. He sometimes woke in a cold sweat, memories fresh as the moment the accident had occurred, and reached for what? No one. Nothing. Sometimes what he remembered in those hours of the clear dawn of early morning was waking up in the hospital, seeing someone standing by him, touching him, then he remembered the gentle hands putting the icepack on his head, and her gentle hands restraining his movements. "Easy there." And her comments. "I would know you love planes." When he was tired of looking out of his window, turning on late night tv, when he could concentrate on a book without feeling dizzy, when he could call his friends and say, "Hey guys, let's go get some beer,", when he could look up and see the trailing red lights of small aircraft and feel his heart contracting within him, he knew it was time to get back into the sky. He had talked to a lot of pilots who had argued fiercely with friends, and spouses about resuming their flight activities and he was glad he had not had to deal with that particular thorn. Rachel knew he loved his planes, she knew him well enough not to push him or try to keep him from flying. It was just the two of them now, their parents both dead and they only had each other, and still, they didn't get together very often. She had a husband, two children, two jobs, a church, and whatever else she crammed into her schedule. Sometimes they met for dinner. He was putting in more hours, working on IFR and VFR ratings, ASEL and MEL ratings, always striving to improve his skills. "Ready for comercial jet classification yet?" asked one of the mechanics who did the annuals on his plane before it came apart across the street from Anne Chambers house. "No, just want to carry passengers for hire. Small planes.” "I hear you're putting a down on a new plane?" "yeah." "FAA know?" "They know." "Paperwork done?" "Just about." “What kind of plane?” “Cessna 150.) “that’s an old plane.” “You know it.” "There's no stopping you is there." Andrew smiled. "Not generally. But there is.." "What?" "Well, the absolute angel, well..woman I suppose who came running across the street.." "The one who loves planes?" "Yeah, that one." "Call her up." "I don't have her phone number," answered the pilot, lamely. "The phone book," said the mechanic wiping his hands on a rag and looking at Andrew as if this were the most obvious suggestion in the world. "She doesn't remember me," he suggested, hollowly. "Oh, Andrew," he rejoined, picking through some wrenches, suggesting to the reluctant pilot by his posture that he was just offering excuses, "you're just shy. You're most comfortable crammed in a shoulder harness into a cockpit looking at instruments and blabbering letters to ATC. IMC bla bla you know. Besides, you're afraid some woman is going to come along and take you away from your baby. Tell me Mr. Hotshot Pilot, how can she forget you? How can she forget climbing into a damaged airplane, looking through your chart case for a cell phone, and then wiping your face. I bet she doesn't do that everyday!" "You're probably right," conceded Andrew Crance good naturedly, now laughing, "I'll have to call her. Your arguments are compelling, you should go into law. You're chipping away at my resolve." He was embarrassed. ""Maybe she does remember me." "OF course she does." The pilot turned away from the mechanic, picking up some papers. "Oh, by the way, Andrew," said the mechanic. Andrew turned back, focusing his brown gaze on the man who was so vehemently pushing him into the arms of someone he hardly knew, that golden blonde hair which Anne had found so appealing, and which was totally lost on the mechanic, touching the now healed gash over his right eye. "You know the NTSB didn't think that was such a great idea her climbing into that plane." The pilot frowned. "So what?" "Oh, Andrew," the mechanic laughed, "That's why you're one of the best pilots in general aviation, you're so calm about everything. Some pilots would be ripping their hair out about something like that." "Yeah, well, there were no good Samaritans to call the ambulances, everyone was asleep and I only had time to make one emergency frequency transmission before getting slammed into the front dash of that plane despite the harness. I'm not going to argue with them about something so minor as their opinion about that. The reason for the engine failure, I'll argue with them about that, but not a girl climbing into a plane that wasn't burning." "Yeah, Andrew," the mechanic said acknowledging another pilot who had just entered the shop, "I think you better call that girl." Perhaps a month after this conversation, when he was still working on aquiring his plane, when he could rent one, when he was working again for the charter company, collecting thousands of dollars to take passengers across short distances, filing flight plans for routes of more than fifty miles, he woke up early one morning with two images in his head: the girl, and the fence. Over the passage of time, images of hitting the fence were abating. Hadn't he and his instructor practiced engine out exercises in training? Piece of cake, right? Well, perhaps sometimes, he was human after all, but those dreams were coming less often, less often than thoughts of Anne Chambers teaching high school kids how to spell or whatever she did. It occurred to the pilot, sprawling in his king-size bed, listening to the ticking of the altimeter wall clock above his desk, looking at the alarm clock on the nightstand, that he didn't even know what she did. They hadn't talked since she had left his house a week after the accident. His sister liked her well enough, but good old Rachel hadn't mentioned her, and with all the paperwork, and the phone tag and the questions and the engine tear-down, even though she had been on his mind, he hadn't contacted her, nor she, him. They went their separate ways, so it was kind of strange that he would be thinking of the fence and the girl at the same time. He lay wide awake now, noting the slight chill in the air. He was usually up by 3:30, readying for his day, and today was no exception. He had been hired for some charters, he would have to be at the airport in two hours. He allowed himself time to clear his head, to wake up, and now as he did so, his thoughts turned to Anne Chambers once again. This morning as the gray haze of fog lay across the sky and he still lay beneath the comforter he wondered what she might be doing at this moment. It was possible she would be awake. Maybe not. She had been awake that day, perhaps she would be awake now? The sudden jangling of the phone clattered into the pilot's thoughts, sharply bringing him back to the present. He turned and looked at the luminous dial on the alarm. It was 3:45. The alarm would be sounding in a few minutes. His hand crept out of the sheets, he flipped the knob into the off position, swung his feet over the side of his bed, put a hand to his hair, rubbed his eyes, put on his glasses. The phone jangled impatiently. He walked over to his cluttered desk, pushed aside a few photographs, moved a Mustang P51 model out of the way and silenced the insistently jangling phone. "Hello." "Andrew?" A purring voice on the phone. "Isn't it time for you to be up?" "Just about." "Well," said the perky voice on the other end of the line, "Sorry to wake you, sounds like you weren't quite up and running yet." "What's up, John? You got business?" "Well, that's why I'm calling, Andrew. We have an evening cancelation. Your charter passenger from out in the boonies called in sick." "Oh?" "That going to set you back?" "You don't have anyone else?" "No, I'm afraid not. Maybe we'll get a call or something. But you know this business." "Yeah," said the pilot, "I know it. Okay." Morning was starting to break and he was shaking the images, getting into gear. "Call me if you come up with something." Just before he hung up, he thought of something. "John?" "Yeah?" "Let's keep that flight plan if you don't mind." "Okay. Schedules not too tight. I suppose we can do that." He hung up the phone, looked at the cluttered desk. He really should clean it. A coffee mug that said "I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning" sat by the phone with an inch of cold, stale coffee in it. He grabbed it, headed out of his spacious room and went into the kitchen to wash it. He rubbed the remaining sleep from his eyes, his bare feet sliding across the cool tiled floor. He pulled out a coffee grinder and ground up some Irish Cream coffee and then returned to his room as the pot gurgled cheerfully into life. Hopping into the shower, he had to wonder about keeping the flight plan. Maybe Anne Chambers, whom he hadn't seen in four months, would want to have dinner with him, you know, a friendly call, and why not take her out there for dinner? He didn't know if she had ever been in a small plane, maybe she would like that? It couldn't hurt to ask, right? Anne was sitting at her desk grading a paper when the phone next to her jangled into life. Its pleasant, soft bell tone startled her. She thought it was a bit early for the phone to be ringing, but she lifted it to her ear. "Miss Chambers?" a voice questioned quietly. "Yes." "Did I wake you by chance?" "No. Who is this?" "Miss Chambers, it's Andrew Crance," he paused, she did not respond, "the pilot?" "Andrew! Hello!" She felt as if she had just heard from a long lost friend. "Where are you? Not in the sky?" "No, not in the sky, not yet." He chuckled easily, wondering why he had been so nervous. "You remembered me." "Of course I did. You think I could forget driving a man back home with a concussion and a broken plane? That doesn't happen everyday you know." "No, no, I suppose not." There was a pause on her end of the line. "How are you feeling?" "Much better. You won't recognize me!" Anne thought about that golden blonde hair. "Sure I will." "Listen," he said easily enough now, "I know it's early, I'm calling from the airport. I found you in the phone book, I hope you don't mind that I gave you a call." "Mind?" she said in surprise, "I don't mind at all." "Well," he plunged perilously ahead, "I'm in the area today, I do charter flights. One of my evening passengers canceled, but I'm flying back here tonight. You wouldn't be free for dinner, would you? I know you're very busy." Anne shuffled some papers on her desk, already knowing the answer to that question. "I can fit you in. I'd be happy too. You want to meet at the airport for dinner?" "Well," responded Andrew Crance a little hesitantly, "Actually," and this was the excuse he needed, "the airport restaurant isn't open for dinner. I was thinking maybe I could fly you out to San Diego. I already have approval for the flight plan. Anne clinched her hands together in anticipation. "Yes, I would like that. I'll meet you there then." When Anne Chambers arrived at the airport and saw him sitting in a plastic chair beside a fake plant, she recognized him immediately. He got up, came over to her with his hand out. "Hello." "Well," she said, taking in his tall, lean figure, casual dress, easy stance, "I hardly know what to say. The last time I saw you..." "I know, I got blood on your sleeve." "And you," she said easily, letting him hug her, "made me climb into a wrecked plane." "No, you did that yourself." "I had no choice." "Of course you didn't." She looked up into his face, his brown eyes sparkling behind the glasses she remembered retrieving. She let her eyes play along his face, now not quite so damaged, her glance fell on the scar above his eye, and there it was, that incessantly mischievous lock of hair teasing her. She seemed transfixed by it. But it was Andrew Crance who was taken aback. He took in Anne's mediumly plump figure, her hair curling at her ears, sweeping majestically to her shoulders, her exquisite face, not to mention her red, summer outfit which made her eyes look very peaceful, and her hair... He had to shake himself. "Please forgive me for staring. I don't even know that I got a good look at you before." Anne Chambers laughed, showing her almost perfect teeth, her smile shaking this nervy adventurous pilot in places he had forgotten existed. "The last time you saw me," she reminded him, "you were sick and injured, just a bit confused, and ready to go to sleep." "You are right," he said, finally coming out of his shock. "I was pretty tired. It was a hard three weeks after that. My AME cleared me for flight two months ago.” "Well," she said, falling into step beside him, "it's probably a good thing you were a little dazed. When we met I was in a robe and slippers. What a way to meet someone, eh?" I must have been dazed not to notice you even in a robe and slippers, thought the thirty-three-year-old private pilot, resisting the urge to take her by the hand as he led her out to the little white Cessna 172 which gleamed invitingly and helped her into it. "I think under the circumstances any way you would have been dressed would have been fine." Anne stuffed herself into the aircraft, strapping herself in, holding her hands out for the headset. She couldn't help blushing at his comment. "I think you're right." She took the headset out of the pilot's hand. "You want me to listen in?" "Yes, of course. Amuse yourself with ATC lingo. Besides I can talk to you, it will be easier." "So," she said settling in, "this is what it's like when the cockpit isn't damaged." "This is it. Scared?" "No. I'm not the one driving this bucket of bolts." His laugh was sudden and expressive, warm, and tingling. "Oh, it's more sophisticated than that. This isn't a Liberator." "True enough." She met the pilot's eyes, her smile just as easy. "I trust you, though. You got the other plane down okay." "Just okay?" He turned and smiled at her, wondering why in the last four months since their fortuitous meeting he had been so nervous about calling her. "More than okay. Did you check the fuel on this baby?" He snapped his fingers. "Damn! Forgot!" Their friendship was sealed. "OF course I did. Come on, let's get out of here! I'm starving."
Copyright © 2002 Shelley Alongi |