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Dwight very rarely smoked cigarettes but that night he smoked ten of them, and as he smoked he occasionally sipped from a white cup of coffee. It was a habit that he had acquired as a junior programmer. Occasionally, when a problem perplexed him, he spent the night smoking cigarettes. Tonight as he sat and waited he gazed toward an old lamp, a lamp on a dark wood desk to the right of his bed; the glass globe that was the base of the lamp had a shell embedded in it, a large shell of a color and a complexity that was not found on the west coast. He was here, he realized, for a critical purpose. Pamela had been correct out on the pier; he had something that she needed. What that was was not certain nor was it meant to be certain, and it was his task to be attentive and to not attempt to force an answer; he would learn when he was supposed to and he found that frustrating, since it was not in accordance with his temperament or with his work habits. He was used to perceiving goals in advance of completing them. Flowcharts came before one programmed, not the other way around. Yet he loved his high school sweetheart more than he had remembered, and he would give up anything, even his habits, to help her; he did not sleep at all that night nor did he care to sleep, and after Mrs. Dolan had left for church he got ready to meet Pamela. She was waiting on her porch and she waved to him. He felt the same upward shuddering of pain that he had felt yesterday. “How are you and Gramma getting along?” she asked Dwight as he helped her into his Porsche. Is she talking you out of your mind?”
“Sometimes.”
“Has she enlisted you? To build houses for half of Mexico?”
“Not yet.” They squeezed hands. Then he drove to Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and from there to the freeway. “How are you feeling?” he asked her as he merged onto the freeway. His voice sounded strained to him.
“My back hurts like hell. Other than that I’m pretty good.”
“What do you take for pain? You haven’t told me what they’re giving you.”
“They want to give me morphine. Orally. I told them to fuck off.”
“Why?”
“Because it snows you out. I saw dad. I don’t want to have that.” Dwight paid attention to the traffic. Once he had reached a steady speed he glanced into his mirrors. “It won’t snow you out,” he told her, “in the right amounts. It’s not like an IV drip of it.”
“I still don’t want it. Let’s forget it. I’m excited.”
“Good.” The traffic thickened. To the right of them blue skyscrapers formed and heightened and glistened. He took the Kearny Mesa off-ramp five miles north of downtown, and they were slung through a three-quarters’ orbit that left them heading west; he drove quickly through those streets that he knew so well, those arteries that traversed a suburb that had been built in the 1950s. Montgomery Field was a small airport that was as old as the suburbs. Tract homes and industrial complexes bordered it on three sides. “Where do you want to go first?” Dwight asked her as he slowed to one entrance. “Do you want to go straight to the Co-Op?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure about that? We could get breakfast at the flight club first.”
“Why?”
“To ease into it. I told you. I’m a little worried.”
“No, I want to go on. I’m not worried. Go ahead.”
He nodded and drove on. The Co-Op was a two-story building that had light planes tied to its asphalt ramps. Dwight parked as close as he could to the building and he helped Pamela out, and he looked toward the rows of light planes that were chained to bolts set in asphalt; a young man was pre-flighting a Cessna to the east of them, and a deep rumbling came from a warmed-up engine to the east of the Co-Op. Dwight and Pamela turned together and they walked to the Co-Op. They pushed through its set of glass doors and Pamela stopped at a counter. “Pamela!” called a man in his fifties as he pushed up from a steel desk. He had said her name hoarsely.
“Hi, Don.”
“I was worried. I thought you were coming in last week.”
“I couldn’t find the nerve. Do you remember my friend? Dwight Bishop?”
“Of course I do.” The two men shook hands. Don stepped from behind the counter and he embraced Pamela. “I was going,” he told her, “to call you this afternoon. It’s so good to see you again!”
“You, too.” She was crying. Two male students looked in surprise from their instructors toward her. “Anyway,” Pamela said with an effort, “here I am and it’s sunny. Like when we used to fly together.”
“I’ll be out front,” Dwight said. “You two talk as long as you want to.”
“Dwight?”
“I’m fine,” he told Pamela. “You two take your time and visit.”
“Okay.”
He turned and went outside. He had felt a pang of jealousy; she had sensed that, he knew. The young man who had been pre-flighting was seated in the cockpit of his Cessna, and Dwight watched as the engine started and as the propeller roared; the sun sparkled off the wings as they rotated slowly, and as the plane's vertical stabilizer showed its row of slanted characters. After ten minutes had passed Pamela came outside. She looked pale and unsteady and Dwight took her left arm. “I want to sit,” she told him, “in the cockpit again. One last time. Don said that I could.”
“Okay.”
He followed her. Though he kept his hand on her she led the way for them. Don had given her a key that was not attached to a Hobbs logbook, and when she reached her training Cessna she unlocked its main door; “Help me up,” she ordered Dwight as she tried to get in. “There. That’s fine. I’ll unlock your door now.” He walked to the other side. She unlocked the other door and Dwight opened it and climbed inside. She released the seat belts for them and he pushed his seat back, as he had always had to do when they had flown together; his long legs required the space and the adjustment was automatic, even after these six years since they had flown so frequently. As he was making this adjustment she removed the control lock. Then she checked the electrical system and she switched on the Master switch. “What are you doing?’ he asked her as she switched the switch on. “You’re not going to do a pre-flight?”
“No, of course not; I’m sorry. I just want to fly it so badly.”
“I know that you do”
They sat there. He reached for the Master switch, paused, and switched it off. “I told you,” he said to her, “that this might be too much. I think that this is too much for you.”
“Just let me sit for a while. I won’t do anything more than this.”
“Put the lock back in. You don’t want the wind to jar us.”
“You’re right.” She replaced the control lock. Then she sat with her pale hands on either side of the yoke. “You were right,” she said rather suddenly, “I think that we should leave. This is getting to be too much for me.”
“Let’s go, then.” He climbed out. He climbed out and he helped her out, and he locked the Cessna. “You wait here,” he told her firmly, “while I go and give the key to Don. I don’t want you to go back in there.”
“Go ahead.”
He went inside. He returned and unlocked the Porsche and he helped her into it. “That’s how I want to die,” she told him as he started the engine. “Flying. Not snowed out on some morphine drip.” Dwight did not answer her. As he merged back onto the freeway he stared broodingly forward. If he was here for a critical reason near the end of her life, perhaps a part of that critical reason was to counteract her impulsiveness; she should not have gone to the Co-Op and he had known that since yesterday, so from now on he had to be much more direct and objective. “What’s the matter?” Pamela asked him as he entered Ocean View. “You look pissed off at somebody.”
“I’m mad at myself. I knew better than to take you there.”
“I was the one who asked you. I was the one who wanted to do it.”
“I should have told you no. I should have said let’s wait a while.” He pulled into her driveway. They sat as the muffler ticked and as some sparrows sang. “We should have started
with Alpine,” he told her, “because that would have been better. Those memories would have been less stressful.”
“Could we go tomorrow? Up to where that old pond is?”
“All right.”
They remained still. Then she kissed him on the cheek and he helped her out of his Porsche.