

### FALLING IN LOVE

by Aimee Norin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Aimee Norin. All rights reserved. Beyond the legal minimum, no part of this book may be reproduced or shared. Email Aimee Norin at aimeenorin@gmail.com

This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarity to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters, things and events appearing in this work are fictitious. While the largest airshow of its kind in the U.S. has occurred annually at Oshkosh, Wisconsin for decades, representations made herein do not reflect anything in particular, or event, year, or situation. As well, any flying or information about flight, aircraft and airshows are represented solely for this fictional story and the flawed characters involved, seen as they see them, done as they do them, for the development of their character, and should not be taken as suggestion, instruction, recommendation, or as representative of the people or organizations involved.

This novel is for mature understanding. The situations and concepts covered in this novel are mature and sometimes sophisticated, yet because the characters, themselves, do not usually prefer to discuss them in objective terms, an unaware reader may not understand all that is being shared. If this novel were made into a film for television, I believe there is nothing in it that would prevent it being broadcast during prime time. It is a novel of a male-to-female transsexual and a female-to-male transgender falling in love.

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### Falling in Love

By

Aimee Norin

Begin Reading

Preface

Copyright

Table of Contents

Emancipation

About the Author

Contact the Author

For Michelle:

There is more to the story.

### PREFACE

_Falling in Love_ is a novel about a difficult romance between a trans woman and a trans man, both pilots, who fall in love one summer during the United States' largest annual airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Lourdes is a Hispanic American, long term transsexual, ashamed of who she is. Desperately needing to be as female as any other, her standards are high, too high to be achieved, so she lives in anguish, hating anything that would diminish her as she sees it.

Jim, a well-adjusted, well-liked transgender man whom Lourdes meets at the air show, has had issues in his own life and doesn't need her to add to them. Where Lourdes initially blasts him hard, his gentle nature wins her over, and in the end, she succumbs to him. He becomes her savior.

This is her growth process.

_Falling in Love_ has one of the two most beautiful endings in my novels to date _._ While it sizzles at times _, Falling in Love_ is represented in such a way that, I believe, if it were made into a film, could be shown on prime-time broadcast television. Lourdes and Jim are personally unwilling to use harsh language, and while they are eventually open with each other, one can sense they are modest in how they share their intimate moments. The emphasis is on romance, not sex. It's on watching them fight through their issues to fall in love, not on anger or divisiveness.

_Falling in Love_ is set in the world of flight. Cliquish terminology and phrasing are used, though explained, throughout. If you're a pilot of light general aviation airplanes, you will feel at home in the novel. If you're not a pilot, then you may fit right in with those who are by the time you're done reading.

Note on reading acronyms:

In the pilot world, there are a lot of acronyms. You can set your O.B.S. on your V.O.R. to check your C.D.I. to get the F.A.F... So to help someone who is not yet a pilot read the acronyms herein as a character may say them, I've taken to spelling _without periods_ those acronyms spoken as words, and spelling _with periods_ those acronyms spoken as individual letters. Examples: "NOTAM" is spoken as "KNOW-tam," and the "F.A.A." is spoken as letters such as "ef-ay-ay." "We're CAVU," one pilot may say to another—spoken as the word "ca-vu," with "A" as in "hat," the acronym for "Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited": good weather.

As well, some disclaimers are needed. _Falling in Love_ is entirely fictional. All persons and events represented herein are fictional. While there is a major, annual airshow event at Oshkosh, Wisconsin—well known and public—the events of this novel are fictional and do not represent events of any particular year or anything in particular. Also, flying information or scenes are represented by flawed characters in the novel for the storyline. Nothing herein is represented as instruction or permission to engage as the characters do, nor even as necessarily correct. It's what the characters are doing for the dramatics or humor of the novel. As well, Lourdes' airplane, Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, a white and blue 1964 Cessna 150, is fictional and is not meant to refer to any actual airplane that may be in existence. As of this writing, the F.A.A. database shows the "N-number" is not assigned.

Fly safe.

Aimee Norin

### BRIEF INTRODUCTION

LOURDES HAS BEEN lied-to so many times she no longer trusts people, and she has suffered so many of her own painful choices that she no longer trusts herself, either.

Who knows her secret? Who really cares about her? Her heart is afraid to ask: _Why is she living_!

CHAPTER 1

"Someone like you should understand!" The bloodied woman scolded Lourdes and walked out.

It hit Lourdes like a hammer in ways the woman would never know.

_Be professional_! Lourdes tried to catch herself. She was an experienced E.R. nurse. The lady's daughter had just been killed in a car wreck. It didn't matter what the lady said—

No. It _did_ matter what the lady said. Her daughter had been killed. _What could be more important_?

But it wasn't _personal?_ It was the lady's reaction to her loss? _She didn't mean that I_ — _The lady couldn't know that I_ — _Did she? It wasn't about me_ , was it?

Lourdes didn't believe her own guesswork. She felt light-headed, walked away from the nurse's station and tried to counsel herself. _The lady meant that an E.R. nurse should know about the pain of loss. Right?_ A nurse sees it every day.

_But was that all the lady meant_?

Lourdes' eyes darted to others in the E.R., looking to see if they knew, but it was unclear. Some were looking at her; others hurried through their work.

Did they know?

Lourdes didn't know. She was getting to a place in life where it was hard to tell, she'd been hurt so many times. It had been thirty-five years, _since she was seventeen_. Her heart was raw from years of fears, living through decades of social evolution and deniable prejudice. There was nothing left inside. Over and over again she was hurt—her whole life—and always over the same things.

Lourdes felt herself withdrawing. She felt dizzy. She stood motionless by a doorway. The noise around her faded. She felt like ghost in a fog, unable to think or focus, unable to touch anything. Unreal.

A doctor got in her face to tell her something, but Lourdes didn't hear. He moved away.

Worried people rushed silently by.

Another nurse got in her face and told her something. Lourdes still didn't hear. The nurse seemed to repeat herself.

Lourdes' legs began moving, but they stopped by the nurse's station to wait for a mass to roll by. The back of her mind noticed it was a covered gurney, the patient clearly dead.

A man on another gurney reached out for Lourdes' hand, but her hand recoiled on its own.

Lourdes turned to walk into the current "myo" room.

A man was sitting by an unconscious patient, holding her hand. "Nurse! What's going on?" He was pleading, not demanding. He obviously loved her. "It's been over an hour. I've been waiting. Please? Will she be alright?"

Lourdes looked through the man to the patient. She was a woman in her forties, in the E.R. for a heart attack, a myocardial infarction. Part of the heart muscle was damaged from a blocked artery in the area. She was lying on her back in a bed. Her clothing had been removed. White sheets covered her up to her chest. Leads webbed off her torso to the EKG. She was hooked up to two different IVs and had been intubated. The respirator showed she was initiating some of her own breaths, and her color wasn't too bad.

But to the man—

Lourdes filled in a scenario for herself: maybe the wife was an otherwise healthy woman, surprisingly hooked up to a dozen space-age machines—a wife who, earlier that afternoon, had been swimming in the pool with family after a back yard barbeque, a woman who, the man had always believed, would be with him into old age.

Lourdes tried to focus on her job. She knew what to say. She'd been through this a thousand times over the years. In general, she should refer the husband to the doctor. He could handle it. It was his place, not hers. But—

Resistance was too hard.

Lourdes' limbs didn't seem to move well. Her mind wouldn't function—yet curiously, to her, she was able to watch her mind not working. She could comment on it to herself, as if she were watching herself—

"Nurse! _What's happening_?" the man pleaded again.

Lourdes answered without looking directly at him, "I think she'll be okay," she encouraged. Lourdes felt it was not her best answer, but she couldn't muster the energy for diplomacy.

She turned to leave.

"Really?" the man said, grabbing her arm. "Because it looks bad." His eyes were pleading.

"Yes," Lourdes tried. "I've seen this before. It does look bad right now, hooked up to all that stuff. But I don't think it's as bad as it looks. These things," Lourdes said, indicating the machines, "look scary, but, really, they're helping. Don't fear them; be thankful for them. I think she'll be okay. Your job, right now, is to give her lots of love. It helps. And give the doctors a good history on her."

The man started crying in gratitude and hugged Lourdes, unexpectedly. He dug his fingers into her back. His tears soaked her hair.

Lourdes heart ached for him, but her arms did not return the hug. Her mind reached out to him with words of comfort that never left her mouth. They were spoken, but only in distant thought.

Lourdes had to get out before she collapsed. She tore loose from the man and headed out of the room.

_Where was the door?_ She couldn't think. Tears formed in her eyes.

She felt like such a failure. She was fifty-two, a success in her career, but the rest of her life was so heavy, and it had weighed her down for so long. Her marriage had ended in disgrace for her and still hurt miserably, even if it was a hundred years ago. "Friends" were so phony to her.

And she felt she had to leave so often.

Because she couldn't stand what she was.

Because her need, inside, since forever, was to just be normal, and she couldn't be. She begged God every day of her life for peace, but it never came. This thing she had become was never her goal.

A therapist years ago told her she was undetectable, that she seemed to be as normal as anyone else—average height for a woman, a little plump, long dark hair, small hands—but Lourdes knew the therapist wasn't entirely correct, that her seeming natural way was because she had tried so hard for years to overcome her past. And she also knew that people told her things like that because they, themselves, wanted to believe it.

Unable to cope, she usually ran away from places that hurt.

And here I am, leaving again.

She watched herself walk out the E.R. door without saying a word to anyone.

This time, though, she knew, it wasn't because of the way anyone looked at her. It wasn't the lady's comment. This time she was leaving because she couldn't take life any more. It was the accumulated weight of a million things over the years that had been too heavy to carry for too long.

Her heart was as damaged as the patient in the myo room.

She believed there was only one machine that could help.

CHAPTER 2

In her small, one bedroom apartment, Lourdes watched herself throw a small overnight bag on the bed and stuff it with essentials: a few tops, two pair of pants, a few underclothes, socks, toothbrush, her Estradiol for daily H.R.T....

She plopped her flight bag next to it on the bed and began loading it as well. She grabbed her tablet computer off the dresser and checked it. The charts in it were current. She put it in the flight bag along with other helpful things. She had charts for the whole nation in her tablet, which, she always knew, could be essential.

Her resolute mind followed her eyes over her meager belongings in the rest of the small one bedroom apartment: bed, couch, T.V., dresser— There was nothing of real value, she knew. Pictures of her life that she wanted and the few important papers she needed for daily living were already transferred to her phone and to her tablet. Any other papers? None. She didn't have any. What? A deed to a house? She didn't have one. Not since her marriage to Raul. The pink slip to her car? The car was trash, anyway. Diploma from nursing school? It was replaceable.

She wanted to leave the whole planet—leave the species forever—but failing that—

She watched herself turn and walk out of the apartment, closing the front door behind her.

Under a gray overcast of persistent low stratus clouds, Lourdes drove down concrete freeways through Los Angeles, between concrete construction barricades, past glass and steel buildings void of any warmth or sensitivity. The city was forever curbs and sidewalks and roads, traffic lights, car engines, exhaust, motorcycles racing between cars, streets filthy with grime.

_Get out!_ She felt it more as an urge than a thought.

She depressed the accelerator and drove a little faster up the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass to the San Fernando Valley. Her car didn't make noise any more. The shocks weren't loose. The fender didn't rattle. The steering wheel bearing didn't grind. The fan didn't tink. The valves didn't tick. The clock never did tick. The air conditioner never did blow. The wind didn't rush through her open windows. The other traffic didn't make any more noise.

The hospital didn't know where she was—

She parked in front of the F.B.O. at Van Nuys airport—the Fixed Base Operator that rented tie-down space—and she looked up. The sky was getting a little lighter, especially to the north, as if the stratus may break up soon. She got out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition, the windows still rolled down, and lugged her two bags over asphalt into the F.B.O.—banging one on the steel door frame on the way in.

She dropped her bags in a chair in the pilot's lounge, went to the bathroom down the hall, and came back to the pilot's lounge to call Flight Service and check on the weather.

She stood there holding the phone.

_Where was she going?_ she wondered. She didn't even care.

There was a large, plastic chart on the wall of the Lower 48 States, with cut-ins for Alaska and Hawaii.

So, where?

She put the phone back down, never making the call, and lugged her bags out onto the ramp.

There were several small airplanes on the ramp: a variety of Pipers and Cessnas—the Ford and Chevy of planes—with one Mooney nearer the fuel truck and an old Bonanza near the FBO.

Lourdes found "Bes" two rows to the right of where she was normally tied down, an old, oxidized, white with blue 1964 Cessna 150 that she got off one of the guys at the airport who had used it to teach his son how to fly, years ago. It had the older "straight tail" which stood more vertically, as opposed to the sleeker slant-tails of later models.

On seeing Bes, Lourdes started crying. It felt like Bes was the only person in the world who understood her. She was short enough to walk under the wing without stooping, so she walked over to Bes' left wing strut and hugged it, thanking God for Bes, praying she could always keep her, somehow, no matter how else she screwed up her life.

Tears still on her face, she opened the left side cockpit door. There was a lock on it, but it had never worked. The two interior seats—side-by-side for two skinny people—were ripped because they were old. The plastic on top the panel and in the small cargo bay was cracked, but that was cosmetic, not an airworthiness issue. The panel was largely original, which meant old, with an asymmetric assortment of now-antique basic flight instruments including an old style turn-and-bank and directional gyro. There was one radio that worked, thankfully, one transponder. One "Johnson bar" between the seats to manually work the huge "barn door" wing flaps. That was about it. As were all 150s, Bes was "stiff-legged." The "gear," the wheels, were fixed and stayed extended in flight. They didn't retract.

Lourdes thanked God she had the plane to fly. It helped her cling to life. Taking the plane on camping trips was about the only thing that had kept her sane, she was so alone.

She put her overnight bag in the small cargo bay behind the seats, on top of her tent and sleeping bag, which lived there. She put the seat-back straight up again, and put her flight bag on the right-side passenger seat, unzipped it. She mounted her tablet on the passenger-side yoke so she could see and operate it from the left seat with her right hand.

With a practiced eye, she preflighted the plane, checked the gauges, checked all nuts and bolts, looked for hanging body parts or flat tires, manually checked the fuel level—she kept it full—drained the bluish 100 low lead fuel from both wing tanks and the gascolator under the engine, checking for water or contaminants in the fuel, checked the oil level, looked under the engine cowl for birds nests...and everything else she had to do.

Most of the windows were still in good shape, she observed. Only the passenger-side window was cracked a little below the top rim. Very good, for a fifty-year-old 150. The engine was a Continental O-200 with about a thousand hours on it since it's last major overhaul, and all she could do was hope it hung in there maybe another eight hundred hours or so, if she guessed from the experience other owners had had, because she couldn't afford to spend twenty-thousand dollars to overhaul it. The old air-cooled engine burned about a quart of oil every six hours of operation, so she carried some extra oil in the cargo bay.

The two-toned white and blue paint was poor, but she didn't care. That was another cosmetic issue she could avoid.

She slipped the chains on her tie-down rings and got in.

" _Clear_ ," Lourdes yelled out the open door. The engine started smartly. She shut her door.

Lourdes sat there with her headset on.

Oil pressure up.

Oil temperature low. It would warm up during taxi for takeoff.

She turned the radio to frequency 118.45 and got the "ATIS," the Automatic Terminal Information Service weather for Van Nuys Airport, designated "November," that hour. The wind was light and variable. The temperature was comfortable. The stratus clouds were breaking up to the north.

She changed the frequency to 121.7 to speak to ground control.

"Van Nuys Ground, Cessna Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra at the F.B.O., taxi for takeoff with November."

Ground control responded over the radio with a chuckle, and then "Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, taxi one six left. Say direction of flight."

He sounded new to Lourdes. She hadn't heard him before.

"Two Hotel Sierra, taxi Runway One Six Left," she said. "Left downwind departure."

Lourdes checked to make sure the ramp around her was clear, released her brakes, and began her taxi—when Ground came back with what sounded like a smile.

"Ah, Two Hotel Sierra—" Ground said in a manner that seemed jovial. He paused then offered a curt "Disregard."

Maybe his supervisor told him not to chatter, she wondered.

A woman with "Hotel Sierra" would sometimes take some ribbing as "Hotel Sierra" usually meant a hangar-flying version of something like "Hot Stuff" in bawdy pilot parlance. Lourdes guessed that was what he was interested in, so she told him, anyway.

She keyed her mike: "It wasn't me. It was two owners back who changed it."

"Okay. Thanks," Ground said with a chuckle.

Lourdes pulled out of her tie-down and headed north up the taxiway for Runway One Six Left.

"Van Nuys Tower, Cessna Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, holding short one six left, left down wind departure."

"Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, cleared for departure," Tower said.

"Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, one six left, cleared for departure," Lourdes repeated to Tower.

She rolled onto the runway, looked to the right for any incoming aircraft. Seeing none, she lined up on the center line for Runway One Six Left, and slowly added throttle. The plane began its roll. There was a slight swerve to the left, but she countered with a touch of right rudder, and in no time, she was at rotate speed. She applied a little back pressure on the yoke, and she and Bes rose gracefully into the sky.

CHAPTER 3

High over western New Mexico, Lourdes watched the world crawl by. The sky was clear and winds were out of the west, so she had a tailwind—as if the world were trying to blow her away from Los Angeles—though there was some light to moderate turbulence that could be tiring at times. Occasionally the plane would jump and shake, some things in the glove compartment and cargo bay would rattle.

She cinched her lap belt and shoulder harness a little tighter.

Her shoulder harness had pressed her long, dark hair against her neck, so she reached up behind her head to pull her hair into something like a ponytail, letting it fall behind her collar.

_What was that?_ The engine sounded different—louder than usual.

She listened to the engine noise, sensitive to any cylinder that might be missing, but it sounded smooth. She put her hand on the top of the panel to feel the degree of vibration in the cockpit. It felt normal. Could an exhaust manifold be loose? She scanned her oil pressure and oil temperature—even checked her fuel mixture and R.P.M.—and couldn't find a problem. Maybe— Sometimes, on a long haul, she knew she could suddenly notice little sounds that had been there all along—

Ah, no. That's not it. She realized the problem. The ear cup seals in her headset were old and didn't seal as well as they used to.

She adjusted her headphones slightly.

The engine noise went back to normal.

She thanked the Lord again.

With a moderate tailwind, her groundspeed was about 118 miles per hour, but at her altitude of nine thousand five hundred feet, about three thousand feet above ground level where she was, she appeared to barely be moving.

She looked at cars going east on Interstate 40 below, measured their progress against her wing strut. Slowly, one after another, her wing strut would overtake them, so she felt satisfied she was going faster than the cars.

Flying cross-country in a slow airplane meant hours and hours of watching the earth slowly pass underneath, with thoughts, wanted or not, covering a desire go get somewhere.

She thought with apprehension about what she was doing. She had left apartments before, left the area of Los Angeles she'd lived in, but she had never left in such a major way as this before.

I must be out of my mind.

Where am I going?

_What am I leaving behind_?

Everything: Los Angeles, her family, friends—

_That was a joke!_ She'd had lots of "friends" over the years, but never any that seemed to amount to much—people who wanted Lourdes to enter their life intermittently, but who didn't want to enter her life beyond a grace period, who would gossip behind her back, or who kept her away from their other friends.

Leaving Los Angeles? She'd been born and raised there. Her parents still lived there. How would she see them again? She would, she thought. Maybe. She wasn't leaving them entirely, but in truth, they were no piece of cake—like "friends" she'd had in the past, her family claimed loyalty but seemed to be happier when she wasn't there.

Raul. She _was_ leaving him entirely. He had divorced her years ago due to family pressure, but she'd dragged his memory around with her all these years, in her heart. _Love the guy who dumped you?_ How can you really love someone who drops you under family pressure? It had been so long since he dumped her, she thought. Maybe she had been loving a fantasy.

It wouldn't surprise her, she thought.

_Chaco Canyon was somewhere over here_ , she thought. _And Navajo and Hopi behind and to the left._ She looked at the land. _Some of my ancestors were here, too—how their lives were different._

She looked ahead. There were some clouds forming over the Sandia Mountains, east of Albuquerque. She hadn't flown through New Mexico before, but she'd heard monsoons, during July, sent a lot of moisture up from Mexico that built over the mountains in the hot afternoon air—a mix of convective and orographic lifting.

She checked her tablet. The last time she had flown over a town and gotten cellular data coverage, she'd downloaded a new radar image to overlay her flight chart.

The rain fell hard and steady on the ramp. Lourdes stood by herself inside the old, country F.B.O., sipping coffee she got from a machine, watching gray behemoths overhead dump Niagara Falls all over three isolated airplanes on acres of ramp and miles of brown dirt, empty land.

_Am I surviving_? she thought, watching rain water drip off the planes. _I'm running away in the biggest way ever_.

_No, maybe not in a bad way_ , she thought _. Life's problems are almost more than I can tolerate, and I deal with that as well as I can by leaving when the stress is too high._

She wondered if she believed that.

_Some people blow off the handle_ , she thought, _and commit suicide, or violence or do drugs or something, and I don't. All I do is leave_. That sounded better, she thought.

Then she realized again _that_ is exactly what Raul had done. He left her when the stress was too great. The family pressured him, and he left.

She set her coffee cup on a small table by the window and looked around the deserted F.B.O. for something to eat. There wasn't a soul there. _Quiet_ echoed off the walls. There was a help-yourself feeling to the isolated, small-town airport, with candy bars in a vending machine by the coffee machine.

She bought a Snickers for lunch.

She showered in an old motel by the airport and slept in a tired bed. The room was as quiet as a coffin. And she was more alone than she'd ever been.

Her altitude had drifted up to nine thousand six hundred seventy, a little high. She corrected. She hadn't heard anything on the emergency channel, so she clicked the push-to-talk button. It seemed to still work. Over Tucumcari, she dialed her radio to 119.275 to listen to their automated ASOS weather report and reset the barometric pressure in the Kollsman window so her altimeter would read correctly, then dialed 122.95 to listen to their air traffic, if any.

It was quiet. No aircraft was using a radio around Tucumcari. If her radio still worked.

She looked outside again. The traffic slowly slipped behind her wing strut.

_Do they know where they're going_?

East of the Rockies, the land began to slope downward, leaving her at a higher altitude above ground level, though she remained at nine thousand five hundred feet M.S.L., Mean Sea Level. The Rocky Mountains disappeared behind her. Jagged canyons blended into flat plains that stretched to infinity. Circles and squares of crops became more numerous. "Crop Circles," she thought. The land was alien to her. She'd never seen such vast openness.

It was beautiful. No mountains to fear crossing.

Since leaving Los Angeles, Lourdes had seen little of the earth other than brown, rocky dirt, with some trees at higher altitude, but by the time she flew past Tucumcari the land began to green beautifully. The brown-forever-nothingness-of-before became the lush-and-colorful-of-the-new, like the scenery in "The Wizard of Oz"—only in reverse, because the color she saw, in this case, was over Kansas.

Lourdes' mind wandered through a brief moment of sarcasm. _The folks in a Pride parade would love that!_

_Do they have water sprinkler systems everywhere down there?_ she barely thought to ask. _Because if they do, they must have a budget deficit like California._

She didn't laugh at her joke; she was too tired.

She stared out her window at airports below crawling by. Wheat. Small towns.

_Where did they get all that green grass beside the airports? Beside everything? Real people live there? They have lives? They live in those lush surroundings?_ She imagined a countryside full of crops, town events where people shared together, the occasional snow at Christmas, a real spring-time when flowers bloomed and leaves grew back on trees.

Emotionally, she reached for the life she found beneath her, but her arms were too short—so her heart drifted away, again, on its own, deeper into her solitary depression.

_I could never have_ — Her mind stopped on its own, not finishing.

_Nothing that real_ — She blocked something else.

_I could never have anything that beautiful in a real life_ , she was finally able to think. _Not me_.

"Here you go, Sugar," the waitress said, refilling Lourdes' coffee.

Lourdes ate her eggs and hash browns, in the airport diner before take-off, thankful she got to eat something, thankful she wasn't dead, yet feeling she surely was dead, everywhere inside. Her heart just didn't know it yet.

Lourdes stood alone on the ramp by the right side of her cowling, the oil door wide open. She screwed an eight-inch filler-extension tube onto the top of a quart of oil and poured it into her engine.

Over Iowa, Lourdes consulted her tablet computer mounted on the passenger yoke. It told her Dyersville floated by underneath. _Could it really be there_? she wondered. She looked for a baseball field—

There it was, northeast of town.

### CHAPTER 4

During the week of the airshow at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Wittman Regional becomes the busiest airport in the world, landing thousands of aircraft of all kinds, large and small, parking them wing-tip to wing-tip, or sometimes T-ing them together, around major runways, over miles of sculpted lawns, and between more exhibits and displays than most people could see over the course of the week with an electric scooter. While many people seek accommodations in town in hotels, university dorms, or in people's homes, tens of thousands of other people camp beside their plane in tents.

It's a busy place during the week. Aircraft are always in the air: landing, taking off, or flying by. Among all the activity, landing approaching aircraft, sometimes two at a time on the same runway, without mishap—in an endless series, all day long—is a testament to the skill and ability of both the pilots and controllers. It's as if Air Traffic Control is the conductor with a huge radio baton leading dozens of pilot musicians who carefully fly their planes in concert, for the enjoyment of all.

The F.A.A.'s NOTAM was in effect—a "Notice to Airmen," which in this case set requirements for the operations at America's largest annual airshow.

Lourdes had studied the NOTAM. She was ready to join the orchestra.

Approaching Ripon, Wisconsin, she looked for other airplanes in the sky and found four. She selected a white Cessna to follow, fell in behind it, and flew, per the NOTAM, northeast up the railroad tracks.

Over Fisk, her radio barked with instructions from A.T.C. Normally, pilots repeat instructions from A.T.C. but under this NOTAM, they were to rock their wings in acknowledgement. "Blue low wing, follow the red high wing outside the blue water tower, make right traffic landing Runway Two Seven, _rock your wings_!" There was a slight pause on Lourdes' radio. "Thank you," A.T.C. said, "that's a good rock. White high wing, follow the blue low wing downwind outside the blue water tower, right traffic Runway Two Seven, rock your wings." Slight pause. "Good rock."

They were all flying northeast up the railroad tracks, and "right traffic Runway Two Seven" meant they would make right turns to the runway, landing in the direction of two seven zero degrees, magnetic, straight west: Runway Two Seven.

Then Lourdes' plane was controlled.

"White and blue high wing, follow the white high wing, right traffic around the blue water tower, landing Runway Two Seven, rock your wings." Lourdes rocked her wings vigorously, a hard dip left then right. "Thank you. Good rock! Yellow low wing, follow the white and blue high wing..."

The sun was warm and yellow—just a little before apex, right where you'd want it at ten in the morning. The sky was the deep rich blue they only make in late July, and green lawn grass, mowed to perfection, stretched for miles, all the way to the horizon.

Jim and Mike sat on their little Honda scooters by Taxiway Poppa in the "South Forty," the parking and camping area for Vintage planes in the southern area of the airport, along the west side of Taxiway Poppa and Runway One Eight/Three Six. Their scooters were turned off for a moment. They were listening to the music of airplane noise.

Jim moved his orange safety vest to the side and withdrew a little white tube. "Want some sunscreen?"

"Thanks, Mate," Mike said in his British accent, taking a squirt into his palm.

They put a fresh layer on their faces below the sunglasses, and neck as well, finishing off by rubbing the remainder into the backs of their hands.

The winds were light and variable, but Jim synched up the neck strap for his Tilley sun hat, anyway, as when he rode the scooter down Taxiway Poppa to park planes, he'd make his own twenty-five knot wind.

"Look around at all this," Jim said in admiration. "That's my Favorite color scheme. Tell me where it could be better."

"Your blue-blockers are darker than my granny's knickers," Mike said. "How can you see beans?"

Jim smiled.

"You think this is like 'Field of Dreams?'" Mike asked.

Jim paused for a second, then "More movies?" he asked. "You mean 'Is this Heaven? No it's Iowa?' kind of thing?"

"I'd say," Mike said in agreement.

"Yeah," Jim agreed, "But around here, it's more like the question is, "'Is this Heaven?' And the answer is a simple truth: 'Yes.'" Jim looked over at Mike more intently. "The whole earth can be, with a little effort."

A Grumman Goose taxied slowly south on Taxiway Poppa. Jim yelled to a relatively new biker on the taxiway near it. "That's it! Take him all the way down. He's amphibious! Amphib camping is down past the runway near _the ditch_."

The new biker nodded and got the pilot's attention by patting himself on the head to signal "Follow Me."

The pilot nodded to the biker, and the biker slowly rode south on the taxiway, Goose in tow.

"I'm not so sure he knows where to go," Mike said about the new biker.

"Yeah. Better check." They both started their bikes and raced south across the lawns.

Runway Two Seven was full in Lourdes' vision, a huge runway over six thousand feet long—manicured off-white concrete surrounded by more of that impossibly green grass.

Lourdes had throttled back, pulled on her carburetor heat, and used the Johnson bar between her seats to partially extend her flaps. With her "barn doors hanging half out," she felt Bes noticeably slow down and begin descent. She managed her throttle setting and pitch cautiously to keep her airspeed perfect while descending right behind the plane ahead. Airspeed too high, and her plane wouldn't land, or she'd float and land too long. Airspeed too low, and her wing could stall, which, this close to the ground, could be a problem. She held it steady.

Lourdes could see the white high wing in front of her on short final, following the blue low wing over the approach end of the runway. She noted the large colored dots painted on the runway per NOTAM for this special airshow.

The A.T.C. Maestro controlled the dense landing traffic.

"Blue low wing, keep it up. Keep it up. Don't land yet. Land long on the large green dot, half way down the runway. Green dot. That's right. White high wing, land short, on the orange dot near the beginning, at the thousand foot markers. That's right. Both of you land _now_. Both of you land now." Slight pause. "Good."

Lourdes proceeded low and slow, ready to land where instructed.

After their roll-out, A.T.C. finished instructions to the two who had just landed. "Both of you exit the runway to the left onto the grass, now, follow ground crew there to parking. Welcome to Oshkosh..."

Lourdes watched everything, making sure she knew what every airplane was doing so she could follow any instruction given.

"White and blue high wing— I want you to land short on the orange dot near the thousand foot markers."

Lourdes pulled on the rest of her flaps, turning her half-barn doors into huge-barn doors. The plane noticeably slowed some more. It was coming down.

"Okay— No. White and blue high wing, _don't land yet. Keep it up_. Keep it in the air. Keep it up—"

Lourdes couldn't see what the controller was telling her to avoid, but she had faith in him. He could see something she couldn't, or he was making room for someone behind her.

Her compliance was automatic. She applied full throttle. Her little engine fought her barn doors and struggled to maintain altitude, even climbing a little. She held her plane at about fifty feet above the runway.

"Okay," A.T.C. finally said over her radio. " _Now_ land, white and blue high wing. Land now. Right there."

Lourdes chopped her throttle and settled her plane down on the runway near the green dot half way down the runway, with barely a skip.

"Good job," A.T.C. said. "Turn left onto the grass and follow ground crew to parking. Welcome to Oshkosh."

Off the "active," Runway Two Seven, onto the grass approaching orange-vested ground controllers, Lourdes held up a piece of paper she'd prepared per NOTAM displaying her aircraft's year of manufacture—1964—and three large letters, "V.A.C," meaning Vintage Aircraft Camping. Ground control personnel marshaled her to turn left then right down various taxiways to the South Forty. She taxied by thousands of aircraft, by row after row of warbirds, then homebuilts, then past Show Central, to Vintage.

Jim and Mike had just ridden their scooters back to the area near the Vintage operation's shack, when Mike called out, " _Lady pilot_ — Aiiieee, no! I can't do it, Bub! She's got to be yours. I've got Millie nowadays. Still making the switch after all these years," he said as if to apologize.

"She's Hotel Sierra," Jim said.

"I noticed a hole over there on Row 63 by Theatre in the Woods. Great location!" Mike said.

"Thanks," Jim said to Mike, and raced to intercept the little white and blue Cessna.

Lourdes saw a biker, wearing an orange vest, take a position in front of her left wing tip, out of the way of the propeller, tapping on his head with his left hand for "Follow Me."

Lourdes nodded and followed.

The Vintage biker exited the taxiway onto a path, and Lourdes followed, noting how unusual it was for her plane to subtly waddle during taxi on grass. Four-wheeling with three wheels. She added a little extra throttle as needed now and then to compensate for the additional drag on her wheels.

The biker led her between rows of planes, past a little shack. Two crossing guards held the crowd back as the biker lead her across a small hard-top road, then onto more grass to a field full of antiques and classics.

It was a little tight between two rows of parked planes. Her biker slowed through that area, then he raced ahead to a parking spot on the right and got off his bike to marshal her into position.

As tired as she was, Lourdes watched closely, careful not to mess up.

Another biker in an orange vest arrived and dismounted, stood at the wingtip of the plane camping on the right.

Her Follow-Me man, who seemed to be in charge of her, held his arms high in the air and bent them at the elbow, moving his palms toward his face over and over, meaning come forward.

Lourdes did.

The man moved to the side, out of the way of the propeller, then held his right hand straight out and down, moving only his left hand toward his face, meaning she should turn left a little.

Lourdes did.

Then the man waved both arms to come straight forward... A little more...

Lourdes was very careful. The man was standing offset to her left, where she'd think he should be, but she didn't want any mistake with her swinging propeller.

The man slowly crossed both his arms in front of his head signaling her to stop all forward motion—Lourdes applied her brakes, throttled back—then the man drew his hand across his neck telling her to stop her engine. Lourdes pulled her mixture control out, cutting off the fuel.

Her engine died. Her propeller swung to a stop, and all was quiet.

She slowly removed her headphones.

Her marshaller came around to the pilot's side of the airplane, ducked under her wing with a big welcoming smile on his face, as he did for everyone, and said, "Welcome to Osh—"

Lourdes buried her face in her hands and cried.

CHAPTER 5

Jim stared at the lady crying in the cockpit.

Tall and skinny Mike came around to the pilot's side of the plane with a large smile, stooped to go under the wing, and stopped when he also saw the lady inside. "They don't react that way to me," he said to Jim. "Love me, they do. But you? The Terminator. Linda Hamilton, poor thing. Two seconds, she's been here, you got her crying like a baby—"

Jim objected. "I didn't do anything!"

Mike smiled sarcastically, pointing to the lady inside. "You break her, you buy her," Mike said, throwing up his hands, stepping out from under the wing.

Jim looked back at the lady inside who seemed to withdraw.

"You know what, Mike, I'll take it from here. I've volunteered enough for one day, anyway." He took his orange safety vest off and handed it to Mike to take back to the Ops Shack, looked back at the lady inside.

Mike took the vest and a smile grew on his face. "Okay! Right. I see. Okay then," he said, very British. "I'll just work over here," he motioned with his hands the entire South Forty, "while you do your angel routine all over there," he said, motioning with his hands to indicate most of the airshow area. "I'm sure you'll do fine. And I'm here to help, even though I'm with Millie now. You know: girlfriend? The idea of a lady-friend who is a _good friend_ , you know? So I'm off the market, as it were."

Another biker rode past them on row sixty-four, one row south of where they were. "Hey, you guys! I heard we have some Piper Cubs coming in soon. They're 'parking,'" as in not camping with their planes, "in their special group area over there," he pointed.

Jim waved at him with a distracted smile.

Mike ran interference for his friend. "I'll get it," he said. "Jim's gonna help this lady here for a bit. You can have someone come get his bike, now. He's done with it."

The supervisor nodded and spoke on his radio, drove off.

Mike gave Jim a knowing smile and drove back to the Ops Shack on his bike, leaving the area quiet.

Lourdes could hear all the talking outside her door, but finished her cry without paying attention.

She knew where she was, but, really: _where was she_? Now what was she going to do?

She jumped when she noticed a man standing outside her door on the left side, stooping slightly under her wing, looking in at her. She began wiping her tears with the sleeves on her shirt. It wasn't very ladylike. She was embarrassed and tried to recover. How much had he seen? How long had he been there?

She looked in her flight bag in the passenger seat for some tissue, found none, looked back at the man and tried to smile.

"Oh," Jim said. "Hard flight, huh? May I?" He asked as he opened her door to help her out. "Sometimes the the weather, and days of travel—and then the complex NOTAM here, can be really emotional when you get here."

He helped her out of the plane—not because she needed it, but because he wanted to.

"You'd be surprised how many times I park pilots who actually get out of the plane and kiss the ground they're so happy to have finally made it."

Lourdes stood under the left wing of her plane—without stooping, because she was shorter—and looked up at her gentle wanna-be angel.

"Me, I just want to hug the grass, I love it so much," Jim said.

"Where am I?" Lourdes asked.

"Oshkosh, Wisconsin."

Lourdes walked out from under the wing to distance herself from him and look at her intended camp sight.

"I mean, this is camping, right? I can pitch a tent?"

"Yes, it is. And I can help."

"No, no. I can do it." She went back into her cargo bay and pulled out the lightweight tent she used up at Columbia, California for days-off camping getaways.

When she pulled the tent out of her cargo bay, the bag came open. Thin, steel stakes rained out on the grass by the left main wheel.

She bent over to pick them up and fell backwards over the wheel, landing less than gracefully. "Aiieeee!" She started to get up, but he stopped her.

"It's the fatigue," he said. "But you know, it's such a lovely lawn, here, the shade under the wing is cool, and the view is so great. Why don't we rest a second. I'd enjoy it. I've been working pretty hard, too." He sat on the grass near her and lay back to stare at the underside of her wing, surrounded by blue sky.

"Tell you what: If you'll let me rest for a second, I'll help you get that tent up in short order. You got any tie downs?"

She looked at him.

"Ropes? To tie the wings down. Stakes for it? Wind's nice now, but just in case the wind blows.

"Oh," she said again.

"None?"

She shook her head. Lourdes didn't carry stakes, normally.

"Well, then I think I can rustle up some. We have some over in the Ops Shack. Someone else took off and left them behind. I could go get 'em. I bet they'll be glad to find a new home."

Lourdes jumped at the word "home" and started to tear again, struggled to avoid breaking out into a cry.

Jim's face showed concern. "Don't worry," he said calmly. "It's okay. It'll be alright."

Another Vintage volunteer showed up on foot.

Jim saw him. "Hey, Dave?"

"Hi, Jim."

"Here to get the bike?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Key's in it. I never take it out—and hey, you know where those extra stakes are on the shelf by the cooler?"

Lourdes lay back on the grass, giving up.

"Right there against the east wall, yeah. At least they were there an hour ago," Dave said.

"Can you bring them here? Ropes and all?" Jim asked.

"Sure. You bet." Dave looked at them lying on the grass under her wing. "You're not going to work too hard now, are you?"

"Not if you'll bring a hammer too," Jim said with a smile. "This is supposed to be a vacation, you know?"

Dave rode off on his scooter and came back in short order with the equipment. Lourdes looked exhausted, so Jim let her lay there while he went to work staking the plane down—one under each wing tie and one under the tail.

He picked up Lourdes' tent and examined it.

"This is a good, lightweight tent for carrying in the plane, especially over long hauls, but I do think that here at Oshkosh, you might need a more rugged rain fly. Sometimes you get a real doozy of a rain, and if we do, that tent will flood in two minutes."

"Rain fly?" Lourdes said, barely awake.

"Yeah," Jim said as much to himself as to her. "The cover over the top."

He looked through her windows into her plane. Mostly original interior. Cosmetically challenged, but in good enough shape. Tablet on the right yoke. One bag in the right seat. A few assorted camping things in the back, sleeping bag. But little in the way of clothes and no food.

"Where do you think is a good place to put the tent?" he asked.

No answer.

"My thinking is: right here," he said. "Somewhat under the left wing, with the door flap facing the cockpit door?"

No answer.

"So that might be a good place to start. It's easy to move, if you decide to later."

There was still no answer from her, so he set about putting up her tent as well: simple rip-stop fabric design with thin fiberglass tubes for overhead sleeves. Stake the bottom down with her tiny factory-supplied stakes, pull up on top, insert fiberglass poles into stops, one at each corner... Though barely effective, he put her rain fly on top of it.

She was still lying under her wing.

"Oh, what time is it?" He made a show of checking his watch. "Whoa, it's nearly noon. Yup. I like to eat lunch nearly every day."

Lourdes started getting up, groaning a little at the effort.

"Hey, Ma'am. You know, this is Friday, and the airshow isn't officially open until Monday. Not much to eat around here today, so I'd like to go into town and have a nice meal at a restaurant."

No answer.

He looked around. "No one around to go with." He waited. "I don't mean to sound forward, but I'd be glad if you'd come along. And after we're done, we could go to Target and get some camping supplies. Bet you could use some."

Lourdes recovered some with her rest. "Oh, no you don't. I don't need some Matt Damon movie-star hunk look-alike smoothing me out for a fake date an hour after I get here. You probably pick up on women when they get here, talk slick and expect some special attention three days later—" She ran her hands through her hair.

"I'm not Matt Damon, or I don't have his millions, anyway."

"You have his looks."

"And you— You—" he stumbled. "You look like Joan Baez, a little."

Lourdes was stunned.

Jim continued, "I know you're what, maybe about my age? Fifties?"

Lourdes was offended.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Your private business. I'm just saying you look kinda like Joan Baez at that age, but with her hair when she was younger: long, dark, center part, with a bit of a turn to it. More recently, she has the short-cropped hair, and I just meant— And you have a Mediterranean look to you. I guess."

"My family's from Mexico."

"Oh, my family's from Wichita," He smiled at her again, which felt disarming to Lourdes.

"I'm not doing a fast pickup on you. Cute little thing needs help? No factor! Just one pilot to another here early for the biggest airshow of its kind on earth. You don't know me, but everybody knows I volunteer here, and they know I've been helping you, and this place is about the safest on earth, so how bad does it sound?

"We can ask Millie to join us."

Lourdes looked at him.

"Mike's girlfriend. The guy who was just here?"

No recognition from Lourdes.

"We do have to eat, and it is Friday, so—really—Matt Damon or no, I think we need to go into town and have a bite. I bet your stomach agrees? And it just so happens I have access to a car. It's Mike's." He dug into his pocket and brought out some keys, big smile confirming.

Lourdes didn't have the will to fight him.

They walked northwest across her camping field through antique biplanes, over a small, wooden pedestrian bridge, and through an area of hundred-foot tall aged oaks.

It was one of the most beautiful places Lourdes had ever seen.

He showed her some sights along the way while they talked.

"This outdoor stage over here, with that huge, steel awning, is the Theatre in the Woods. After you walk five miles a day trying to see everything, it's a great place to sit with a few thousand others and watch whatever they have going on: awards, presentations, musical groups, whatever—especially if it rains of an evening. Very nice."

"Lovely," she said. "So what is your name?"

"Matt Damon."

"Not for real."

"No really! I've been him for ten minutes now."

She gave him a look like _Don't mess with me_.

"Ok," he held up his hands defensively. "My name's Jim Boone. It's on my volunteer name tag, see here?" It was clipped to his shirt. He showed her. "No relation to Daniel or Pat. That I know of."

"What do you do, Jim?"

"Oh, I'm wholesome and safe as the git-go: I run a cute little farm with a cute little white house, some roses, a red barn, fields of waving crops—"

"Picket Fence?"

"Yes, actually, and a kitchen that smells like cup cakes, often as not."

She stopped, hands on hips and glared at him.

"Ok. I'm an international jewel thief."

Lourdes rolled her eyes and turned to continue their walk west across a road into an area of motor homes.

"This is Camp Scholler. Mike—you remember that guy who also helped you park? Guy on a bike but not Dave? Millie's boyfriend?"

"No."

"You don't know her any better than you don't know him?" he asked.

Lourdes gave him a sour look.

"Well, Mike is building an RV-9A, not ready yet, so he drives up here in his motorhome with his girlfriend, Millie—and they tow his car. That's what these keys are for."

"He doesn't mind?"

"No. Its okay. We're thick as thieves."

"He's a jewel thief, also?"

"No. He's InterPol."

"Really?"

"No. But he is building his RV in my shed, so it's all very kosher. And—?" He looked at her, eyebrows raised. "So what's your name?" he asked.

"Lourdes Aida Luz Camila Montoya Delgado Rodriguez—del Aviles."

"Really?" he asked her.

"No."

He took his lumps and walked on with her.

"What was the first one?"

"Lourdes."

"Is that one real?"

"Yes."

"Lourdes." He smiled. "What a beautiful name! Religious, even."

"I'm not religious."

"That's okay. Not required in the Pilot Operating Handbook."

"And I really am Jim."

"The thief."

"Jewel thief, actually, Madam. The distinction is hardly academic. No, actually I pulled your leg a tiny bit on that. Really, I'm the one who is InterPol, and Mike fences stolen property."

"You're an angel, I can tell, because you're helping me."

Jim nodded acceptance.

"But you're neither police nor thief."

"True. Not any more. Or not very good ones, anyway. Here it is," he showed her. "That motorhome there, the short one, is Millie's. And there's Millie, right by the charbroiler tending to her Maltese. The dog's name is Li'l Missie. They're both from Greenhills, Missouri. Prettiest little town you never saw."

"That's where you're from?"

"Not any more. Now I do all my work out of Paris. Got the idea from the 'Bourne Identity' when I saw Matt Damon had his apartment there."

"And he picked up the girl and had his way with her," she said.

" _She_ was helping _him_ , actually, and she decided she liked him—"

"And then she got killed at the beginning of the second movie—"

"But Bourne avenged her handsomely," he said, finger in the air to mark a point. "You know, that's part of the life of a secret agent— Assassin," he corrected. "Don't upset the world-class assassin: an axiom. Just like don't steal the sheriff's car. Those other guys should have read the script."

She started to ask him about all the movies, but he answered before she asked. "It was Mike who got us into all the movies. It wasn't really, but I blame it on him. The guy's an artist, so, really, you can hit him with anything."

Millie, a thin, medium-height, brunette, noticed them, picked up Missie and walked over to meet them. Millie scanned them both—walking together, a forgotten smile on Jim's face—and she probed deeply into Jim's eyes. A big smile grew on her face.

"Jiiiiiim," Millie said. "Hi! Who is this?" Her gaze switched to Lourdes.

"I don't know. I was just down the street robing a bank, when she showed up and started talking. And I realized I needed a getaway car, so I came for Mike's."

Millie looked more deeply into Jim's eyes, and, as if it were possible, her smile grew warmer.

"Hello—" Millie said to Lourdes.

"Lourdes," Lourdes said.

"Mexican-American?"

"Just American. But of Mexican decent, yes."

Millie extended her hand and they shook. "My family immigrated from Poland, a hundred years ago." Then Millie took Lourdes into her arms for a big three-way hug with Missie that held more message than Lourdes could immediately discern.

"Lourdes. I'm so glad to meet you," Millie said. "Would you two like to stay a while? Have some refreshments?"

Lourdes reached over to pet Missie.

"We'd love to," Jim said, "but I really feel the need for a sit-down lunch. We're going into the steak house, then over to Target. Wanna come? You need anything?"

"No, we're fine here."

Lourdes looked at both Jim and Millie. There seemed to be some communication Lourdes was missing, but she knew neither of them.

"Okay. Then we'll leave." Jim started to back away a bit.

Millie embraced him and hugged him, too.

"Uh, you okay, Millie?" Jim asked.

"Just thankful, she said.

Jim let her have her hug, then removed her arms from his neck.

As they walked toward the car, Millie called after them. "Lourdes, you know where we're camped, now. So please come back. This is your home away from the plane on the field. Okay? See you two later."

Jim opened the door of a light blue Prius. Lourdes went around to the other side, getting in.

"What am I missing between you two?" Lourdes asked.

Jim put his foot on the brake and pushed the "On" button, set the ambient temperature to seventy-two.

"Uh," Jim paused a second. "I think she's surprised to see me with a girl."

"You're gay?"

Jim chuckled. "No. But I haven't been getting around much for a few years. So lets go have a bite and get caught up. Okay? Haven't seen you in fifty years."

"Fifty-two."

"Fifty-five for me. So far. So I have a lot to learn." He pulled the car out and headed west up the small road.

"Now, see that big red barn there?"

"Yours?" she asked.

"No. It's the Barn Store, where you can get all kinds of food and camping supplies." He followed the road around to the right. "And see that shorter building beside the Barn Store? It's the Volunteer Cafeteria. We show up early and volunteer, and they feed us three squares a day."

CHAPTER 6

Wittman Regional was, literally, right across the freeway, so their drive into town was brief—for which Lourdes was thankful, as it seemed Jim was trying to be charming, and she didn't yet grok his sense of humor.

They walked into a steak house and sat down at a nice table. The air conditioning and deferential manner of the staff were most welcome.

Lourdes was beat, more than she'd have wanted to admit. It felt nice to be in such civilized surroundings and be waited on.

"Jim! How are you," the server said in a thick northern accent, as she approached the table. "Where's the rest of the crew."

"Hello Fran! Day off. But I brought a trainee, here," he said, indicating Lourdes.

"Okay, then. That sounds good," Fran said, rounding her Os, straight out of the movie 'Fargo.' "We'll show her some basic kindness, and maybe she'll come back. So you know the menu, Jim. What'll you have?"

"For me, one Porterhouse, medium rare, and mashed potatoes, please," Jim told her.

Fran moved to write it down.

"And," he continued, "she'll have a little bowl of soup and a napkin."

Lourdes rose to his challenge, telling the waitress, "He'll have a vat of Tobasco with a little dish of butter sauce," Lourdes said, "and I'll have the salmon with mashed potatoes."

"No, I'll have the Porterhouse, and—do you have a glass of water for her to put her dentures in? She'll have little dish of tapioca and a glass of skim milk." Then to Lourdes, "Remember what the doctor said, Dear."

"Ignore him, Fran. He's been off his medicine for three weeks, so this is to be expected."

Fran laughed at the exchange.

"Not to worry," Lourdes said. "He's not violent. But he isn't supposed to eat meat, so, really, he'll just have mixed vegetables with some bread."

"Why don't I bring you both some canned spaghetti while you fight it out?"

"Actually, I like the canned spaghetti," Jim said.

"Me, too," Lourdes gave the server a cute smile that was meant to irritate Jim. "Separate checks."

"No, one check is okay," Jim said to Fran, then to Lourdes, "I'll buy. You look terrible—"

Lourdes started to object.

"—Like you flew in from Hawaii or something."

"Separate," Lourdes told the server.

"Same," Jim told her.

"I'm gonna charge you both double," Fran said and walked away.

"So, 'Jim.' 'Boone.' Not related to Daniel or Pat?"

He shook his head no.

"You fly in? What kind of plane you have?" Lourdes asked. They were pilots. It was a natural question.

"You flew in from Alaska?" he asked.

"L.A. A few clicks shy of Alaska."

"Hollywood?"

"No. I'm a nurse—I mean, I'm a cardiac surgeon in Beverly Hills."

"Okay. Great. I'll keep that in mind. Would you come around in about forty years when I need you?"

"You're so tired because you flew in from Los Angeles? It is a long way."

"I'm tired for a lot of reasons."

He nodded. "Okay."

"So me, I flew in from Greenhills, Missouri—which is my domestic office, a home base for my art forgery business. You know, I've been to the Louvre in Paris, and I was inspired. When it picks up, I plan to move to Miami, where all the good forgers live."

Lourdes smiled, pretending to be gullible.

"Good," he said.

"You lying about flying, also?"

"My plane is an RV-6. Red. I tried not to paint it red, but that was the color paint I bought, and then when I sprayed it, it came out red."

"A red RV-6. I know there are RVs, but I don't know what's so good about them, or one from another."

He looked around as if embarrassed for her. "Shhhh. Don't let that get out. I'll help you. I'm the perfect person to tell you all about them, because I built my '6, and I've been devoted to them for years. It's quite an innovative design. We can go over to the Homebuilt area sometime, and I'll show you all about 'em. There are hundreds of 'em over there."

"How fast does it go?"

"Usually about 160 knots, 180 miles per hour or so. It depends on my mashed potato intake level. And it's a taildragger."

Lourdes had a question on her face.

"Because it doesn't' have an 'A' after it," he said. "An RV-7 would be a taildragger; an RV-7A would be a trike."

"What engine do you have in it?" she asked.

"Lycoming O-320."

"So you burn—"

"Uh, fuel."

Lourdes smiled at his humor.

Jim smiled at her smile.

"What do you have in your plane?" Jim asked.

"A Continental O-200. Hundred horse."

"That's a Cessna 152?"

"150," Lourdes corrected. "1964."

"Classic. You can land that anywhere. I have a grass strip at my place. Two thousand five hundred feet long. I keep the grass short."

"It's by your cupcakes and your art forgeries."

He nodded. "And my roses."

"So you _are_ gay?" she asked.

"Not hardly," he said, smiling at her.

"Right."

"So how did you get into flying?" he asked her. The question was asked more often of lady pilots than men. Women have always flown, since soon after the Wright Brothers, but they're fewer than men, so they're more of a curiosity.

Lourdes had been down this road before, but she was new to him, so she tried to answer genuinely. She thought back and tried to remember. "Well, no one in my family flew. It's just me, so— I think they switched me at the hospital. I think it's beautiful and graceful. But I think, on a deeper level, it's a free-spirited escape, a way to soar free and get out. I enjoy doing it, but mostly I enjoy how I feel when I fly: pure, I guess it is. Genuine. Real. Just me, doing a real thing, proving myself each and every time. I need the break, and when I'm up there, two miles high, soaring, I—"

She stopped abruptly.

Jim could see the pain that grew on her face. He waited a while to see if she wanted to continue.

She didn't.

Jim's tone turned to sincere comfort. "Life is hard," he finally said, summing up for her.

She looked at the napkin on her lap.

"You are much too good a person to have to carry all that," he said gently.

Lourdes started to tear again. "How would you know?"

"I can see it in you. There's no way I can know all you carry, but you've shown me something in myself, today, that I can relate to. Something about life and its quality that I didn't even realize until now."

"What?"

"I'll— I've been dark for a long time. Four years ago, my wife died. Breast cancer."

"I'm so sorry," Lourdes said, meaning it. "And here you are so happy, helping me."

"Yes—" Then he stopped. "May I share more of that later? Another time?"

Lourdes could see he wanted some space, also. "Sure," she said.

"So, what color is your plane," he said, then answering for himself. "Lourdes from L.A. White with blue!"

Then he thought to ask. "What is your last name for real?"

"Aviles."

"Lourdes Aviles." He seemed charmed.

"And I'm divorced because he left me, a million years ago."

"Because you had an affair with—?" he asked.

"Ben Affleck," she said. "I wish. No. It was just us. He didn't want me any more."

"There's no way that will feel good. That alone, regardless of anything else, is a heavy load."

"Right."

He picked up his water glass, as did she, and they clinked them together as if they were wine and drank.

"I don't need to guess," Jim said. "He wasn't a pilot."

"No."

"Figures. You may have loved him, but he couldn't have been too bright, if he left you."

"You mind if we save that one for another day, too?" Lourdes asked.

"Sure. And I'll be happy there is another day." He smiled yet again.

_Not me,_ Lourdes thought.

They chatted about general aviation and the upcoming airshow. It was a week long event, beginning Monday and going through the following Sunday, with a major air show every afternoon and zillions of pilots and vendors, twenty thousand planes on the field stretching for miles, hundreds of thousands of spectators over the week, manufacturers displaying new and existing models... He made it clear to her there was no way she'd be able to see it all in one year, and she'd likely wear herself out trying.

He excused himself to go to the head, returning a couple of minutes later.

Fran brought their food: a porterhouse steak for Jim, medium rare, potatoes; and salmon and potatoes for Lourdes. No checks.

"No checks?" Lourdes asked.

"No," the server answered with an inadvertent glance at Jim. "It's on the house."

Lourdes shook her head. "Please say thanks to whatever nerf herder paid you, and tell him if he does it again, he'll lose his turn."

"Nerf herder?" he asked in astonishment.

"He's fake," Lourdes told Fran, "He prints all his money in the basement."

"Barn," Jim corrected.

Fran smiled and set two glasses of a house rosé on the table, which called for a real toast between Lourdes and Jim.

Acting regal, Jim spoke as if addressing an audience: "May your days be filled with laughter. May your plane fly well. May the weather be fair ahead. And may you be in heaven thirty minutes before the Devil knows you're dead."

Lourdes laughed, and they took a liberal drink.

Jim confessed. "I stole part of that from the Irish."

"I know."

"Because we're drinking. Wine."

"The last part."

"Yeah."

"You're mental."

"I'm somethin'."

"You're somethin' else," she smiled.

"And so are you," he said with yet another smile to her smile.

CHAPTER 7

Two pilots talking planes: that is a cliquish conversation. Two pilots shopping for camping supplies at Oshkosh: that is a specialty.

"The trick," Jim said to Lourdes while they wondered the aisles at Target, is to get the right size tarp for the weather we think we might have. For your size tent—about six feet square and four feet high? I'm guessing a tarp about 12 by 15 or so, something in that range, would work well."

"Okay."

"I don't want to pontificate to you," he said, as if asking for permission to rattle on, "but this is a talent of mine."

"It's okay. You have the car keys, and I don't want to walk two miles back to base."

"No problem. You see, if you drape a tarp over your tent and stake it to the ground on three sides, except the door-flap side? Then it'll protect you from the rain, even when it's heavy, but your tent will get hot, and then you'll sleep hot, and that's no fun. So, you get one that's a tad larger, stake it down on one side, only, to the ground—like the north side maybe—and then on the other two non-door sides, you set the stakes farther out with rope holding the tarp—so you can get a cross-breeze through there to keep it cooler."

Lourdes thought he was putting too much into this, but let him drone on. It seemed to make him happy.

Shopping, they wound up buying soap, toothpaste, large plastic tent stakes, a 15 x 15 tarp, some clothes—because she brought so little—some plastic bags to hold dirty clothes, batteries, several snack bars, and a few other things to make her more comfortable.

They dropped Mike's car off at their motor home in Camp Scholler and walked back to her plane. In no time, he had her tent properly covered.

"It might be overkill, but it should keep you dry if needed," he said.

Lourdes saw him turn to look at her, but she was feeling a little overwhelmed at all his attention.

"So, listen, you need to register your plane at the registration shack over there," he pointed. "Pay for camping and also get a wrist band to come and go from the airshow."

"Okay. I will."

"You put their little stickers on the panel in the plane and one on your tent. Then that's it: you're here."

Lourdes turned away from him to look at her camp. It was fine. He'd done a good job.

"Jim, I do appreciate all you're doing for me, but I—"

"I think maybe a lot has happened, and you'd like some time to yourself for a while? To catch up with it all?"

Lourdes was relieved. "Yes."

Mike showed up on his bike again, followed by someone else on another bike.

"Hello all. Did you get all your bits over at Target? Millie told me you were going. I was hoping for a little present, myself, like a color TV or some gold bars."

"That's okay," Jim said to Lourdes, ignoring Mike. "I like solace, too, sometimes. It's a big place."

Mike held back.

Jim continued to Lourdes. "So when you're out walking around, today, Show Center is up that way north of us, the flight line is all along that east side. Then there's massive areas of production planes being parked, then homebuilts for camping and parking, where mine is, and warbirds. It's a nice area, very civilized. The North Forty is all the way up there along Runway Two Seven, like down here but where they park newer spam cans, and they 'T' some of them, so you'll know."

Lourdes said nothing, withdrawing.

"Okay. So it was a pleasure meeting you," Jim said with a sad smile.

"Yes," Lourdes barely spoke.

"So I hope I can see you tomorrow? Around."

"Yeah, that would be fine." Lourdes tone was distant and fading.

"Okay. See you then."

Lourdes walked slowly off in the direction of the registration shack and disappeared behind a Piper Pacer.

"Cliché time?" Mike asked.

"No, No. It's okay," Jim said.

The other biker said nothing.

Jim looked after her. She reappeared again around a Stinson, and he smiled to himself.

"Oh, Bobby. Lookie that," Mike said in a fake Irish accent to his riding mate. "Ole Jimmy's got the bug."

Mike hopped off his bike and gave Jim a big hug. "Millie told me, but I didn't think I should believe it. But you have, haven't you? You've been bitten!"

Mike started dancing a little Irish jig while holding onto Jim's shoulders.

Jim smiled at the loon and looked a little embarrassed.

"I don't know. We've only just met."

"I know, but you're a man who knows his ways. You know your own mind, and if you know, then you know."

The only person Lourdes had ever been able to trust was herself, and now, with this latest fiasco, she wasn't sure she could even do that. The enormity of her recent actions weighed on her. Her perceptual field varied. Her hearing faded. She could see what was going on around her, but her willingness to pay any attention waned.

With great effort, regretting her actions as she did them, yet not knowing how to avoid them, she registered at the shack, put the stickers on her plane and tent, and then wandered out, alone, toward the flight line.

There were planes parked and camped as far as the eye could see both to the north and the south and seemingly lawns farther than that. Taxiway Poppa stretched north and south right through those lawns, with Runway One Eight/Three Six just beyond to the east. Planes were landing constantly, then taxying up or down Poppa, directed by ground crew.

She went up to the "burn line" that ran north and south along Taxiway Poppa—the limit line drawn in the grass beyond which pedestrians should not go—and looked carefully. Everywhere she looked, to the north and south, there were planes and grass, and the occasional shack for some kind of operation. Bikers were riding around with planes in tow. She could hear the occasional something-other engine—like a car, or a John Deere "Gator," or a scooter—but it was mostly aircraft on grass. Thousands of them of all kinds: Pietenpol, Cub, Travel Air, Fleet, Stinson, Pacer, C-120, Waco, Stearman, Grumman...

People were smiling, happy, sometimes laughing.

She didn't see any disgust with wall-to-wall concrete.

There didn't seem to be any pain over impossible life choices.

At that time, middle of the afternoon on Friday, with thousands of planes coming in for the upcoming show, the sound of airplane engines was constant. Yet it wasn't noise to her. It was more like the rustle of a crowd at a major sporting event, before the game.

The biggest airshow in the U.S. was getting ready to start, and this year, for the first time, she'd be a part of it, if only as a camper, a pilot who flew in, which—

She thought to herself.

— _was the heart of the show_.

Lourdes felt her life was so empty, _without_ much of any real validation for anything in herself, she needed to jump to accept anything she could get. Being part of the real heart of the airshow felt, to her, like a tiny bit of validation for _something,_ at least, at that time of her life: however small, it was something real.

For one of the few times in her life, Lourdes didn't feel like a fifth wheel, out of place, a pretender trying to fit in.

Maybe that guy Jim had something to do with it. Or Mike. Or Millie, or Fran.

Or maybe it was the flying, for no matter what else she was in life, or feared she wasn't: Lourdes was a real pilot.

A Cub taxied by her, south on Poppa, presumably toward a tie-down for static display.

She caught herself thinking she was real—something she'd learned usually led to disappointment—and turned away to wander back northwest toward Show Center.

_What was that?_ She wondered about her thoughts.

She'd been dumping on herself for so long she didn't know how to stop. Her brain patterns had formed around it. But what else could she do? She felt like nothing, any more in life. Yet she surely was something. She needed to be something else, but biology— Neural limits made that impossible in some key ways that mattered to her.

Yet she had to survive, somehow, to find a way to make it through life and fit in, in some way, to try to find happiness as much as she could and minimize the pain. Transitional newbies had a less pessimistic outlook? But she'd been in this for thirty-five years, and decades of constant games from people—or the never-ending games that rocked her life at random intervals—left her seeing problems, she felt, that most others seemed to miss.

She was the weary, wary warrior who had somehow survived countless unpredictable dangers—yet who wasn't always in danger. She was hyper-aware of way too much.

A problem with denial, she didn't have. If she compared herself some of those telepathic characters on Star Trek, hers wasn't a mind that was isolated unto itself, thinking only whatever it thought, oblivious to what others were really thinking; hers was the mind of, as it were, a telepath who knew so much of what was going on, that she had trouble shutting it out. What other people felt about her drove her crazy—partly because it agreed with what she felt about herself—and if she didn't learn to shut some of it out, including her own feelings, it'd drive her crazy.

Because she was what she really was.

And the world was what it really was.

Maybe she should fly away to a desert isle somewhere? Land on the beach. Even if she died in fewer years than otherwise, she could live in peace with herself for a while?

No, she corrected. She'd allowed herself to brainstorm, looking for ideas, but the desert isle thing wouldn't work, either. Because _she'd_ be there—with herself—on that desert isle. The problem was inside her, and she couldn't shut it out or leave it behind. Denial was not her problem. Handling the onslaught of awareness was her problem.

Her "social fraud" sensor was highly attuned, maybe even overactive. Yet, around Jim and his friends, she sensed only genuineness.

No, she reminded herself. She couldn't tell so well any more.

So she chose to endure. Even at Oshkosh, endure. Face each day, live, get through it, do her best, survive, and find a way to enjoy something now and then to make it worth while.

She cried for a half second before her automatic shut-off kicked in and stifled it.

_Live_ , she thought.

Be here.

She wandered over through Show Center. It wasn't parked yet with gigantic static display aircraft. It would, she speculated, be filled with some notables or very large aircraft for central display during the show. But it was only Friday so far.

She noted there was a stage being erected in the northwest corner of Show Center, but didn't think to wonder who was going to play. Some kind of concert, maybe.

Commercial tents were being erected everywhere. People bustled about getting ready for the show, three days hence.

Moving to the north, she found a large clothing reatail store, but it wasn't open yet. Little was, at that point.

Her wandering was aimless, angling back toward the northeast, until she fond herself in front of a large brown arch. It looked like it may have been a gateway to the flight line years ago, before the airshow grew larger. It had very nice stone work, and a path under it, with hundreds of square tiles in the path for people to commemorate sentiments.

She sat cross-legged on them to rest and read: Honor this person, remember that person...

These people had real lives.

They had no idea.

Another tear stifled.

She felt so badly. It never seemed to end. Every moment of every day—

She got up to leave again.

Ice cream cones, the sign said, just north. But they weren't open yet, either.

She was on a hard deck, a tarmac path, more than a road, that wound north. The flight line with row after row of homebuilts on display was on the right, her east side, and small buildings for show-related things were on her left.

Then the buildings stopped, and she was presented with wide-open acreage, again, filled with commercial tents and factory or experimental airplanes on display, being organized for the show. All kinds: Kitfox, Sonex—and RV.

Jim had mentioned he built one of those. She went over to take a look.

They were clean, simple designs. Low wing. She'd heard they were fast for the horse power, and heard that RV was a good company, but she didn't know that much about them.

Her Cessna flew.

Lourdes was thankful she had anything at all and prayed to a nameless god she'd always be able to fly. Without that, she feared, she'd have nothing to look forward to in life.

And then she found the homebuilt parking and camping area, filling with hundreds of RVs.

"Goodness night sakes!" she caught herself saying out loud.

It looked like the RV camping area, but it was really for any homebuilt. It's just that most of them happened to be RVs.

She couldn't tell one kind from another, though it was clear some were taildraggers and some were tricycle gear. Some were painted in loud color schemes, some conservative. Some were painted as P-51s or warbirds. And one was airbrushed in the most beautiful blues and greens, with teeth on the cowl, feathers on the wings, and claws on the horizontal stabilizer. She stood and stared at it for a long time. It was gorgeous, the most beautiful paint job she'd ever seen.

"It's an ikran," Jim said, walking up to her from behind.

Lourdes jumped. "Are you stalking me?"

"No! My plane is right over there. I saw you walk up, so I'm saying 'Hi," again. Maybe you're stalking me? Because I told you I was here."

"Touché," Lourdes said.

"That's an RV-3," Jim said.

She looked at him unclear.

"See? It has 'cheeks.' Those bulges on the sides of the engine cowl? They go around the cylinder heads. And it's a single-seater. RV-3. It's painted like an ikran. Remember those flying creatures in 'Avatar'?"

"Oh, my goodness, it is!" Lourdes was astonished. "It's _beautiful_." She wanted to stare at it a long time.

"Yes." He stared with her. "Makes me envious every time I look at it, but if it were me, I'd have painted it like the big red one Toruk Makto rode near the end."

"That was a great movie. It clearly should have won the Oscar for Beast Picture of the Year, and it missed. Unfair. Political choices, not artistic. But it was truly great. One of my favorite of all time."

"You actually like movies?" he asked.

"Yes. I guess it's another escape for me. But I do enjoy them. And reading books. And playing some games, sometimes."

They sat on the lawn near the ikran and rested where they could stare at it.

"Games?" he asked.

She was a little embarrassed to admit it, but she said, "Star Wars, The Old Republic. It's an MMORPG online—"

Jim laughed. "Wow! I know _exactly_ what that is. I'm a Jedi Knight in there, a Sentinel, running around saving people and fighting Sith Lords. Melee Damage Per Second. D.P.S. Like Luke Skywalker."

Lourdes was surprised and happy with that.

"What are you?" Jim asked.

"Well, I have a few—"

"Don't we all."

"But my main one is a Jedi Sage. I'm not into melee fighting—too athletic for me. I'm more at ranged Force and D.P.S., but I'm a healer—"

"A _healer_?" Jim laid his head back and laughed a good long time, until he could talk again. "We always need healers! You know Mike? He's a Sith."

Lourdes laughed.

"Yeah! He runs around and does his evil laugh at people: 'Muahahaha.'"

"Playful crazy?" Lourdes asked.

"Right! That's the truth."

"Right now, I'm on Tatooine with a smuggler I'm working on," Lourdes said. "Normally, I just work the Black Hole on Corellia with my Sage healer, but I'm tripping. I'm not normally a desert-dweller, but I enjoyed being able to see a long way, so—"

"So your Jedi Sage is level fifty?" he asked.

"Yes," Lourdes said.

"Me, too. Right now, I'm on my ship organizing some of my stuff."

"Same ship my Sage has," she said.

"Yup. Same design. Mike got me into the game, but then he's responsible for getting me to do a lot of things. Helps get me out, adds color to my life."

"He's your best friend?"

"Yes, I guess he is. And a fine one, too."

"How long have you known him?"

"Uh, maybe eight years or so. He lives over in Kansas City. I go there sometimes, but he's been coming to Greenhills, also, more and more over the years because he's dating Millie there."

"And you're really from there."

"It's my cover. I'm an international arms dealer, trying to appear as a small-time farmer on the west side of town."

She laughed.

"But it's not what it seems. I'm the local chief of SPECTRE We fight the SITH, relentlessly. The Society for Intentional Tricks and Hate, I think it is, or ought to be."

She laughed at him again.

"The hidden compound underneath the town is larger than the actual farm up above. James Bond would love to blow it up."

"You're mixing your movies, I think."

"Yeah, but they're really just documentaries about part of my life." He said with a smile.

"Come on. I'll show you my plane. It's right over there."

They got up and walked back a few rows to the west, when they came on a beautiful, red RV-6 with a tent behind the left wing, covered in a tarp exactly like Lourdes'.

"Tent looks familiar."

"It should."

"And that plane is gorgeous. Black and white checkerboard racing stripes across the cowl and up the fin. Yellow points. It's hot. It looks like a NASCAR plane."

"That's right. Flies like one, too."

"That's your get-away machine?"

"Yup," he said. "She flies up-side-down and down-side-up—most anyway you want, so long as you don't leave it in the hangar."

"And you built it?"

"Every rivet, yes." He was pleased with it, she could tell.

"What distinguishes it as an RV-6?"

"Well, it's pretty similar to the RV-7—side-by-side seating, smooth cowl, no cheeks on the cowl—but the RV-7 has a slightly larger fin, and I think there's a little different angle across the top of the fin on the 6. There are some internal differences, but on appearance, they're kind of like fraternal twins. It's hard to tell 'em apart. For most folks."

"Low wings."

"All RVs are low-wing, unless they're upside down."

"Go ahead. Sit in it." He reached over and slid the canopy back. "Step up on the wing there, step into the seat, and then sit down."

She did, and admired the quality of his work. "You've really done a nice job here. This plane looks new. What year did you build it?"

"It's a 2000. But I take care of it."

"I can see you do."

She moved the stick back and forth, right and left. "Feels light."

"It is. It's connected by linkage, not cable, to the ailerons. It's something of a sports car of a plane, if you will. Like a light weight Corvette of a sort, if it were a car. Really an innovative design."

"You've got an inset in the panel here?"

"For my G.P.S."

"I don't have that. I'm using an iPad with Foreflight in it. It does well overall."

"That's actually better than my G.P.S., but when I built the thing, the iPad and Foreflight weren't available yet. Hadn't even been invented. But I could bring one, if I got around to it. I suppose a Jedi might."

"Yes," Lourdes said. "But a Jedi knight could reach out with the force and tell where to go without it."

"Outside of game, my spidey sense isn't that good. Maybe I will break down and get the iPad someday. But I'm not really happy with the cloud, information-sharing, that's on it. I prefer to keep my stuff private."

"I know what you mean there," Lourdes agreed.

She got out of his plane, careful not to touch his paint job while she did it.

"What's this plane right beside you?"

"That one is an RV-7A. It looks like my 6, but see the slightly larger fin? And it's a tricycle gear, so it's an A."

Lourdes noted that the 7A's vertical stabilizer, "fin," appeared to have a more squared-off angle to it, across the top.

"Mike is building a 9A, like that one over there." They walked northeast through the planes.

"I don't see any real difference."

"Well, it has a longer wing and is a little different overall. I think it's not supposed to be aerobatic. But it's supposed to be maximized for good cruising from A to B. All designs are compromises. Get something, lose something else, and that one's meant for comfortable cruising."

"Okay."

"This one over here's a 4. See the cheeks on the cowl? And the tandem two-seat?"

"The 3 is a single-seat with cheeks."

"Yes. And that one over there's an 8."

"It looks like the 4."

"Close. Tandem two-seater. But it's larger, and it has no cheeks on the cowl. See? Look close. I think the size matters to some folks who want the room."

"And the 4 has cheeks," Lourdes said.

"You're quick."

"Now the 12 is over here."

They walked farther to the northeast.

Lourdes looked at it and thought. "It's not an 'A'?" she asked.?

"No. Right. It's a trike, yet no A. This one's an exception. It's a 'Light Sport' RV, a faster build with those rivets, and it has the Rotax engine in it."

"I don't know much about Rotax engines," she said.

"Well, they've been earning their mark, and seem to be a very good engine—and they get better fuel economy than most any other. That's turning out to be a pretty smart airplane, and a lot of people are building them. I think they're the most popular kind of engine in a Light Sport."

"You don't need a medical to fly them," Lourdes mused.

"Right."

"And that's a good mark, too." Lourdes didn't like having to report her medical history to the FAA. It wasn't ill health; it was just private and not relevant.

"I agree completely. I think a lot of pilots agree."

Lourdes wondered if she could find herself owning a Light Sport. Relatively inexpensive fuel costs. No need to report private medical things to the FAA.

"How fast does it go?"

"I hear about 110 knots."

"That's like 126 miles per hour!"

"Oh my god! That's faster than my plane. Less gas— I am livid!" Really, she was enthused.

"Yeah, and lands slow, too, which makes it easy to put into short little fields. You can cross the country in that or land on grass trips, all with ease."

"Grass strips?" Lourdes looked at him suspiciously.

"Not if you don't want to," Jim said defensively.

"I'd like to sit in one of these 12s," Lourdes said.

"You can get a ride in one over at the RV tent, that-a-way. Go over there after they open on Monday and sign up for an appointment. Better make it early that day, though. They'll fill up quickly."

She made a mental note, took a good last look at the 12, and then proceeded more northeasterly.

"Are there heads over there?" she asked.

"Yeah. Over by Warbirds. Come on. Maybe we can find something to drink and go sit and watch planes come in."

Water bottles in hand, they sat under the large wing of a C-47—large, World War-II, twin-engine cargo plane, a taildragger—parked on the lawns of the warbird area, watching plane after plane coming in to land on Runway Two Seven.

Someone had his aviation radio going, so they could hear the tower.

"White high wing, land in the middle of the runway, on the green dot. Green dot. Great. White low wing, land on the orange dot, near the thousand foot markers. Good. That's it. When able, exit the runway to the left onto the grass and follow ground crew to parking. Welcome to Oshkosh."

"That approach is a gas," Lourdes said, chuckling to herself. "I think I was a zombie, and they talked me through it just fine."

"You can get fatigued on the flight here, especially if it's a long way."

"I've been a very long time getting here."

Jim let it lie.

"You're really from a small town?" she asked.

"Yes. But it's not a normal small town, I suppose. There is something special about the people there. You've already met three of them: Mike more or less, Millie, and me. I think the town is an artistic lot, as if they are a community of artists waiting to happen. They're cute like out of the most charming Don Knots movie you ever saw, but with the values of some cool place like Santa Barbara."

"You've been to Santa Barabara?"

"Yes. Lovely place. I enjoyed it a lot."

"When?"

"On a vacation, about three years ago, I guess. I rented a Harley in L.A. and went from Hollywood to San Francisco—I wanted to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on the bike—and then down to Las Vegas. It was a nice outing."

"And you like all that but you choose to live in a small town in Missouri?"

He looked at her and gave her a half smile in humor. "You're thinking old-style small towns? Well, not necessarily old style. There are still small towns that have simple, narrow values, where outsiders aren't welcome. But any more, I'm finding those kinds are growing less numerous."

"That one's a 7A, I think. See that?" Lourdes commented, looking at an RV on short final. "Looking at the angle on the top of the fin. I don't know if there really is a difference, but it looks like it to me."

"Yes, it looks like it could be. I hate to put money on those distinctions, half the time."

"And taxying by, over there, looks like a 4?" she asked. Cheeks, tandem 2-seater.

"Yes," he said, "So Nowadays, more smaller towns are like genteel farms. You know: those little 'farms' that look like farms but they're really just so you have room to keep some horses? You have the peace to be yourself, the freedom to walk down the street without a lot of crime, and you're still connected to the world. Narrow little old values have been slipping away with the internet, airlines, and cell phones. Everyone everywhere is connected, if they want to be—and more often even if they _don't_ want to be—and you can have packages shipped in a day, no matter where you are."

"I don't think I'd do well in small towns, myself," Lourdes told him. "I've lived in L.A. all my life, so I may not really know, but I've traveled, and whether small groups or small towns, my experience is that people get into my business, and then gossip starts. And I seem to naturally attract gossip, with some people specifically misrepresenting me and what I'm about. If I lived in a small town, they'd do that, and then I'd be stuck with them, facing them everyday."

"What you need is to be around people who can see your heart."

It sounded simple to Lourdes, when he said it that way.

"And all these little towns are different," he said. "Like men: Most men may not be right for you, but," he grinned, "hopefully one is."

Lourdes looked away. "That's an Albatross, there," she said looking up. "Look at that." She pointed to final for Runway Two Seven where a large flying boat with two radial engines was approaching, gear down.

"Beautiful," Jim said. "Doesn't Jimmy Buffet have one of those?"

"I think so, or he did. I don't know. There was one here, one year in Show Central that I thought was his."

The Albatross made a perfect touch-down on its wheels and exited onto a taxiway to go south on Poppa.

Deep droning radial engines sounded overhead. "Oh my God," Lourdes exclaimed looking up. "That's a B-29, like the Enola Gay—And that's a B-17 following it! Where are they going?"

"I don't know."

A fellow two seats over chimed in. "I heard they were giving rides out of Appleton, a little north of here."

"Oh, no! Oh, never mind," Lourdes said. "Probably too expensive."

"But they're beautiful to see," Jim agreed. "Here comes a Mooney on final."

"Followed by— A Lancair?" Lourdes guessed.

"Yup. Looks like it. And a _Swift_ after that. Is that a Swift?" He asked.

"Low wing, retractable gear— Yes, I think it is. This is like smorgasbord for airplanes around here," Lourdes said. She lay back on the grass to close her eyes, and so did he.

"Oh, this is nice," he said.

She rested.

"It must be hard, living in Los Angeles," he said, "Everyone is so busy, the place is so crowded."

Lourdes thought about it. "It is."

"It could be hard to get to know people in a city that big. I think it's easy for people to not really know you."

Lourdes thought about that, too. "True. But that can also be its greatest benefit, for me."

"You really a doctor?"

"No. Nurse."

"An R.N.?"

"Yes."

"What kind of place you work in?"

Lourdes didn't answer.

"How did you choose to fly here for vacation?"

Lourdes still didn't answer.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to pry. Me? I inherited the farm from my uncle. He always said the place was a goldmine, and I realized he was talking about the town. It's the people. They really are special."

"Do you have crops and a tractor and all that?"

"Yup. Corn and soybeans, one tractor, two plows, an actual red barn—not as big as the Barn Store on this site—an airplane hangar that's an add-on to the barn."

"I think that one's an RV-3, right?" Lourdes asked. "Cheeks. Single seat."

"Yes. I agree."

"And that one's likely another 8? Tandem two-seater, but with no Cheeks."

"You're getting good at this," he said. "You go to college to get your R.N?"

"Yes," she said. "U.C.L.A."

"Was it hard?" he asked.

"It took work."

"Me? I've had a lot of courses as I went along, both in Wichita and Kansas City. But I never got a degree. However, if I did, I'd have gone for physics."

Lourdes laughed. "That doesn't seem at all like you. You seem more like a humanistic sort of person, interested in people."

"I am, and that's why I like physics. Didn't you ever wonder what's going on in the universe? I know we're star dust, but look how amazing it is that we collected together in just this right spot where we can build planes like those," he indicated any number of them taxying by or landing, "fly them, and—even more amazing—sit here and contemplate it. You—" he touched her arm.

Sparks flew up her arm like a tesla coil. She froze, surprised by it.

"You and I, sitting here?" he said. "When I touch you? What's that about? I think the answer lies more in physics than any other science. You like physics?"

"Sure, but when I was in school, I avoided math whenever possible."

"You had math in nursing, surely," he said.

"Yes, but not like physics. But the funny thing is, I had the ability all along and didn't know it."

He smiled at her.

"I used to hear people in high school or college— I'd hear them say how those kinds of courses were hard, so I never took them. Believing what they said."

"And then you learned later you could have all along?" he asked.

"Yes. Because it turned out the reason those guys were saying those courses were so hard was because they weren't so smart."

"And you never thought you were that smart?"

"No," she answered, agreeing, looking at the grass, she turned to redirect the conversation back to flying.

"That one looks like a Grumman Yankee, a Lynx, I think," Lourdes said. "Flying an RV is like driving a sports car? Sporty? Quick to handle like a Yankee?"

"I've never flown a Yankee, but I think you're right. It's quick on the stick. You have to fly it."

"Takes a little skill?"

"You get used to it pretty quickly and have a lot of fun. Any Jedi could do it," he said, smiling at her again.

"I have a lot of time on my hands, alone," Lourdes shared. "And the game is just another way of getting out and interacting that, oddly, seems to me to be more real than my daily life has been for a long time."

"I know what you mean. And I've had a lot of lonely nights, myself, since Connie passed away four years ago."

"That was her name?"

"Yeah. Connie. She was a special person. I don't love easily, but when I do, I think I really do."

Lourdes started to speak, but Jim caught her drift.

"I mean," he corrected, "I love, really, everyone. But I don't love like that, easily. But sometimes it clicks with a person." He looked at her. "And then you know. And that's all there is."

"You're chasing me!" she said, almost offended.

"No! You're not running."

"You're hoping you can come on to me."

Jim smiled at the grass in front of him. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend you. It's just that I've been kinda happy today, ever since you got here."

"You're a farmer in the mid-west. In a small town, which makes it worse, but you also seem like an urbanite who goes to Kansas City, who likes Santa Barbara, who builds and flies planes, and who also plays Star Wars?" Lourdes seemed confused. "What are you?"

"I think I'm someone who loves the world and the people in it, with a curious mind that reaches out, but who happened by chance inheritance to discover the greatest little group of people there could possibly be who share the same interests as I do. And I don't know you that well, Hon, but I'm thinking you are one of those kinds of folks, too. I think you're just shell-shocked from too many years battling real life Sith out there in L.A."

"On Star Wars," Lourdes said, "wouldn't it be great if there were a place you go to inside the game that wasn't related to going on missions for the Jedi Counsel or something? You know, like just a county fair that you could enjoy spending time in to relax?"

"We have a town Harvest Festival every fall in Greenhills, after the crops come in. Usually in September or October. We have a small parade, that people from other towns come over to see. And it's almost Halloween, so we turn the school gym into a haunted house for a weekend. There is more pumpkin and apple pie than you can eat—which I personally think is best with real whipped cream on top.

"And we have some Wiccans in town who double the Harvest Festival as a Mabon Festival—the Autumnal Equinox, harvest and all that. I've been known to let them use the farm for rituals. And they have a Samhain circle they do on Halloween that is super cool. Really: the best way to spend Halloween. I've been. You ought to come."

"Now that's a plus," Lourdes said. "A small town with Wiccans in it." It was a sign of liberality and tolerance, to her.

"Oh? We also have athiests and Christians, Jews and Buddhists, and two Muslims—"

"Any gays?" she asked.

"A few."

"Republicans?"

"Yup," he said. "But we know who they are."

She giggled.

"Aliens from outer space?" she asked.

"Yes!" he said. "The mayor. We always knew there was something wrong with him."

Lourdes giggled at him again. "This place sounds a little too good to be true, and you know what they say about that."

"Yeah, but counter-inductively, sometimes what's outside your experience is different than you think. Actually, and to be fair, I think most small towns might come a little closer to your expectations. It's just that this one is, by happenstance, really cool. Of course, Uncle Tim was gay."

" _Your uncle who owned the farm was gay_? Gay guys can't own a farm in the Midwest," she teased.

"I know! It almost ripped the universe apart! There were some earthquakes— But he was and he did. And so was Rock Hudson, so if you can imagine him on a tractor—"

Lourdes melted a little at his attempt to make her laugh again.

"—wearing bib overalls, hollerin' in t' his lover that they's a fence down 'at needs fix'd."

"You are so fake! This town does not exist."

"Then I guess we don't have to pay taxes any more, and we should cancel the Festival. Come on," he said, "We've talked about this long enough. I'm here on vacation."

They got up and dusted off some of the grass. Jim spied a ripe stalk of grass, plucked it and put it in his mouth.

She angled south, toward an area of larger warbirds they hadn't seen yet.

"You have grass in your mouth," she said.

"This is the only way I do grass, yes. I wouldn't even smoke it if it was legal."

"Why not then?"

"Because it is supposed to be full of tar, and that's bad for your lungs—where a glass of wine is supposed to be good for you."

"You think drugs should be legal?" she asked.

"Some how, yes," he said. "Treated like alcohol is today I guess. Individual choice—" He turned to her. "They could tax it and balance the budget—

"And pay for universal health are," she said

"—instead of paying money to fight it," he said.

"I hate drugs, though," she said.

"Right. Me, too. But the way it is right now, kids can buy it on street corners from black market dudes who don't ask for I.D., and there is no quality control. People frying their brains thinking they're having fun!"

His disgust was apparent.

"It's a joke," she agreed.

Lourdes commented on the warbird in front of them as they walked. "Here's an A-36, like out of the movie 'Always'? I really liked that movie. Must cost a fortune to put fuel in it, though."

"Yeah. What? Maybe fifty gallons an hour in taxi," he guessed, "maybe two or three times that in cruise. I'm not really sure, but it's a lot. Your plane would easily beat it by that standard."

"Why are you chewing on that grass?" she asked.

"It's sweet. Ever tried it?"

"No."

"Well, lets see." He bent over to look at the grass as they walked. "The tricks to this trade? Find one that doesn't look like it's been walked on, or peed on, and pick a fresh, looking green one. They're the sweetest."

He found one, plucked it, then stripped the leaves off the lower end to reveal a round, fresh, green stalk.

"Stick that in your mouth," he said.

She did and gently chewed on it a bit. "My goodness," she thought. "It's just like candy. But I really can't chew this unless I'm wearing boots."

Jim was wearing Merrell trekking shoes.

He reached over to touch her hand.

"I'm not on the market," she said, withdrawing her hand. "Especially to Matt Damon movie-star-lookin' smooth-talkers who chew grass that hopefully hasn't been peed on."

He chewed his stalk and smiled, seemed to know better.

"Over there, there's a B-25," Lourdes noted. "And a Grumman F-7 or something? The twin Navy fighter?"

"You know your planes. And I think I see a Seafury, a TBM, I think it is? Like President Bush flew. The first one."

"And another C-47, two Beach 18s," Lourdes said, "and—" she caught on that one. "No, wait. That one's not a Beach, is it? Isn't that a Lockheed Electra? Are you kidding me?"

"I don't know," he said.

"I'm not sure, but I have heard about these and never seen one in person." They walked over to it on the lawn and looked closer. "It looks very similar," she narrated. "But I think— The windshield is different. Look. Fewer of those bars in the windshield."

"Yes, I see that," he said.

"Excuse me," Lourdes asked some people sitting nearby. "What kind of plane is this?"

"Lockheed Model 10. Electra," they said.

"Oh my God," Lourdes exclaimed. "This is like the one Amelia Earhart flew around the world, when she was lost. I really liked her. I can guess how hard it must have been for her, to be a trail blazer that way."

"And she was from Atchison, Kansas, not far from Kansas City."

"This stalk is about all chewed out." He spit it out.

"You chew tobacco?" She asked, an accusing look in her eye.

"No. And actually, I don't know anyone who does. Nasty stuff. I don't smoke, either. Now, I do go out and bay at the moon when it's full, and I keep some bib overalls in the closet so's when we get callers."

Lourdes laughed. "I had to ask."

"I don't blame you. And you being from l.A.— You probably eat wheat germ and work in the movie industry?"

"Alright, I give up," she said. "I've been stereotyping you right and left for hours, haven't I? I'll have to call it quits for now."

There were a group of T-28s up ahead. They moseyed through on their way back south toward her camp sight.

"And if it's okay, I'll just peel off from here," she said.

"Oh, no. I was going to walk you back and ask you to join us all for supper. Nothing much to eat on the field, yet, so we drive into town and eat with a group of volunteers: Mike, Millie, and half a dozen others. You have to eat supper."

"I'll do just fine. And I do enjoy your company, but I'd like some alone time, for now. I just need to be alone."

"Alright. Millie will be heart-broken. She really seemed to like you. But I'll try to let her down gently. I'll tell her you got a ride in that A-36 and haven't come back yet. Or married Matt Damon. Or Harrison Ford— He's a flier, too, you know. Pretty good one. I've seen him here before.

She smiled and walked away from him for the second time that day, angling for the quiet, sentimental, Brown Arch.

CHAPTER 8

_Crrack!_ A bolt of lightning seared the night sky in a jagged path from cloud to cloud, its thunder shaking everything for miles.

" _Aiieeeeeee_ ," Lourdes yelled on reflex. She sat straight up in her tent, rubbing her head on the rip-stop top flattened half way down by the building wind. Then the rain started pounding the tarp rainfly like a firehose, heavy with the Force. Her tent buckled to the south against its stakes and shook in an effort to cope.

Her first thought was to pray her plane didn't blow away. She ran some numbers through her mind: stalling speed, clean, speed of the wind, gusts, angle of attack, sitting on the grass, staked—

She lay back down to get her head away from the top. She'd heard that in a real rain storm, you shouldn't touch the tent, because it could conduct moisture in, causing drip then a flood. She lay still in her sleeping bag— _Get everything away from the sides!_ She began pulling things—bags of clothes, her inflatable pillow, the foot of her sleeping bag—away from the sides. Then huddled in her sleeping bag to ride it out.

Oh, but that guy got that waterproof tarp rain fly on.

Pushed by the wind, the northern side of her tent pressed down closer to her face. So it wasn't the top but the side. The whole thing shook like an evil giant was trying to tear it apart, the tarp rainfly flapping against its ties threatening to tear itself loose.

_The stakes!_ Would they hold for the tent as well as the plane?

_CRRRACK!_ went another close one. Thunder seemed to bounce off everything at the airport, echoing off buildings, other clouds, the moon.

" _Goodness_!" she yelled in protest.

Rain poured down on the tent mercilessly. Its weight, in itself, nearly enough on its own to flatten her tent's fragile fiberglass poles. But the tent held.

After a few minutes, the winds and rain moderated into a gentle storm. Thunder rolled more distantly, and Lourdes began to feel as if the weather were less an expression of her inner fears and more an expression of her inner turmoil.

Which was comforting to her, she found. It seemed to take the pain out of her heart and dump it on the whole world.

_The tent was holding_ , she thought to herself in amazement _. The tent held!_

It was a new experience for her. She'd been rained on in her tent twice before in California, but nothing like this.

This is Oshkosh! She laughed at the storm. Big in every way.

Secure in the knowledge her tent had passed the test, she rolled over in her bag and slept soundly for the first time in years.

CHAPTER 9

The morning sun peeked over Runway Three Six and Taxiway Poppa, illuminating the bottoms of wings and the lower half of Lourdes' tent. The top half was in the shadow of her fuselage.

Lourdes peeked out the tent flap to have a look.

The flight line was the most beautiful place in the world, to her. The morning sun reflected off tiny drops on planes and grass, which made them look like after-storm jewelry.

By six a.m. Lourdes was walking through the grass alone, south along the Taxiway Poppa burn line abeam dozens of rows of planes, toward green fields beyond. She wanted to see what was down there, and if there was nothing, she needed some exercise. She felt her heart rate up where it should be and took a breath of fresh air to fill her system.

God, it was beautiful.

She didn't know how long it had rained last night, but everything was fresh and gorgeous this morning, with no puddles left in the grass to step in. The grass was wet, though, so she took higher steps than normal to try to keep her shoes dry.

A biker blew past her on his way to the deep south, no plane in tow. It was early.

"Hi!" Someone called from behind.

She turned to see Jim gaining on her by foot.

"Good morning," Jim said. "Good day for a morning constitutional."

Lourdes didn't answer.

He tried teasing her a little. "Are you that lady who flies all over the country without tie downs?"

Lourdes ignored him.

"How'd your tent hold up?" he asked. "You sleep dry?"

"Actually, not a drop," she answered. "Slept like a baby if the baby slept well, thank you."

"At your service."

"And you?" She decided to speak with him. He had helped her, no reason to be stand-offish.

"Same guy set it up."

"I thought so."

He walked along side of her. They were approaching the end of Taxiway Poppa, near the Vintage point shack called "Point Fondie."

To her unspoken question, he answered, "It's because it's our nearest shack to Fond du Lac, a town twenty miles or so south of here. We've actually got a Fond du Lac city limits sign down there, at the end of the lawns."

"Good, good. Need to know where you are."

"Up over here to the right is where we tend to put amphibs," he said.

"I can tell because of those amphibs."

"Ah but did you notice there's a 'ditch' there? A gully, a wash."

"You're a natural guide. They should pay you."

"And right beside all of that are more gorgeous fields."

"Amazing."

"It's not filled up down here, though."

"That's probably why it's not full of planes," she said.

"It's Saturday morning, early. By later this afternoon, they'll have some of it filled in."

"Do they ever fill up?"

He walked beside her, breathing a little harder than she.

"You're in shape."

"I'm a nurse. I'm on my feet all the time."

"They fill up in the North Forty regularly. Probably will today, if they haven't already. But this area down here? Rarely. It's good overflow. But it's so vast— I think it's only actually filed up once, in all the years I've volunteered here. We try to make room for everyone."

"Ha!" Lourdes laughed briefly. "Sorry. I saw this guy, this morning, with a Pacer? He was putting his sleeping bag on his wing to dry it out. I guess he slept wet. I don't mean to laugh at him, but I just thought it was funny. It rained hard last night."

"Yeah, that happens sometimes."

"So what're you gonna do today?" he asked her.

"I—" She paused to think. "I have no idea. Just be here, I think. Probably get some nerf herder to show me around. It's breakfast. I hear they have grass and trees— Do you eat trees?"

"Little ones. Have you had breakfast?"

"No."

"Alrightie then," he said, doing a Jim Carrey. He guided her into a right one-eighty, heading back north. "There just happens to be a great breakfast tent right back up that way. Why don't we start there?"

"I'll go eat and see a little, but no picking me up, okay?"

"No, no. I've already had my workout."

Inside a flight line tent cafe, down by the Ultralight Area, they sat to eat eggs and pancakes, sausage gravy and biscuits, toast with jelly, and milk. Everyone in there was abuzz with stories of how they weathered the storms last night.

"The wind must have been forty knots—"

"No fifty—"

"Rain was blowing my tent sideways like a hurricane—"

"That's why my wife stays in a dorm over at the University."

"It uprooted my tent and sent it south _with me in it_ —" one guy joked.

"I saw a maple tree scooting sideways through the planes!"

"With you in it?"

"No."

"Darn."

"Mine flattened right down on me like a pancake—"

"You need to get a Cabela's tent—"

Lourdes felt alive and chuckled with the guys at her table. "How did I sleep? No problem. The secret is in the tarping. He knows all about it," she said, handing them off to the expert.

"So what did you do?" they asked.

Lourdes ate like she hadn't eaten all day.

"You want your walking?" he asked her. "You don't need to go out of your way for it here. There's something to do everywhere, but it's so large, you'll get your walking doing anything."

They walked together up Wittman Rd. past the Vintage Ops Shack, past Vintage headquarters, east of Theatre in the Woods, thence left 45 degrees, vectors to Pioneer Field, a grass strip nearby that specialized in rebuilding and flying antique planes. They angled for the new control tower as their visual waypoint.

Jim's phone rang. "Hello," he answered. "West of Show Center, on our way to the Museum. It's a must-see." Another pause. "I don't know. Let me give her the phone."

He handed his phone to Lourdes.

"Hello?" she said into it. She looked at Jim then back ahead. "I don't know, maybe." Pause. "Can I say 'we'll see'?" Another pause. "Okay. Thank you."

She hung it up and gave it back to him.

"Do you have a phone?" he asked her?

She gave him a dirty look.

"The place is vast, and it helps, sometimes, to find each other."

"Okay." They swapped phone numbers, and Lourdes put Mike and Millie's into her phone as well.

"Millie invited me to come to her corn roast tonight over in Camp Scholler. She said you'd be there and thirty other people, too, probably."

"Oh, that's nice."

"What is a corn roast?"

"You stick ears of corn on the barbie, husk and all, and burn 'em a little. Medium heat. By the time they're a little charred, you can set 'em aside for maybe just one minute, and you can then literally pick them up with your hands. Peel the husk back, hold it by the husk—the corn inside is hot—pour a little melted butter over the top, and _voila_. Delicious. Like a cocktail party, only it's a corn-husker party. Residence in Nebraska not required.

"You know corn. How tall does your corn grow?"

He held his hand up over his head. "By the time it's harvested. Like 'Field of Dreams.'"

She looked at him, startled.

He turned to face her in mock umbrage. "I never get any ghosts!" he laughed, turning to walk again. "And five will get you ten, Millie will get someone to make some ice cream, too. It's really more of a social gathering of friends than anything else, doubling as supper. And, as you know, the show isn't open yet 'till Monday, so restaurants are still scarce."

"Right. Saturday is still a little early."

"So we have to ban together to survive," he said playfully.

Just past the tower, and still surrounded by airshow-related traffic and vendor tents being erected, they picked up Waukau Ave., which eventually lead west past the museum and off the airport. But they didn't stay on that road long. After the airshow's buss stop, they angled right, off the road, through a large picturesque park area with a lovely duck pond, finding a charming chapel to the north of it.

Lourdes read the sign: "Fergus Chapel."

Lourdes was struck with its beauty. She felt she could stop right there and stay, it was so lovely.

"Have you ever been in?" she asked Jim.

"Actually no. You'd think I would have, but I haven't. I've always seen it, but I've been busy with the show."

"You go to church anywhere?" she asked.

"Every day," he answered. "Mine is the church of life. I worship, as it were, every time I breathe, every time I see, every time I love someone. I'm in church right now."

She enjoyed hearing this from him, and it seemed fitting by the chapel.

"I'm struck, existentially, with the beauty of life," he said. "I'm amazed we're here, that our atoms have collected from stardust into this thing we call life, that we can appreciate everything we have, and that we are aware of it."

Lourdes could hear the church in him.

"You sound like you've said all that before."

He grinned. "I have. Lots of times. I think I'm filled with it. Always have been. And I share it with others."

"What religion are you, if any?"

"Ah, I'm Christian, but not in a classic sense. My view is more like— Have you seen 'The Man from Earth' starring David Lee Smith?"

"No."

"It's of a play. Beautifully done. A fourteen thousand year old Cro-Magnon—or Early Modern Human—lives and learns, knows Buddha, and in doing some teaching in Canaan, he is defined as one of the messianics predicted in the area, and he becomes the story of Jesus."

Lourdes looks at him funny.

"No, I don't mean that I believe in fourteen thousand year-old Cro-Magnons. What's beautiful in the story, though, is the idea that Jesus was a man, a person, who taught a philosophy of love and inclusion—and that likely his story and message was built up after him. Stories grow. And then, later, it became what we know of as Christianity. But underneath it, is the message of a person who talked about acceptance of others, of peace, of loving each other, and appreciating this miracle which is life. To me, that is my Christianity."

"With a little Buddhism thrown into the mix?" she asked.

"I think a lot of religions are similar, if you look deeply enough. Do you go to a church?"

"I recognize them two out of three times," she said.

He looked at her.

"I don't like them when they put people down—me or anyone else."

"Me, neither," he said.

"Do you believe in predestination?" she asked.

"Um," he put his hand on his chin for a minute. "I think the ideas of determinism or randomness are man-made simplicities, that probably don't describe most of the universe. I think there are so many things about the universe we don't understand, that we can't guess, yet, what's really going on."

"So how is it best to see the future?" she asked.

"An old friend of mine, Joe, used to tell me to have faith in the Big Picture. And know what you need to get there."

"Used to?" she asked.

"He's passed on, now," he said sadly.

"What big picture?" she asked.

"Not sure."

"Then how do you know what you need to get there?"

"Um— I feel there is a Big Picture, but I can't know what it really is, yet, as a human. But I feel I'm part of what's going on, so I think, with some effort, I can work with it."

They continued walking past Fergus Chapel on to Pioneer Field, which was immediately to the west of it. The Museum, to come later, was to the south of Pioneer Field, along Waukau Ave.

The lawns and the grass strip through the area were lush, the trees in the area were plush, the scent of life was rich in the air.

"You think God does things to us, good and bad?" Lourdes asked. "That he's responsible for the state we find ourselves in, sometimes?"

"Actually no. I don't think God micromanages our lives. I think life _is_ what it _is_ , and that we can learn to work within it."

"So you think there is a God?"

"Well, I think the view I shared is mixed with the idea that there is a God, but I don't think God is anything we can directly understand. You remember 'Avatar'? How Sigourney Weaver was telling us about the synaptic connections in Pandora? How it's all interconnected and conscious?"

"Yes."

"Well, we have consciousness." He motioned the both of them.

"I do, anyway," Lourdes teased.

He smiled.

" _We_ do. And what is that? It seems to me it may be a complex of synapses—some of which do tasks in our body but others of which seem to monitor those other synapses that do things, such that we are literally _aware_ of _ourselves_. Well, Sigourney Weaver was talking about that with Pandora, an example of how a planet can also be alive. I like the idea. And then there's Dark Energy."

"I know what that is."

"Right," he said. "It's an example of how galaxies all across the universe are connected. We didn't know that existed several years ago. We don't know what it is, let alone what all it does. And I'm sure there are other ways we haven't begun to imagine yet. Think what we may understand in a million years."

"Okay."

"So what if the universe is interconnected in some way, in ways we can't begin to guess?"

"The universe may actually be alive and awake," Lourdes said, "aware of itself, in ways we don't know, but that we are still a part of."

"Yeah. I don't know if it is," he said. "And for all I know, the feeling of 'God' is just an active circuit in our brains right over here," he pointed to an area above his right ear, "like I saw in Discovery Channel documentary. But I think there is likely much more going on that we're aware of and that it might be aware. To me, that could be God: an intelligence behind a universe. Flaky?" he asked Lourdes.

"No. I don't think so. I actually think there may be something to it. It's a whole lot more reasonable to me than the old man on the throne thing, or the dictates of one person or group on what is morality."

"Me, too."

They approached the large hangars of Pioneer Field, filled with antique airplanes being restored, or even being built for the first time.

"What about life after death?" she asked.

"I don't know there, either. But I do think there's more going on than we see directly—goodness, we can't even perceive most of the electromagnetic spectrum, and it's real. There could be an energy that coalesces in life, started by the organization of the body, that continues after the body ceases to function—a way of bringing other energies in the cosmos, such as food and minerals, together into a new formation which could be a soul or spirit, or a continuing-something that contributes to the cosmos at length. I am _excited_ to be alive, Lourdes! This _miracle of life_! And we're _part of it_. We get to fly and love! And grow corn!"

His smile was infectious.

CHAPTER 10

Pioneer Field was another example of heaven on earth. Antique airplanes were being restored. There were old-style hangars, a beautiful grass strip angling mostly east and west between the hangars and the Museum. Lourdes could just about see Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart working on planes there.

And the Museum was as professional as any in aviation she'd seen.

They shared together through the afternoon in the museum's air conditioned peace, watching short films presenting planes or designers, a mock-up of the Wright Brothers' plane; a mock-up of SpaceShipOne, the space craft that completed the world's first manned private spaceflight, in 2004; the world's smallest plane; antiques with large radial engines on them; and warbirds.

After scouring the museum, the two were walking back toward the flight line, when Lourdes began to feel the need for some of her own time again.

"It's nothing special," she told Jim. "I have been having a wonderful time. I just haven't been in a good space for a while. And I'd kind of like to sit and rest."

"Ok," he said. "Lets find a bench—"

"I mean alone," she said.

Jim hung his head.

"I'll look you up later, okay? I just need some time."

"You promise?" he asked.

"Okay," she said, smiling at him.

Jim beamed.

Lourdes wondered alone with her life's thoughts through myriad vendor tents being set up, John Deere "Gators" driving past, and cars, motorcycles, and people moving about, working and watching. Eventually, she wound up back at the Brown Arch by the flight line, surrounded by aircraft, reading people's joyous or sentimental thoughts, placed permanently on tile.

She sat down, cross-legged, rubbing her hand over the tiles, needing to feel closer to them.

One tile made reference to someone's first solo, and she thought back to her first solo at El Monte, California. She remembered she used to think a cross-country flight was so complicated—but now, it was primarily what she did. Instead of a labor, it was a labor of love. Nothing could be as beautiful.

Another tile was in memory of a loved-one, passed on. She touched it, held it. She hadn't had a close family member loss, yet, but she'd suffered other loss and grieved for the person whose heart obviously ached.

Another tile made reference to a loving couple and then to John Gillespie Magee, Jr.'s sonnet, "High Flight," beloved of aviators and astronauts, or of anyone free spirited. The poem, itself, wasn't reprinted on the tile, but Lourdes knew it by heart, remembering her own life in flight as she touched the tile and closed her eyes, playing the words over in her mind, cherishing something in her life that was perfect:

_Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth_ ,

Lourdes remembered countless times the wheels of her plane slowly lifted, held aloft by thin, molecules of air, to play with the birds, beneath the sun, high above the earth.

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Her mind soared through the skies in harmony with his magical words, seeing clouds beneath her yet far above the city as the sun sparkled across them, a full circle of rainbow across their tops.

Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—

Most people have no idea! she knew. The beauty of soaring free, climbing and banking, exploring new places, experiencing life in new ways, seeing things no one on the ground can ever see, without— The sonnet continued in her mind.

— _wheeled and soared and swung_ ,

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air...

She felt she could frolic in the sky as if a disembodied spirit, circling a cloud at thirteen thousand, and lifting a wing to dive toward a mountain top, sliding over it unscathed at twelve thousand—then spying another cloud to round—

She was lost in his words; her heart ached for his purity.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Yet another tear fell down her cheek. So often, of late, the need was strong.

She slowly rubbed her hand over the tile of reference and knew Magee's poem was true. No one else can know, she was certain, unless they'd _experienced_ it. She knew Magee's heart for real, and knew he would have known hers, or that part of it.

But, to have a heart that needs to soar, in and of itself, is not enough.

It was sad, she felt: she couldn't truly share her feelings with others—only, it seemed, with people who already knew.

CHAPTER 11

It was dark, just after dusk.

Lourdes had bought a couple of things at the Barn Store and was making her way past Camp Scholler toward her own campsight when she noticed Mike and Millie's camp by the road. There were perhaps forty people standing around on the grass between a group of motorhomes, around a charbroiler—and she wondered what to do about it.

Joining groups was never her strong point. She could make it look like she was joining. She could make it look on the surface as if she'd joined. But she always knew she didn't fit in, that she was different in a way that mattered to most people. They'd act like they liked her, that she was a member or a friend, then they'd drift away, and she'd feel like that fifth wheel again. The one who was different.

She looked at them from a distance and waited.

People talked with each other and ate corn on the cob by holding the husk. One man picked up an ear of corn off the edge of the charbroiler and peeled it back. Someone else poured some butter over it.

She saw Mike, behind a group, with Millie who was making sure people were getting all they wanted, serving someone a canned soda pop out of a cooler.

There was someone else on the far side, hand-churning an ice cream maker.

Their conversation sounded friendly, relaxed.

Lourdes noticed Jim sitting among a group on the south side, talking lively about something. She couldn't tell what.

So was she going to join or not?

She weighed her options. It may only hurt. Worst case? It'd hurt. Best case? She has a nice evening of pretend acceptance.

She'd already had a good enough day; she didn't need more. Or she _did_ need more, but she'd learned to live without it.

Live like what? she wondered. Her life was such a failure, she felt.

She studied her shoes—meant to cover her feet and protect them, but also meant to explore.

She slowly began to make her way in.

"Lourdes!" Millie called. "I'm so glad you came!"

Jim noticed Lourdes' arrival and grinned ear to ear, but held back.

Mike looked like he'd like to go greet Lourdes, but at Jim's urging, he stayed back with him.

Millie gave Lourdes the biggest hug Lourdes had in years, and held on.

"What?" Lourdes exclaimed.

"Oh," Millie let go the hug but held onto Lourdes' shoulders. "Love, I don't know what you did to Jim, but I'm so thankful."

"What?" Lourdes said. "I didn't do anything."

"Oh, yes you did. I swear he's been a zombie since Connie passed away—missing a light inside that we knew hurt. And then, since yesterday morning, he's come back alive. Come over here and get some corn!"

Millie took Lourdes over to the Barbie and got her an ear of corn.

The husk was barely warm to Lourdes' hand, but the corn was hot. Millie poured some buter on it.

"Sample it," Millie said.

Lourdes did. "This is delicious," she said.

Millie's smile was genuine. "Kinda nice," she said.

Lourdes ate her corn while she chatted with Millie and watched people mill about, or sit on chairs in the pleasant evening.

After a time, "campfire" stories began, even though they didn't have a campfire. Jokes were told, and people relaxed into the calm of the evening. A lady, near Jim, strummed a soft tune on an acoustic guitar that made the evening whole.

Jim and Mike stayed where they were.

Jim glanced at Lourdes now and then, a flirt in his eye and a smile on his face.

Lourdes glanced at Jim, now and then, wondering if she should approach. She put her finished cob into a trash bin and wiped her hands on a napkin.

Jim smiled at her, with a slight nod, as if he felt the time was right. He borrowed the guitar from his neighbor and began to pick a gentle, aimless melody as he talked. Chatter faded. People listened, as it seemed Jim wanted to share. There was something magical about the way he played.

"I'm reminded," Jim said, another quick glance at Lourdes, "of a problem we all have from time to time, in how we look at our lives."

"There he goes again," Mike said. "Preaching again—"

A few people whispered, "Shhhh," to Mike, so he settled in his chair to listen.

Jim smiled at Mike and continued. "Of how our view of life can change so."

He strummed gently as he talked, lilting a few notes above the rest, then settling back into a soft, easy, dreamy tune.

"Everything else being the same, Life can seem so _beautiful,_ with everything you need—and then something happens, and everything in it hurts. The sky is still blue, people are still friends," he smiled at everyone, who smiled back as well, "but there's pain all around. Ugliness. Darkness.

"Then something else happens, maybe years later, and those same painful days become life again. Glowing in glory, and you know everything's alright.

"And it's the same life. The same things around you. The same crops, people, days. But now it all matters again when you find something right."

He continued strumming.

"Like sharing this evening with you folks."

The people seemed to appreciate him.

"Look at us, here. We're doing something we love. Nice evening. Good people. I'm thankful to be alive."

People were quiet, listening, mesmerized by his music and his message.

"And it doesn't take long to happen. The first time I went to Paris, I knew in an instant the Louvre had to be one of my places in the world, that it would always be, and it was there I developed an appreciation for Leonardo de Vinci and Monet.

"The first time I went to Scotland, I felt the same thing. Standing on Stirling Castle, looking out through the battlements over the Highlands, I knew I'd always keep it with me. Because it was part of me."

He strummed.

"And the first time my uncle took me up in a plane, I knew I'd have to have that the rest of my life. Because it was also a part of me. It'd been absent before I got to it, and I didn't know how much its absence hurt, until I saw it.

"And so I'm thinking, that when life gets you down, you remember this: that it's the connections that make us whole. Our connections to life in general, and to each other. Without them, a painting is just paint, a place is just a region, and a plane is just a machine.

A smile grew on his lips as he talked, and the melody he strummed on his guitar took on a more directed tune, the beginnings of a song.

"So I'm moved by this little song I heard Garrett Hedlund and Leighton Meester sing together in the movie 'Country Strong.' The movie was about people finding themselves, and I don't think you really know who they are until the end. Kind of like a lot of us. So if I may."

Looking at Lourdes standing by Millie, he began to sing, softly, in a soothing voice, that carried through the evening, the quiet song

" _I'm gonna wear you down_

I'm gonna make you see

I'm gonna get to you

You're gonna give into me..."

Millie looked over at Lourdes as if in love.

Lourdes realized Jim was singing to her and blushed, embarrassed— She looked around quickly and noticed everyone was staring at her, to see where Jim was looking!

There were smiles and giggles, and people leaning over to whisper in someone else's ear.

She felt humiliated. She didn't know whether she should run for safety or stand still, to pretend she didn't mind.

_Stand_ , she decided. _Don't make it worse by running_.

She stood by Millie while he sang the slow, peaceful song. She was in shock as much as anything else, for reasons her mind scrambled to understand and that didn't make sense to her.

He almost sounded like Garrett, though Jim's voice was not quite as deep.

_Why had she decided to stay_? she wondered. Normally, she'd have run.

Millie put her arm around Lourdes. "See what I mean?" she said.

Lourdes looked at her and then back to Jim, sitting, playing the guitar.

His song continued, about falling in love and its bliss of submission.

Finally, his song ended, and he left his audience with a few lilting notes that drifted away into the evening.

When he finished, big grin on his face, the crowd cheered and clapped.

Jim thanked them—big grin on his face—sat the guitar down on a cooler, and went straight over to Lourdes, took her by the hand and led her away through the motorhomes amid good-natured cat calls.

Three motorhomes away, with no one else around, by the base of a huge oak tree, Jim suddenly turned Lourdes around and kissed her long and warm on the lips, his arms embracing her strong around her back and shoulders.

Lourdes melted. Her mind blew. She couldn't think. She needed him. She felt it in her soul, in her being, but she couldn't form the thought. She became his kiss, his lips. She moved into his whiskers, his teeth, and his tongue, lying close against him, losing her balance, letting him support her weight with his embrace.

His kiss never ended but changed into a caress with his lips on hers, moving back and forth to feel them, then nibbling her lower lip with his teeth.

Lourdes could feel nothing else, as if she ceased to exist. She leaned her head to the side and absorbed him for what seemed like forever.

Jim gently leaned her back against the oak.

Lourdes could feel its strength on her back, and his strength on her front, feeling warm inside like she hadn't felt in years.

She couldn't move, and she didn't want to.

He asked her something. She didn't notice.

He kissed her cheeks, her eyes, the tip of her nose, then wet on her lips again, forever, it seemed, never ending.

In time, somehow, she noticed she was looking at him smiling at her.

She melted into him again.

His hands found their way through her. She couldn't—didn't want to stop him. She gave in to him and came into his heart, more than she knew she could, more union with eternity.

CHAPTER 12

Early the next morning, an angry Lourdes stomped through the trees by Theatre in the Woods, muttering to herself.

"Greenhills, Missouri!"

People noticed. She was walking with a purpose.

She looked for traffic before walking on the road, then headed straight west to Camp Scholler.

" _He doesn't look like Matt Damon_! He's not nearly as good looking!"

People stared as she stomped by talking to herself.

"'I have a grass stip. Come land on it!' Sure!"

She crossed another road, walked behind the Exhibit Hangar B, then behind Exhibit Hangar D—huge, steel buildings open only to exhibitors getting their shops organized.

It was Sunday.

"The fence has to be open!" and it was. She went through a gate to the south then turned right again to Millie's.

She knocked on the door to Millie's motor home and waited as patiently as she could.

Millie came around the corner, her Maltese, Li'l Missie, in tow. "Hi—" A smile spread across her face on seeing Lourdes, then vanished seeing Lourdes' mood. "What's the matter?" she asked.

Lourdes steamed a while before answering. "Can we sit?" she asked.

"Yes. Actually, I was going up to the Barn Store for some supplies. Wanna come?"

"Where's Mike?" Lourdes didn't notice she was being curt.

"He's parking planes over in Vintage. They're expecting a couple hundred Cubs from a group to come in."

Lourdes nodded her thanks. "Good."

"Lourdes, honey. What's wrong?"

Lourdes didn't wait for a chair, didn't wait to begin walking to the Barn Store.

"I— What am I supposed to see here?" she asked. "I'm in L.A., fed up with everything from concrete to groups that misrepresent me, and I come out here to Oshkosh to get away—and what do I get but every little detail telling me to go to Greenhills, Missouri? You know, I'm from L.A.! _My whole life_. We don't know from small towns. _Chicago_ is a small town to me. Small groups I do know, and they're a pain, so why would I move to a _real_ small town? I meet this smooth-talking slick-o who helps me with my tent and then kisses me, and I'm gonna have this nice little progressive relationship build and then move off there to be with him? I don't know this guy! Who is he? I know him two days and _whamo_ —everybody thinks we're a couple. Like you said, that you were so glad to have me here because he's happy again."

Millie stood there, taking it all in, not even bending over to pick up Missie.

"So what does that make me? Not 'Lourdes,' but _Jim's girl_. I'm seeing problems, here, waiting to happen."

Millie waited.

"Like, what if you all get to know me," Lourdes continued, "and you don't like me. Or what if I try to become part of the group, and you do like me, but then I get into some fight with someone because of some quirk—like it turns out you're weird and need to try to control me, or people have expectations of me that don't fit, or it turns out there's a problem with bigotry or something among the group that _I am not gonna tolerate—_ "

Millie laughed and reached over to pat Lourdes' hand. "He kissed you?" she asked.

" _Yes he did_!"

Millie giggled.

"And now I'm supposed to have this story-book romance and move to Green-small-town-hills, Missouri? Where the hell is Missouri!" Lourdes turned to peek under the motorhome. "Okay, come out of there!" she yelled, then she turned to peek under a neighboring motorhome. "Where's Rob Reiner? _Steven Spieeeeelberg_?" she called out. "Sandra Bullock! I know you're hiding in there with this cute little script I'm supposed to follow, because this is so ruddy fake!"

Millie laughed at Lourdes. "Wow! If you find one of them, can I have them? I'm not even gay, and I'd take Sondra. Because all I have right now is Mike, and—" Millie laughed at herself.

"What are you so happy about?" Lourdes demanded.

"Sorry," Millie said. "I'm just kidding."

"Well, I'm not!" Lourdes said sternly. "This is all just a little too fake-perfect, and I can think of a hundred ways jumping into a new group could go bad. But that's what people seem to have in mind for me. So how can I do that?"

Lourdes began to wind down a little.

"Fantastic, Lourdes! It's good to meet you. I'm Millie!" Millie reached over and shook Lourdes' hand as if they'd just been introduced.

Lourdes was confused.

"I don't know if you will ever want to move there or not, but I think it'd be great if you did, because I can tell about people, and you're good people."

Lourdes started to object, mad again.

Millie clarified, "For _you_ being there, not to be with Jim _per se_."

Lourdes cooled.

"Come on," Millie said. She put Missie in the motorhome, took Lourdes by the hand and started walking toward the Barn Store.

Lourdes' phone rang. She pulled it out of a pocket, pressed "Ignore" and shoved it back in her pocket. "It's Jim."

"Ok," Millie said. "So you are thinking all about leaving L.A., meeting Jim, and what that could mean as far as the idea of making a commitment to a group of people you don't know in a small town like you have no experience with—and how that could easily be a problem?"

"Close enough."

"Okay. I'll give you my take on it?" Millie asked.

"Good. That's what I wanted."

"Well, first of all, you got your small towns, and then you got your small towns."

"What do you do in it?"

"Me? I teach math down at the high school. Algebra and Trig."

"Okay. Just wanted to get a sense of you."

"Best sense for that is me-math-teacher, or me-who-survived-a-bad-marriage-for-fifteen-years, or me-mother-of-two, or me-Jewish."

"You're Jewish? I didn't pick up on that."

"You might not. I don't seem to telegraph it—which takes me to some of my thoughts I'd like to share."

"Yeah, go ahead. Sorry."

They crossed an intersection to angle slightly right to the big red barn.

"Greenhills isn't like most small towns. To begin with, most people there are from somewhere else. It's L.A., Miami, New York, Kansas City—a lot of 'em from Kansas City and Omaha, because, really, as opposed to being an isolated little thing, Greenhills is more of a Suburb in America with elbow room. We have one little grocery store, two churches—one has a regular preacher, but ours has no regular preacher right now, so we make do—"

"You're Jewish?"

"Yeah, but we don't have a synagogue in Greenhills, and it's more of a church about our lives than any particular religion."

Millie waited for a response, but got none.

They entered the Barn Store and Millie began looking for her items while they talked.

Lourdes followed along.

"So, it's really not classic in any sense like that. It's a little city. I mean, where else can you have many of the values you might find in L.A. but with the freedom to have a barn and a grass strip literally right beside town? Right there across the street. The flavor of peaceful country roots and the intrigue of civilization."

Lourdes' phone rang again, so she pulled it out of her pocket and looked at it. "It's Jim again. Just a sec?" she told Millie, then speaking into the phone, "What!" Pause. "It's none of your business." She paused to listen while indicating to Millie that she was frustrated. "Really!" she said into the phone. "Maybe."

She hung up the phone.

Millie was clearly curious.

"He wants to take me flying in his RV-6."

"Great! I've done that! He's a good pilot."

"He seems to be good at everything!"

Lourdes started to pick up some more snack bars, but then realized: it's Sunday. Tent cafés were open, now, close enough to the airshow, and she didn't need them any more. But she did see some mosquito repellent, and got some of that.

"And on the other part, those groups—that is a really good concern, and, Hon, am I ever good at talking about that one."

"From having squabbled with some of them?"

"Duh? It's more than that. I think Judaism is a good example. Because we've been a group for three thousand years, give or take. Think about how hard that is to keep together? We've got people all the time who leave, who join the group, who argue that so-and-so isn't really a member of the group, who argue that so-and-so is, too. We agree; we disagree—sometimes vehemently. But we have to find a way, still, to be part of the same group, to carry on, which also means getting through anger and misunderstandings. Arguing is part of who we are and I think that is what helps keep us together."

"What?" Lourdes asked.

"Because people have to express their mind. Contrary to narrow opinions, different ideas are money in the bank to any group that wants to survive for the long haul, because times and things change. Different ideas are the creativity a group needs to adapt.

"Even our name: 'Israel. You know what that means in Hebrew?"

"I have no idea. Shalom is all I know."

"A good start: Peace. 'Israel' means to 'struggle with God.'" Millie laughed at herself. "See? We argue with everything. It's part of life. Sometimes we even argue over whether there _is_ a god. That has _got_ to be a group of very serious arguments. And we survive it, because we accept from the outset that we are going to argue."

Millie stopped in an aisle short of the cash registers to look Lourdes in the eye.

"And that's pretty much what a town can be, including people you will argue with sometimes."

They went through the checkout stand and carried Millie's groceries back to the motorhome in bags.

Lourdes felt as if she were on a precipice, on the edge. She felt large changes ahead, needed someone to share a vision, and Millie was helping.

"I— I'm not comfortable with the idea of having arguments," Lourdes said.

"Maybe you're not comfortable with the idea of _conflicting_. But arguing? It's just people expressing different views. Doesn't have to be ugly."

"When the student is ready—" Lourdes decided to confide a little more. "Maybe I can share some of some of my personal insanity with you?"

"Love it," Millie said. "If I don't know you're crazy, we're not really friends."

Lourdes stopped at that for a second. "People sometimes think untrue things— I'm worried that there is another group that misrepresents me, makes people misunderstand me. That makes me seem fake.

"Okay. If others key off this or that thing in you," Millie said, "or worse—listen to others when they intone something—they can never understand you. Because you aren't any _things_ about you. You are _you_ , inside."

"I can agree with that."

"That's a major reason we don't like gossip—not just Jews but also not most reasonable people, and also not us folks in Greenhills: Gossip destroys community. It hurts the people who do it, as well as the people it targets, and it also teaches the community that kind of thing is okay. And it's not. Someone says something about Sarah Beth Crabtree? And we're supposed to know something about her from that? Whether part of it's true or not? No! You can't. You don't know why she did this or that, what was behind it, or even if it happened at all. What you learn from that kind of gossip, is something negative about the gossiper. See that wonderful movie, 'The Contender' with Joan Allen and Jeff Bridges?" Millie asked.

"Yes, I loved it," Lourdes said. "It was about false accusations, integrity. People using half-truths to hurt someone."

"There's your gossip image to hang onto. We don't put up with that in Greenhills, or not around us. I, for one, know better, and so do most folks."

Lourdes pressed another point. "What if Person A humiliates himself in front of everybody else sometime—biggest humiliation that could exist?"

"Well, that's _family_. Take a number. We all do that sooner or later. And if we don't, then we're really not family, I think. That's got to be part of the meaning of it, I'd say. If people think they are a successful group yet they've never really fought? Then I don't think they're much of a group yet; they're just standing nearby. And the beauty of it: If people are working to become a group, and they fight miserably, and someone learns she's humiliated herself horribly in front of them all— _and then they get past it_ —then they know. _Then they know_ they're really a group, and _that_ is one of the greatest feelings there is. That's a bonding, there.

"Same as for a marriage. Same as for a friendship. You're thinking about some kind of potential situation in Greenhills?"

"I don't know," Lourdes said, shaking her head.

"Well, to me?" Millie looked around at nothing while she thought. "You're not subject to what the group thinks. If you're part of a group, you're part of what makes it work or not. If you're involved. What you think matters as well."

CHAPTER 13

Lourdes wasn't going to let Millie's kind help ruin her angry day.

"You do _not_ look like Matt Damon!" Lourdes yelled at Jim as she marched across the vast, green lawns of the Homebuilt Camping area, toward Jim's red, NASCAR-like-painted RV-6 with racing logos all over it. "You look more like Tom Hanks' little brother, if there is one—"

Some guys sitting near the RV-7 camped next to Jim's plane noticed her demeanor.

Jim smiled broadly and grabbed her gently by the shoulders.

"No good morning kiss!" Lourdes demanded. "I'm mad at you—"

Jim planted a warm kiss on her.

Lourdes' sparks flew again as her central nervous system sizzled.

The guys began good-natured laughing, making friendly, supportive comments.

"Oh, that's it!"

"That's the way to do it."

"Go get her!"

"Ha _ha_!"

Sporting a happy smile, Jim stood back to stare at her. "Good morning, Lourdes!" he said.

The guys had to cut in.

"Is he a movie star?" they asked.

"No good! Take two, and this time with passion!"

"Roll 'em!"

Lourdes started to object, but she was a little slow to react.

Jim smiled at the guys and leaned in more softly to kiss her gently, breathing over her lips, lingering over face—then, wrapping his right arm behind the small of her back, drew her in to kiss her more firmly, touching her tongue with his teeth.

"Ooooooh! Zoom in on that!"

"That's a _wrap_!"

"Get a room!"

"No! Do it again!" they called out in encouragement.

Jim stepped away from Lourdes and looked at her.

"Ooooh," the first guy said again.

Lourdes began to blush and stepped aside to stabilize herself with a hand on Jim's wing. She felt herself respond in spite of herself.

"And here we are!" Jim reached down to his left wing-root and picked up two, blue parachutes. "I think we ought to use these."

"Going for a flight?" the guys asked.

"Yup! Gotta take in the sights. This little lady needs a ride."

There were more good-natured calls from the guys, who were enjoying themselves.

Jim plopped one of the chutes on the grass near Lourdes and began strapping the other one on her.

"You familiar with these?" Jim asked.

"Yes, but I've never actually worn one before," Lourdes stunned mind heard herself saying.

"Okay. Well it's no problem. We'll get it strapped on like this...and this. And I'll get mine on." He picked up the other one off the grass and strapped it on himself.

The guys laughed. "Better bring a sick sack," they said.

Jim smiled at them. "That's up to her." Then to Lourdes. "I won't do anything you don't agree to, okay?"

Lourdes nodded, then said, "Okay."

"That's no fun!" the guys played.

"These chutes are required by F.A.R.s, you know," Jim said, "if we _happen_ to turn it over."

The guys laughed.

"What are you going to do?" Lourdes asked.

"Well, I thought we'd blast out of here, head out over there," Jim said, indicating an area to the east past Lake Winnebago, "and fly around a little. Do some gentle aerobatics?"

"Sure!" the guys teased.

"And I thought you might like to fly it a while?" Jim asked.

"Sure," Lourdes said. _Who would pass that up?_

"And if there's an emergency and we have to punch out, you know this is your rip cord," He showed her where it was.

"You're supposed to pull that _before_ you hit the ground," one of the guys informed.

Lourdes looked and make sure she knew where it was. She was a steady-cruise, A-to-B pilot, and parachutes were new to her.

"So—" Jim looked at her then looked over the plane again as if re-doing the entire preflight a second time in his mind. "I think we're fine. Fuel, oil's right. All our nuts and bolts, chutes—"

The guys laughed.

"—NOTAM departure and camping cards for the flagmen. So lets get in?" He motioned to Lourdes to get in the plane.

The canopy was already open.

Lourdes smiled at the guys and moved to get in.

"Yep: Step right up on this non-skid area on the wing-root, then step right down onto the right seat, then onto the floor."

Lourdes looked the cockpit over. Grey interior. Round three-inch "steam" gauges in a "six-pack" formation on the panel: for altimeter, attitude indicator, turn coordinator... She made sure she found the fuel selector, throttle, mixture, in case she had to fly it back, in case something happened to Jim. It was a pilot thing, a habit. There was no prop knob; the plane had a fixed pitch prop up front. She felt the stick between her knees, cycled the control surfaces. Pressed a little on the rudder pedals and turned her head around to see the rudder wag.

Jim could see her checking it out. "Like she was born to it," Jim said to the guys, proud of her.

Jim climbed up into his left seat, grabbed a "Walk Me" sign off the top of the panel and waved it at the orange-vested biker waiting for them. "I'm almost ready," he yelled to the biker fifty feet away. "I just need to check the ATIS and then fire it up. And we'll be back to this same spot in forty minutes."

Their biker nodded, climbed off his bike and went over to stand guard on Jim's propeller, keep bystanders out of it.

"Here's your headset," Jim said to Lourdes, picking both of them off the floor in front of the seats.

They put them on in silence. Lourdes knew to leave a pilot alone when he was getting ready for takeoff. "Sterile cockpit," it was sometimes referred to: don't distract him while he's working.

Jim turned on the master, then the avionics master, then the radio—listened to the ATIS then looked at the biker with a nod.

The biker checked the area clear, and rotated his finger in the air for "Start your engine."

Jim turned the radio and avionics master back off. "You ready?" he asked Lourdes through the headset mike.

"Ready," Lourdes said, professionally.

Jim reached behind him and half-closed the canopy cover and turned the rotating beacon on.

One last look at the biker, and Jim primed the engine and turned the key. Two blades over the cowl and the engine started smoothly.

Jim held the RPM down to 900, in an effort to prevent ring wear on start-up.

Both Jim and Lourdes checked all the gauges: oil pressure, oil temperature, fuel, amperes...

Jim turned the avionics master and radio back on. Per the NOTAM in effect, Jim set the tower frequency in the radio for a Runway Three Six Left departure so he could monitor it—not the same one as used for the Runway Two Seven Fisk Arrival Procedure they had listened to the other day—and he also set his transponder to "standby," as he wasn't supposed to turn it on until they were out of the Class D airspace that surrounded Wittman Regional.

Satisfied, Jim looked over at Lourdes, who gave him a thumb's up, and then to the biker waiting for his signal out front.

The biker gave Jim the signal to stay stopped, hopped on his bike, and then patted himself on the head indicating "Follow Me," and headed out for the runway.

Jim followed the biker north between rows of planes, then east toward Taxiway Poppa. There, the biker waved goodbye, and another ground crew on foot pointed for Jim to go south on Poppa.

Both Jim and Lourdes could hear the tower periodically clearing planes for takeoff.

They taxied south past homebuilts on the flight line, past the Brown Arch, past Show Center, past the Theatre in the Woods, past Vintage parking and camping, to Point Fondie at the end of Taxiway Poppa, where Jim did a pre-takeoff run-up.

"All set-ski?" Jim asked Lourdes."

"Ready and willing," she responded, getting the feel for the plane.

Jim smiled. "Oshkosh tower. Red low wing holding short on Poppa beginning of Runway Three Six Left, right downwind departure per NOTAM."

"Red low wing, hold short, landing traffic."

"Red low wing holding short," Jim said. Then to Lourdes he added, "I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say my "N" number or not, but he seems happy."

"I don't know either."

A group of cubs landed on Runway Three Six Left in formation—like a slow, graceful group of lighter-than-air ballet dancers touching down on a stage in front of fifty thousand onlookers. In time, they exited the runway onto the grass in Vintage Parking.

A.T.C. spoke on Jim's radio: "Red low wing, cleared for takeoff Three Six Left. Turn right before you reach the tower, then fly heading one five zero until clear, at or below one thousand three hundred."

"Right before the tower, one five zero until clear, below thirteen hundred, red low wing. Clear for takeoff."

Jim closed the canopy the rest of the way, latched it, and rolled onto the runway, looking for traffic to his right—looking for any more cubs that might be coming in, or space ships, or warbird megaplanes, anything—then pirouetted smartly to the left, smoothly adding throttle.

The little RV-6 picked up speed rapidly. Jim pushed forward on the stick and raised the tailwheel off the runway, then, because it picked up speed so rapidly, he almost immediately afterward pulled the stick back again—and Jim, Lourdes, and the little, red, NASCAR-painted speedster lifted gracefully off the runway, climbing skyward like a homesick angel.

Lourdes watched him carefully, but also watched the airport fall away beneath them, thousands of people watching.

Before reaching the tower, Jim banked smartly to the right, heading one five zero, keeping his altitude below 1,300 feet mean sea level.

Lourdes watched his altimeter. Jim held it perfectly.

Wittman Regional left behind them; the southern end of Lake Winnebago approached ahead—blue as a sapphire, surrounded by a sea of emerald fields.

Lourdes' heart was pounding. "This plane is fast," she said into the intercom.

Jim smiled at her.

Outside the Class D airspace, Jim turned his transponder to "On" and climbed to about two thousand five hundred feet A.G.L., Above Ground Level.

They cruised a ways east to get away from any Oshkosh traffic.

"Lets do some clearing turns, okay?" he asked Lourdes.

"Fine," Lourdes said.

Jim made two ninety degree turns, first left then right, looking for planes, birds, bugs, rocket ships, anything. Finding nothing, he entered a left standard turn.

"Yank and bank?" he asked her?

Lourdes giggled at him. "Or as we say in Star Wars: 'tank and spank.'"

"You ever get air sick?" He asked.

"Flying simple A to B?"

"Okay then."

Jim straightened it out in level cruise at about 165 knots, about 190 mph, then raised the nose thirty degrees and neutralized the elevators.

Lourdes felt herself go weightless—

Jim pressed the stick midway left.

Lourdes watched a spherical Planet Earth rotate 360 degrees around them from left, to overhead, to right, disappearing again beneath the right wing. Her feeling that brief second they were inverted, with the earth above them, was _the sky was so deep_! She could sense for her first time in her life: the sky faded to black outer space beneath them, it looked so different when it was below.

Jim had a grin from ear to ear. Holding the plane steady in level cruise, he asked her, "How was that?"

Lourdes laughed.

"Okay." Jim did another one, only this time faster.

Nose up. Weightless. The planet rotated around them in a fast 360: up over their left wing, way overhead, then down below the right wing.

Lourdes laughed harder.

Still doing 165 knots, Jim pushed the throttle in all the way for a loop—and Lourdes watched Planet Earth disappear beneath their nose, everything turning to blue sky ahead, then the sun—

The "G" forces were lighter than Lourdes thought they would be in a loop and credited that to Jim's skill.

Jim closed the throttle a little over the back side of the loop, and Lourdes noticed the planet climb forward over the cockpit to take position beneath the nose again. Where it usually was.

"You're smooth, alright," Lourdes said with a grin.

"I try. So how are you doing?"

"Fine. No problems," Lourdes said.

Jim said, "Okay," and raised the nose, heading straight up for a hammerhead—gravity slowing them, eventually, nearly to a full stop in the air, where he hit his left rudder hard, swinging his tail up over his nose, then diving straight back down at the earth—next carving directly through a barrel roll, then a series of aileron rolls—

Lourdes was on her hands and knees in the grass by Jim's plane heaving, coughing, and spitting.

The guys next door had waited for their return, and they couldn't pass up some ribbing, which didn't help Lourdes deal with it.

"Didn't he keep 'her steady?" one gibed.

"It's alright, honey! Happens to all of us."

"You get used to it, Sweetheart."

Jim tried to defend her. "It was her first time aerobatic." Then to Lourdes, putting a hand on her back while she stared at the grass. "I'm sorry, Lourdes. I think I got carried away."

"Sith spawn!" Lourdes spat. "Darth Invader!"

CHAPTER 14

Lourdes leaned on a water fountain and slowly bent over to let some of the water spray on her face. Jim stood behind her dripping guilt.

They walked slowly toward a group of large tents.

They sat at a table in the Fightertown tent café, near the warbirds. It was early for lunch, and most tables were empty, but there may have nonetheless been twenty people in there eating burgers and fries, drinking soda pop.

"I'll be fine. I'm better already," she said, exaggerating.

"I'm glad," Jim said. "Want a warm soda?"

"No. I'll be fine," she said. "It's not the flu. I just have to wait another few minutes until my inner ear slows down. The nausea will disappear."

Jim nodded his understanding. He'd been there, too.

"I'm sorry about throwing up in your plane. I'm sure it'll wash."

"No problem. I'll get to it."

"Was that a transmit button on the stick?"

"Yeah, but I've been thinking of replacing it, anyway. It was sticking."

"Well, it's sticky for sure, now. And I was doing so well, there. Right up until it came on me. All of a sudden—you were so smooth. It's just me." She took a slow breath to steady her insides. "I'd probably be used to it in a day, if we did it again."

"You want to go up again?"

"No!"

"She's a little green?" a guy from the next table said as he got up to leave.

"Yeah," Jim said. "Did some aerobatics just now. Might have gotten carried away."

"Great!" the guy said. "What kind of plane?"

"RV-6."

"Fantastic. I do love those."

"What kind do you fly?" Jim asked the man.

"A P-51 Mustang. That one right over there," he said, pointing.

Jim looked at the man's paint job, even though it was a long way off. "Oooo, I can tell that one is sweet. Have you won any awards?"

"A couple. But now, mostly I just fly it."

"Forever," Jim said.

The man smiled and walked south out the front of the café.

"Whew," Lourdes exclaimed. "I'm feeling better. I'm getting over it faster than I thought I would."

"I'm so glad."

Lourdes put both her hands on the table in front of her as if they were on a keyboard, positioning her left hand over the imaginary A, S, and D keys and her right hand over imaginary number keys along the top row.

She looked at him with determination and slapped her right index finger down on the table.

His eyes widened.

She did it again, but this time with her right ring finger as well, followed by the middle finger, then her pinky.

He reached both his hands up onto the table in front of him, and slammed his fingers down in a systematic, repetitive order—one that may have appeared random to a passer-by, but which was in fact calculated to destroy her character.

"No!" Lourdes moved the fingers on her left hand to maneuver her character, and slammed her right-hand fingers down in a smart sequence, hitting what would be a #6 key and a #7, groaning with emphasis, sending Force energy to defeat him.

He looked like he was interested in carrying it on, but Lourdes quit and held still a bit. "I'm not all the way back, yet," she said.

"It's okay," Jim said. "Are you going to be able to eat some lunch? They have burgers—"

"No."

"—and also a nice salad? And maybe a warm soda might be nice?"

"Yes, that'd be fine," she said, thinking it may actually be.

He got up to go get it.

Some folks began trickling in for lunch.

Two older gentlemen who had been lounging at a near-by table spoke to her. "You a little airsick?" one asked.

Lourdes nodded.

"Where'd you fly in from?" he asked.

"L.A.," Lourdes answered. "But it's not that. He just took me up and 'twisted the tail off' his RV, and that did it to me."

"Oh, yeah," the other fellow said. "You've got to get used to it. What do you normally fly?"

"Me? I have a Cessna 150, down in the South Forty."

"Classic," the first man said, getting a nostalgic look on his face. "I soloed in one of those, probably fifty years ago. I could do anything in it."

"What do you fly, now?" Lourdes asked to be social. She didn't feel in the mood, but social convention at an airshow rather required it.

"We have an L-4," the first guy said.

"It's actually his," the second said. "I'm his 'ground crew,' reads: passenger and gofer."

"He helps with it. We're a team," the first said.

"An L-4?" Lourdes thought. "Dark green liaison plane from World War Two? Like a Cub design, right?"

"Yeah," the first said. "And I was in Dubya Dubya Two—Patton's Third Army, infantry—and I always thought it'd be nice to have one."

"Where'd you fly in from?" Lourdes asked. The question was always expected and always genuine.

"Milwaukee," the second said, with a big smile.

"So it only took us a week," said the first, teasing himself about the classic, slow airspeed.

Lourdes smiled for them, feeling better as well.

"I bet it was a beautiful flight," she said.

The men knew what she was referring to, as only other pilots could. "Yes, they both said," nodding. "As nice as seeing you two together, there."

"We've been watching you, thinking 'Oh, how nice,'" the second one said.

"Us?" Lourdes looked at Jim paying at the cash register. "We're not—" She caught herself.

"We just got here, so we got to go clean the bugs off the plane. Airshow stuff, you know. In case 'the general' comes by." The two men got up to leave and smiled broadly at Lourdes all the way out of the café.

Jim returned with their food. "And here's a nice salad for you with a little dressing on the side, warm soda," he sat down. "And here's a very calm burger and fries for me, and a bottle of water."

Lourdes looked at him, trying to understand how the two men had seen them. Together. As a couple. _You're my man_? she asked herself.

"Jim, I need to talk."

He smiled. "Love to," he said.

She took a sip of soda and opened the plastic cover on her salad, began to pick at it.

He took a big bite of his burger.

"You know, like, I can see that we're getting to know each other, but you have to know I'm about six shades of messed up these days, and I'm not in a good position to be getting into any relationship."

Jim stopped chewing and talked with his mouth full. "What's the matter?"

Lourdes picked at her salad, thinking.

"I'm coming on too strong?" he said. "I'm sorry. I'll back up." He started to reach out to her hand, but pulled his hand back.

"Just a kiss? No, it's not that. It's not you. Truly, it's me."

She noticed he wasn't eating.

"Eat, please? This isn't that bad a talk."

He began to chew again.

"It's— Didn't you notice I got here all messed up? I fly in here to Oshkosh with no tie-downs, few camping supplies?"

"Yes. I wondered, but didn't want to pry."

"Very nice of you."

"You're not the only one to show up with no tie-downs."

"Nice, also. But I— I don't know whether I'm coming or going, right now in life. I don't know if I want to be with you or not, or if you're even a good guy or not."

Looking concerned, he started to respond, but she interrupted.

"Sorry, I'm sure you're nice. But I can't think well, right now. I'm all messed up. I—" She thought for a second. "I've been hurt a lot, and I don't trust people so much any more. Truth be known: people scare me."

Jim looked at her. "I hear and respect what you're saying—and hopefully without minimizing what you're saying—I have issues, too. Truly. I think the only one who doesn't is the real Matt Damon. Who I know I don't look like. Much. Though I think I do a little around the eyes, now that you mention it."

She smiled at his humor.

"Yeah, you're great. Are you rich like him, too?"

"If he's poor like me."

"Pitty," she teased him back. "We could have been happy."

Lourdes looked at some guys chatting at the next table and asked them, "Hey guys: Do any of you have an extra hundred million dollars you could give to this guy?" She indicated Jim.

"No," came their responses.

"I left it in my other pants!"

"My wife blew it shopping!"

"The price of fuel—"

Shaking his head, it was his turn to smile at her.

"You do fine," Lourdes said to Jim, "really. But me? I'm a mess. Back in Los Angeles, I quit, you know. I gave up. You wanna know why I got here the way I did?" she asked him. "I'll tell you why—it's because I didn't plan on it. I got overloaded back in L.A. and one day, about three days before, I walked out. Leaving is one of the things I do best. I packed my little flight bag, abandoned my apartment, abandoned my car, got in my plane and flew away.

"I'm so overloaded, I'm two tons over gross. My airplane head won't fly any more. It can't. I'm so messed up, I make 'Wrong-way Corrigan' look like Neil Armstrong. I make Stephen Colbert look like Ben Stein. I've had problems ragging on me for so long I can't even remember when they started, and there's this other group that's had to make it all _harder_ for me, whether they admit it or not, and now people don't understand me—even worse than they used to thirty five years ago, which was better anyway than they do now—and I'm about way-out-to-here sick of it!"

She held her hands over her head to show how deep it had gotten.

Jim sat quietly and listened.

She tried to speak quietly to keep surrounding tables from hearing. "I mean, I was at work in the E.R. one day, and suddenly I couldn't do my job any more. I didn't have it in me. And my husband left me ages ago, but it's all related, and I haven't dated anyone of any note in years because I'm so dejected, and— I'm getting to the point where I don't even know who I am, any more. I don't know what I want for supper. I don't even know where I'll find supper after I leave here. Except for my campsite, I'm homeless."

"You're a nurse; you can work anywhere. Just point your plane and go, and you're there."

"That's not it!" She scolded him quietly for missing it. "The _plane_ will go, but _I'm_ lost. You hearing me? I don't have a sense of anything in here." She tapped her sternum. "I'm gone, lost. I don't feel like I can connect with any _place_ any more, let alone any _one_. It's been too much for too long.

"And then here is this guy out of nowhere who latches on to me—"

He started to object again.

"—and I'm sure you're a great guy, but you are probably not as screwed up as I am, and you've probably got reasonable expectations which I am _not gonna fulfill_ , and there'll be this schism.

"There's no way I have an emotional basis for a relationship right now. I don't even know what I want. I'd probably lead you on thinking you were the right medicine for me, and then one day—p _pffffftt_!" She stared at him, half afraid to say it. "One day, you'd wake up and I'd be gone. _Poof_ , like that. Out of your life, never to even think of you again. Gone. I mean, who picks up and leaves like that? Me."

Jim waited and listened.

People walked by. Going to tables. Sitting at tables chatting while they ate. Leaving when finished.

Jim didn't say anything.

"I cannot do this," Lourdes continued. "I don't know how to do this. You're fairly well balanced, and you think something is developing here. But I'm afraid that you're just a salve over old wounds to me, and that if I ever find myself again— I don't even know who I am to find, and what will I be like when I find myself? I might not be interested in you. My whole outlook on life, myself, and you could all change when something comes together for me six months from now."

Lourdes was both glad and sad she'd laid so much on the table for Jim. Was something good just destroyed? Was a problem averted?

She played with her salad, dreading his response, not eating.

Jim studied her for a minute before attempting to respond.

"Do you hear me?" Lourdes asked, not meaning for it to come out sarcastically.

"Yes," Jim said. "I do. And I'm trying to think about what you're saying, trying to meld that with who I'm seeing you to be as well."

That mattered to Lourdes, because she rarely got a glimpse of how others saw her, and she thought he'd be genuine with her.

She took a chance. "Who do you see me to be?" she asked.

He kept studying her and finally shared. "Well," he paused, thinking some more. "It's hard to say, and I'm not sure I should."

"Go on! Get it out," she urged.

"Well, from the first moment I saw you crying in your plane, I knew something was up. The way you taxied in and followed me, all smelled like a pilot who knew what she was doing. But then when you shut the engine down, you cried as if you couldn't take it any more. And you seemed so delicate.

"And then, right after that, I began to feel that you were a lot stronger inside than it seemed, a strong-minded person who'd been carrying a heavy load.

"Who are you, to me? You're a cute little brunette whose been facing the world alone too long. You're a beautiful flower who stands and shines her petals brilliantly in the sun after a hurricane. Because you made it through. You're here. I see strength of character in you. I see a delicate nature that can appreciate new life, yet who has the strength to face a tornado. That's what I see. And I'm thinking, 'Who is this person who picks herself up over and over again after the worst life has to throw at her'? And I'm thinking, 'You.'"

"You are so kissing my ass," she said.

A guy at a neighboring table laughed. He'd been listening in. "Sorry."

Pilots at a fly-in were like an impromptu family, there for a family gathering.

"Yeah," he said to Lourdes. "But it's also true. I really mean it.

"Lourdes—" Jim re-thought, for a long time, until he finally spoke. "You know," he said, nearly in tears, himself.

She could see something was tearing at him inside.

"We could all...lose—" He stopped so he wouldn't cry, himself. "You know, we could all lose all this," he said, indicating everything around them. "We could all lose all this around us—our planes, our health, each other, our lives—at any time. One moment we're here, and the next we're gone, without any ability to think of ourselves or those we love, or to see how green the grass is, how lovely the paint job is on my plane," smiling sardonically, "or how nice it is to hear someone speak."

"Oh, Connie died!" Lourdes said, remembering.

"Yes, but it's not just her, it's _all of us_. Life will end for all of us, and maybe on a moment's notice. And it's so fragile. Yet we're _alive_ , right now, Lourdes. We're here. We're the _miracle of life_. We can share this _beautiful place_! Because we're here— And then one day we won't be. It'll be gone. Because we'll die, and it'll all be lost for us.

" _Just being here"_ he earnestly, stabbing his finger at the table, "is a joyous miracle we can't give up, even if it hurts sometimes. Give me one day with you, and I could spend the rest of my life with that joy that at least I had _that good time_. Give me _anything at all_ , and I am grateful, because that's what life is.

"We love. We lose love. But we _live_!

"We _have_ to, don't you see? We _have_ to. Because if we don't, then _we still die_ when that time hits, without it."

People all around in the café had stopped talking and were staring at them.

"I'm thankful you told me you may not stay. But you have to also know that the time we spend together makes life possible for me, and I'm— I'm just hoping you may be willing to let me be with you more. That _you'd_ want to be with _me_. For as long as it lasts.

"And then one day, when it's gone—whether because you flew away or because you died—I'll miss you, but I'll be thankful I had you for as long as I did. Thankful to God for the chance to live this life and see you in front of me for as long as I could."

" _Bravo_!" people in surrounding tables raved for his inspirational speech.

Lourdes noticed they were all watching.

"You did it again," she said. She shrank in her chair and blushed again.

Jim composed himself and offered Lourdes a positive face: he smiled at the other tables, and when their applause died down, he told them as if he were an M.C. at the Oscars, "Everybody's looking? I feel like 'When Harry met Sally' and Meg Ryan has an orgasm for Billy Crystal in the restaurant."

All the guys laughed.

Lourdes blushed even more.

Jim finished addressing the guys: "Because she just flew with me in my plane, and we are gonna go get an ice cream!"

They applauded again, laughing.

"That's it!"

"Go get her!"

Jim grabbed Lourdes' hand and led her quickly out of the café.

CHAPTER 15

The lady handed Jim two soft serve cones. "Thanks," he told her and moved to hand one to Lourdes kissing her gently on the lips beforehand.

Lourdes was surprised, but she took the kiss—and there it was again, she noticed, that yearning that rose in her, so needy after so long.

"I sneaked one in," he smiled at her.

They walked through endless rows of homebuilts out on the flight line.

"It's about four," he said, noting the sun. "And it's been a long half-week. Camping tires me."

"Sleeping in a tent," Lourdes agreed.

"And I like it, but I do need to pamper myself a little. Why don't I call up some folks and get us all out to dinner tonight back at the steak house?"

Lourdes was a little reluctant. "I'm not sure. I need to conserve my pennies."

"I'll buy."

"No you won't," Lourdes said, trying to apply the brakes.

"Alright then, you buy your own, but just order a hamburger."

She thought about it. "Okay, this time."

Jim pulled out his phone and made a couple of calls. "So," He said into his phone, "Wanna pick us up at about five over at the airshow Bus Stop just west of the control tower?" Pause. "Great."

The rustic steak house was as warm and inviting as it had been the last time. Eight of them were seated at a large, round table. Servers came and went carrying trays of down home delicacies. Wine was poured. Glasses clinked. People smiled and talked at neighboring tables as well as their own. Occasional laughter confirmed people were having a good evening.

A server sat salads in front of those who had ordered one.

"Now flying, as you know, takes a little bit of fuel," Jim said to the group of fliers at the large, round table.

"Way too much of that," Brad said, a mechanic who was staying with his family for the week in tents next to Mike and Millie's motor home.

"Yeah, it's because of that whirly dicer-thing up front," Mike said.

"The prop?" Millie asked.

"Why does that cause a problem?" Jeremy asked, Brad and Ally's son, who had just graduated high school.

"Not really, J.J. I think he's being poetic," Ally said to clarify.

Jim watched Lourdes pick at her salad.

"I'm fine," she said to him.

"The prop is actually a good thing," Lourdes said to Jeremy, using Mike's comment as a way to make a small joke. "You know what it's for, don't you?"

Older salts sat back and smiled, knowing the old joke's punch line but not robbing Jeremy of the fun.

Lourdes continued. "It's there to keep the pilot cool."

Jeremy looked confused, so Lourdes finished: "If it stops, the pilot starts to sweat."

Jeremy got it and knew he'd been had.

The group laughed.

"I sure wish we could float the planes like they do speeders in Star Wars," Mike said. "Like pod racing? Notice how they seem to float right there a few feet above the ground like that?"

"Need anti-grav," Sophie said, Jeremy's older sister.

Ally was sipping some wine and smiling at her family. "Maybe you can invent it," she said.

"You know, we may not need to," Jim guessed. "Can't we float things with superconductors? Maybe we just need to figure out a way to make some room-temperature superconductors, with a little rheostat on them so you can dial up your altitude."

"Or tie it into a radar altimeter so it'll know to stay a certain distance above terrain," Mike said.

"With some lag built in so it'll be a smooth ride," Jim added.

"Then add some little fans for directional control," Brad said. "If all you do is float 'em up, you'd drift with the wind, so you need to have something to move with."

"Put three such floating nodules in the plane—or car?—and if you had a mechanical breakdown, you could float around up there waiting for a tow truck," Millie said.

"You wouldn't need wings any more for lift. That'd make 'em lighter," Brad said.

Lourdes speared a tomato with some ranch dressing on it.

Jim wasn't having any.

Jeremy went with it. "And then you could do away with actually paving roads. Plant crops there instead."

"Smart kid, there," Ally said.

"Mix all the concrete and asphalt up and ship it to L.A.," Lourdes said sarcastically. "It'll morph into buildings."

There was light general laughter.

"She isn't real fond of L.A.," Jim said to everyone.

"You're from L.A.?" Ally asked Lourdes.

"Yes," Lourdes answered. "That's why."

"What's it like?" Ally asked.

"They put Star Fleet Academy in San Francisco," Lourdes deflected. "Moved the library up there from Cal State, Northridge, it looks like."

Mike jumped at one of his favorite topics. "Like the new Star Trek time line that was out with Chris Pine? Great—"

Sophie jumped in. "And in this one, they actually said it was a new timeline right in the show."

"Yup," Jim said.

Turning to Millie, Sophie said, "Jeremy, says it's his fave."

"I actually enjoyed it, too," Millie said with a warm smile.

Mike jumped back in with his British accent showing. "And there was a documentary on the tellie the other day wondering what aliens from outer space may look like, some day when we meet up with them. If we haven't already."

" _You_ are an alien from outer space," Millie said to him.

Mike stood up, ceremoniously, by the table in front of his chair and laid his napkin down. "Everyone, I have an announcement to make."

People from other tables looked as well.

Mike spoke to everyone in the restaurant. "I am an alien from outer space here to sample your cuisine and court your women."

People from other tables turned back to their business without remark.

People at Lourdes' and Jim's table applauded briefly.

Mike sat back down. "And they won't tell us about the aliens for fear we'll panic."

"I always knew it," Jim said. "I just didn't think you wanted me to speak of it."

"So I speak with authority on life elsewhere," Mike continued. "But I'll mess up the secret bits on purpose so as not to violate any State secrets, Okay?"

"Okay," the table agreed.

"On the tellie, they thought alien life might be in one of two different and major categories: one being maybe insectoid, that survived predaciously, that grew smart and scraped its murderous claws through the hulls of our ships like the movie 'Aliens'; and two being maybe humanoids like us because they could be, in fact, related to us distantly somehow, a common seed spread throughout the galaxy."

"I think that's how 'Star Trek' explained why so many other species seemed to be humanoid," Ally said, "In 'The Next Generation.'"

"Because some earlier ancient species went through the galaxy seeding the place?" Mike asked.

"Yes," she said.

"That would explain it," Jim said. "They have to have a reason."

"It's probably the reason most actors are humanoid," Mike said.

Lourdes watched Jim goof off with the others. She was feeling comfortable taking a back seat in the conversation, per se, but there was something else about the evening nagging at her, something just below her awareness. It was making her uncomfortable, and she couldn't yet put her finger on it.

"Or," Brad said, "it could be that we are actually a very rare phenomenon, here on earth. We have a temperature range that permits liquid water. Earth's wild precession was stabilized by the moon and also made life possible—which only came about because of a huge collision four billion years ago at just the right angle with a rogue planetoid. Maybe we're one of the more significant species in the galaxy, right now, and after a paltry million years, _we'll_ be the ones spread out all over, seeding the place with _our_ D.N.A."

"And then we can have real Star Trek days," Jeremy said. "Only then we'll be more like the ancient ones who seeded, rather than the young explorers."

"Or we might be like the ancient aliens in '2001 A Space Odyssey,'" Mike told him. "You know, they made an advanced embryo out of Dave. 'I like working with humans.'" He laughed at himself.

"Everything's in evolution," Jim said.

"What do you think, Lourdes?" Millie asked. "What do you think aliens from outer space might look like one day?"

"I think if we can't get along with someone of a different religion here on Earth, how in the cosmos are we ever going to get along with someone of a completely alien nature from Rigel Four."

That brought a round of "Ooos" and "Aaahs" from the table.

They all looked at Lourdes, and she immediately chastised herself for attracting too much attention. Attention creates focus, creates discovery—not her habit. She wasn't comfortable with discovery.

"Which also makes me wonder," Sophie said, continuing the discussion, "of how we could interbreed with another species, because on 'Star Trek,' Spock's father was Vulcan, and his mother was human. If they're of different species, how could they make Spock?"

Lourdes didn't jump in this time.

"Different species," Jim said, "I think, is defined by the ability to produce _fertile_ offspring, not just any offspring. Right?" he said, turning to Lourdes.

Lourdes looked shy this evening, but she tried to answer a little. "I think so."

Jim told everyone, "She's a nurse."

"Oh, how nice," they answered.

Millie picked up, "So maybe Spock is sterile?"

"No," Ally answered her. "Remember that _kolinar_ or whatever it was? Spock feels the heat."

" _Pon Farr_ ," I think that is, her husband, Brad, told her. "And I think he could feel the heat, while still shooting blanks."

"Well," Jim said. "In those future Star Trek days, they might have done a littlie genetic fix that allowed fertile offspring."

Two servers brought food all around. One had a steak. One was vegetarian. One had fish. One had fish and chips, and four had burgers.

"Or," Jim said to the table, "they didn't need to because they really are our cousins, more of a different race than species— No, his blood is green.

"Oh, excuse me," Jim said to his server. "Is this the burger with the extra good flavor in it?"

She smiled at Jim. "Yes."

"Cooked super well?" he pressed.

"Perfectly."

"Oh, good. And hers also?" He asked of her, point to Lourdes.

"Of course! Our chef graduated Star Fleet Academy!" she kidded.

The table laughed.

"Cheers," Mike said to everyone, raising his glass of water on a happy but surprisingly serious note.

Everyone raised a glass of something and waited to hear the toast.

"To another good evening," Mike said with dignity. "You know, I've had days when it wasn't so. Yup. I make no secret of the fact I am an alcoholic. Dry eight years, now thanks to Jim."

Cheers went up from the table for both of them.

Millie looked at Mike then over to Lourdes.

"No," Jim said. "That's thanks only to _you_. Nobody chooses what he does but himself. It's your daily will, Mike."

"I find your strength infectious," Mike said. "So here's to everyone on this good evening. I know we all have our own cross to bear, and it's by doing this that we can one day happily marry an alien from outer space—or a Star Fleet officer."

"Here! Here!," they all said, chuckling, sipping whatever they had. Only four of them drank any wine.

"Speech!" The table clamored for Jim.

Lourdes had been shrinking away from the spotlight most of the evening. She sipped a little of her water, and watched Jim handle himself in front of the table.

Jim seemed a little embarrassed, she noted, yet stood nonetheless in a show of confidence, smiling at them all sarcastically, and offered his simple speech: "Your food is getting cold."

He sat back down.

"What a speech!"

"Bravo!"

"Smart alec."

_What was that_? Lourdes wondered?

Jim delicately sat his glass down and redirected the conversation back to the topic that existed before the food arrived. "Interspecies' marriage with aliens is cool and reasonable. If the heart wills it. They're adults. If consensual, it doesn't hurt anyone else, so it should exist. Not 'It should be _allowed'_ as that is presumptive. But then I have to ask the question." Turning to Mike, Jim added with a bit of humor, "Don't fry a circuit."

Jim addressed the whole table, "Do you think you could fall in love with some alien character in one of these movies? Or a real alien here on Earth, if one existed like that?"

He asked the whole table, but he also glanced over at Lourdes as well, asking her.

Lourdes noticed his glance and shrunk back. Her mind reeled, and she didn't know why. The back of her brain started involuntarily to form answers to his question that she immediately knew she wouldn't voice, when it hit her like a shockwave.

Oh my God! No!

_It couldn't be!_ She panicked, staring at him.

He couldn't be.

She looked at him for sign. His hands: muscular, but the bone structure underneath—Shoulders: maybe a little more narrow than she'd noticed before. Strong neck. Brow ridge: exists but slight. Hair: slight pattern baldness, not definitive. Whiskers: real, but not as full as they could be. Buttocks: maybe larger than she'd have thought.

Nothing specific, but the overall gestalt—

She looked at his front—maybe even staring longer than she should have, looking for any trace—

Expletives raced through her mind.

_Run!_ was her first reaction. That was the way she'd adapted to handling potential humiliation in society. Run. But where could she go? She could cab back to the field, get in the plane—leave the tent—and fly away before she'd have to face any of them.

Don't be ridiculous, she chastised herself. That would cause questions. She had no car. She'd be leaving a dinner to walk? To take a cab?

Did the others know about him?

She quickly but surreptitiously looked at everyone seated at the table. There was no sign of it if they did.

Did they know about _her_? She looked at them all again, and again, there was no sign.

Too many questions.

Stay for now. Slow. Easy. Get out of this as soon as able, but don't raise suspicion.

Lourdes' social skills were not impeccable, but from countless humiliating events in her life, she had practiced a few things had helped her in the past.

Can anyone tell how alarmed I am?

Would she give herself away?

Only someone very attentive would notice. Her mouth and eyes opened only slightly— She felt her face beginning to warm into a blush, so she lowered her face a little, adjusting the napkin in her lap. Her heart pounded. She couldn't stop that. But her breath wanted to race as well, and that she _did_ control.

Other people at the table carried on as before with their jovial interchange over dinner, scraped forks against plates, drank out of glasses.

Lourdes was quiet.

Jim looked at her.

Staring at him, she—ever so slightly—withdrew.

The look of alarm in his face told everything.

She quit staring at him and looked back down at her napkin again.

"Lourdes, honey? Are you alright?" Millie asked quietly.

_Aaiieee!_ Lourdes caught herself withdrawing too much. "I'm fine," she tried to say calmly. "Sorry. I guess I'm still a little green from the flight today."

"True, I over did it. Had her praying to the grass about noon." Jim gave Millie a confident smile.

"You can't woo her that way, Jim! Here, let me show you how!" Mike jumped half out of his seat as if to act on his feigned romantic bravado.

"Park it, Bucko," Millie said playfully.

"You took her flying and got her sick?" Ally asked.

"Sounds just like my Arnie," Sophie said fondly. "He got me sick on a roller coaster when we met."

"Are you going to be okay?" Millie asked Lourdes.

Lourdes was fearful of the attention. "I'm fine." _Please don't look at me_. "I just want to sit. It'll pass."

Millie gave Lourdes a concerned look but went back to her conversation with the others at the table.

Jim looked at Lourdes.

Lourdes looked at Jim so sternly that he looked away from her.

His hands— On the edge of the table.

He looked at her and moved his hands to his lap, under the table.

"My dear, you're as red as a beet," Ally said.

Lourdes put her hands to her face and excused herself. "I'm sorry. I'll be right back."

CHAPTER 16

The morning sun was so low over Runway Three Six, it illuminated the underside of her wing and the bottom half of her tent.

"You're one of _them_!" Lourdes scolded, crawling out the door flap of her tent.

Jim stood by her plane. "One of what?" he asked, stepping forward.

Lourdes jumped back to keep away from him and hit her head on the edge of her wing strut.

"Aiieee!" she screamed, as much to him as from the impact.

"You okay?" he asked.

A small trickle of blood began forming on Lourdes' head, just above her hairline.

"Keep away from me!" she ordered. She held her hand on the small wound, thinking the pressure could help stop the bleeding.

"You need some help—"

"Not by you!" she told him.

She stepped over her left main gear and opened her cockpit door, rummaging around inside for her first aid kit.

"I don't know what you're so mad at me about!" he said.

"Yes you do!"

She found her kit and set out some polysporin and a bandage but continued for the time being to keep pressure on her scalp with her right hand. She pulled her hand away periodically to check and see if it was still bleeding.

"Classic 'Cessna Forehead,'" Jim said.

Her look to him was caustic. "I didn't do it on my own."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"You don't scare me; you _disgust_ me."

The look on his face made his pain clear, and she was sorry. She didn't want to hurt him. Neither, she admitted to herself, did she feel she needed to abandon her beliefs just because she'd been attracted to him.

"You took advantage of me. You used me."

"Let me help," he said.

"Stay out of it!" she yelled, dressing her wound herself.

"And you know good and well what I'm talking about: You're one of _them_. A make-believer, a pretender who doesn't want to hear the unholy 'ist' suffix. You're a transgenderist."

"We don't like that word; we prefer 'transgender.'" he said quickly, with a smirk on his face.

"Because 'transgenderist' means something you specifically try to hide," she said just as quickly. " _You don't even want_ —"

Jim's mouth formed part of the word—what?—but it didn't finish. "How dare—"

"Don't lie to me any more. I know too much about it."

"I'm sure you do because you've got your own involvement in this."

"No I don't," she said, tossing her first aid kit into the cargo bay and slamming her cockpit door. She turned to face him. "I have _no_ involvement in your thing."

"Lourdes. Honey. I'm sorry—"

"I'm not your honey, and yes you are!"

"But you're—"

" _Don't say it_! It's true, but I don't want to hear it." She looked around to see if anyone was looking.

"You know what I mean," he said.

"I know what _I am_ ," she said. "But I can pretty much guarantee, it's not what _you_ are."

She zipped up her tent flap, draped the all-important tarp over the doorway, and marched away from both the plane and Jim.

He followed her. "Some of us have genital conversion, and some of us don't," he said.

She was always aghast when she heard that. "What? 'Some of us people who don't want to try to change our sex try to change our sex'? That's like saying some of us who are Chinese are Japanese. Some of us who are red are blue. Can you hear yourself stretching the logic of that? It's a different thing! And you're not saying we are both colors, both Asian, or both transitioners. You're saying we are both red, both Chinese, or both into transgenderism! Because that term you're using for both of us—transgenderism— Remember? Virginia Prince, Ph.D., popularized the term for decades. She was information central on it: Transgenderism is about changing _gender_ , not sex. My phenomenon is about changing sex; yours is not."

"Things evolve. Terms evolve," he said.

"Yes, they do. But sex and gender are still two different things that you're trying to blend—but then, because being blended is what you are all about."

"Transgenderism as a term has evolved. Now, it doesn't mean what it used to mean. We are variations of the same thing," he told her patiently.

She stopped her march long enough to look at him incredulously, then stomped away again.

"No we're not. And it hasn't really evolved. You've just tried to forcibly roll transsexuals into it as well, like Christine Jorgensen and me, for your own social movement, which is good for you but bad for us, because it misrepresents us and makes it harder for us to gain acceptance for our own, different issues. 99% of everyone who says they're 'transgender' are transgenderists and prefer to change gender and not sex—while implying they have my package, or are going to get it, or offering some phony excuse, but really not wanting it. You're fake," she told him.

"If I am, you are."

"Actually," she confirmed, "I'd agree with that," she said meekly.

That caused him to stop in the field, between two rows of antiques. Hardly anyone was up and about yet.

Lourdes stopped to face him again. "Yes, I am. As fake as the day is long. You and I are both fakes, but in different ways."

"Goodness," he said, staring at her.

"No way near it," she said, turning on her heels and marching off again.

"Who would have thought?" he asked, pursuing her again.

"Would you two take it down the road?" someone yelled from inside a nearby tent.

Lourdes worried about having been overheard _. Have I said anything in detail? What words did I use?_ Her face went beet red yet again. Her look clearly blamed Jim for her embarrassment.

She stomped through the grass on the way to anywhere else.

"We— Neither one of us are fake," he said.

"Yes we are," Lourdes said quietly, trying not to draw attention while they argued. "I'm fake because I try— All my life! With all my heart! _In every way possible_ —to be something I _need to be_ — I still, even now feel like I'm _dying_ every day because I'm not _truly_ what I need to be."

He started to speak. " Legally—"

She turned to him yet again, shouting in whisper. "Legally is _not enough_! I'm thankful for that, but I'm talking biology here: structure, stature, brain differentiations, hormones, rearing, chromosomes, reproductive capability, anatomy, the quality and quantity of _being_ who and what I really am— _right down to every aspect_ — I'm dealing with a _birth defect_ here of something in my brain that can't ever be in accord with the rest of this!" she said, indicating her born-male body. "What do I need people to believe I am? What do I hope they see in me? What I really feel inside! What's really in here!" she pointed at her heart. "I'm just fake because I can't really be that out here," she said, indicating her body again. "I fall short and I know it.

"Why do you think I'm so broke? You think it was all the airplane expenses? That was cheap by comparison. I've spent over a _hundred and fifty thousand dollars_ on myself, tweaking everything in sight—and everything not in sight—trying to be more genuine, and it's not enough. And on top of my own internal battles, I have to face the world's misunderstandings— _who don't even believe I have a birth defect_. It's a defect that can't be seen."

"Me, too," he said simply.

Her face was pure sarcasm. "I doubt that," she counterpointed with genuine sincerity. "Because you! You—!"

She walked away from him again and entered a portable toilet near the ditch by Theatre in the Woods, slamming the door behind her.

"I think that describes me, too—" he tried to say through the plastic door, but she interrupted.

"Can I get out of here first!" she called.

He waited.

She exited the plastic outhouse, letting the door slam again, and stomped away in the direction of Show Center.

"No it doesn't describe you," she said angrily. "Me? I'm fake because I _can't_ be what I need to be. But you— You you're fake because you want to be _taken_ as something _you don't even want to be_!"

"No! Not true!" he said.

"Really? Let me see your driver's license."

He didn't respond directly.

"Come on. Let me see it." She held out her hand expecting him to hand it over.

He slowly pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed it to her.

She opened it and looked at his driver's license.

It said he was James Boone, Greenhills, Missouri...

"See this?" She showed it to him. "That's an 'M' on there. An 'M.' See that?" She handed his wallet back to him. "It doesn't mean 'Masculine.' It doesn't mean 'Man.'"

"It means 'Male,'" he said to her.

"Right. And you don't want to be one of those, do you."

"I _am_ one of those."

"Oh, really? Drop your drawers."

Lourdes was hurt by her own actions when she saw his face. As angry as she was, as victimized as she felt by the transgender misinformation campaign paradigm, as truthful as she was trying to be, she didn't want to cause that kind of pain.

"I am male," he said simply.

Lourdes tried to respond true to her beliefs, yet a little more gently. "I don't do denial, Jim. You don't want male genitalia. You want what you have _to be taken as if it were male_. And that's not the same thing."

Lourdes could see his hurt feelings.

She had done it again, and she wasn't proud of herself. She'd had this conflict with others in the past, and it had never worked out well—she feared—because the need in them, however fake it seemed to her, felt genuine to them.

"Denial and wishful thinking," she said. "Effects of serious autogynephilia—or auto _andro_ philia, in this case. You want to believe it so you believe it."

"The surgeries aren't good enough," he said weakly.

"You mean you like what you have better. News flash: the surgeries aren't good enough for _anyone_ who wants the real thing, though they are getting better. And on female-to-males like you? It doesn't stop F.T.M.s who really need it. That feeling you have about yourself as male? It isn't male; it's F.T.M.-transgender. You're offering an excuse as a reason."

"You're being so binary, Lourdes," Jim said.

"You guys put us down with that term: 'binary.' As if it's unenlightened, as if we can't see variation all around us. It's a put-down, and it's not nice. But isn't that binary sex designation what you fight for? That beloved 'M' or 'F' on a driver's license? A passport? You want to be a blend, but be taken as one of two."

"Right, we do— No, we don't—" Jim stammered. "We do want the gender marker—"

"And the rights that go along—"

"Rights should be same for all folks, regardless of sex," he said.

"Yes. But you want to be accepted and thought-of as that other 'binary' sex, even though you just want to be the other gender—so don't hit me with that 'binary' bit, okay? You recognize the sexes too, because you want to be taken as one. _One._ The other _one_. You don't fight for an 'F.T.M.' on your driver's license, or a 'T' or something."

The sun was rising a little higher into the sky, warming everything nicely in an orange glow. A few more people began moving about. Dew was evaporating, but the grass was still wet.

Lourdes' toes were feeling the moisture.

"Lourdes—" He said, touching her shoulder to get her to stop. "Honey, I really don't want to hurt you, but I'm right here in this conversation, and I feel I have to ask if you're being a little bit prejudiced?"

"Narrow-minded paradigm!" Lourdes said, angrier still. "See?" she said, speaking about herself. "You have soooo much experience from way back in the '70s— And you know things! You personally know many of the major players. You see how these things evolve! You see the snake-oil industry take over for money—people who have auto _something_ philia willing to fork over Big Bucks to 'professionals' of narrow experience—relative to mine—who reinforce denial for money in a practice— They cater to the earlier stages of transitioners spouting the paradigm right and left because—whoa!—those are the patients who pay most of their bills! If they don't, they're blacklisted in a heart beat, and there goes the new car! And the next thing you know! _Bang_ : forty years of me watching this T-history evolve," she indicated herself, "turns from knowledge into prejudice _because it doesn't match the fake paradigm_! Your group's marketing sham has been so effective!"

Jim looked blown away.

"It's sexual obscuration," she said flatly. "It's a purposeful misleading to obscure what's really down there and what they really want. The paradigm can never advocate for its way of life if it lies about what it is."

Jim's look was of shock.

Lourdes felt defeated that that simple message was always lost in favor of the pretense.

"Jim: I never gave a whit what you or anybody else like you ever did with yourselves or in society. I wouldn't like or dislike anyone for it. I never even gave it a thought! Why would I? It's not my gig. You don't want to really be the other sex."

"But when you tell people that I am a variation of you, then _you're saying I don't really want to be the other sex, either._ And _that_ 's where I draw the line! Because I _do need that other actual sex_! I _need_ it! _My life depends on it_! It's _everything_ to me in a way I honestly believe you'll never get!

"We're about something different," she told him softly. "I have issues with this," she admitted, "not because I don't like your kind, per se, but because you make people misunderstand me. Society doesn't want to give some sex-based right to a transgenderist—right or wrong? Like on immigration or marriage? Is employment an issue for this or that one—or a security clearance, for whatever—because of a gender that was changed but genitalia that wasn't? Do you know how many thousands I've spent on attorneys trying to figure out where I stand, legally, in some of these situations, when I get some lawyer telling me this or that applies to me when it really doesn't? And what about people I meet at a party? Or neighbors? Or even family? They see you all faking your way along—'I'm a woman,' when you clearly are a man in a dress with a boob job—and you say _I'm_ one of you? That makes it harder for me in society. Some governmental agency or individual company intending to deny something to people who claim to be a new sex _but who are hiding that they don't even want it_ hurts people in society who really _do_ want and try to actually be that other sex. We have different issues, Jim. Not just emotionally, psychologically, sexually, interpersonally."

She tried to get off her soap box and summarize for him: "You know how you say I need to be around people who can 'see my heart'?"

He nodded silently.

"Well, _you all_ make it so they _don't_. They look at me and see _your_ heart, instead."

CHAPTER 17

"Why do you hate yourself so much?" Jim asked, his demeanor as gentle and non-threatening as it could be with such a question. "You've got what you worked for; you could live and enjoy, be happy."

Lourdes looked at him incredulously. She knew he was a smart man who just didn't know.

She walked slowly around Show Central in the morning sun, after dawn, watching vendors get their displays ready for the show, polish airplanes on display, greet each other for the biggest airshow of its kind on Earth.

He walked beside her quietly.

She considered the situation. Usually paradigm discussions lead to fights, but he didn't seem to be going that way, so she decided to make a small attempt to explain.

"It's not about not liking good things about myself," she explained.

He said nothing, just walked beside her.

Someone started up a turboprop monoplane, the first of the day. The smell of kerosene filled the air—mixed with the smell of the lawns freshly cut and breakfast being cooked nearby, the aroma entered her soul with a life-sustaining scent that, it seemed, only pilots could love.

"Your premise is wrong," she said."

"What?"

"Your premise, that I have become what I wanted to be. I'm not. I just said that earlier. And it's not that I— I don't hate good things about me. I love that I'm honest, that I love people, that I am quick in the mind. I love this talent I have for being able to point a plane in the right direction and to land it. I love being able to sense the world and be a part of it. I especially love being able to be alive in the first place. My atoms could have been a rock, you know, or worse: a Republican.

He laughed at her.

"All that is wonderful," she said, continuing.

They stood and looked at the concert stage that was being put up for the Steve Miller band that evening.

She looked at him.

He looked back at her, respectfully.

"And the problem isn't just that I can't become what I need to become, either. That's terrible, but it's more. It's— I think—"

She dug deep, trying yet again in life to find that elusive answer.

He waited, unmoving.

"I'm trying to find the answer for you and give it to you in a way you might understand. It's hard, because the thing I use to think with is the thing that's messed up.

"I think there is something deep inside that you don't have, that is part of the problem."

She turned to him. "Are you in pain? Do you feel good about yourself?"

"Yes. I feel fine," he said.

"And you seem fine to me to be, too. You've become who you want to be. You're happy? Fine. But with me, there's a problem with something inside, a fundamental piece that's causing this in me, some structure or differentiation in the brain—or lack of differentiation—that senses other parts of me _are still out of accord_.

"It's not about being happy because so much in life has been achieved. There's that, but if I'm not in denial, I have to admit I'm not what I need to be. It really feels—all the time—every minute of my life, waking or sleeping—as if there is a tiny yet very relevant part of my brain that has a painful discord with the parts of me that aren't biologically so.

"Maybe it's some other biological brain problem that only feels to you like you need to be the other?" he asked.

"I've thought about that. But all my life, my need has been this. Since I was—I don't know, maybe two, at my first thoughts. And the progress that I've made has been the only thing that's helped. Being partially so hurts. Being a blend hurts. I'm not about needing to be beautiful or look good in lingerie. Just female. Just _really_ female. Children? I'd have loved to been able to bear them, but even if I couldn't, I still need to be female, because it's not about bearing so much. It's about _being_. Not a simulation or approximation."

Lourdes was looking into empty space as she talked, looking inside herself for answers as well as she could.

"I don't know what it is. But if I were to guess, it kind of feels like, when I as a fetus, when I differentiated, that part of my brain did not differentiate and remained female or differentiated differently, such that from my every moment in life— I think long-term exposure to hormones may help to feminize the brain, in part, and other life adjustments help, but I think that _that fundamental something_ I don't know about _is still in there needing to actually be the other_ , that discord whatever it is, and that it still can't work well with the other aspects of me I can't change, that aren't genuinely female."

"But you've changed it all," he said. "Haven't you?"

"You mean genital surgery? Yes," she said. "But that's denial," she said. "That doesn't make me biologically there. And this thing in me is painful, Jim. It _hurts_. It's not the kind of pain like suffering rape or oppression—horrible though those are. It's the kind of pain as if someone's twisting a screwdriver in my brain tearing my soul apart.

"I didn't do this," she said indicating herself, "because it grew in me over time, like it did for most of you. It's not that it's where my life's evolution brought me. It didn't grow out of an attraction to any clothes. I've never cared about clothes. It's not a fantasy, and it's not a fetish.

"It's about needing to _actually be_ the other. Why can't you all see that? I did it because I've needed to all my life—that something deep inside—and the discord hurts. I did it trying to be the me I _always_ needed to be. I did it on the _chance I could live at all_ , so I could avoid killing myself."

She looked ashamed in the admission.

The look on his face was genuine compassion.

"I love life soooooooooooo much," she said, "that I put up with this to live."

Lourdes looked around her at people passing by, to make sure no one was listening to them, and they appeared safe to her. She leaned in, nonetheless, to him, and whispered. "You can be happy with yourself because you've got yourself. But I can't be because I haven't."

She looked at him for understanding.

Jim looked around also and then spoke to her quietly, "But others say, after surgery, that they've made it, and they're happy."

"If they're happy, then fine, but that's also denial based on need or wishful thinking, because they aren't what they think they are. The honeymoon period can be half a life-time, but there's more to it that eventually makes itself known again, if the mind is still flexible enough at that age to accept it. There have been times when even I have slipped into denial, thought I'd made it, but that's just a bandage that doesn't cure the hurt. And after all this time I can see things that people are doing, how they're faking themselves out or hoping others will misunderstand— I can see how the thinking can be soooooo wishful because the needs are so strong. But with enough time, and if there's enough internal strength, the truth comes knocking."

"How long has it been for you," Jim asked.

"Fifty-two years in pain," she said. "Thirty-five years in. I was seventeen. And you?"

"Maybe half that. I don't know. There was no real division."

CHAPTER 18

Lourdes and Jim sat among a crowd of hungry aviators in a flight line tent café, having breakfast on wooden-topped, metal-frame folding tables. The atmosphere was classic airshow rustic, and it couldn't have been better. Airshow food was served on plastic plates with plastic weapons, in little cardboard box carrying trays: scrambled eggs, tube-link sausages, sausage patties, French toast, pancakes, butter and syrup, ketchup, coffee in plastic cups, juices in little bottles, and milk in little cartons.

The morning was stunning. The clear plastic sides of the huge tent were standing still, as the winds were light and variable. The sky was CAVU: Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited. The temperature was two two degrees celcius; dew point one seven. The altimeter setting was 29.92 inches of mercury, for those so equipped—and some of the folks probably were.

It was Monday, and the airshow was alive.

A P-51 buzzed the flight line, its twelve-cylinder Rolls Royce Merlin engine throaty to the core in a long, ranged Doppler effect. Half the crowd about broke their neck craning to see it.

"Did you see that?" a man standing by his table said to his buddy.

"Yao," his buddy said. "And lookie that," he said, pointing to a P-40 chasing it, with shark teeth on the cowling.

Lourdes had her plate of eggs and sausage, some hash brown potatoes, with a carton of milk, bought mostly on inertia. She wasn't hungry.

Jim ignored his eggs, looked around them and leaned over to Lourdes. "Have you ever been interested in a woman?"

"With Ben Affleck on the loose?" came Lourdes' simple answer. "But that's a different issue— What? You looking for validation?"

"No," he said. "I didn't think so. But have to admit it's nice to hear. Are you the treasurer of a corrupt nonprofit organization?"

"No," she said.

"Are you a Republican?" he asked.

Lourdes' horror was her response. "What are you doing?"

He laughed. "Okay." He held his hands up in surrender. "Just thought I'd check. There's a major airshow this afternoon. Have one every day. We could go out there, lie on the grass under the wing of someone's Cessna, and watch it. Bring a little scanner and listen to the air boss?"

"Steve Miller is in concert tonight, also," Lourdes said, relaxing with him a little.

"Now that would be nice," Jim said. "'Jet Airliner,'" he said, smiling.

"I'm glad they started having concerts," someone said farther down their table. "They didn't used to, but I think it makes a very nice evening."

Lourdes was immediately embarrassed again by letting someone overhear her, and she resolved to be more discrete.

"After you're exhausted running around all day," his buddy said. "I kinda like that."

"Me, too," said the lady across from them. "I usually go to the Theatre in the Woods, but tonight, I do believe I'll go to the concert. It sounds fun."

" _Abra—abra-cadabra_ ," the man next to her sang Steve Miller's song, smiling at her.

" _Du du du_ ," she chimed in, with more of the song.

" _I want to reach out and grab ya,_ " he finished.

"And it's free," the lady said. "After you pay to be here."

Jim looked at Lourdes. "You wanna go to it?" he asked.

She thought about it, and him. "I'm not sure. I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable being with you."

The man kept singing "Abracadabra," drumming on the table top.

"Steve does it better than you," his girl said.

"Not this," he leaned over and gave her a peck on the mouth.

The whole table teased them.

"You know," Jim said, holdings his hands wide. "It just happens, sometimes."

"So do accidents," Lourdes said.

The man on the other side of Lourdes laughed and dug into his pancakes.

Jim smiled at the man, then spoke to Lourdes quietly. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable," he said. "I just—ask you to let me be with you."

Lourdes was worried about being "read by association," the idea of being discovered because you're with someone else, as the cumulative effect of the 'tells' raises issues to the level of awareness.

She looked around at others in the café. People were doing their own thing—waiting in line, getting food, walking to or from tables, talking with each other. There was the occasional laughter because there was airplane noise in the air and thousands of magnificent airplanes parked literally everywhere.

She'd been running around with Jim for days, with no one the wiser—even she, herself, was unaware, for most of it.

She considered some old tapes that had been running in her head. Is it crushing if someone knows? It's crushing, she felt, that she, herself, knew. But is it _more_ crushing if others know? If they look at her closely trying to figure it out? If they mention it sometime?

Mentioning it?

In her thirty-five years in role, no one had ever mentioned it to her unless it was a setting in which she, herself, needed to participate in the conversation, such as in a discussion with a doctor or lawyer.

No. People here at the airshow—even if they weren't completely focused on the airshow—were not going to be so rude as to bring it up.

And then there was Millie—

"Oh, hi! Lourdes and Jim!" Millie said, showing up, standing by their table, not sitting.

"Hi, Millie," Jim said back to her.

Lourdes said nothing at first. She hadn't seen Millie arrive, and she almost died on impulse as if her thoughts had been revealed by the coincidence.

"Um, hi, Millie," Lourdes said.

"Are you feeling better, Hon?" Millie asked. "Last night, it was getting to you—but I know how you feel, because he gave me a ride in that plane a couple years ago. I did the same thing!" She laughed at herself. "But then I got another ride with him a week later, and it was great! It was just that first time, while my body got used to aerobatics, I guess: seeing the world dance round about you— Oh, my God, there I go talking like Mike. I'd have said 'around' last year. Have either of you seen him? He didn't take his phone." Millie held it up for them both to see. "But I want to ask him about the concert tonight. You know the Steve Miller Band are playing tonight? Out at Show Center. In that big stage they put up."

Jim jumped in. "Haven't seen him."

"Will you give him his phone if you do?" Millie gave it to Jim.

"Sure," Jim said

"Thanks," Millie gave him Mike's phone. "I'm gonna head back over to camp and walk Missie." Then to Lourdes, "You look so much better." Millie put her hand on Lourdes' head and bent over, giving Lourdes a quick peck on the cheek, then left as quickly as she came.

Lourdes watched her leave. She found only comfort in Millie, no hint of embarrassment that would relate to Lourdes in any way.

Did she know? Lourdes couldn't tell.

She squeezed some ketchup from little packages onto her hash browns. "Why are you interested in me," she asked Jim, taking a bite.

Jim paused a few beats and looked at her, obviously thinking. "You know, it was automatic. From the first time I saw you, I wanted you. The brain sets, and it's love."

Love! Already?

"Three days here?" Lourdes said. "And you're giving me that?"

Jim looked helpless, picking at his eggs. "Maybe I shouldn't have said that so quick, but sometimes it happens."

Lourdes took another bite. She knew she needed the nourishment.

"But, Jim, I need to know why you're into me? Are you one of _them_? Someone who chases people like me? Because that really sickens me—"

"Oh, is that what you've been thinking? No!" Jim looked worried for her. "I wasn't even aware of it at first."

"When were you aware of it? How long did it take? What did it?"

"You know I don't know, really," he said, pausing. "Maybe a day or two? You didn't do anything. There is no way to know, either, with you. It's just something that seemed to be in you. Maybe. I wasn't sure. But honestly, other than it's something that hurts you, it means nothing to me."

"Sure!" she said, quietly if sarcastically.

"You know what? Not everyone cares about that. I know it's been something that you've carried around with you for decades, but we're not in the eighties any more."

"I know that," she said.

"It's like—" he said. "Remember when, years ago if you dated someone who was black, how you might have had people around you who noticed? Who cared? Some folks would talk about you behind your back? You notice how that's changed these days?

"Well, guess what about stuff like this?" He indicated the two of them, "People don't care about this as much as they used to, either."

"Yes they do."

" _Sometimes_ they do," he said. "But more often, these days—when you get out of Backwoods Bubbaland—it's not _as often_ an issue for other people unless you do something that _makes_ it an issue. Ideas evolve in society."

He looked around. No one was watching, yet he leaned over the table to be closer to her, so he could talk more privately. "Used to, you were probably real secretive to survive. You couldn't be yourself if people knew, because it mattered so much to them—positively or negatively. But it's not so much that way, any more."

"It still is a lot," she said.

"Yes. And there's still a lot of oppression and prejudice about blacks, also. But mostly that's by jerks and Alpha Hotels, not most people."

"Outside of Bubbaland," she added.

"Look around you," he said. "What if you were dating Denzel Washington, and he walked right here into this room and gave you a kiss on the mouth, right here in front of everyone. Would anyone think ' _yuk_ '?" Because you're a different color?

"Some would," she said.

"But most wouldn't," he said. "Nothing like they might have fifty years ago. And around here? By and large, what would folks really think? 'Wow, like, who cares?' 'There's love.' 'She is kinda cute.' Because you are. Or maybe 'How many millions does he have?' 'I saw him get an Oscar.' There wouldn't be one bleedin' soul—Ugh, I'm talking like Mike also—who would indicate in any way, 'Yuk, that's a black man kissing a white woman,' and if he did, the rest of this crowd would run him out on a rail.

"Imagine yourself dating him," Jim said.

"How about Will Smith," Lourdes said.

"Okay. I don't think he has an Oscar, but he should have for 'I am Legend.' He was so good."

"I'd prefer 'Independence Day,'" she said.

Jim laughed. "Okay. You like macho fliers—" Jim laughed at himself again. "Ha, see what I just did? I was thinking Will Smith and me as _fliers_! See? I wasn't thinking 'macho _black_ fliers.' But anyway, imagine yourself dating Will Smith, even if he wasn't a movie star. You also have to admit there are a lot of other people who wouldn't even think about it. Right?"

Lourdes imagined Will Smith sitting in there having breakfast with her, and she had to admit most people wouldn't care.

"And if you were somewhere," Jim continued, "where folks _did_ seem to care, you'd leave, right? Or stand up for yourself or something.

"But times they have been a changin'," he said, paraphrasing Bob Dylan. "They always do. Nowadays—and I know prejudice is still a problem—more so than in earlier decades, I think there are actually a lot of people for whom color is really not an issue at all. Not something they even 'overlook'—because for them it's really nothing in the first place that people of different shades love each other.

"Now," he said, "run _that idea_ by an oppressed black person who fought her way through the Sixties in Mississippi, and see how it flies!"

"Right. It wouldn't," Lourdes said.

"And I say it because _that's_ the way you kinda seem to me," he said.

"Full of scars? Still reacting to old wounds?" she asked.

"No! Yes! I mean, yes, I think you do have scars, but I'm also saying I can tell you're strong because you're still here. You're someone who has been on the front lines in emerging days of this phenomenon, who has suffered more battles than I'll ever know, who has seen people turn up their nose at you countless times? People who you never would have expected? You've had people hurt you, then claim they never did to other people, so those other people look at you as if you're making up problems that don't even exist? You know people have lied to you and said they accepted you when they didn't, who have indicated they agreed with you when they didn't, or who have invalidated what you had to say—even though it was true—because they didn't like _this_ quality in you?

Lourdes nodded.

Jim looked at her with evident compassion. "You've probably spent a lot of time preparing for battles _that never even happened_ —"

Lourdes opened her mouth to speak in defense.

"— _offset_ ," he continued, "by other times when battles hit that you couldn't even predict."

Lourdes nodded her head.

"I'm not painting you as paranoid," he said. "I'm thinking of you as someone who is seasoned and knows what is going on—but who is also battle-weary. You see things other people miss, but you also—I think—may still fear battles that aren't very likely any more. So you see real problems, but sometimes, maybe, you over-expect pain."

Lourdes knew all that he said was right on and looked at him with a mixture of anger for bringing it all up and of gratitude he understood at least that much. She started to cry again, gently. A tear moved down her cheek. She glanced at nearby people to make sure no one was watching, and wiped the tear off quickly with a napkin.

"Other minorities also experience this," he said, "on an ongoing basis. Gays. Blacks. Asians. Latins. Irish. Jews. Muslims— People have been denied jobs, lied-to, told they couldn't love who they loved, kicked out of families, been ridiculed or humiliated. Even killed."

It was true. She tried, ineffectively, to hide her tears, to keep her face motionless, needing him to continue, and at the same time fearing he could misstep.

"I'm hitting the mark, aren't I?" he asked.

Lourdes nodded. "But having scars doesn't invalidate what I'm saying."

"No. It doesn't," he said. "But facing those battles, I think, shows you have character. And surviving them shows you are good."

Lourdes cried.

"I don't know what all you've been through, but I get that a lot of it has been humiliating—and I'll tell you this: if they do any of that around you or me, if I even _sense_ or think it might be present, they'll have to deal with me, because I won't have it."

He paused. "I think you know it's true."

Lourdes nodded.

"And believe it or not," he said, " _I_ am one of those folks who doesn't care about _that_."

Lourdes knew what he meant and was thankful he didn't spell it out.

"So—no— _that_ never entered my mind for itself, and—no—I'm not into you because of it. I like this," he said, moving his hand across the table, touching her heart with his finger.

Tears ran down Lourdes' cheeks. She put her hands over her face to hide.

People nearby noticed.

Jim touched her arm gently.

"Crikey Moses, you buggered her again," Mike said approaching the table with his own tray of food." He sat down beside them.

Lourdes wiped her face off with another napkin.

Jim took his hand off her arm. "Good morning, Mike. Millie was just in here looking for you."

"Did she see you do anything to his little bird here?" Mike asked.

"I'm okay," Lourdes said, composing herself. "It's nothing."

"Right," Mike said. "Go on. Have a good cry. Reminds me of my mother—every time the Bobbies brought me home."

"Millie wanted to know if you wanted to go to Steve Miller tonight," Jim said. "You wanna call her?"

Jim gave Mike his phone.

"Alright." Mike took the phone and called Millie. Their talk was excited and brief. He handed the phone back to Jim.

"I think it'll be fun," Mike said.

"You know who he is?" Lourdes asked him, trying to sound normal.

"Who doesn't?" Mike said. "He sings easy rock. I grew up listening to him, among a thousand others. 'The Joker,' I am," he said with a smile, digging into his breakfast.

"So what are you gonna do today?" Jim asked Lourdes.

"I've been thinking I'd go to this seminar over in the Forums area, right after breakfast—near homebuilts, actually. It's about owner maintenance."

"Yeah. You lot need that sort of thing," Mike said, chomping down French toast and eggs. "But if you were to build your own plane like Jim, here—"

"Like you're doing," Jim said, "with your RV-9A."

"I'm a cruiser, not an aerobatic buff, Love," Mike said to Lourdes. "So no need to worry about flying with me."

Lourdes jumped in. "If I built my own, I could be my own mechanic from stem to stern because I'd be the plane's builder. But my Cessna's a production airplane, and I'm required to have an A&P do it, or an I.A., and that costs big bucks. So in light of my life's chronic destitution, I thought I'd learn how to do more of my own maintenance."

"And very good, that is!" Mike said. "Leaves more money for games."

Jim laughed at him, as usual. "You could build one," he said to Lourdes.

"I guess I could. I'd worry about liability if I ever sold it, having my name on there as the builder for the whole life of the plane. Maybe I should restore one instead? But I guess I never even thought about it because I've been living out of apartments in L.A. No hangar. No where to even consider it."

"Well, then. A seminar on owner maintenance sounds really good," Jim said.

"It starts in about twenty-five minutes," she said, "so it's about time to go. Afterwards, I thought it'd be nice to take my Garmin G.P.S. over to one of those big steel vendor buildings. I heard I could get my database updated, and then I'd like to just get lost shopping for—anything. Mindless enjoyment. Just see what's there. I'm gonna buy a Will Smith, if I can find one."

"Great," Jim said with a chuckle. "Can I come with you?"

Mike laughed, and acted like he would crack a joke on that, but one look at the two of them—and with uncharacteristic restraint—he went back to his French toast.

"I don't know," Lourdes said to Jim. "Can you?"

CHAPTER 19

Large tents, like the flight line café they were enjoying, reminded Lourdes of the tents in "M*A*S*H"—only the ones in "M*A*S*H" were Army "drab" green, dirty, and full of comic surgeons during dreadful wartime, and the tents at Oshkosh were white, clean, and full of pilots on vacation during a major airshow. But they both had wood or metal frames inside, rugged tarping stretched over them, and were secured by large, rope guy lines angling out to heavy steel stakes driven into the ground.

As Lourdes and Jim left the café, they saw a slim, frail, quite elderly man leaning into one of the white guy lines, holding on to it.

Lourdes could see the man's face was pleasant, even happy. But she could also see he was distressed and trying not to show it.

She stopped, and Jim stopped with her.

"Hello," Lourdes said to the man, kindly. "I'm a nurse. Are you alright?"

"Pretty good," the man said, keeping his smile.

"You look a little tired," Jim said.

"Yeah, well, I am, but that's okay. In pretty good shape, actually."

"Oh, good," Lourdes said. "You want to come inside and sit with us a while? Have some coffee? Chairs are pretty comfortable."

The man looked like he considered it, but rejected the idea. "No. I'll be fine. Just need to rest my left knee a little. Trick knee. Arthritis. Doc thinks I need to get it replaced, and I think he's right."

"Ok," Lourdes said. "So I'm Lourdes. This is Jim. What's your name?"

"Heath."

"Where are you headed, Heath?" Jim asked.

"Over to Exhibit Hangar C," Heath said. "Big, steel thing. Full of vendors. About a half-mile that-a-way." He indicated with a toss of his hand. "Got my daughter over there working a booth. I'm helping her, but I wanted to roam the flight line in the early morning before it got hot and see the planes. Was doing fine. Just need to take it easy on this knee."

"Yeah, well, they can flare up sometimes. How's it feel to walk on it?" Lourdes asked.

"It's smarting some. If I rest it, it'll be fine."

Lourdes looked the man over. He appeared to be in his eighties, though fairly fit like he said. But he also seemed tired, keeping some weight off the left knee.

"Okay," Lourdes said. "But you know, we're heading that way as well." She indicated her purse. "I have my Garmin, right here, and I'm going to find a place to get the database updated."

"Oh, I've heard of that. They do that over there. Yep."

"And," Jim said. "we thought we'd take in some shopping."

"Maybe we could walk together?" Lourdes asked him.

Heath laughed. "Well, I hate to turn down a good offer, so lets enjoy." He reached out and took Lourdes' arm, leaning on it some.

"It's your left knee?" Jim asked. "Put your left hand into my right, and stiffen your arm a bit. And I'll pull up a little, taking some weight off that left knee. It'll probably work real well."

"Okay," Heath said.

They started walking through the grass, between tents and aircraft displays toward Exhibit Hangar C.

Lourdes walked on Heath's right side. Ideally, in a hospital, she'd have used a gait belt. But there, she spent some time looking at his clothes. He had a sturdy shirt on, she noted. If he tripped or teetered, she felt she could grab him and help keep him from falling over, and maybe his arm, if his knee collapsed—

"This is working," Heath noted.

Jim kept walking him.

Lourdes realized she was probably worrying about the man too much, but she nonetheless watched Heath's respiration. It was normal. She couldn't check his pulse, but he seemed to be doing better with the help and the rest.

Heath slipped his right arm through her left and walked arm in arm. "No need to nurse me, dearie," he said. "I'm fine. But I do like the company."

"Busted," she said.

"And keeping good company," Jim said. "Look at what we're doing! The three of us out here in the middle of miles of sculpted lawns full of good people and good food. Sky so clear—CAVU all the way to the moon. What could be better? Smell that grass?"

They all took a whiff.

"You a pilot, Heath?" Jim asked.

"Yep. Always have been, since Adam. I soloed a Fleet Biplane and got my ticket in a Cub— Oh, Lordy Land o' Goshen, would you look at that. It was like that one over there. Would you believe it?"

They walked over to: a yellow Cub with black trim, black engine on front, black tires, wooden propeller.

"Oh," Heath said. "I've been seeing a lot of them this year, here."

"A large group flew in this weekend," Jim said. "There are probably two hundred and some down in the South Forty, that way."

Lourdes' mind was more on Heath than the planes.

" _Two hundred_?" Heath asked, then laughed. "Probably took 'em a week to get here—no matter where they flew in from."

"Not fast planes," Jim said.

"No, but they got 'beauty of flight' written all over 'em."

They walked up to the yellow Cub and looked it over. Heath let go of their arms to walked up to the engine.

"This," he said in admiration to Jim and Lourdes, "is a Continental 40 engine up front. I didn't even know they were still in operation." Heath looked at the plane as a whole. "This looks like maybe a 1937 J3C-40?" He turned to Lourdes. "The one I soloed in was a 1938—and it didn't look nearly this good."

"Not even when it was new," Jim said, agreeing.

"I know!" Heath said, moving to walk around the rest of the plane. He put his hand up to block some glare and peeked in the window, without touching it, to see the cockpit instrument panel.

"And see these rags?" Heath said, pointing to the wings. "Fabric work is an art form that was getting lost until we got some homebuilts that started using it more. Now it's coming back, and I'm glad."

"Seems fragile to me," Lourdes said, making conversation. "I wonder if hail could take it out."

"No, no. It's good. Actually strengthens the wing, if it's done right." Heath brought Lourdes' attention to the fabric seams. "Look how taught that is. See how smooth. Look at how straight the seams are. That doesn't just happen; someone had to place it there. Whoever did this was an artist," Heath said, standing back to look at the plane. "No way was it his first plane to cover."

"What if the fabric weakens over the years from the sun and weather?" Lourdes asked. What if it gets injured in hail?"

"You mean dented up like 'spam cans'?" Heath asked, using a cliquish name for aluminum covered, light, general aviation aircraft. "If this fabric gets messed up for any reason, you just replace it," Heath said. "A lot easier than metal wings with all the rivets. Just replace the piece, dope it up, and paint it."

Lourdes looked at it, mystified. She had never seen it done. Mechanics was not her strong suit.

"But not this guy," Heath said, admiring the Cub. "He wouldn't patch it. He'd probably redo the whole thing. He's an artist. You can tell. You guys fly, too?"

"Yup," Jim said with a smile.

"Since Eve," Lourdes said, nodding her head in affirmation.

"That's my girl," Heath said. "I like it when the wife flies, also."

Lourdes and Jim looked at each other.

"Too many times wives sit at home complaining the husband is out wasting all their money on what they could be spending at the mall."

Heath reached his hand up to the left wing on the Cub and almost touched it.

Lourdes knew it was etiquette never to touch someone else's plane—it was even common to clasp your hands behind your back when getting close to a plane, just to put people at ease, in case they were looking.

Jim watched the man admire the work of flying art.

Heath clasped his hands behind his back and walked around the plane as if he were preflighting it.

"He's got a modern E.L.T. in it," Heath said, referring to the Emergency Locator Transmitter. "I guess you have to have that."

"You know what you do?" Heath asked them, stopping his circuit by the empennage to talk with them. "You get in one of these Cubs right here—or, frankly, anything else like it. You sit on the runway with it, and when cleared, you slowly advance the throttle until you take off. It only takes a few seconds, because this baby will fly in a breath of wind."

Lourdes and Jim watched his smile grow from ear to ear as he lived his virtual flight.

"And in about," Heath stopped to laugh at himself, "two seconds, you're lifting off the runway into the air—but slow enough you can still see the ground you're lifting off of. It's right there," he pointed to the ground, "because you're flying without the door. You took it off. The wind is only going by at fifty miles an hour." He laughed again. "'Cause the engine only has forty horses!"

Lourdes and Jim chuckled with him, his laugh was infectious.

"So there you are, fifteen feet above the runway, watching the perfect little imperfections on it drift under you, and you decide to raise it up a little higher. You pull back on the stick—right there between your knees—you feel the little plane change attitude, and she lifts up a few more feet—moving with every little thing the wind does.

"Then you send out for pizza, have lunch, read the paper—and the next thing you know, you're approaching the end of the runway!"

Lourdes and Jim were charmed.

"So you lift 'er up a little more to clear the trees, and you're gone! Sweet Jesus! You carve out a curve twenty feet above the trees and arc left slow as you please—flying like a bird which also means close enough to see people smile up at you.

"You can actually wave at them, and they'll wave back. I've done it." Heath laughed at himself again. "The bucket thing. I haven't done that."

Lourdes asked, "You mean where you lower a bucket down from the plane in flight to someone on the ground? They put something in it and you pull it back in?"

"Right. Haven't done any of that airshow 'drunk-flying-act' either, but I can see why it has been done in a Cub. Sturdy little thing. You could just about land it in one of those big oaks over there, like a Swallow," he said.

Heath smiled as he walked around the Cub. The logo was perfect on tail. The "N number" was perfect on fuselage. "Someone really does nice work," he said.

"Lourdes, here, has a Cessna 150," Jim said to Heath. "Has it over there on the other side of those trees."

"Ah," Heath said. "Beautiful. That'd maybe be your 'Cub' to you, like this is to me? Those are good planes, too. Still gentle enough to enjoy. Thousands of people soloed in them. That what you soloed in?" he asked Lourdes.

"No, no. That was in a 152 over at El Monte airport, years ago. And then an instructor augered-in not long after I got my ticket."

"Oh!" both Jim and Heath said.

Lourdes could see she opened the door on that one.

"But not with me in it. As I hear it, he had a student, and he was practicing forced landing procedures with him—only he _really_ cut the engine."

"Yikes," Jim said.

"Bad news," Heath said.

"So they went through their procedures in practice," Lourdes continued, "and when they got ready to start the engine again, it wouldn't start. So they had to actually make that forced landing—which would have been fine, but there was this little fence—"

"They are hard to see!" Heath said.

"From the air," Jim confirmed.

"—and their mains caught the fence and turned 'em over."

Jim and Heath both looked in pain.

"I'm told they walked away from it, which was great" Lourdes said, "but the plane was kind of bent all over. So, so much for that. And I liked that little plane."

"Well, I'm glad they walked away," Heath said. He walked up behind the right wing then around it to the propeller. "These old wooden propellers?" he said. "I think not as efficient as the more modern ones? But you feel like you're flying class when you fly behind 'em.

"And you know: spending a week to get to lunch—" Heath looked down the length of the fuselage, bright yellow in the morning sun, "is spending time to live your life. Mostly, people are thinking about hurrying up to get somewhere, or wishing they had this or that other bigger-better thing, when they don't realize how much they have right there in front of them. Right now. I'm approaching the end of my life—"

"You look fine!" Jim said.

"Son, I'm ninety-three. I don't know when it'll be, but it's likely sooner 'n later, so lets be real? Because what I'm saying is, when I look back, the things I remember— You know, there's not that much satisfaction in worrying about things. It never brought me any happiness. What matters is the golden moments."

Heath reached out against his will to touch the fabric on the Cub's left wing. Lourdes noticed evident pain on Heath's face. He seemed to need something in the Cub so much.

"Especially," Heath said, "the golden moments spent doing 'nothing,' when you simply appreciate being here."

The three of them stood in front of the Cub and looked at it's yellow majesty on the green grass, surrounded by other aircraft on static display, white tents, and people walking by under blue sky.

Jim reached over to hold Lourdes' hand.

She let him.

"And it seems to me that worrying about the past is just as bad as worrying about the future. You get locked into that other stuff, and you miss the fact that you're alive. A short blessing, life is."

Heath patted the wing strut like an old friend he knew he'd see again later.

"Now look at me wax on," Heath said. "The air sure is good this morning, isn't it?"

"Beautiful," Jim said.

"And the temperature?" Heath asked Lourdes.

"Perfect," she said.

Heath slipped an arm through their arms, and they started moseying again in the direction of Hangar C.

A young lady in her thirties walked by nibbling at an ice cream bar.

"Hey, Darlin'," Heath called to her. "Where did you get that?"

"Right over there," she said.

"If it was a snake it'd have bit me," he said, then turning to Lourdes and Jim, "You two?"

"Sure," Lourdes said.

They walked over. "Three, please," Heath said.

Jim handed Lourdes an ice cream bar and kissed her on the lips before she had a chance to take a bite.

Heath laughed. "Blushing! I love it!"

CHAPTER 20

There were four large, steel buildings on Wittman Regional used for vendor booths—more like oversized airplane hangars than commercial buildings downtown. Exhibit Hangars A, B, C, and D, arranged in a square just inside the pedestrian entrance to the show, had every kind of aviation item in them anyone could imagine from antique memorabilia to the most advanced avionics, software, miscellaneous parts, parachutes, maps, gadgets, doodads, trinkets, and widgets.

Surrounded by thousands of shoppers cruising the aisles, the three of them walked in to Hangar C and found Heath's daughter at a counter in a long aisle of booths.

Jim noticed the lady was an attractive blonde in her sixties.

Lourdes was pleased to see that Heath walked with even less of a limp on getting there than he did back at the tent café.

"Finally," his daughter said. "There you are. I've been worried sick."

Heath smiled and shook his head. "Told you I might be a long time. Wanted to wander and look at planes—which is exactly what I did. Let me show you a couple of good folks. This here's Jim and Lourdes. They went browsing with me."

Jim put his hand out to shake the lady's hand.

Lourdes smiled at her. "Hello," she said.

"Hello. I'm Adelaide."

"Cool name," Jim said.

"Named after my Uncle Ben's wife. Dad, here, been giving you any trouble?"

"Not a bit of it," Jim said. "More like he's been showing us around."

"We happened to link up with him outside a tent café over near the flight line, and we walked back over this way with him. He was showing us planes."

"He knows them!" Adelaide said, then turning to Heath, "How'd your knee hold up? You should have taken your scooter."

There was a red electric three-wheeler sitting by the curtain partition behind them.

"He got his right hip replaced a few years ago, but that knee's gonna need one."

"It's okay," Heath told her, with a little warning look to Lourdes and Jim. "Wasn't no big deal. Don't wanna use that scooter if I don't have to."

"Well, you have to," she said. "I don't want you to fall—think of it like seatbelts in a plane. You use 'em even if you don't think you'll need to."

"Use it or lose it," Heath said. "Walk as long as you're able."

Lourdes and Jim laughed and chatted with them for a while, and then excused themselves to shop on their own.

"Subsequently," Heath said with a smile in parting. "Here: take one of our cards, just in case." Heath picked one up off the counter.

"Yes, thanks for looking after him."

"Oh, it wasn't 'looking-after,'" Lourdes said, gladly taking his card.

"Kind of reminded me of a few things," Jim said. "It was our pleasure."

"Well, y'all come back any time. You hear?" Adelaide said.

Lourdes and Jim turned and began perusing the huge hangar full of exhibitors and shoppers. Partitioned exhibitor booths were arranged in aisles angling north and south with everything imaginable. People were everywhere, talking and shopping.

"Excuse me," Lourdes said to a passer-by playing with a G.P.S. "Do you know where I can get my Garmin updated?"

"No, but if you use the app, you can find out I'm sure."

"What app?" Jim asked.

The man showed them on his smartphone. "You just download it, and you can find anything."

"Are you kidding me?" Lourdes asked. She'd never heard of an app for an airshow, but this was Oshkosh.

"Sure. No problem." He walked off.

"Maybe I'll try that?" she said. She played with her phone and found the app, downloaded it. "My goodness, look at this."

She showed Jim.

"Nice."

She put her phone in her purse and forgot about it.

"Aren't you gonna look up the G.P.S. place?"

"No," she said. "We'll find it when we get there."

They wandered around the Exhibit Hangar area, in and out of all four big hangars and through the many exhibitor tents in the large area between them.

Walking in the morning sun, sipping on a soft drink, Jim asked her. "So, tell me twenty questions?"

"Ten," she answered playfully.

"What is your favorite color?"

Lourdes smiled at his little game.

"If I tell you, you have to tell me," she said.

"Okay. Your favorite color is blue."

"No! I tell you _mine_ ; you tell me _yours_ ," she said.

"Okay. Yours is?"

" _Light_ blue. Coincidentally like the sky, I suppose. Baby blue. Yours?"

"Red."

"I figured," she said.

"How can you downgrade a cloud-based operating system to something sub-cloud?" he asked.

She laughed. "I have no idea. Wish I could."

"Me neither, and me, too," he said. "That's all I'd need is my doctor handling my case on his cloud-based tablet with my sensitive medical information flying off to God knows where."

"Like _that'd_ make your blood pressure go back down," she agreed.

"I'm told you can opt out of using the cloud features, but I'm not sure the devices aren't still clouding data— Oh, never mind," he said. "Whatever happened to privacy?"

"It's up there in the clouds with a few hundred thousand people in shared agencies, profiling, keeping it all 'confidential' except for the thousand places it can be legally shared."

"What is your favorite song?" he asked.

They wandered by the Lycoming display, engines set out for people to look at. They stopped to look while they talked.

"You have a Lycoming in your plane," she said.

"Yeah. And you're a Continental, but I don't know if there's all that much difference. Song?"

"I don't know," she said, thinking about it. "Right now, it's probably 'Abracadabra,' because that guy was singing it and it's been on my mind. But I'd choose a lot of them. It depends on my mood."

"I have the same problem, but I have to ask you this stuff. It's in the regs."

"I like," she said, pausing to think while she looked at an engine he was looking at. "I like Enya, anything she does. Soft music. Carpenters. Barry Manilow. Joan Baez—"

He pointed at her.

"—all kinds of stuff. And Glenn Miller."

"Glenn Miller, too? Oh— That was some time ago," he said.

"Yeah, but I like the era. And it's not old-times wishes, there. It's current, still happening in some places. I think it's charming and romantic."

"That's the problem I have, too," he said. "I like it all—especially if I go to a live concert. It always sounds better to me in person. But I've seen, maybe everything but Boston in concert: Styx, Aerosmith, Z Z Top, Bachman Turner Overdrive—loved John Denver, but didn't see him—the Doobie Brothers," he laughed. "Even Liberace in Vegas, back when."

"Liberace?" she laughed.

"True. He was a gas. He came on stage wearing this huge rhinestone cape, glittering under all the spot lights. We all cheered his lavishness. He waited until we were done applauding, and he asked us in his 'Liberace' way, 'Do you like my cape?' Everybody laughed." Jim smiled. "It was funny."

They wandered around through more exhibitions, noting how wonderful everything looked, so clean and—presentable.

"You see the Bose Corporation, right there?" Jim asked.

"Yes."

"I've been wondering if I should get one of those noise cancelling headsets sometime. And I ought to rig up a feed into whatever headset I have from my phone so I can listen to music in the background on long flights. I think if I do it right, it won't block out A.T.C. when they call. Or the F-16s, if I bust someone's airspace. I don't want to not hear _them_ if they call me."

"Um—" Lourdes looked at him sheepishly.

"You've already done that in your plane?" he asked.

Lourdes nodded.

Jim laughed. "But songs, okay: I guess one of my favorites is Elvis Presley."

Lourdes laughed. "Really?"

"Yes, really. You know he learned to dance from Forrest Gump? It's true, 'Thank you very much,'" he said in a credible impersonation.

Lourdes laughed at him.

Jim looked around as if he was about to share a state secret.

"Hello, Ma'am," he said to a lady passing by them, as if he was up to something he was obviously trying to hide.

The lady smiled at him and moved on.

Then Jim began his Elvis impersonation of "Heartbreak Hotel" not quite loud enough for everyone to hear. "Well, since my baby left me..."

He made some air guitar noises for his band.

Lourdes got goose pimples and looked around, embarrassed, to see if anyone was looking.

Two people had noticed and were staring.

"Jim!" She said to make him stop.

"Elvis," he said.

"Elvis!" she said.

He stopped. The two people clapped at the impromptu concert, and he gave them a small bow, not quite obvious enough for everyone else to notice. "Thank you very much."

Lourdes walked away.

Jim kept up.

"You're crazy?" Lourdes asked. "But good. You have a way with people, that's for sure. You ought to be on stage somewhere."

"I am sometimes."

"You perform?"

"A preacher."

"Right," she said.

"Only once in a while. They make me share time with the school principal."

"I don't doubt it."

"But I don't want you to get the wrong impression."

"Like what?" She turned to look at him.

"'Don't be Cruel' is my favorite Elvis song. "So what's your favorite food?" he asked her.

"Other than chocolate? Popcorn," she answered. "If it's crispy and crunchy. Sometimes both together, too. Yours?"

"Pizza, I have to say. Black olive and beef."

They rounded a row of exhibitor's tents and entered Exhibit Hangar B.

"I was actually thinking of planting some, next year. There's a market for it."

"Pizza?" she asked.

"Yup. Think of it: rows of pizzas down range. Some with beef, some with pepperoni. Grow some for the freezer," he mused. "It'd be easier to ship. Harvest 'em all with a combine because they have those scissor things on the front."

"And maybe some with garlic chicken and some with nothing, just cheese," she said.

"You need a variety, just to keep Mike in check."

"Are you a good housekeeper," she asked.

Jim stopped one of the thousand passers-by, in front of Hangar B, and asked him. "Excuse me, sir. But do you happen to know what 'house keeping' is?"

"Never heard of it," he said.

Jim asked another behind him. "Excuse me, sir. But do you know what 'house keeping' is?"

The man looked at Jim funny and walked on.

Lourdes told a clerk in a nearby booth, "We're having a mental health emergency. Can you all 911?"

The lady smiled at them.

"Can't say," Jim said to Lourdes. "Oh! Oh, I remember. Okay. Sorry. Yes. Yes—" He feigned remembrance. "Yes. I am a _good_ housekeeper."

"I'm doubting that."

"No, it's true. You know, in northwest Missouri, our main breezes blow from the west, so every month I open up the front and back doors—the house faces east, because it's on the west side of town, right across the road, facing town—letting the breeze blow through. Then I take out the leaf blower and blow the house out, starting in the west so as to use the wind."

She laughed at him.

"It's harder than you think," he said.

"Because there are eddies?" she asked.

"Yes. Then I take the water hose and rinse the floors, and leave the doors open to dry the place out."

Lourdes looked at him aghast.

"It's a lot more than I do for the barn," he said with a straight face.

"So what's your favorite animal?" she asked.

"Dogs," he answered.

"You have one?"

"Yeah. A German Shepard I-don't-know-what-all mix. Looks like a warewolf, but he'll lick you to death in ten minutes, if you hold still."

Lourdes smiled. _How cute_! "What's his name?"

"Moff Tarkin."

"From 'Star Wars'?"

"Yes. Mike named him. Then Connie liked it, and—"

Lourdes broke into a laugh that grew and wouldn't quit. First she thought about that poor dog being called by the name of one the worst villains in 'Star Wars' history, the guy who destroyed Princess Leia's home planet, Alderaan. And then she thought about all the poor kids in town being terminally confused about good and evil—

She tried to quit laughing. "What do you call him?"

"Moff Tarkin."

"Not 'Tark' or 'Moff' or something?"

"No. Just 'Moff Tarkin.'"

Lourdes' laugh kept coming. She slightly bent over, put the back of her left hand against her face—the she noticed people walking in and out of one of the Exhibit Hangars were staring at her, which only made it worse.

She pointed at Jim while she laughed.

"Me?" Jim said in self defense. "All I did was tell her about my dog—"

Which made her laugh harder.

Jim looked at her like she was mentally ill and he didn't understand.

It was infectious. People around them got a big grin on their face on the verge of laughing, themselves.

Lourdes squealed involuntarily and walked away to the west to try to avoid them.

Jim followed.

"He, uh," Jim called after her. "He likes cheese pizza."

Thirty minutes later, Lourdes was approaching normal again. They walked through the "Fly Market" just southwest of the Exhibit Hangars.

"So what's your favorite movie?" she asked to get her mind away from her laughter.

"Can't pick just one. That really is gonna have to depend on the moment. Some in general? Maybe Star Wars series. Star Trek Series, including the new one, which was very good. 'Avatar.' The Jason Bourne series."

She pointed at him for the Matt Damon thing.

"Independence Day," he pointed at her.

"'Top Gun.' 'Starman'—"

"With Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen? I loved that show."

"Yup. 'Blade Runner,'" he said.

"I can identify with that. I'm kind of like a Nexus Two replicant, if you ask me. Or like 'Friday,' the artificial person from Robert Heinlein."

"Oh, I enjoyed that, too."

"Okay," she said, "and my movies? It's also got to vary with the moment, but I also loved 'Cloud Atlas'—"

"Me, too," he said. "Do you think we knew each other in another life?"

"Did Halle know Berry?" she asked.

"Right."

"No, do you really think we might have known each other in a prior life?" she asked.

"To give the matter more serious consideration?"

She nodded.

"I don't know if the universe works that way. But I know it feels like it could." He seemed to think about it some more. "If so, maybe our spirits have our sexes—or genders—mixed up from birth or something— Or maybe we've been both through time, like they showed in the movie, and we're more in touch with some aspect of those lives that most people."

"Mine definitely feels messed up somehow," she said.

"Mine does, too," he said. "So maybe we're in the same boat from that perspective? But how may I have known you before? Okay," he said with certainty. "If the universe works that way, then I'd have to say it does feel like I've known you before and that we were hot for each other."

Lourdes nodded. It made sense to her. "You think you were a male lover of mine?"

"And you were someone I thought was sexy, maybe—but someone I think I wasn't supposed to have, perhaps. As if we weren't in the same social group at one time."

"I could buy that—as if, maybe, you were the Lord of the castle, and I was a maid." She considered it. "Something like that could feel— It's not like now. But if we had a life like that, I could see how feelings from that experience could underlie my feelings."

"So you look up to me?"

"I might have thought you were a jerk," she said playfully. "Even if it was your castle."

"Yeah, but you didn't, did you?"

Lourdes smiled and withdrew slightly. "No," she finally said. "I didn't. I think I wanted you. I think, if this is true, that you were a bright spot in my life and I admired you—that without you, my life was empty servitude."

Jim smiled and swelled with the good feeling that gave him. "And if I were to guess, I'd guess that I never really knew that before. So thanks for telling me."

He touched her hand and leaned over to give her a little kiss on the lips and looked around. No one seemed to care. "Maybe I couldn't have done that so freely back then?"

"Or this," she said, leaning up to him to give him a little kiss on the lips.

They smiled at each other—his started to grow warmer, so she turned and walked on.

"So," Lourdes said, "if 'Cloud Atlas' is right, then what are your lives about? In the movie, Halle's and Tom's were about social justice, I think. What would you guess is yours?"

"Ah," he paused. "I'd guess it's about learning to be a leader, which also serves the cause of social justice, if I were to guess. The way I mean to do it, anyway. I care about people."

Lourdes nodded.

"And you?" he asked.

"Um," she thought. "Well—" She walked on through vendor tents, looking at everything from T-shirts to tools and aircraft parts. "I think, pitiful by comparison as it may seem, maybe more at trying to survive. My life quests seem to be more at scrambling to protect myself and get the basics of life down. Were I to guess, I'd say I've had a few lives where I've been on the butt end of things. Hurt. Tortured. Or oppressed, or just painfully without, as if lives of squalor or never being able to get started."

"Sounds base," he said.

"Yes, it does. And I don't know where it's going. Many a times I've prayed to God to help show me why my life has to be so painful, why I can't get ahead, and he hasn't. I have no idea why I'm struggling this way other than dealing with something handed to me that I can't fully change. I sense it's important to carry through, but I don't know to what."

Their walk took them by a hotdog stand, and he got one for each of them.

"Thank you," she said.

"If I were to think about this a while?" he said, "I'd think that you may wind up taking care of other people, later in some life, when maybe they feel they can't make it through—and you know they can because you sense in yourself that you also made it through difficulty. Which would also make you a leader, then. Their leader. Though caring would be your goal."

"Possibly," she said, doubting she could ever feel good about more strife, even if she wasn't the focus.

"And I think it'd matter to the people you help, Lourdes. Like their life may depend on it. And that's something you should be able to feel good about: a knight who fights death to show people to safety."

Lourdes considered it while she ate her hotdog.

"I could see that in you," he said.

"I also loved 'Love Actually,'" she said, walking again, "the Hugh Grant movie."

"He was in 'Cloud Atlas' also," Jim said.

"Yes. And 'The Holiday' with Cameron Diaz. 'Knight and Day' with her and Tom Cruise. 'The Family Stone'—"

"I don't know that one."

"With Sarah Jessica Parker?"

"Nope."

"A few years ago. It's very good. A family that comes together at Christmas. Like 'This Christmas,' a good one also?"

"Sorry," he said. "Missed them.

"Madea goes to Jail?"

"Yup. I like Tyler Perry."

"Okay. 'Message in a Bottle'?

"Nope."

"With Kevin Costner?"

"Don't know it."

"How about 'Dances with Wolves.'"

"One of my faves."

"'The Sound of Music'?"

"Even Romulans know that one."

They rounded a corner of a group of exhibit tents and started down another row.

'The Music Man'—I also saw that one starring Dick van Dyke in Hollywood at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.' I loved that with Barbara Streisand, and I also saw it at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, in L.A., with Robert Goulet."

"Grand. I'd love to take you to a play, if you let me sometime?"

Lourdes smiled at him.

"You saw Dick van Dyke?"

"Yes. Pantages Theatre, Hollywood. He was the star. He was funny," Lourdes mused. "Right in the middle of a bit with just him and his co-star on stage? He did his rubber-man thing when she was talking, and he got her laughing, so she flubbed her line. The audience just laughed! We didn't blame her; he did it to her on purpose, and we all loved it."

"What a list!" he said. "So you really are a film buff like me—like us, I should say. There seem to be a few in Greenhills. You've heard Mike talk."

"Yes."

"Oh, look." Lourdes noted a sign over a booth that says they update Garmin G.P.S.s.

Lourdes dug in her purse and gave the lady her Garmin. In five minutes she had it back, all updated.

Lourdes paid her forty dollars and put her Garmin back in her purse.

Outside, on the northeast corner of Hangar B, they found a refreshment stand and a picnic table. He bought them some lemon aid and they sat a while, sipping.

"Good lemon aid. Thanks," she said.

"What is your worst event in history, if you had to pick?" Jim asked as they walked through more exhibit areas.

"Um," Lourdes thought. "Well, I think the Holocaust, World War Two. I mean the sheer cruelty of it, the masses of it, the thought that some kinds of people should be removed from the earth. That thought wasn't even a war for greed, bad as that is. It was just their personal fake-superiority that said others shouldn't exist."

Jim said seriously. "I don't think I could top that. What was your best event in history?"

"Well, it's hard to pick," Lourdes said "I'm thinking, like, the idea of science, I think. Science as a whole thing."

"That surprises me," he said.

"Me, too," she said. "But I think it's because it asserts reason over an emotional fake-certainty that people get into, sometimes. Like, I think it's the backbone of the culture in Star Trek, of people realizing more how the universe works instead of blaming things on superstition or ideologies. And like the movie 'Lincoln' with Daniel Day-Lewis. Science shows gives us proof people are people, and that differences that mean so much to people, may have no basis in fact."

"You're deep sometimes."

"It'll pass."

"No. I like that in you. So we get to choose ideas? Then my best event is the discovery of the monolith on the dark side of the moon."

"Real life," Lourdes said.

"Probably when the Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect stowed away on the Vogons' ship."

Lourdes was not aware of that one.

" _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_?" he said. "You never read that?"

"No. Sorry."

"It's a four-book trilogy."

She laughed.

"Yeah. Typical of it," he said with a smile. "The author's got a screw loose. In a good way. You read much?"

"Yes, I do!"

"Okay. Best event or thing or something?" he said. "I'm guessing when the planetoid hit the earth and made the moon."

Lourdes looked at him like she was tired.

"Alright," he said, giving up. "I don't know. There's whatever happened in Egypt three thousand years ago that was the impetus for a lot of western thought from written law to civilization. There's the Buddha. The struggle of knowledge and science, like you said, where we pulled ourselves up as a culture by our own boot straps from the depths of the dark ages. There's medicine that helps keep billions alive.

"I don't know how to pick."

He thought for a few minutes.

"I think love," he said, finally.

Lourdes said nothing.

"Directed positive emotion that pulls people together, that makes people _want_ to be together, to be better people so they _can_ be together."

Lourdes smiled. "That's deep, too."

"You started it."

CHAPTER 21

They wound up in a large shop west of Show Center, looking through racks of shirts, hats, patches—everything an airshow buff might want.

Jim followed along dutifully.

"The air conditioning's nice in here," he said.

"Refreshing," Lourdes said, lifting a short-sleeved top off the rack to look at it better.

"I think the light blue looks good on you," Jim said.

"Me, too." She put the shirt back nonetheless. "What doesn't look good on me is a pea-soup green. Doesn't fit my coloring."

"I see that," Jim said.

He pulled a long-sleeved baby-blue shirt for himself off a rack and asked for her input.

"Lovely," Lourdes said.

"Uh," Jim found the top on the rack that she'd looked at. "I—am kind of wondering if it would be okay for me to buy the both of these for us. They look like they match, even if mine has long sleeves."

"I know you know I don't want to spend money. I just quit my job. And I don't like the charity aspect of your gift. So no thank you."

"Yes, I see that," Jim said almost timidly. "I don't want to offend you. And I know you're also camping and don't need to pile things into your plane to stay under gross. But I do have an ulterior motive in my asking?" He said it as a question.

Lourdes stopped by a counter full of jewelry and patches in the middle of the store.

"May I help you?" the lady behind the counter asked.

Lourdes almost asked her for help. "No thank you," she said to the lady. Then to Jim she asked, "What is it?"

"Because I'd like to ask you out on a date tonight," he said.

The lady grinned, taking a step back to give them room.

"And I'd like everyone there to know you're with me." His smile was warm and friendly.

"A date." Lourdes glanced at the lady who was nodding yes behind her grin.

Another lady walked up to the counter and stood beside them to watch.

"Lourdes," Jim asked, "would you go out with me tonight? Just the two of us. And thirty thousand other people?"

CHAPTER 22

The entire airport could see the major airshow in progress, aerobatic planes trailing smoke through sailor's knots in the sky, the announcer relaying every detail over loudspeakers as if it were the Superbowl. The air was tense with adventure.

Lourdes and Jim sat on plastic seat, steel-frame chairs in the middle of one of the huge, educational Forum "tents"—a steel building with canvas sides—listening to a lecturer talk about the world of flight from a humorous perspective. The building was about two-thirds full. Some people drifted in; some drifted out. The air was very casual.

All were in a pleasant mood and laughed off and on at the lecturer's wisecracks which had loosened them up into a joking free-for-all: hangar flying large style.

One man yelled to the lecturer up front. "Excuse me, but why can't I fly over and fuel up at my cousin Elmer's gas station out on the highway?"

Another man added in an exaggerated country accent, "Because he don't have ethyl—well, he may have Ethyl, but not the kind—"

People laughed.

"Because it isn't high enough octane for some engines, and you could get detonation in your engine," someone yelled back a little more seriously.

"Hundred Low lead is a better fuel for those higher compression engines some planes have," another put in.

"Most little planes don't have that high a compression, and don't need hundred octane."

"Engines have better performance on higher octane."

"Octane's just an anti-knock rating; it doesn't give you more power."

"And, Mitchell," someone else said. "Elmer's gas is lead-free, and your 100LL fuel has a little lead in it that lubes your valve guides and stuff."

"Not needed for the smaller engines like ours," another said.

"And," the lecturer said with a smile, trying to remind folks he was still in there somewhere. "Car gas has a bunch of stuff in it that airplane fuel isn't supposed to have that could be bad for your engine. I took a research team over to that fictitious Elmer's gas station, sampled his car gas, and I found ethanol in it and some other stuff—that can hurt some airplane engine seals," he held up a jar of liquid for them all to see, "Elmer had some mayonnaise in there, and some jiz," he held up another jar—

All of this played on the shoulders of other comments the audience had made and tipped the audience into cat calls and laughter.

"I like this guy," Jim told Lourdes.

Lourdes smiled and shook her head at the zaniness.

The lecturer continued. "And there were some chemicals my team told me about but which I could never pronounce—and a partridge in a pair tree—all dressed up in a soup that looked like my grandmother's day old broth."

"But my plane has an S.T.C. for auto gas," someone yelled.

"That was way back when, Orville," someone said. "Before they started monkeying with the chemical nature of the fuel."

While the group kept talking, Jim leaned over and told Lourdes quietly. "You have an S.T.C. for autogas?"

"I think there's one buried in the ship's papers somewhere from years ago, but I've never used it.

"Good. Because modern fuel used with an old S.T.C.? The fuel's different than it used to be. It may or may not make you land in the corn—which would be homesick fuel going back home," he said with a grin.

Lourdes grinned at his grin.

The lecturer summed that part up: "Some aircraft engines are actually made for autogas and prefer it if there's no lead. But for the others, which is most of them, so far, if you ever do want to use autogas in your plane, if it isn't itself made for it, you should check with your A&P to see if the kind of fuel you want to use is both legal and is not going to hurt your engine. Auto gas isn't the same everywhere, you know. So ask your plane's doctor what it should have."

Lourdes asked Jim, "Do you have your A&P?"

"No," Jim said. "But Mike's been nagging me on it, as well as a couple other guys. I told 'em I am not a real airplane mechanic, but they say I could be with a little more effort."

"Maybe that would be a good thing?" Lourdes wondered.

"Well, I was using part of the shed—the one attached to the barn—as a brothel—"

"Ah!" Lourdes said. "Not fence jewels?"

"I give up," he said with a smile. "I'm a 'respectable' lobbyist for the Republican Party in Washington, fighting for the Defense of Marriage Act and against women's choice."

"You are soooo totally full of it!"

"You bet your sweet— I am," he said, shaking his head in disgust.

"Are you a republican?" she asked.

"Not with stuff like that in their platform, no. And double-no. I do like the idea of having a better national energy plan that incorporates more natural gas, but honestly, do I have to put up with stuff like that to get it?"

The group in the Forum "tent" was carrying on humorously with whatever topic, because people around them kept laughing about something, but neither Lourdes nor Jim paid any attention.

"So who did you vote for in the last election?" Lourdes asked.

"I can't say."

"Oh, come on! You told me you were a thief."

"Father Guido Sarducci," he said.

"A real person!"

"Eddie Murphy?"

Lourdes tried to convey with her raised eyebrows that he could keep trying.

"Lewis Black?"

Lourdes chuckled at him.

"Okay," he said. "I voted for Steve Martin, because then as our President, when he was in the middle of the latest SNAFU, he could tell us all 'Well, excuuuuuuse Meeeeeeee'!"

Lourdes laughed.

"What about you?" Jim asked. "Who'd you vote for?"

"Stephen Colbert," she said.

This time Jim laughed at her.

"No, it was Jeff Dunham—and Walter as V.P."

"Ha! Lourdes! He could use his puppets as cabinet. The little purple whacko could be Press Secretary. The suicide bomber could be Secretary of Defense!"

"So you watch him, too?" Lourdes asked.

"Yeah. On the Comedy Channel."

"So you have TV in Missouri?"

"And indoor plumbing."

"Really, I—" Lourdes thought. "I voted for Obama."

"Me, too," he said.

"Overall," she said, "I try to see if there's a candidate that the constituents need at that time, depending on the issues. And I try to find a good person, inside, someone who might handle something well if something comes up we can't anticipate."

Jim looked into her eyes. "That sounds just like me," he admitted. "And I also take into account equal rights."

"Right. I do think that what's good for some Americans should be good for all Americans."

"Like marriage?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Including that, too. I mean, saying it's only between a 'man' and a 'woman,' aside from the fact those are poorly defined terms, means to them 'any American can marry as long as it's to someone like _we_ would marry,' and that's just wrong. That gives license to any kind of bigotry. It's like saying 'Anyone's free live as they want as long as they do it the way I do.' And there would go freedom of religion, also. And freedom of speech. All so that insecure righteous bigotry—"

"Fascism," he added.

"—can feel safe in the knowledge they're okay inside."

"And not have to face some of their own, private nature, either," he agreed.

Jim laughed out loud. "Have you heard Lewis Black go on about this?"

"No," she answered.

Jim laughed again. "You should look it up on the internet. The Carnegie Hall one, I think. It was great," Jim said to her, smiling.

Engine roar in the air got Lourdes' attention. She turned her head and looked across Jim to see a group of airplanes in tight formation fly through a graceful starburst maneuver.

CHAPTER 23

In the warm late twilight, just before dusk, Jim and Lourdes sat near Millie on the Show Central ramp seventy feet from the huge stage occupied by the Steve Miller Band, listening to great music they'd enjoyed much of their life.

"Jet Airliner" played loudly over the speakers.

It was a lively event. People danced in place alone or with each other. Many stood. Some sat. Some walked back and forth getting refreshments.

Jim stood up to see over some folks in front of them and danced a little in front of his chair.

"Thanks for these lawn chairs, Millie," Lourdes said to her.

"Oh, of course," Millie said. "We bring them for whatever—exactly stuff like this. Nice shirts, you guys," she commented on their look-alike light blue shirts.

"It was him," Lourdes said with a thumb to Jim.

"I know. But it looks nice."

"Because it's an actual date," Jim told Millie, sitting back down in his chair.

Mike returned with some lemon aid for the four of them, handed them out. "You're on an actual date?" he asked. "Like serenading isn't? This one's real?"

"Yup," Jim said.

"And you agreed to this?" Mike asked Lourdes.

Lourdes nodded reluctantly.

Millie reached her lemon aid cup over to Lourdes' and clicked them together, laughing.

"Well, that's the first time he's dated in years," Mike said. "I hope you don't upset the weather gods with any of that. These clouds could dump rain all over us and spoil the concert."

"Not enough clouds," Jim said, pulling out his smart phone. "And lets see." He pressed a few icons to get the local radar. "Nope. See here?" He showed his phone to everyone. "Not this evening."

"Well, I don't guess I should be surprised," Mike said, leaning across Millie to Lourdes and clicking his cup against hers also.

Their playful banter continued through the evening while they listened to a list of classic Steve Miller songs.

Some of the folks in front had sat down as the concert continued playing, so Jim sat back down as well.

"The Joker" rocked the ramp.

The four of them sat and enjoyed the evening.

"How many people you think are here," Millie asked them all.

Everyone looked around at the ramp.

Mike stood up to count. "One, two—thirty thousand?"

"Could be," Jim said looking around. "I don't know. Cold be fifty thousand for all I know. Good draw, either way" Jim said.

"Everything's big around here," Mike said. "We want planes, we get twenty thousand of them. We want music? We get a major concert. Good planning, I think. You know sometimes in the past? I've seen a Quantas 747 land right back there on Runway Three Six, non-stop from Australia, bringing people here for this airshow."

"Me, too," said Jim. "And planes parked right here in Show Center? A Concorde. A Soviet Atonov An-124, Migs, an F-117 fighter, F-104 Starghter, C-5 Galaxy—all kinds of things."

"Bigger is better, to me," Mike said as the crowd rocked on. "I'd have a 747 for myself, if I could. I think it should have a hot tub in it. A King-sized bed—"

"What about turbulence?" Millie asked.

Jim picked that up. "You hit an air pocket, and all the water in your hot tub would fly up out of there splashing all over the ceiling. Get your cafeteria-wrapped sub sandwich all wet."

"So I'd have a butler standing by with gourmet spaghetti, and it'd have one of those little silver lids on the plate, so it'd stay dry. And the butler could wear a bikini, so she'd be ready for it."

"You'd need a restraint harness for the bed," Jim said. You're lying there asleep, and then you'd go flying."

"I make my own turbulence, whether I'm in a plane or not," Mike said.

Jim laughed. "If I could have any plane I'd want? I'd probably choose something more personal. Like maybe a G-5 corporate jet? If I could fly it myself. Then I could pick up the guys at our home strip and fly off to where ever for lunch. That's living. And an F-14 Tomcat, like Tom Cruise's in 'Top Gun' for back up."

"With a tanker to follow you around," Mike added.

"If it were me," Millie said. "I'd kinda like Mike's RV-9A that you guys are building. I really think that's a great plane."

"Well, if you're gonna get real, I'd take my own RV-6, because that plane is tricked out. And looks like it belongs in a race. What about you, Lourdes?" Jim asked.

"I don't know," Lourdes said. "This is magic?"

"Yes," Jim said. "Never needs fuel or maintenance. Just what would you like?"

The crowd was mostly standing again for another rousing song.

Jim, Lourdes, Mike, and Millie couldn't see the stage at that point, for the people standing in front of them. But they could very well hear the music and were having a great time.

"I think," Lourdes said, "On the grand side of things? I'd take a Starship Enterprise, 1701D—"

"Oooooohh! That is soooooo not here!" Millie said.

"Not fair!" Mike said. "We're talking Earth-based, intra-atmosphere motorized airfoils!"

"With wings!" Jim added with a laugh.

"—and a Millennium Falcon—" Lourdes said.

Mike and Jim laughed loudly, which during a live rock concert meant the neighbors didn't even notice.

"And for a personal plane? To be more real?" Lourdes thought. "I'd probably prefer a stable high wing because I kind of like to sit under the wing when I go some places, like camping or airshows."

"You mean like a Cessna or Kitfox?" Mike asked.

"Like an Albatross," Lourdes said, referring to the large, twin-engine flying boat, messing with them.

They all laughed together in their lawn chairs.

When the Steve Miller Band started playing "Abracadabra," half the audience hit their feet and began dancing to the bouncy, familiar beat, including Mike and Millie—emphasizing beats "and two and," pause, "and two and."

"Oh, God," Lourdes told Jim. "Millie's _good_."

"Sultry," Jim laughed. "And Mike is so pathetic."

With a silly grin, Lourdes watched Mike move the occasional body part, sometimes in beat with the music—also noting the enthusiastic, have-fun smile on both Millie's and his face.

The song's introductory rif continued, "and two and," pause, "and two and..."

The whole crowd jumped into it.

"Come on!" Millie told Lourdes and Jim.

"Oh, not me," Jim said. "I'm no good at that."

"And you think he is?" Millie said about Mike.

"It looks like epilepsy," Jim agreed.

"No, you are good. I watched you earlier," Lourdes said.

"Get up here!" Millie ordered, until finally, before the words of the song began, Jim's grin spread into abandonment. He jumped up to join them.

Lourdes watched him again: minimalist, leg-dip movements, but definitely in sync with the beat—and, actually, what made him good wasn't his style, but his enjoyment.

"Lourdes?" Jim called to her. Dancing beside her chair, he held his arms out for her.

"No," Lourdes said with a small shake of her head.

"Lourdes?" Jim pleaded.

_No!_ she thought. She looked around her at everyone else.

Steve Miller sang:

" _I heat up_

I can't cool down."

Jim leaned over to gently hold Lourdes' right hand while he slightly moved with the music.

Lourdes laughed at him, embarrassed and charmed at the same time.

Other people of all kinds around her danced their happiness.

Sexy.

Smooth.

Spastic.

Sloppy.

Some not even guessable.

Jim leaned closer to Lourdes while he danced with her hand as if he were making love to it.

Lourdes gave up. She jumped up to join Jim—sliding into fun with Steve's live music and these crazy people she'd fallen in with at the most amazing airshow.

Jim continued holding her hand as he modified his technique with a ridiculous hip movement, making Lourdes laugh out loud.

Lourdes moved in his reflection to echo his hips, and Mike laughed at her.

"Oooooooh!" he yelled! "Lourdes!"

" _Abra-abra-cadabra..."_ Steve sang.

" _I want to reach out and grab ya."_

The song had been in Lourdes' head all day.

The audience sang the chorus with him, all tens of thousands of them, including Lourdes, which developed into the magic such a large crowd can have when they're all enjoying the same thing, all on the same page, all not worried how they look, all not caring about other issues in life.

Lourdes couldn't have imagined, a week ago—

Jim leaned in to put his arm around her waist, slid his left foot between hers to dance closer.

Lourdes moved in a little, herself, to move with him, slipping her right hand into his left.

"You guys are totally not married," a younger man behind them yelled out above the singing. "No way. 'Cause married people don't dance like that."

Jim drew her in tight, kissing her while they danced.

Several people around them were charmed into comment.

"See?" the young man said to the guy next to him. "I told ya."

When Jim ended the kiss, he laughed at the two youngsters.

Lourdes stood frozen, touching Jim's chest, unable to think or move, let alone dance, still mentally lost in his kiss, and the song, and the— Everything.

"Why don't you kiss me like that?" Millie slapped Mike playfully on his arm.

"Sure, Love," Mike said. He smacked her a good one on the lips. "How's that?"

Millie laughed at the comic screwball and ground out some skilled moves guaranteed to encourage him further, later.

"Oh! Violation of the public rules! Violation of the rules!" Mike said. " _Just the way I like it!_ "

Jim held Lourdes close and let his sway move her with the music.

Lourdes' dance had faded; her mind was gone. There was no concert, no thousands of people surrounding them, no dusk, no yelling, no screaming. There was only Jim, the strength of his arms around her back, his movement, his whiskers, his neck, his leg—

Jim moved his hand down her back.

Sparks flew in her mind. Without realizing it, she kissed the left side of his neck.

Her mind had been in pain for so long— _How could this be_ , she wondered without realizing it. The world was so— Things were so horrible so long. _How could this be?_ Evil around her. People with their thoughts— The pressure! Year after year. It wasn't possible. Pieces of hundreds of painful incidents had formed the basis of her emotionality for decades— Things she needed to be and was unable to be. The way people misunderstood her—and she didn't even _want_ them to understand her at all, on some levels, which made it more painful.

Don't trust people!

Stay away!

People hurt.

Closeness hurts.

Stay separate.

Be anonymous.

Always be ready to move.

You give in, you get close and they'll stab you in the heart with a rusty, barbed knife and twist it while you scream because you should have known better than to live in their world in the first place!

_Run!_ she felt—while she clung to him, hugging his neck, moving with his magic.

Her tears began flowing again of their own, soaking his shirt. Her face didn't distort; her tears flowed on their own.

Jim held her more tightly, and she let him, needing to flee but needing to stay even more.

Lourdes leaned backward against an isolated tree in the darkness, pulling Jim's face closer. Pulling _him_ closer. Opening herself to him without knowing it. Encouraging him. Pulling him into her, until finally he was there. Unable to think, she involuntarily wrapped her arms around his neck and groaned, holding him tighter and tighter...

At two o'clock in the morning thunder storms raked overhead. Lightning ripped through the sky like a broken strobe exposing dark, jagged clouds. Thunder shook everything within a hundred miles.

The rain hitting the tarp over Lourdes' tent sounded like its own version of constant thunder, a loud, deep, continuous white noise of angry _spat_ s and _plat_ s. The tarp pulled at its guy lines in the gusty North wind, adding more noise to the mix, the lee side flapping and tearing violently at its stakes. In the distance, six feet away, hail _tink_ ed and _clack_ ed against the light-weight aluminum of her plane.

And of all this, Lourdes and Jim were unaware, lying together inside, arm in arm, in peaceful sleep.

CHAPTER 24

At dawn on Tuesday, it was cloudy. The sun—appearing even more brilliant than usual because of its contrast to the otherwise gray sky—peeked through a brief hole in the clouds to shine over Runway Three Six, across wet grass, and under the bellies of countless airplanes on the field, lighting the bottom half of Lourdes' tent.

Lourdes' phone rang and woke them both.

Jim rubbed his face.

Lourdes scrounged around in her tent to find her phone. It was on her clothes bag next to her battery-back-up phone charger. Still dry.

"Yes?" she answered, lying back down.

" _Lourdes? This is Millie_."

"Yes," Lourdes said out of inertia, still half asleep.

" _Oh_ ," Millie said. " _We have to have breakfast together— Did I wake you_?"

"Hi, Millie," Lourdes said, waking.

" _Oh, I'm sorry! I'm an early riser_ —"

Jim began to register events. "It's Millie?" he asked.

The phone went silent for a second. " _Lourdes! Is he there with you!"_ Millie gasped and wheezed, laughing. " _No! I think it's wonderful! Welcome to the family!"_ she said.

"Uh-oh," Lourdes said to Jim, handing him the phone.

" _Oh, I'm so happy!"_ Millie said, loudly enough so they could both hear regardless of who held the phone. " _We have got to have breakfast_ —"

"Love you, Millie," Jim said, looking at Lourdes beside him, his first smile of the day forming on his face.

The sun's light went out, and the rain began to pat on the overhead tarping again.

Lourdes pulled some of her sleeping bag over herself to cover up, at least a little.

" _Jim_!" Millie said.

Jim leaned over to kiss Lourdes who pulled away. " _Sand paper_!" she said, feeling his whiskers with the fingers of her right hand, her own smile forming.

Millie laughed into the phone.

Jim moved to put the phone down, but Lourdes grabbed it. "Maybe in a couple hours?" she asked.

" _About eight_? _Same café_?" Millie asked.

Lourdes hung up the phone.

Jim rolled over to kiss her some more, moving the sleeping bag aside.

Outside the tent, a solo man walked by under an umbrella, dipping to go under the outboard edge of Lourdes wing.

He heard a noise that sounded like a woman in the tent, maybe in distress.

"Hello?" he asked to the tent. "Are you alright in there?"

The lady giggled.

"Oh," the man said, chuckling to himself, and trundled on his way to the heads.

The rain was pouring outside, splatting all over everything, dripping down the clear plastic walls of the flight line tent café. The white-noise patting of rain was loud on the canvas roof overhead. People shuttled around inside, shaking rain off light jackets as if an actual storm was raging—every single one of them with a smile from ear to ear.

"So did you get wet?" a young, thin, wiry man asked another on their way to the food line.

"Are you kidding? Dry like Moses. Good tent."

"Ah!" another man said cutting in to their conversation. "I was soaked!"

Everyone in earshot laughed at him.

"I know how it is!" a man called from several feet away.

"Had water flooding in all over the place," the wiry man shared with the whole tent.

"Through the rain fly on top?" someone else asked him.

"No! I think an evil Sith Lord picked it up and dipped the whole thing over there in Lake Winnebago, me and all. Swimming with the fish."

The men laughed. The storm had energized the whole airfield.

"So what'd you do?" someone else asked him.

"I slept _wet_!" the wiry man said. " _What you think_? Cheap tent! It looked good at the store! So I draped my sleeping bag out on the wing, this morning, to dry and look: it's raining again all over it."

The men laughed again.

Lourdes and Jim sat opposite each other at one of the tables and enjoyed their breakfast: eggs and French toast for Jim, a short stack of pancakes for Lourdes. Orange juice and milk for the pair.

Jim looked over at the man who had referenced the Sith. "Jedi?" Jim asked.

"Commando," the wiry man said back with a knowing smile.

Millie and Mike walked in through the open east side of the tent, shaking rain off umbrellas, closing them. Millie spotted Lourdes and Jim right away.

Mike smiled and waved.

"Ha ha ha!" Mike laughed, slapping Jim on the shoulder and heading to the food line.

Millie sat down by Lourdes and beamed. Without notice she reached over and hugged Lourdes a big one. "Honey!" she said.

Lourdes smiled.

Millie hugged her again. "Lourdes!" She waited for Lourdes to respond.

Lourdes looked at her.

Jim ate his French toast.

"Look!" Millie showed Lourdes her left hand.

"Oh my God!" Lourdes exclaimed. "Oh my God, look at that! _You got engaged_?"

Jim looked up at Millie.

"Engaged?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," Millie said, beaming.

Lourdes hugged Millie vigorously. "What? How?"

"It just happened this morning! I think that little S.O.B. was waiting on this guy," Millie said, indicating Jim.

Jim looked innocent.

"Years, I've been thinking Mike should hurry up and he never does," Millie said. "Then you show up, and _whamo_! Lookie this!"

Lourdes held Millie's left hand and looked at her ring. A beautiful little diamond in a prong setting. "Oh, it's lovely."

Millie put her hand in front of Jim's face to show him.

"You're beautiful. Congratulations to you both," Jim said with a genuine smile.

"We woke up in the motor home—great storm—and he got amorous, and then popped it out to me with a 'Why don't we make it official?' announcement, and I grabbed it before he could get away."

Lourdes gave her another hug.

"Sounds like it got the job done," Jim said.

"We've been together for years. Even though he has his studio over in Kansas City, we're already like an old married couple, anyway. But this is so beautiful." Millie held her ring hand up again. "And I've got you to thank."

Millie jumped up and gave Jim a peck on the forehead.

"I haven't done anything," Jim said.

"I think you did," Millie said with a wink. "I think a large part of Mike's success is your support. You are more amazing than you think."

Jim took another bite of his French toast.

"Isn't he great?" Millie asked Lourdes.

Lourdes smiled knowingly.

"Oh my God!" Millie said, examining Lourdes neck. "Whisker burn all over the place— Anywhere else?" she asked laughing. " _Lourdes_ —!" Millie asked, demanding an explanation.

"Nothing!" Lourdes said, feebly. "It was raining—"

"Aren't we a pair!" Millie said.

Thunder cracked overhead and more rain poured down on the roof of the tent café.

People cheered it, thankful for the moisture.

"Remember a few years ago? Wettest year we ever had at Oshkosh. A soaker," one man said to a group of others.

"I do!" said another. "And last year it was hotter and drier. This year? I like this. I like a good rain now and then."

There was general agreement among the happy pilot campers. Someone couldn't resist the old, bad-weather, go-no-go adage: "It's better to be down here wishing you're up there, then up there wishing you're down here."

Thunder cracked again to make the point.

Mike returned with two cardboard tray boxes of breakfast for Millie and himself. He sat down beside Jim and slid Millie's box over to her.

"Congratulations, Mike," Jim said warmly, reaching over to shake his hand.

"Right!" Mike said. "And you, too."

"No reason to congratulate me," Jim said.

Lourdes remained quiet, trying to sneak in a bite.

Mike laughed. "I know you too well," he said, then to Lourdes, "I know, for example, that Jim here? He loves everyone in a general sense. The best man I've ever known in my life." Then to Jim, "Be the best man at my wedding?"

"You bet," Jim said.

Mike continued to Lourdes. "Taught me everything I know. Except the money bits like art and welding and the art business, and how to set up web pages and stuff like that."

"So why'd you pop the question last night?" Jim asked.

"She has a steady paycheck," Mike said.

Jim laughed.

Millie beamed.

"But when it comes to close women, Lourdes," Mike said, "Like that? Jim's heart doesn't go out often. One horse guy, he is. Only other woman I ever knew him to love was Connie—you never saw anybody care for anyone so much, no matter how hard it was toward the end—and when she died four years ago, it killed him."

Jim took another bite of eggs.

"I know you already know this, but I can't say it enough. It's been hitting me lately. He's been the living dead—never ending—until recently. And now I'm seeing his light again. And I know that's not anything you need credit for, either, Love, but it's part of the thing here, which you are, really, a part of, so thank you," he said, winking at her. "Hell, I'm thankful for the whole universe, today."

"So where are you guys gonna live," Jim asked.

"If you guys can stand me up in Greenhills, I'm gonna move up there with Millie. Sell my studio in Kansas City."

Lourdes and Jim walked slowly together, arm in arm, under Lourdes' umbrella over swamped, mushy, four-inch grass through thousands of experimental airplanes. The thunder had stopped. There was a light, steady rain over the whole field. Only the most determined or romantic were strolling.

The mechanical, computerized voice of the Automated Surface Observing System for Wittman Regional spoke over Jim's telephone loudspeaker.

"...Oshkosh Wittman Regional airport

Automated Weather observation—one five four one zulu.

Wind zero three zero at four.

Visibility three, light rain.

Sky condition: ceiling, three hundred broken, seven hundred overcast.

Temperature one niner Celsius; dew point one niner Celsius.

Altimeter two niner niner two..."

They both understood the ASOS: the winds were northeast and light. Light rain. Low clouds, some of which almost touched the trees—cozy, if you're strolling along. Temperature about sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit—barely an excuse for a jacket.

He ended the call and put the phone into a plastic sandwich baggie, slipping it back in his pocket.

Jim wore his long-sleeved light blue shirt from the concert the previous evening, and Lourdes wore a clean top, though under a light grey jacket she had stashed in the back of the plane.

Lourdes held onto his right arm with both her arms. He held the umbrella in his left.

"They said it hailed last night, but none of the planes seem to have been bothered by it."

"No," Jim agreed. "I'm glad yours is fine, too. And I'm not worried about mine. I'm sure it's fine—but regardless, it has to be brought to this airshow. These things have as much right to live as we do, and should. They shouldn't be locked up in hangars, only brought out when it's perfect."

"If you ask me, this is perfect," Lourdes said.

He looked at her. "Yes, it is."

"You speak about planes like they have a soul," she said.

He seemed to thin. "They're part of the universe," he said, as if that explained it. "We might mosey that way and see if it's still there, though."

"Okay."

She leaned into him a little more. The nearly deserted flight line was so romantic. She just wanted to keep it, savor it. Walking in the rain with him was so beautiful.

They came upon an unconventional design for an airplane: mostly white, composite manufacture, a canard up front, main wing to the rear, winglets, retractable gear. A four-seater.

"This is a Velocity," he said.

"Yes." She knew.

"A really slick design. Fast."

"It looks very nice," Lourdes said. "Someone did good work on it. The paint is perfect."

They slowly continued through other rows. The rain began coming down harder again when they happened upon a man crouching under the wing of a Kitfox.

"Hey," Jim called out to him. "You dry?"

"The guy said, "I will be when this lets up."

"Do you need a poncho?" Lourdes asked.

"No. I'm fine, the man replied.

"It's okay. Here," Lourdes said, fishing in her purse. She drew out a light, yellow, plastic poncho still in its original package and handed it to him.

"I couldn't!" the man said.

"It was given to me. And I don't want it. I kind of like scooching under his umbrella," Lourdes said with a smile.

The man gave in. "Thanks," he said, taking the poncho.

"No problem," Jim said. "What a beautiful morning?"

"You bet it is," said the man.

The man put his new poncho on while Lourdes and Jim continued on their way.

The rain had diminished to a drizzle, for the time being.

"We're getting to your plane via everywhere else," Lourdes asked.

"Yeah, but who wants to interrupt this beautiful morning?"

"The Warbird area is sooooo cozy in this weather," she asked.

Jim took his arm back from Lourdes and wrapped it around her waist. She put hers around his waist, too, as they walked.

"So tell me more about Connie? You haven't gone into it much."

"I didn't—figure you'd want to hear about my wife, and not her dying, either."

"I might not have, but I think I'm ready now."

Jim moseyed over to some wet bleachers in front of a small ramp, in the warbirds area, with some Liaison planes around, and sat down.

They held hands while they sat.

"Well," Jim said. "In my mind, Connie's all part of living, everything about my life. It's so precious, life is. I knew her in high school and I was very into her. Never saw anything so pretty. I got into her, and I couldn't forget her. She—made the world tick for me."

Lourdes listened attentively.

"That was in Wichita, back then. But she wasn't into me that way, so I left and joined the Army."

"What did you do in there?"

"Gave out parking tickets."

"You were police?"

"Nothing fancy," he said. "But after my hitch, I got out. Went to work at various jobs, took some college courses, and also got my pilot's license. Then Uncle Tim passed on and I inherited his farm. Now, during all this, when I got my pilot's license, I went through my second adolesence, and looked Connie up to take her flying, and one thing lead to another pretty quickly, and we stayed together. Marrying. No kids.

"My mom and I moved to the farm in Greenhills—"

"You're living with your mother?"

Jim laughed at her.

"On a farm, it's tradition."

He looked at Lourdes' face. "Kidding! No, actually, she did go over there with me, but she stayed when she met her boyfriend and she lives with him, not me. So she's in town, too. She's pretty young for her age. So I was living with Connie on the farm. And we were happy for a long time. Knew Millie for years, and her then husband. Her kids. Met Mike maybe eight years ago. Life develops. Connie was great around the house. I'd work the farm now and then—"

He looked at Lourdes.

"I have to admit I don't work all that hard at it. The guy who owns the place next to mine? Benny? He owns some of the equipment, and I own some others. So we kinda work together. The fields are the same, basically. If they're both ready for plowing, for example, or some service, then if one of us has the equipment out, we just do both because it's easier. The fuel works out overall, and there's less set-up and tear-down. There's no fence in between them.

"But I'd tend to do most of the farmy things, and Connie— When she wasn't out shopping or doing things with friends, she'd play farm-wife also, or maybe even work on the house some. Go to Home Depot for things."

The rain started to fall a little heavier, but they didn't care and barely noticed. They continued snuggling under Lourdes' umbrella on the wet bleachers in front of the Liaison planes.

The ceiling got lower, and the visibility dropped to about one mile.

He smiled. "She had this beautiful patch of roses out in the front yard. It was a talent of hers. She didn't tend to them that much, but what she did, she seemed to do well."

"Did you ever fight?" Lourdes asked, to be realistic.

"Some, yeah. But not much, and they were superficial, if you will. Mostly just working stuff out. It was a good marriage. And when she got ill— The doctor told us she had breast cancer about five years ago and it hit us like a sledge hammer. She was braver than I was. We went to specialists, but in the end, she didn't make it."

The pain was clear on his face.

Lourdes said nothing at all. Just held his hand.

"We buried her in the town cemetery. I don't go there often."

_Who was this man_? Lourdes wondered. _How could he live his life so well_?

"I guess I kinda shut down after that. I didn't think I did, but to listen to Mike and Millie— And I trust them. They say I was shut-down, so I guess I was. I still worked, but maybe not as much."

He lowered his head.

"How can people like that exist? In a universe of atoms from stars, that they could come together so beautifully?"

Jim fished his phone out of his pocket and removed the plastic baggie from it. "Let me show you some pictures?"

"Sure."

Jim found the album and went through a few photos, showing Lourdes Connie and their home. The next one was a warewolf.

Lourdes gasped.

"That's Moff Tarkin," Jim explained with a grin of relief. "They were very close, too."

"He looks just like you said."

"Yeah. He's a character," Jim said. "Thank you for letting me share." He put his phone back in the baggie and then back in his pocket.

"Do you wear bib overalls? Like the classic farmer guy?"

"Ah. I'm more like Kevin Costner in 'Field of Dreams.' Without the 'baseball men.' It's because I don't hear voices! I don't understand it! I grow corn. I miss my father. I have room. I hang out with all the other real farmers at the feed store," he said in mock exasperation.

"Where is your father?" Lourdes asked.

"I don't know."

"What was his name?"

"Handsome Stranger."

Lourdes laughed.

Jim told her, "He left when I was very young. Just gone one day, I hear. I don't think I even realized it until I was older."

"What about you on all this?" Jim asked her.

Lourdes was caught off guard by the question.

"Well," she said, indicating to him they stroll some more.

They got up to wander around the Liaison planes. Cute, she thought, like they expected George C. Scott to appear in full military dress with a parade behind him.

"You already know some of it. Mom, Dad. Siblings long gone. I don't think I jell with them. I'm welcome for holidays, but I don't feel comfortable—and I don't think it's all me. Maybe they want to pretend we're fine, but they don't want to admit they're still uncomfortable with me? I don't know. But I've really been feeling, painfully, that I'm on my own in life, more than I used to realize, and more than I can stand.

"I had Raul, a hundred years ago, and we were married, I thought we were happy, but then his family pressured him, and he divorced me."

"I'm sorry," Jim said.

"It was a long time ago. I've adjusted."

"Being alone a long time can make it harder, not easier," Jim said.

_That was so true_.

"When did you get your R.N.?"

"After Raul left. But it's not really me, inside. It's just—something to pay rent. I don't know what I want to do. I think I started playing Star Wars out of loneliness. I've shut myself off from a lot of people because it hurts to be around them. But in-game, I'm as real as anybody else."

"Me, too," Jim said. "In that I started playing another MMO after Connie passed—on the farm alone. Mike got me into it. Then I switched to Star Wars. And now, it's become something else altogether. I just do it now and then, but now— Mike and I have it set up on laptops— How do you play yours?"

"I had it on a laptop, but I left it behind, too. I caved, back there, really bad."

Jim nodded. "So Sometimes Mike and I get on there at the same time with some kind of character, on our laptops, even if we're in the same room, and fight each other P.V.P., 'Person vs. Person.' It's like a science-fiction movie, only you're in there with it. The things we do! Mike is so crazy and smart: He never tries to win, and he always wins."

"What?" Lourdes asked.

"Uh," Jim thought. "He knows it's all just for fun, so he has fun. I know it's just a game, but, initially, it did help save me from loneliness. And it also became a vehicle for social interaction and fun— Mike has been very good for me. Helped me."

"You're good friends," she noted.

"Yeah," he nodded.

The rain diminished again, but the sky remained drizzly, dark and cloudy.

A few other people—more than earlier in the morning—were undeterred and walked to various places. The occasional Gator drove by or some other airport vehicle.

Lourdes and Jim saw some BT-13 "Vibrator's" they turned to go see: low wing, warbird, trainer, taildragger from the forties, Pratt "Wasp Junior" radial engine on the front.

"The rain is beautiful to see these things in," Lourdes said.

In time, the rain stopped and the clouds began to clear. It began to get lighter, overall. Little light gray patches began to form overhead, followed by light blue then brilliant blue. Soggy fields, accustomed to a good rain now and then, turned into lush, green lawns.

And people materialized out of nowhere, again, to fill the airfield with enthusiastic exploration. There was more to see and do at a major airshow than almost anywhere else on earth, and in the most beautiful setting.

They found Jim's RV-6, still beading moisture from the rains, a million tiny dust particles clinging to it, each the former nucleus of a rain drop.

They stopped and stared at his campsight: red, low-wing plane with racing insignias all over it, small single-person tent behind the left wing, tarp over the top.

"I think I could use a shower," he said to Lourdes.

"And a shave," Lourdes said in self defense.

Jim rubbed his face. "Yeah." He smiled. "Because I was otherwise engaged this morning."

He leaned in for a kiss, but she stopped him.

"Shower? Shave? Brush your teeth?"

Jim gave up in mock defeat and went to rummage through his tent for supplies. "Alright. Get cleaned up. Happens to me—every month, the same ol' thing—"

"For what it's worth, I need to, too," Lourdes said, watching Jim dig through his tent, tossing things out, like Yoda digging through Luke's pack. "Do you have individual stalls in the showers? Curtains?"

"Yeah," Jim said, turning to look at Lourdes. "But you can't come in with me." Turning back to dig through his tent, his butt hanging out the door flap, he said, "I don't know why, but they have rules about such things. It's their loss."

He got all he needed and stood in front of her, towel and toiletries in hand. "Don't you need some things?"

"I have it all in my purse," she said.

"Towel?"

"I'm camping. I have a change of underwear in a freezer bag. I go in, shut the shower curtain, strip, clean, dress wet in clean underwear and outer clothes, put the old underwear in the bag, then go brush my teeth. I'm basically dry by the time I leave. I change clothes in the morning when I dress. I've been known to wash a top in the shower, too."

He raised his eyebrows. "Compact."

"For camping, it's pretty good."

"It is. But for me? I just bring my stuff back here to the tent when I'm done."

Fresh and clean—and clean-shaven—Lourdes and Jim enjoyed lounging through the rest of the day, eating lunch in another tent café, snacking on things found through the afternoon, shopping whatever was around, and playing that popular pilot game of Would I like to have that plane? every time they saw one. Which was all the time—and every make and model imaginable. As aware as both of them were of the aviation community, even combined they did not know them all.

After the cold front, the sky was a deep, clear blue, yet a little gusty, but that didn't stop local air traffic. The sky was always filled with airplane noise: people landing or taking off or buzzing overhead.

No matter where they went, they found people from all over the globe. Once they found people speaking German while examining a plane made in Idaho. Another time, they found people speaking French while looking at a plane made in Italy. Yet, regardless of who they were or where they were from, they were all airplane or airshow people, so they were all on a similar page, somehow.

Lourdes had to laugh at Jim talking airplanes with a Chinese couple, because they couldn't speak English well. And Jim's Mandarin was nonexistent.

The Chinese man was standing in a grass field, in Antique Parking, near the Theatre in the Woods, in front of an antique monoplane—box girder fuselage, small fin, wood, metal bits, covered in light cloth where it was covered at all. The Chinese man was looking alternately between his woman and the plane, moving his hands large and wide with exaggerated vocalizations to match. "PPPPPPP-ppppppp," the man buzzed his lips with a Doppler effect.

The woman looked at him irritated. She said something back to him that sounded like rude directions to a nut house.

The man seemed to try to explain something again, with even better buzzing.

The woman demonstrated different hand motions.

Jim stepped in. "Good afternoon! May I help you?" he asked of them.

The woman turned to him and said something in Mandarin.

The man tried it also.

"Hi. No. Sorry. Don't speak that language." Then to Lourdes. "Do you know what language this is?"

"May be Mandarin. I think." Lourdes addressed the couple. "Ni hao ma?" she vocalized, for how are you.

"Hao," they said in return, continuing in a string of similar phonetic sounds.

"It's Mandarin. I think they're Chinese," Lourdes said.

"You speak Chinese?" Jim asked.

"No. Just that."

Lourdes explained to them, shaking her head. "No. I'm sorry. I don't speak Mandarin."

Jim tried to help also. "But you want to know about the plane?" Jim made exaggerated hand motions toward the plane.

The man shook his head yes, yes, several times—eeking out the learned phrase "No English"—and went over to indicate the outboard wing then the woman, speaking excitedly in Mandarin.

"This plane a Bleriot," Jim told them clearly, indicating the plane while he said it. "BLER-ee-oh."

"BLAY OH?" The man replied.

Jim shook his head yes. "BLER-ee-oh," he said. "BLER-ee-oh." Jim then waved his hands in large motions as if indicating way behind him. "Waaaaaay from the past. OLD airplane type." He moved his hands as if indicating far behind him. "Like near the Wright Brothers."

The woman looked pissed off and seemed to indicate so, to the man.

The man shook his head affirmatively, more words in Mandarin, and motioned heavily in the direction of its wing—then walked to the next antique in the row, a biplane and pointed at the aileron on the wing. His hands moved up and down while he spoke in Mandarin.

Jim looked back at the Bleriot.

"Oh!" He said to the Chinese man. Jim held his hands up by the aileron on the biplane. "The ailerons change angle. They make the plane turn— Oh," he said to Lourdes, then returning his attention to the Chinese man, Jim held his hands up by the aileron again on the biplane and rotated them in the motion of an aileron. "Up," he angled his hand up, "Down," he said, angling his hand down. Then he repeated: "Up," he angled, "Down," he angled.

Jim motioned with his finger for the man to follow him back to the Bleriot, wiping his hands in the air back and forth. "No." Jim held his hands wide to encompass the entire wing, and moved his hands together as if to bring the entire wing with it. "Up," he said, moving his hands up, and then "Down," as if to move the entire wing up and down.

The Chinese man's eyebrows went up, and he started talking to the woman in excited Mandarin, moving his hands wide. Then he turned back to Jim with his Doppler effect: "PPPPPPPPP-ppppppp!" his right hand darting off as if into the distance.

Lourdes laughed.

"That's right," Jim said, "PPPPPPPPP-ppppppppp!"

Full of smiles, the Chinese couple walked on to look at other planes, talking back and forth, hands moving.

"It's a wing-warper," Jim said to Lourdes.

Lourdes smiled and nodded. "He noticed there were no ailerons."

At three-thirty, the daily, afternoon major airshow began, which changed little for most people enjoying the larger part of the airshow, the million things to see along the flight line and in countless, associated tents and exhibits—except that during the show, performing airplanes tended to trail smoke that corkscrewed along with the oscillating _wow-wow-wow-wow_ sound of an aerobatic engine. The viewing crowd loved it, and there were no bad seats. The show was up in the air; you could see it from everywhere.

Later in the evening, they went into town to have pizza with Mike and Millie and then about six-thirty, they made it to the Theatre in the Woods. The airshow was just ending.

The Theatre in the Woods is a fixture at Wittman Regional, set in a grove of gigantic, old Oak trees. It's a large, rough-wood-plank stage faced east with a huge steel awning stretching over asphalt flooring to protect the audience from the occasional rain. The sides are always open to let the summer breeze drift through. Equipped with lighting and sound, it makes a comfortable place for people to relax after a day on their feet trying to see everything.

People slowly filed in from all sides at will in the open, unstructured seating. No tickets were required. There were no doors nor even walls in the audience area. It was always wide open, like the concert on the ramp.

The four of them sat together, maybe fifty feet from the stage, on ubiquitous, padded, wooden chairs.

"Here's some mosquito repellent," Lourdes said, pulling a little bottle from her purse. "Anybody want some?"

"I do. They love me," Mike said.

Lourdes sprayed his arms and neck.

"Jim?" Lourdes asked.

"Yes."

She sprayed his arms and neck.

"Can you get my back also? They love me there, too, for some reason."

"Millie?" Lourdes asked.

"No thank you. They don't bother me."

"Oaky." Lourdes sprayed her own arms and neck.

"Tonight," Millie said, checking the app on her phone, "it looks like We're having some awards and presentations. The Cub folks? And later, a barbershop chorus?"

"Like a barbershop quartet?" Lourdes asked.

"I guess so," Millie said.

"I love that. Like the one in The Music Man? How charming."

"Lovely," Mike agreed.

Jim moved his hand over to hold Lourdes' hand.

Lourdes felt herself arouse again. She looked at Jim before she could stop herself. She didn't want to display in front of others, but it had been so long for her, since she felt anything for anyone, and much longer since anyone had felt anything real for her.

She noticed Millie had caught her look at Jim—and that Millie had then noticed her embarrassment.

"Me, too," Millie said in comfort. She leaned against Mike.

"When are you two gonna do it," Lourdes asked Millie, to redirect attention.

"When we get back to the motor home," Mike said.

Millie hit him on the leg. "Marry," she said to Mike, then to Lourdes, "When we get back home to Greenhills. No reason to wait. Life is too short."

"That's right," Mike said in one of his few sincere moments.

Jim, ever so gently, squeezed Lourdes' hand slightly more, moving his hand as well briefly along her leg.

Lourdes responded to him. She tried not to move for fear it would show, but she didn't know how to contain it.

Jim's shirt was open at the collar, and she could see part of his chest. He was clean-shaven. He smelled like heaven. His jawline—

She squeezed Jim's hand, also.

_The tent is right over there_ , she thought before she could stop herself.

But she had Millie here, whose friendship she also needed.

Lourdes reached over and held Millie's hand also, yet for support—who seemed to understand with a knowing smile.

CHAPTER 25

The dawn sunlight shone brilliantly over Runway Three Six to light the bellies of planes and the bottom half of Lourdes' tent.

The weather had been perfect the night before, but they had no idea because they slept so soundly.

Lourdes woke to see Jim sleeping beside her, the two of them barely covered with the corner of her sleeping bag. She lifted his right arm and moved to lie on his shoulder, laying his arm behind her.

His whiskers had grown out again. It was morning.

He stirred and stretched a little, keeping her on his shoulder, and moved his left hand over her left breast.

"I guess we've gone and done something now," Lourdes said. "Look at this." She moved her hand over the scant hair on his chest, but it was the situation she was referring to.

Jim waited a few seconds to reply. "Yes, I guess we have."

"I don't know where this will go, but I do have to say I'm into you," she said. "How do you just meet someone and fall in love—"

She caught herself. "How could I say that after only five days?"

He squeezed her tight and kissed her warmly on the lips, letting his hands wander.

She loved his kiss and even his scratchy whiskers. She explored his lips with her teeth, then her eyes widened.

Lourdes placed her hand on top of his hand to hold him still. "Stay here," she pleaded to him.

"I'm in love with you, Lourdes," Jim said seriously, kissing her eyes, rolling her onto her back to explore some more.

Lourdes couldn't stop herself responding to him.

"And thank God for that," Jim said.

They stood on the grass, under trees, by the wooden siding of a small building, holding each other close, brushing their lips together. They couldn't get enough of each other.

People passed by and noticed, sharing large smiles and making cute comments. Pilots are a life-loving bunch.

But Lourdes and Jim heard none of it.

Lourdes phone rang.

Jim's phone rang.

What phones?

It was right. It happened. They were into each other. They had each other. And the world could handle itself.

He moved her around the corner of the building and kissed her again.

"Get a room," someone called playfully.

"Young love," a young man in his eighties said as he and a friend walked by.

Jim took her hand. "I know you don't know me well, but I think I know your heart. And I certainly know mine."

"Okay," Lourdes said.

"Come with me," he said.

He lead her by the hand through a maze of light general aviation aircraft on display by vendor booths, emerging in Show Center, near Wittman Road—the small, north-south frontage road for the airshow that parallels Taxiway Poppa and Runway Three Six—in front of a spotlessly restored 1937 cabin Waco biplane, with a gaggle of other people standing by it admiring the workmanship.

He looked around. "This is it," he said to Lourdes. "We're right here in the middle of the show, in sight of everything—one of the places our hearts belong."

"Yes," she said.

"Hold that thought," he said. He held her shoulders for a second to anchor her into that spot.

Lourdes stayed.

He fished in his shirt pocket for a tiny wild flower.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

He smiled at her and gave it to her with a gentle kiss. "I'm doing romantic things, here, Hon. Nice when that happens in life."

She accepted both kindly.

"Lourdes, there is no way we can get to know each other well in a few days. And this environment is artificial for us. It's beautiful, but neither one of us actually lives at an airshow. We might behave differently at another setting, around a lot of other folks, with different things going on. I know that."

She followed him easily. That was all a given.

"But on the other hand, I also know my heart. I know how important and rare love is when it happens. And I know the mistakes people can make when they don't share their feelings, and I won't let that happen to us. So, Lourdes—"

Her eyes widened as she realized what he was doing.

"I'm in love with you."

Her heart raced.

"I have been since we met."

He looked into her eyes. "So I need to ask you in the kindest, simplest, and most direct way I know how." He paused to look at her and continued softly. "Will you marry me? Will you come to Greenhills and be my wife?"

Lourdes melted. She was in shock, entirely unable to think.

He kissed her, held her briefly and then looked in her eyes to ask her again.

She looked up at him.

He looked back with a smile.

Lourdes said nothing for a while letting her thoughts coalesce, until she blurted her feelings out.

" _Are you kidding me_?" she asked too loudly. " _Marry you_?"

His face changed to shock.

Everybody around them heard and stopped to stare—surprise on some, half a smile on others.

Realizing her multiple mistakes, Lourdes turned quickly and walked away in shame, north up Wittman Road.

He followed her into the outdoor patio area of the Vicki Cruse Educational Pavilion, a large, covered patio, at the International Aerobatics Club.

She turned on him hard by one of the patio tables, without sitting down, and scolded him in a loud whisper: "You don't know me very well, Jim. I have severe trust issues. This rapid stuff doesn't fit for me. _Five days_ I know you!"

"What a coincidence!" he said.

She looked around to see if she was drawing attention to herself again.

"You're good looking." She leaned in so she could be quieter. "You're good in bed— But you scare me."

He smiled.

"Who the hell _are_ you?" she scolded. "This is too fast! _Disaster_. For all I know you're a vampire or a warewolf or something."

"I know! It's too soon. But it's the way I feel," he said, smiling again, "and I think you feel that way, too— _and I don't want to lose you after this airshow_! I don't know where you live. _You_ don't even know where you live—"

"People like us," she said, "we like to jump the gun too fast. We're so lonely inside we jump into relationships too fast, and then they don't work out and erupt, a net gain in pain, and then we wonder why we're so hurt inside—up and down our emotions go like a roller coaster, rarely taking the time to find someone who really fits us. This is _wrong,_ Jim."

His smile dropped again.

"And me? I'm a basket case. You know I'm messed up." She ran her hands through her hair into a pony tail that wasn't there, turned around in frustration darting at unknown paths of escape.

He looked around. "Please. Sit down here? It's a nice patio." He leaned in to her so he could be quieter. "No one's listening to us."

He sat down, and she reluctantly followed in a huff.

"This is wrong?" he asked. "When was the last time you felt something like this in your heart, if ever? _Don't_ hurry up and grab happiness? I didn't ask for this life, Lourdes, but it's here, and I'm trying to deal with it!"

"It's probably infatuation," she said.

"Haven't we spent long enough away from each other? Alone?" he continued. "And then if you were to come down there and you find out that I really do run a vampire cult that fences stolen jewelry, you can leave."

Lourdes put her face in her hands, then ran her hands through her hair again, letting it fall afterward where it may.

"You don't know me?" he asked. "Call your parents and tell them the details. So if you wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, the law will come after me. Take my picture on your phone and send it to them."

"I already did, but it was really to share. I like to pretend they care. I'm not worried about that kind of thing," she admitted to him. "I'm worried about jumping into something too fast that looks great this week, but hurts next week. It's foolish. Better to take it slow and see if it develops."

"Slow? Until when? We're at an airshow," he said.

She said nothing.

"So you're starving, but you _don'_ t want a nourishing meal."

"No, I'm starving, but I don't want to grab at just anything because it might be bad for me."

"Fair enough. Normally. But you know better than that, this time. You don't give yourself to people easily. Years go by, you keep yourself apart. You're so overly self-protective, probably there have been dozens of relationships you could have pursued that you didn't because you feared they'd turn out painfully. You'd rather starve than risk it? So you find yourself starving to _death_ —you even blow off your home town and leave everything because it gets too you too much. Then you find yourself here with me."

His smile was slight but knowing.

" _This_ ," he indicated the two of them, "has developed between us," Jim said, touching her arm.

Her arm tingled.

"You feel that, I know. And we don't have a lot of time. We take a chance on love. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't. But it can't, if we don't give it a try."

"I marry you," she said in practical summation, "I divorce you. I take half your farm 'cause you're so naïve. And then I sell it because it turns out _I'm_ the real thief."

"Then we get a prenuptual, so we meter things out to you in grades over the years we're married—"

"Your hair is thinning on top."

"You're five pounds over-weight."

Other people noticed.

"Oh!" she groaned and got up to leave again.

He turned her back, still on Vicki's patio, speaking forcefully whether people were watching or not. "Okay! Then we _don't_ marry—but you know where I'm coming from!"

Everyone was watching now.

"You come down to Greenhills, anyway, and live with me—"

The look on her face showed that idea wasn't getting any better.

Jim, always good with an audience, turned to the others on the patio. "What do you say, people? Should she give our love a chance?"

"Yes!" came the unanimous reply from a dozen of them, this drama temporarily more important than everything else.

Lourdes, uncharacteristically, replied back to them. "I've only known him a week!"

"So what!" they called out.

"Big deal!"

"I knew my wife three years—and look what that got me!"

"If you're married, you have an excuse to run around!" the guys joked.

Lourdes left the patio and steamed through aerobatic planes on the lawns of the I.A.C., unwittingly toward the Cub they'd enjoyed with Heath.

He caught up to her.

"I'll keep asking you until you give in or leave, because I do know my heart. I do love you. This is not an airshow crush," he told her affirmatively. "Stay in a different bedroom! Ha, like _that'd_ work. You'd be in my room all the time or I'd be in yours. And then the day comes you don't like it any more? Or it turns out I'm a controlling ass, you go out to your plane and fly away—gone—no different than you are, now.

"We—" He held her shoulders, "We do have rocky lives."

Her glare indicated _let go of me_.

He did, but continued, "I know that. Maybe we're not the best emotionally prepared to face all our needs in love. We do have loneliness a lot—but we're not prepared to deal with that, either, are we!" He put his hand on his chest. "I deal with loneliness better when I'm _with_ someone."

"Witty."

"Thank you.

"We need to struggle to find a way to make life work," he said, "because if we don't, _we're not living_. We gain ourselves at some point, but then for what? To live in isolation right _there_ among people who pretend they care when they don't? And you, from L.A., ought to know better than most: You can be surrounded by millions of people and be totally alone—maybe even made worse because you have so many people around you, constantly reminding you that you don't have anyone."

He looked in her eyes as if pleading for her to understand.

Lourdes responded quietly, slowly, looking around. "True. True," she said. "But," there was an angry look in her eye. "pardon me if I ask, for clarification on something?"

"Shoot."

She waited for a second before asking: "'We' _what_?"

He looked at her questioningly. "Still doing the 'different' thing?"

"Yes."

"How long?" he asked.

"Always," she answered.

"Even if you love me?"

"If I loved a Republican, and even if I also agreed we need better fiscal responsibility, I'd still claim it's different to be a Democrat," she said.

He rubbed his hand through his short hair and exhaled in exasperation.

"It's a continuum," he said.

"We did that one, already," she said, trying to remain patient—easier to do, now that she knew she loved him. "I think it is between Republicans and Democrats, also. Arrange all persons side-by-side and you can't tell the difference in views from one person to the next."

"They're different parties," he said. "I don't want to be called a Republican, either."

"And males and females are different sexes," she responded. "And sex and gender are different things, when we're talking about what you physically are."

A passerby seemed to begin to overhear. Without a hitch, Lourdes noted to Jim loud enough for the man to hear, "So, if you put Taylorcraft wings on this Cub, it'll still be a modified Cub."

The passerby smiled in confusion at the "hangar flying" and kept walking.

"Nice segue," Jim said.

"Thank you."

Jim had accidentally reached out and held onto the wing strut of the Cub and jerked his hand back, because he shouldn't touch another person's plane without permission.

"Look," she said. "I—" Lourdes looked around, thinking more than looking. She looked down at her purse as well, then back to Jim, taking a breath for strength. "I think you're thinking this is all just my own eccentricity, that I'm not enlightened or something, because I say such things that don't fit your weltanshauung." She paused for a second, considering again, as this was farther outside her comfort range. "Do you still have keys to Mike's Prius?"

Lourdes and Jim got out of the Prius. Jim touched the sensor on the door handle to lock it, and they walked across the street to the beautiful Polk Library.

"I love college campuses," Jim said.

"I do, too," Lourdes agreed. "I don't know why. I think they feel like a bit of a retreat for me. But I know I like the air of learning. They're like hospitals for ideas, where old ideas go to get better, or die."

"The Paradigm is strongly correlated with universities," Jim said.

"And tens of thousands of hospital errors occur each year, too," she countered. "So they need to keep trying." She gave him a curt smile.

The clerk on the first floor Circulation Department greeted them with a smile.

"Hello," Lourdes began. "We're here with the airshow—"

"Oh, yes, Welcome to Oshkosh," the clerk said, rounding her "Os" in a comfortable northern accent.

"—and I'm a nurse from U.C.L.A.—"

"What a lovely area."

"I find I need to do a little research, here, with my colleague," Lourdes said, indicating Jim, "So I thought I'd ask if I could come over here and borrow a terminal or something? To get on the internet a while?"

"Oh," the clerk thought for just a second. "Yes. I think that would be fine. I can— You can use a terminal on the second floor. Here's a guest sign-in."

Lourdes and Jim sat before a terminal. Lourdes quietly scanned the internet looking for information to support things she'd been saying. "Due to the Paradigm's massive marketing effort for its social issues," she whispered to him, "there's tons of stuff that you'd recognize. But I thought I'd just show you a little bit of what tends to get overlooked, so you can see that I'm not making all this stuff up on my own."

Jim quietly sat beside her reading material she found.

"Ok," Lourdes said, speaking quietly into his ear. "Here you see the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists referencing Ekins and King saying that Virginia Prince, Ph.D., coined the term 'transgenderism' which was about, in effect, changing social gender, even acquiring secondary sex characteristics, but not intending to change sex with genital reconstructive surgery. Dr. Prince lived that way and brought it out into the open— You think society's difficult now? In the second half of the 20th Century, I personally knew 'professionals' who thought folks should be committed to a mental institution for it, and discrimination was off the charts. Dr. Prince really forged ahead with the strength of an ice breaker, and I agree with a lot she said.

Lourdes found other links of interest on the web, with a surgical search, and mentioned a few to Jim.

"Here, on gender.org.uk, it says she wrote, in 1979, that she is a 'transgenderist.'

"About the hard times? Here it says she was arrested in 1960 for sending information through the mail about cross dressing. Apparently, she lived in realistic fear of going to jail for how she dressed."

"That still happens," Jim said, "in some parts, but oppression is usually disguised as some other phony charge."

"True. But back then? They didn't even bother pretending.

"Here, she said, finding another site, "she distinguishes between transvestites, which literally means cross-dressing, and between transgenderism and transsexualism. For what it's worth, I think those groupings are still valid. I really feel that someone who chooses to change gender, seek hormones, acquire many secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex, but not wanting to change sex along with it, are doing something very different from someone who is a cross-dresser. And the same for transsexuals vs. transgenderists, per issues and needs."

"I know you don't want to hear the overlap thing again," Jim said, "But there are so many cases of overlap, that there are times you can't fit people into those hard groups."

"Right. Well, I don't think they're 'hard' groups.' But I know what you mean."

Lourdes searched on the internet again and found references to body shapes. "Look at this," she said. "Ectomorphs—think skinny folks. Endomorophs—think chubby folks. And Mesomorphs—think shapely ladies or muscular guys. They're groupings. Why do they matter? Why should we be aware of their differences?"

"There is so much overlap, few people fit neatly into one or the other group," he mentioned."

"In favor of your continuum view," she agreed. "But if we want to work with them, medically, we need to be aware of their different issues and needs because they really vary in every area from diet to diabetes, cancers, cardiac health, and so on."

She clicked on the keys and went back to searching for information on Dr. Prince. "Here's a reference to a group of hers, the Foundation for Full Personality Expression—'Phi Pi Epsilon'—and how they discouraged curiosity seekers, gays, or transsexuals from applying for membership. Now, I didn't personally know Dr. Prince, but I knew folks who did. And I don't believe at all that was an attempt at elitist exclusion."

Jim looked at her questioningly.

She continued. "When I've argued, before, that she held separate from transsexuals, I've had people get in my face about how maybe she didn't like them. But I don't think she was trying to keep the group for transgenderists out of elitism; I think she simply recognized that transsexuals are a different phenomenon, into different things, and was seeking her own group's cohesion.

"And here," Lourdes went on, "it references statements of hers in 1978 arguing that sex reassignment surgery is inappropriate for maybe 90% of those requesting it, that many transvestites get seduced by thinking that it is a solution to their problems. I have also felt that way, for many people who, I think, seem more comfortable in transgenderism, but wind up seeking genital reconstructive surgery because they erroneously feel it will help them be themselves more—which the transgender paradigm is partially responsible for, because it purports happiness in the 'gender' switch and doesn't actually disclose 99% of the time that they don't have or don't even want to have the mis-named 'gender' reassignment surgery. And I also think a lot of people have G.R.S. because they feel it will gain them social validation.

"I feel strongly," she told Jim with her deepest sincerity, "that people who have G.R.S. for any reason other than a very strong need to _actually try to be_ that other natal sex—and if they don't have a realistic understanding of what it actually is and is not—disappointment, devastation, or worse, could lie in their future. And by 'worse' I mean suicide. An awakening may be half a life later, but at some time, reality may come a knocking.

Jim looked a little disgusted, reached over and turned the terminal off. "Come on," he said, taking her by the arm and leading her out onto the grounds of the university. "We can talk better out here," he said. "I don't' dispute what you're saying. And I don't want G.R.S., either. But I think some of that terminology you use is out dated. 'Transgenderism' meant one thing for Prince, but it doesn't mean that any more. The term has evolved, and so has the phenomenon."

Lourdes shook her head no. "The term has evolved because transgenderism came out of the closet—which became the largest group of public transitioners—and swept everything else up in its wake, erroneously renaming everything as a variation of itself: 'transgender.' Which doesn't change a couple of major things for me."

"What's that," he asked, his patience clearly waning.

"One," she said, "it takes away my own group's separate issues and the things we go through mentally and physically, socially, legally, etc., to actually try to be that other sex. It's different from you guys. And two, it's still true—it's closeted by most who do it, but it's still true that 99% of all those who identify with the group 'transgender' are 'transgenderists,' like you, who want to be the other gender, at least in part, who want to be taken as the other sex, yet who conceal that they don't actually want to _be_ the other sex."

"It still hurts when you do that," he said.

"Think about newbies who learn from more experienced transgenders. What are they learning from the paradigm about how it's okay to be themselves in the other gender when the rate of actual G.R.S. is concealed and when they don't want G.R.S. themselves. Do those newbies know that, really, probably 99% of you don't want G.R.S.? Do they know that you group us," Lourdes said, referring to herself, "with you for social validation? Does anyone care that you can't promote your own lifestyle of actually being one sex and the other gender if you conceal that as what's really going on? _Almost all the time?"_

"Lourdes! Get off it!," he said, in a rare moment of losing his temper.

"Anyone can believe what they want," she said. "But I made it clear the other day: I don't do denial. I don't pretend for me, and I'm not going to pretend for you, either."

"So I don't get to assert for myself who I am?"

He began walking back toward the car.

"You're a pilot," she said, following him. "What if you wanted to be taken as an astronaut and won that right in court. 'It's only a matter of degree,' you say. You could then do your paperwork in life, that way. But it wouldn't really make you one. And then what about real-life other people who wanted to become a real astronaut? They tell friends and parents, who think that means maybe they want to be phony pretenders! Or liars!"

"And you? What makes you think you're such a real astronaut?"

Lourdes stood by the car with her head down. Shame was written all over her face. "Have you ever heard me actually say that I was?"

The realization of what she said to him, again, slowly worked its way across his face. It looked like shock, to Lourdes, so she was beginning to think he was hearing her.

"Lourdes—" he said, not finishing.

Jim stood by the Prius and looked at her over the roof. "You— You—" He placed his hand on the door handle. The sensor unlocked the door.

They got in—Jim angrily, Lourdes slowly.

She closed her door, sat in her seat and looked at her lap in shame.

"Our groups are different in a lot of ways, Jim. I can't let you imply—to me or anyone else—that I don't want what I truly need to be. You need to let me be in my own, separate group."

She looked at him.

"There's no _we_ or there's no _us_ ," she said flatly.

She rubbed her face with her hands.

Jim sat in the car with her for a while, until finally he responded in a kind, gentle tone. "You know, I've been thinking about this since the other day. People function in their daily lives with some denial, Lourdes. Honest people, trying to lead good lives. It's like pain medicine that helps with life's aches. They need some of it, to get by. Doesn't matter who they are. You don't have to be us—like either of us as individuals—to have issues with denial. All people do. Where it can be a problem if it is severe enough, it's needed on a daily basis to help people confront other aspects of reality more positively."

Lourdes let him speak.

He turned toward her in the seat a little. "Like maybe someone has a different religion, and she's been degraded for it. She has to face that every day, has to face others every day—never knowing who may ridicule her—and greet them with a smile even if she knows they're being critical of her—because if she doesn't, that'll screw up their interactions even more, and then not only may they not like her religion, but they'll also think she's a sour puss.

"Or like someone who lost a loved-one? Maybe it hurts too much to bear? So you bury part of it so you can carry on.

"Or someone who was molested?

"Or someone who isn't the best artist but who is better if he keeps a positive mental attitude?

"On and on," he said. "So people use a bandage now and then? To help them live life more positively and cope? As opposed to, maybe," he looked at Lourdes directly, "Living life depressed because they can't get painful things off their mind, or becoming hyper-critical of themselves to the point of rarely being able to enjoy anything. Or worse," he speculated. "And by that I mean suicide."

Lourdes unconsciously scooted a couple inches away from Jim, pressing herself against the door, feeling slapped.

"It happens to _us_ ," he said, emphasizing the last word. "You wanna know what I think about myself, Lourdes? Deep inside? You think I really am as happy as I act most of the time? I'm not. Yes, I'm happy with _what_ I am, and I'm thankful to God I'm healthy. Yes, I'd also be happy if God had made me normal, but this is what I have, and I make the best of it! The painful part, for me, is how others could think of me if they're putting me down, whether they say it or not.

"So, no, I'm not so all fired happy, inside, all the time. So, yes, I do use a bandage over my hurts to get through life sometimes. And, no, I don't want to go around telling people my private sexual business!"

Lourdes looked at her lap.

"You?" he said angrily. "With all your truth? Your life is so happy?"

Lourdes started to defend herself, but he continued over her.

"Because of a congenital birth defect you can't biologically address— Okay!" he said, too loudly, then more quietly to her, "But still, look at where else you are: You fly, you own a plane. You're at an airshow on miles of sculpted lawns, with thousands of planes and plane buffs. You got trees. Entertainment. Great weather. You've had a new circle of friends since the moment you landed, and you've fallen in love with a man—yes a man—"

"I didn't disagree with that part," she said quickly.

"—who also loves you. _For now_! Until he comes to his senses. And yet you can't enjoy—"

"Biological discord in the brain I can't control! It's always there—"

" _Okay again_! But however much that hurts, you're making it worse because you're so damn critical of yourself in life that you diminish other things that are happy!"

He stopped for a second in thought. "That's it, isn't it? Or part of it."

Lourdes looked away.

"You're not happy, deep inside."

Lourdes looked at her lap. "How could I be?"

"You— You don't think you're as much a _real person_ as other people, because of your birth defect. That's why," Jim touched the whiskers on his chin, "You think other people are more _valid as people_ than you—or you think they'll think you can't be as _right_ as they are! So you think what you say will carry no weight! So you hurt so much when others say things, because you think your view won't be heard.

"And that also includes why you avoided most math in college," he said.

Lourdes thought about it.

"Other students said it was hard, so you thought it was too hard for you. You're letting other people's opinions hit you too hard. You need to believe in your own validity more."

"Actually, I think that's true," she said. "But I've still seen denial wreck people's lives for real."

"Yeah?" he said. "Medicine can make people sick, too, if taken wrong. So people shouldn't take some when it could help?"

CHAPTER 26

Back on the airfield, sitting together in a tent café, both of them looked whipped.

Jim toyed with some pie, while Lourdes sat across the table from him toying with a muffin.

"You can really lecture me a new one, you know that?" he said.

"You, too."

"I guess we shouldn't expect to get together without some argument. We're part of two warring tribes, you and me. And you're right: We don't know each other. I've been a fool."

"To propose to me?"

"I don't know," he said. "I do love you. I've just been a fool in general about you. I don't think I've ever met anyone like you."

"Few people are aware they have, because we usually slip through life trying to avoid notice. We don't speak up because that blows it for us. It's a hard existence."

"You mean 'we' as in you lonely people?"

"No. I mean me 'we' as in we people-who-need-to-actually-be-the-other," she said.

"I know. I'm just playing with you."

Jim reached across the table to hold her hand, jerked it back. Then reached across to hold her hand again, this time actually holding it. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have withdrawn my hand. I don't want to imply I don't want to hold it. I just feel shaken. You know how many people have stripped me down like that?"

Lourdes shook her head. "None."

"Right."

Lourdes felt shame for doing that to such a good and dignified man.

"You did it to me, though, too," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not my best quality," she said, "and I'm sorry. I'm just trying to stand up for myself and what I am, even if I hate what I am. It hurts more to—" She quit.

"I know," he said.

"It's your larger group," Lourdes said, "I feel like it's me against thousands. And I've never had a boyfriend who was one, before. Almost no one like me speaks up—because the act of doing so defeats the focus of the need. And the differences are so real— Look at how we argue! Doesn't that show it?"

"You wanna hear another idea on the differences?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Okay: People like me don't usually go for people like you. We don't even hang out together, usually. If we're not in a group or on some committee."

"I know. Another set of rejections," she said.

"It's because, I think most of us think most of you are flakes parading."

"On this part, you mean like F.T.Ms vs. M.T.Fs?

"Yeah," he said.

Lourdes responded. "It's a mess. Folks actually trying to be the other sex don't like to mix with people who just want to change gender and not sex. But the gender changers do like to have us in their midst—at least the few of us who don't argue about the false grouping. F.T.M.s of either group don't usually like to hang out with M.T.F.s of either. But M.T.F. genders do like to be with F.T.M.s of either group... On and on. And, yes, I do think it's because we're of different groups.

"The whole unity under one umbrella thing?" she asked. "Fake. And the umbrella belongs to the largest public group: you guys. Trying to adopt us against our will. How couldn't that cause problems? Outsiders think it's a successful union, because all they hear is you people saying so. You outnumber us a thousand to one. And people don't want to hear anything that sounds more complicated—I think because they don't like the subject in the first place. They just want to think they know about it and get past the topic."

Jim let her wind down.

"On M.T.F.s vs. F.T.M.S? M.T.F.s can't make as good a switch, because usually once something has developed, it can't be so well undeveloped. And that's voice, bone structure, musculature, et cetera. But you guys? You can make more of a change. Sometimes you can really buff up, voice and all. And building muscle is easier than getting rid of it."

"You seem really natural, though," he said.

"I was young," she said. "It was do or die, and I mean that."

"What was that like? Being raised in a Latin culture, in Los Angeles?"

"Well," she said, playing with her muffin but not eating it. "My experience is they're relatively pro family, but not in my case. I there are a lot of macho aspects to it that make it harder. To my surprise, my family didn't reject me outright. Daddy had to help me do my thing probably so I wouldn't humiliate him more by messing it up. I said once to Daddy, in talking about something, I mentioned, 'I'm your daughter,' and you should have seen the look on his face. I never said that to him again. I've corrected it to, 'You're my father,' which is received better.

"The best way I've heard of it was from this one Latin guy I met once in a gay bar—"

"You hang out sometimes in gay bars?"

"Not like you think. I had a friend who was lesbian, and she needed to cruise, so I went with her for a few years. Women would come and go in her life, and I'd try to be a good friend. Kind of a like a Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays person?

"You want an experience? March with those folks in a major Pride parade. I have, for her: It's non-stop applause and cheers. Like as if you really did something! Saved humanity or cured cancer or something. And all I did was walk along with the P-FLAG contingent, holding up a sign that said, 'I love my lesbian friend.'"

Jim nodded.

"But there was this one Latin guy we knew from the gay bar. Good guy. Insightful. And one evening over dinner, he was talking to me, and the way he said it. He was talking about his family, and he just said, 'They look at me like I'm broken.' That's all. That's what my family feels like to me.

"How can someone live his life," Lourdes asked, "working, paying bills, trying to love and failing as often as or more often than most people—while feeling, to his surprise, that other people think he's _defective_? Not honorable. Not dignified. Maybe not even trustworthy? That adds an oppressive weight to his already over-burdened shoulders. And that goes for people of all differences."

"You have compassion for them."

"It doesn't take much to get there from here," she said.

"You know what I think? I think you should go back to school over in K.C., and get a teaching degree or whatever they use in Missouri. What subject, I don't know. But I bet you'd fit in over at the High School."

She laughed. "I don't think so."

"We don't have a college in town."

"No, I mean: me? Standing in front of people for a living? I usually avoid the spotlight. Even good kids can be mean, and I'm damaged goods. I really don't need rumors and school talk about me—which will develop over time. I could never go back in there and face them."

"You mean like people wouldn't be mean anyway sometimes? No matter where you were, even in L.A.?"

"But I wouldn't want to face them. It would be humiliating."

Jim smiled at her again.

"Your humiliation circuit is hard-wired in, isn't it."

"On this, it is. It goes back to the discord I've mentioned," she pointed to her head. "I do think it's part of the brain that needs-to-be that is physically in discord with other parts of the brain that perceives my physical state, and the mis-firing hurts: some of it doesn't seem to function with other parts. Everybody thinks that's mythical because it's not obvious to any one else. Most scientists don't want to find it because the area of research is thought of as flaky, and those who are interested are grouping us together with you guys, so they say findings are not significant. _Hello_! They won't be if they don't separate the groups—and GRS no longer makes the difference."

"There you go again."

"Sorry."

"Good girl," Jim said. "But remember what I said about a little denial helping? I don't mean lying to yourself or faking your way through life. I'm talking about just being able to get through your days—enough 'positive thinking,' as it were, to face things seeing more of the bright side. Like, no matter where you are, people will think things and talk about you, right?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Well, if you're not there to guide them, they get to think and say what they want. You show enough courage to _be there_ , and now, all of a sudden, their thoughts are not independent. Now you influence them. They have their wrong ideas challenged by how you are, even if you don't discuss it—perhaps most importantly when you, in fact, _don't_ discuss it. And you'd control the kids as their teacher. They don't want to piss the teacher off." He laughed. "If _they're_ your fear? In a small town, you'd be in the perfect position to nip gossip in the bud."

"But they'd gossip and criticize after school."

"And you're not a kid in high school any more," Jim said. "Now, you can be one of the folks running the place. Grow. Believe your view and your actions matter more than you have thought in the past. _Believe in yourself more_."

"But I am _not_ trying to be part of any social movement or trying to forge my way in society! I just want to live my life left alone, skating along day to day where people don't peg me. The only chance I've ever had at happiness is when people _don't know_!"

"So how's that working out for you? You carry your own pain in your head, you said. You just blew off everything you ever had, other than your plane and your good looks. Joan Baez wannabe. Are you planning to grow old alone and lonely? With a few memories of brief times when someone didn't know? News Flash: Even the staff in your nursing home will know, and you can't run from them. You better learn to deal with it now.

"Reality," he said. "Staring you in the face. As in: not running from it?"

For Lourdes, facing herself was the hardest thing she did every day of her life, so his words stung more than he knew, she was sure.

"You're together than most," he said, "and I think you'd be a good teacher. But it's your choice— Ah! You're bilingual! You could teach Spanish!"

"That's true."

Jim smiled broadly. "And the school could probably take you as a sub until you were official, whatever they do. Millie would know about that, more than me. Oh, and you're a nurse! You could also be the school nurse! You did E.R. work? What a valuable resource! We don't have any medical facilities in town. It'd be easy for you: scraped knees and runny noses. Like Hawkeye Pierce taking a job at the country club. The school would pray to you twice a week, and three times on Sunday.

"Oh, and on checking gossip? As the nurse, you'd know which kids had gonorrhea! Hawkeye would know how to use that."

They both laughed.

"I'm just kidding!" he said, holding his hands out to her in a "stop" motion.

"Hot lips," Lourdes said. "And I hear Frank Burns is cool in real life."

He laughed.

"See how things work out? This is all falling in your lap."

"I really don't think I could do that," she said.

"The humiliation," he said, simply.

"You've lived in town forever. Do they know about you?"

He seemed to consider the question. "I really don't know," he said. I've never heard of anyone bringing it up."

"So—"

"So why dig up that can of worms? I know how they treat me. I know I have respect, real friendship. You've seen it. I know there are people there I care for. And I know that no matter where in this world I am, whatever people thought would be there, too, because _I'd_ be there, and it's in me. Now, if people were unkind or mean? I'd resist or leave. Because people don't behave the same in all places. But what do they know or think? It's only from whatever they see in me, and it's resulted after all these years—I do believe, without denial—in mutual respect."

Jim looked up to the heavens and crossed himself as if he were Catholic.

Lourdes laughed at him.

"It's amazing to me how life works out, sometimes," Jim said. "I couldn't plan all this. This is Wednesday, isn't it?" Jim asked.

"I think so," Lourdes said.

"God, I've only known you five days."

The afternoon airshow started with the announcer speaking to the crowd over the loudspeakers and planes flying over the runway trailing smoke, their engines warbling through maneuvers.

They slowly walked behind the FAA building on the flight line, when a strange contraption came around the corner.

Everyone in the area turned to look, and in spite of his sour mood, Jim broke out laughing. Which caused Lourdes to laugh.

It seemed like a Leonardo du Viking-esque ornithopter, with large flapping wings covered in something totally unrealistic, made of large tree branches and a bit of steel, powered by a small one-lung inertia-wheel motor that popped once every few turns 'round. The guy riding it was dressed like a Viking and seemed to be enjoying himself.

People smiled at it as it motored by at about two knots.

A crowd gathered around, so the 'pilot' stopped.

People gathered around even more.

Lourdes looked at Jim. He did still look whipped. Maybe she had gone too hard on him? She believed in what she said, but maybe she had spoken too harshly? Too much?

The guy talked to the crowd and demonstrated the ornithopter's 'flying' capability by revving up the inertia-wheel motor to full speed and pressing a lever, which moved something into the ground lifting a wheel.

The people laughed and joked. It was a good show.

Later that afternoon, still while the airshow raged, Lourdes and Jim strolled past a one-man band booth, that was surprisingly good. "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine..."

People stood around and watched. Some seemed to know the man and sang with him. _Maybe he was a regular there?_ Lourdes wondered.

Lourdes worried about Jim. "How are you doing?"

"I— I'm sorry," he said. "You're just getting to know me, and I do hope you hang around long enough to find out. You?"

"I think— I feel like I'm in shock again," she said. "You being so great, and then this fight over such an ugly topic, and now we're seeing these happy things—but they feel false to me, now—like other people's happiness underscores my pain. I really feel badly."

"I do, too," he said. "But we've got to get past it—or into it and through it—or something, if we're gonna work something out. Right?"

Jim's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and answered it, stepping away from the one-man band.

"Hello?"

Lourdes followed and watched as he listened into it. His demeanor changed from their pre-occupation to genuine concern over the phone call.

"What happened?" Jim asked.

Lourdes paid attention.

"Which hospital?" Jim asked.

Jim gazed at the sky then back to Lourdes.

"Lemme think," Jim said into the phone. "Okay." Jim looked like he didn't want to make a decision. "Uh, Okay. I'll— Lemme talk to Lourdes." Pause. "Millie told you?" Pause. "That's up to her. But lemme talk to Lourdes and I'll call you back. But also— No. Forget that. I'll be there," he checked his watch and scanned the weather. "I think I can be there by seven tonight." Pause. "You okay, Sharon?" Another pause. "I'm not sure on the time, okay? But I think the weather is good. It'll take me some time to break camp. I'll call you. You call Millie?" He asked. Pause. "You know they got engaged? Good. You call Millie, and I'm coming. You hear? I'm on my way."

Jim hung up the phone.

Jim told Lourdes the story: "Sharon's husband, Benny—they have the next farm over, remember—has had a car accident, and he's in the hospital. Sharon says it's bad, but I can't really tell from her. But he's asking for me, and she is asking for Millie. They're friends, so all in all—I'm going to need to go."

"I understand," she said, concerned for them, but also sad about a lot of other things.

"I don't want to leave you," he said. "We have problems to work on, and we barely know each other, but I do need to go."

Lourdes' phone rang. She got it out. It was Millie. "Hello?"

Lourdes handed the phone to Jim.

"Right. Sharon told me. Okay. I'll go right there," Jim said, hanging up the phone and giving it back to Lourdes. "Millie's meeting me at the plane. I'm gonna go back there, break camp, and take her back to Greenhills. Oh! I can't get out of here. The airshow is going on. I can't take-off until the airshow is finished."

"That's six-thirty. Can you make it home while it's still light? Do you have lighting on your strip?"

"No lighting. Can't land in the dark. But I could land somewhere else and get there at first light in the morning."

"Or just stay here the night and go in the morning."

Jim thought.

He called Mike who was apparently already informed. "What do you think?" Jim asked him.

Lourdes tried to follow the conversation. They were walking toward Jim's plane, then turned to walk toward Millie's motor home, then turned to walk toward Jim's plane again.

"Okay," Jim said into his phone and hung it up.

"We're getting this organized. We're gong to leave this evening, after the show. There's some weather moving in from the northwest, and if we make some miles this evening, we can miss it for in the morning, too. You'll know where I am by phone. I'll keep in touch. And you can coordinate with Mike."

Lourdes looked a little confused by the arrangements.

"Mike will take the motorhome back down later tomorrow. Maybe you'll help him get it ready? He's a mess. He'll cram everything in there like a junk yard. He'll follow your lead, if you do it."

"Okay," Lourdes said.

"Remind him to take the leveling jacks off first? Millie usually does that."

"Okay."

Lourdes looked at her watch. It was about five o'clock. "The show ends in an hour and a half."

"Yeah," Jim said to himself. "No rush. We'll take this nice and easy. Do it right."

"As they walked toward his plane, nearly a mile away, Jim checked various weather sources on his phone. "There's the weather Mike was talking about." He showed Lourdes a prog chart for the next day, then showed her a current satellite view of the central United States. "But it's CAVU all the way there this evening. Here's the winds," he said, switching to a screen that showed them. "Good. Weather window."

Pilot speech was often clipped, trained-in to help prevent frequency congestion.

Lourdes knew he was all business right then.

Lourdes' phone rang. It was Millie, again. "Hello?" She paused to listen. "Okay. I don't think you need to take anything but a toothbrush, if you get caught in some motel for the night. There's not much room in the plane for all that other." Pause. "Right."

Lourdes hung up again.

Jim kept walking.

"Millie just wanted to connect, I think. She wanted direction."

"Good," Jim said, all business.

Mike and Millie were at Jim's plane when they walked up, and Mike already had Jim's tent mostly taken down. A patch of brown, flat grass lay where the tent had been for a week.

Mike was stuffing Jim's belongings into a large bag, all together: tent, stakes, poles, clothes, gear... "If you're taking Millie, you won't have room for all this other stuff," Mike said.

"You'll make a good pilot, Mike," Jim said.

Jim helped get his stuff together.

Millie and Lourdes watched the guys.

"Let me go get a ground crew organized?" Jim said. He left, walking northeast to the Homebuilt Ops shack.

When Jim returned, he had two ground crewmen in tow: one on a bike and one on foot, both in orange safety vests, and when the airshow ended for the day, Jim came over to kiss Lourdes goodbye, holding onto her desperately while he did so.

"I'm so sorry for everything," he said.

"I am, too," Lourdes said.

"It's just us. We are who we are. We've got to work with our issues. God, I wish we had more time because I need you."

Mike stood with a large bag off to the side, out of the way.

Millie sat in the passenger seat of Jim's plane, waiting.

It was a beautiful evening.

"I don't know what you'll do," Jim said, his face clearly showing his pain. He kissed her on the forehead and turned to climb into his RV-6.

With a signal from the ground crew, Jim started his engine and followed the biker to the runway for takeoff.

CHAPTER 27

Lourdes stood alone on the field with Mike and a thousand other people. Jim had taken off. He was gone.

She felt sick inside, as if the air had been sucked out of her.

Mike hefted his large bag full of Jim's camping supplies.

"Okay, Love. I'm not gonna like dragging this thing back to the motorhome," he said. "You wanna help me?"

"Sure," Lourdes said, trying to sound normal.

"I'll pick it up by the top, and you walk along beside me holding up part of the bottom? Anything you do will help. What we need is a—"

Another ground crew in an orange vest showed up in a John Deere "Gator," a two-seat, farm-green, wide-tire, workhorse with an open bed in the back. "I heard Jim had to bug out and that you had a lot of stuff. Want me to help you back to your site with that?"

"Thanks, Mate," Mike said to him.

Mike and the man lifted Jim's stuff off the ground and put it in the back of the Gator.

Mike climbed into the passenger seat of the two-seat "Gator."

"Come on, Love," Mike said to Lourdes, patting his lap. "It's a two-seater, so my lap will do."

Lourdes knew there was nothing else in his suggestion, so she climbed on, and the three of them rode to Camp Scholler to Millie's motorhome.

The whole time, Lourdes said nothing.

Mike said little.

"So he had to leave suddenly?" the driver asked while he drove past the control tower.

"Yes," Mike said. "A friend had a bit of a car wreck. He's taking his wife's friend home to be with her."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the guy said. "I hope he'll be alright."

"Yeah," Mike said. "Thanks."

"Jim's a good guy. You guys need anything else while you're here, you let me know. Or any of us. We all like him. He's a volunteer, here, too."

"We sure will, Mate. Thanks," Mike said.

Lourdes sat on Mike's lap and rode.

At the motorhome, the guy left them off with their stuff and a friendly farewell.

_Folks were so nice, here at Oshkosh_ , Lourdes thought.

Mike opened a side hatch on the motorhome and threw Jim's bag into it. Closed the door. Then he turned to look at Lourdes.

"Alright, give it up. What is it?" Mike said in his British accent.

Lourdes knew what he was asking, but she still didn't say anything. No words at all.

"Soften you up with some dinner? I can do that. Come on." Mike headed to the car motioning for Lourdes to follow.

She followed on autopilot, without thought.

The steak house was full of people dining and talking, as usual, but they were able to get a booth along a wall.

Lourdes was glad they didn't have to sit in the middle of the room, her self-protective nature re-asserting itself. There was no reason for it, but she could see herself doing it, anyway. And she tended to be silent when she was scared.

Mike ordered dinner for himself, and when Lourdes didn't order, he ordered the same for her, too—fish and rice—getting a nod from her on the selection.

She sat there looking at the table more than him.

People around them carried on, happily dining and talking.

Mike stared at her, his normal, jovial manner gone.

In time, the server brought their food, and Mike started to eat.

Lourdes played with her food, eventually starting to eat.

"Bugger!" Mike said. "How am gonna get the Prius back?"

Lourdes still didn't talk.

"I've got to drive the motorhome back, and take the car, too. Oh no!"

Lourdes picked at her food.

"I guess I'll tow on its trailer like we did coming up here." He smiled and waited, looking at Lourdes. "You're not gonna talk to me, are you?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't mean that."

"You know I weld," Mike said. "My art: I weld sculpture. And do large, mosaic tile figures for things like golf courses and hotels. And I also do web pages. I have a need to express myself, so I'm an artist."

"I'd love to see your work some day," Lourdes said, hoping that sounded like acceptable conversation.

"You could look on my website," Mike said. He fished out one of his cards and gave it to her. "It's all there, or the big stuff."

They ate some more.

"Do you create anything?" he asked.

"No." Lourdes never thought of it as a deficit.

"Right," Mike said. "Bet you never thought of doing it before?"

Lourdes looked at him, wondering if he was psychic. "I never—" She didn't want to disclose her life story to him.

"That's alright. I'm sorry," he said.

"No, it's okay. I never thought about it. I have been focused on other things, I guess."

"You know, the reason I talk to people about it? Because I find that if they do create something in their life, to express themselves, they feel better as a person. I think it's a way to reach out to other people in an emotional way.

"Jim's big on that with everyone. He's the reason I do so much of it, because I realized I'm hungry for it. I think I always have been, and when I was drinking, I made it worse because that drives people away."

Lourdes looked at him warily.

"No. I am not coming on to you, Love. I'm saying that I think—like Jim does—that there is a fundamental need in all of us to do that, to reach out. I learned it from him. So he encourages people to get into some form of expression—to become artists, if you will—and that if we don't, we get stuck in ourselves, and that messes us up."

Lourdes didn't respond to him again.

"I don't know what's wrong," he said, "but you seem hurt about him, so I'm sharing what I think about that."

"You're a good person, Mike."

"Right you are," Mike said. "And I think you are, too."

Nothing from Lourdes again.

"That's alright, Love. You're not into talking tonight? That's okay. So I'll do all the talking for both of us—bad habit of mine, anyway. So if you get tired of me, just let me know, okay?"

Lourdes nodded and took another bite.

Mike took a bite as well, and talked right through it.

"I eek out a living doing my art now and then. Millie is a musician, like Jim. She plays the piano and sings. Connie used to garden. That was her art. And so I wondered what yours might be. You look like you could be one of those folks who attaches balloons to a chair and tries to fly around the world with it."

Lourdes enjoyed his teasing and tried feebly to smile at him, but in her own heart, she felt like dirt sinking through the ocean's depths to hidden craters below.

She tried to talk with Mike, nonetheless. "I don't know. Maybe I could express myself as a hermit in a cave."

"Right. There you are. You could paint little figures on the cave wall of things you hoped for, and maybe the gods would make them true for you? Paint a little— What would you paint up there?"

_Whale dung_ , Lourdes thought.

"I can't choose an art right now, Mike."

Mike nodded and ate some more.

"You know, I was in a worse way when Jim found me that first night in K.C. Actually, I found him, I guess. I'm sure he didn't go into it with you; he doesn't talk about other people. One of the things I admire in him. But I was worse off than I'm sure you know. Because I wasn't just into alcohol; I was into anything. Messed up, terribly."

The nurse in Lourdes perked up.

"Not messed up my whole life, though. But I'm an artist, of mentality. And I wanted to come over from England to the Midwest to get into the rustic scenery and express myself in contrast to it. Like do an oversized, multi-colored mosaic tile sculpture of Peter Frampton and sell it to a cattle feed lot? I had this big idea I was going to sell my bits everywhere and be appreciated for my work, and it didn't happen. I was a flop. And then I got depressed and found myself doing drugs and drinking."

Lourdes stopped eating and looked over at him, for the first time of the evening.

"Nobody is more messed up than I was. Because not only was I homeless at the time, but I actually met Jim because I mugged him."

"No way."

"That's right," Mike said. "It was outside a movie theatre after dark, in K.C. He was in the parking lot with his Connie, getting into their car, and I attacked him. I was strung out, so I don't remember all of it, but I attacked him—meant to pummel him with my fists until he gave me his wallet, I did."

"Mike!"

"I know! How stupid. Because there were two of them." He laughed at himself. "I did my work, and then right when I was getting to the part where I get paid, _she hit me on the back of the head with a brick_ without so much as a by your leave. And then he got the best of me and held me down bodily until the Bobbies came—and then," Mike said, "he tried to talk the police into _not_ arresting me! He said I should go to a home instead."

"You're kidding! You mugged him?"

"That I did! And Connie, particularly, got very upset about the whole thing, even though it was a proper mugging by all accounts, following the Robert's Rules of Mugging Order to a 'T.' I should have had a card printed up."

They both laughed.

"I was so messed up during that time, they made the term up after me. I—" He looked at his food and back over to Lourdes: "Tell me what's worse than that? A shallow, misguided person who hurts other people so he can do something else that hurts himself, too."

Lourdes wondered what more he'd say, but he clammed up.

"There are a lot of things worse," she said.

"Not by my way of thinking," he said. "I was so lost, I didn't even know what a compass was, let alone follow one—like deep in the clouds, upside down and backwards, without so much as a cane to tap with—and there was no way out of it, for me. Really! I think if Jim hadn't come along, I'd have wound up dead in an alley somewhere, or a cheap hotel room, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," she said. "What happened?"

"The both of them tried to talk the police into sending me to a drug rehab house instead of jail, but the police would have none of it. They took me away in irons and chained me to the wall. But then Jim talked to the judge, asking me to go to rehab, and Counselor Troi stepped in—"

"Off the Enterprise?" she asked.

"Yup. Straight off the bridge."

"You don't mean the real Marina Sirtis? I saw her once in Hollywood."

"No. I mean the character from Star Trek."

Lourdes looked at him questioningly.

"I'm kidding with that," Mike said with a smile. "Gotcha! But I mean in real life, a regular counselor."

Lourdes shook her head for missing the joke. "Sorry," she said.

"That's okay," Mike said. "The best part of the whole thing, I think, was the Alcoholics Anonymous that was attached to it, because in there I found out there were other poor sods just as badly off as I was—and I got that connection Jim talks about. It was the first time I ever did.

"It was the reaching out that did it, and being open to other people reaching out, too. And I learned the most important thing in the world, to me: that, if you're open to life, there are things that can still hurt you, but there are other things—maybe even things you'd never expect—that give you the things you really need. And if you _aren't_ open to life? Then you don't get the good things, and the lack of connection makes you hurt worse, right on top of your other crap that still hurts."

Mike smiled at Lourdes. "Jim gave that to me. Not all by himself, but through him, it did."

Lourdes knew there was more to the story because somehow they grew together, but she also knew she couldn't get it all in one evening.

"You guys are best friends. Do you have the keys to his house?" she asked.

"It took me years to earn Connie's trust. She kept thinking I'd steal to go back to drugs—which includes alcohol, you know. But Jim seemed to believe in me right away.

"And yes." He fished out his key chain, selected one in particular with some red paint on it. "This one's his house, and even though I've never used it, it's my greatest treasure."

Lourdes looked almost embarrassed to ask her next question. She looked around at the other tables. No one was paying them any attention. "How did you live down mugging him? You must have felt soooooooo humiliated."

"It was harder than petrified— Woops! Lady present," Mike smiled. "About a month after all that, Jim came to one of my A.A. meetings in K.C."

"He's an alcoholic?"

"No. I am. My meeting. He came to see how I was doing and we talked. And there was never any recrimination out of him. It was more like a natural understanding of where I was, and we work with that. But Connie was a different story for me. I feared facing her. Maybe I associated her with my mother. But the A.A. group said I needed to face her, so I did. I stood right there on the porch of their farm house and introduce myself as their mugger and told her the whole story— Braced for it, I was. Ready for her to bash me with a board. And she looked it, too. The devil herself, she was. Because I'd hit her husband and tried to rob him. And I don't blame her."

"What did she do?" Lourdes asked.

"It probably made her proud," he said. "She never did hit me, but she didn't let me in, either. She made me stand on the porch while I talked and then she told me in a kind but plastic-distant way to 'F' the opposite of On and she slammed the door."

Mike smiled for some reason, and Lourdes laughed at him. He was a natural comic.

"Have a roll, Love?" Mike slid the basket of rolls over to Lourdes, to compliment her meal.

Lourdes had one and began buttering it. "So?" she asked.

"I was shook up. So I went back to my A.A. group and told 'em. And they said I had to back and tell Jim, so I did. He was out in the shed building his plane and took me in over there. That was me: humble hat in hand, begging people to help me live with myself. You can't undo stuff like that. You just gotta learn through it."

Lourdes knew he was talking about the mugging, drugs, all of it. "Did you feel shame in it?"

"Yes, I did. How couldn't I? These good people, and I hurt 'em so I could steal from them. And I was so messed up I let drugs mess me up further. I was totally nothing I'd want to be, and it was official with a police record and everything. Yes, I was ashamed. But that was part of the A.A. thing there: if you run from your issues, they control you. If you face them, you can handle them, and in some cases, get past them."

"Do the people in town know about all this?" Lourdes asked.

"Yes, they do."

"How did they learn of it? What did you do?"

"At first, I was humiliated— The courage it took to go to their farm and face Connie, and then to go _back_ and face Jim?"

Mike hung his head and looked embarrassed to talk.

Lourdes remained silent, hoping not to disturb his thought process.

"I was afraid," Mike continued, "that they'd hurl daggers at me with their words, that somehow evil death would hit me for being there. I didn't know. Tar and feathers? Dressing me down with jagged bits duly earned? That I'd walk down the street and old ladies would spit at me? I was afraid they'd strip me down and expose my nakedness, right there on Main Street, and that everyone would snarl and laugh at my crooked penis or something—"

Lourdes raised her eyebrows.

"—humor, there, again, love."

Lourdes shook her head at missing another joke.

"—and then while they scorned me, I feared I'd blow up, explode from too much evil pressure in me. I didn't know what would happen, but facing a group with all I was, was more than I could handle.

"Which was why I had to do it, and probably one of the reasons I'm still dry today."

"Why?" Lourdes asked.

"Because I did face them, and I learned the lesson that my scary fears were my own, private issue—that, believe it or not, other people didn't feel as sickening about my issues as I did, and many didn't even care. Hell: If I were to run for Mayor and say how hard this life has been—there are some who would appreciate it, but there are others who would wonder why I was even bringing it up, they care so little.

"It turned out to be not important to them except they're glad I got better," he said.

"So they know because Jim and Connie told them?" Lourdes asked.

"No. They know because I told them. I had to face the fear they'd find out. And it turned out they were proud of me for overcoming. But the evil, hating, paralyzing humiliation I felt inside? They didn't feel that. It wasn't their issue, it was mine.

"And that's what's so great about it. That's why I don't melt down, nowadays, when I work another fear into my life. Because I learned fear is just an emotion. It's not a thought process. It's not a real thing in life like poverty, or hate crimes. It's just an emotion, and my fear is in my head, not other people's.

"So I learned to handle things instead of run from them, and it turns out handling them is a lot easier than running, and costs less, too," he said with a smile.

"God," he apologized. "I haven't shared my ugly bits in years. I'm sorry to go on about it all with you. That can be onerous."

"No, Mike. I think it's beautiful," she heard herself say—and there she was, not minding, and even thinking it beautiful, that someone else shared what humiliated him. And she noticed: she cared for his trial, but she noticed she didn't feel his humiliation in it, like he'd said.

"Do you tell other people about your humiliation? Are you public about it?"

"Not any more. I don't know why I told you—probably because you're with Jim, now. After I learned the lesson, I quit jabbering about it. Nowadays, I don't bring it up with folks any more. No need, I guess."

Her phone rang. She grabbed it out of her purse. "Hello?" She listened with pain showing on her face. "You're there?" she asked, then to Mike, "They're at home, already."

"It's an RV," Mike said.

Listening on the phone, Lourdes tried to summarize for Mike: "They got there just before dark."

"Lucky sod," Mike said. His phone rang and he answered it also. "Millie," he quietly mouthed to Lourdes, who nodded.

Lourdes listened to Jim on the phone, feeling a mixture of thankfulness and sick depression. She said little through most of it.

"Jim—" she finally said, then listened some more. After a couple of minutes, the call was ended on the other end.

CHAPTER 28

The next morning, Lourdes was over at Millie's motorhome bright and early, helping Mike get things stowed for their return trip—or, rather, Lourdes was doing it, and mike was mentally "organizing."

The car was already hitched up.

Lourdes didn't know Mike and Millie well and had no business, she felt, taking charge there, but Mike didn't seem like he'd do a job Millie would like, so she jumped in and did it. And Mike didn't seem to mind.

After about a half an hour, everything was ready to go, and Lourdes gave him the all-clear.

Mike sat in the driver's seat up front, turning to her. "What happened between you two, Love?" he asked Lourdes. "I don't want you to talk about him, per se, but how could I not ask? You seemed so happy, but now—?"

Lourdes put some cleaners under the sink in the galley and turned to leave by the side door.

She didn't feel like talking.

She stepped out the side door of the motorhome to stand near a picnic table there. Images of Jim sifted through her mind, of their time together at Oshkosh, and of him back on a farm she could only imagine.

Where was he now? She didn't really know. He was gone. She felt disconnected, and now even Mike was leaving, also.

Mike followed her out the door to stand near her.

Tears welled up in her eyes and fell on their own.

"He asked me to marry him," she said.

"Marry you!" Mike yelled loud enough for the whole camp to hear. "My God! Great!" he yelled again.

Lourdes was startled.

Other people in nearby camps turned to stare and smile.

"Yea!" they yelled back.

"Good for you!"

"Congratulations!"

Mike wrapped his arms around her and picked her up off the ground, doing a three-sixty with her before setting her back down.

" _We're gonna get married_!" Mike yelled to everyone within a mile.

Lourdes' mouth fell open.

"Oh, no, God: we're not marrying each other!" Mike clarified for the other camps. "We've each got our own! We're marrying other folks, not each other—because her fiancé wouldn't like that, and neither would mine."

"You dweeb," Lourdes laughed at him.

"She's gonna come down to Greenhills and marry Jim!" Mike yelled to everyone within earshot.

"Hooray!" the camps yelled.

"Hey!"

More congratulations.

Lourdes turned around to avoid looking the other camps in the eye and yelled quietly to Mike, " _But I don't think I should_!"

"Oh!" Mike said in a normal tone.

Lourdes' tears welled again. "You get it now?"

"Yes," he said. "Oh, my God."

"I don't know him. Just here," she indicated the airshow. "And Mike, you don't know it, but I'm messed up. I have issues. I'm probably just loving him—"

"You love him!" Mike seemed overjoyed.

Lourdes didn't want to cry any more in front of Mike—or any of the other campers—so she turned to walk away.

"Please don't leave, Lourdes," Mike said, following her. "I don't know the details. But I know something beautiful was happening, and now something's wrong. You both seemed happier than in years, but—he told you he's a communist?"

Lourdes turned to stare at him aghast.

"A pirate? He kidnaps people and holds them for ransom? He's told me that one before, too. None of it's true."

"It didn't work out, Mike. That's all."

"Go back to your perfect life," she said. "Congratulations on getting married to Millie."

She walked away.

CHAPTER 29

Standing among alien trees in a show half the length of the country away from any home she ever knew, Lourdes willed her heart to stop.

Slow it down. Let it give in.

The rough wood, plank siding of the Theatre in the Woods was nothing to her. It didn't even block her way, because she didn't have the strength to walk over to it. The oaks were ghosts. The drainage ditch along the south edge of that field and its two, rough-wood pedestrian bridges across it, were not even in her mind. The endless grass under her feet belonged to someone else, a whole 'nother culture of people who led happy, distant, plastic lives behind a glass barrier.

Lourdes' feet moved sometimes, but they had no mind either and didn't know where they were going.

She passed by the Bleriot in a daze.

"Are you okay?" someone far below asked, but thankfully they flew on so she didn't have to respond.

Lourdes' pain drove her heart into trauma, she was sure. If she felt enough pain, the tissues would tear. An atrium would rupture. The wall of her heart would cave, destroying itself like her will to live.

This had been her whole life, she thought. Always: fake highs and real lows. And the real lows were probably because of the fake highs and false ideas—she knew that—but she couldn't stop it. The need to be herself was overpowering, and _she couldn't be_. Medical science couldn't make it happen. And then _those people had to step in and lie to everyone about what she was doing_. And she had to feel this _love_ for one of them?

She was certain it was a fake love. Infatuation? Just another fake high.

Her feet wandered toward Show Center on inertia and stood by the Waco. People milled around her.

She couldn't believe how stupid she was. Leave everything behind. Her home, her car, her job. And go to this place? Find this total fantasy knock-off and jump into the sack with him? Thinking she could be happy with him so fast?

When it was just a vacation affair.

Her eyes looked at the panel in the Waco, but her knees wavered.

"Lady," someone said, "Are you alright?"

She turned to leave, forcing herself to walk as steadily as possible so no one would notice her.

If her heart imploded— _If she willed it to tear apart, crushed it with her pain, it wouldn't be suicide,_ she thought to herself.

There was a stone bench by Wittman Road at the Brown Arch, where people had engraved, memorable inscriptions set in the tiles of the pathway. Lourdes sat down and willed her mind to slow into nothingness. She let days pass, though she didn't know if it were minutes or years.

_To hell with them all_ , she thought. She could do nothing. She was this junk of a person who couldn't be loved, a distortion of her sex with a life-threatening birth defect no one would believe, who people have to talk about behind her back—

_Invalidate my whole life!_ she thought to them. Say whatever you want so my issues aren't my issues and my needs aren't my needs. All Asians look alike to you so lump them together as Chinese?

No friends, no love.

Maybe, she thought, that's why she got along better with animals and things—like airplanes—because they didn't invalidate her or set her up for hell.

She looked into the future at the rest of her life. Forty more years of this? If her heart quit in a minute, there wouldn't even be that.

So how was she going to get through those next forty years?

There she was, star dust reformed as life—broken so badly she could hardly stand to live each minute.

_Distract herself,_ she thought. _I suck at relationships, and every time I get close to someone, that never-ending conflict with the gender crowd comes up. So I just need to swear them off like a nun and distract myself, day by day, for the rest of my life—little anonymous concerts, flying the plane, anonymous festivals and fairs. Maybe travel some and see the planet—IT didn't do anything to me—and pack it all in my head so that when I die, I can pretend to myself I did my best with what I had._

The tan colored tiles held her gaze, but all she could see was her desolation.

How long she sat, she didn't know. The afternoon wore on. The sun fell behind her—as she was facing east through the Brown Arch—so the grasses beyond appeared greener, and the airplanes sitting on it appeared more and more golden.

Food.

She knew she was depressed and defeated, but she could do that while she gorged. _Why suffer that way, too? No reason to watch her weight_ , she thought.

There was a tent café nearby, she knew. Like the ninety year old woman she felt she was, she ached herself off the bench into an upright posture, and shuffled in that direction—losing her way, stumbling aimlessly.

In the Warbird area, on the patio by some Liaison aircraft on display, before a gathering crowd of people, a gifted singer impersonated Billie Holiday at a forties-era microphone, singing "Stormy Weather." Some people sat on bleachers nearby while others sat on the grass, either holding hands or smiling past ice cream cones, all feeling the glow the singer crafted.

" _Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky_

As if on cue, a distant P-51 fired up, its deep, twelve cylinder Rolls Royce Merlin engine serving as perfect background accompaniment—another instrument in the band to the crowd in the Fightertown tent café.

"You hear that song? That's from the thirties," one old fella said to another, listening.

"Reminds me of that scene in 'The Glenn Miller Story' when they played 'In the Mood' while buzz bombs dropped all over London," a slightly younger man added.

"I lived some of that. I was over there and saw Glenn Miller," another older gentleman said.

"Well, I saw Benny Goodman at the Casino out at Catalina Island, once," yet another said.

"These are golden times, guys," the first said. "Man, what a life."

Lourdes didn't notice. She picked at a cheeseburger, ignoring her fries, people bustling around her, and everything else.

_How could she be five pounds overweight_? Two weeks ago, she had been _ten_ pounds overweight.

Her phone rang and she put her burger down to answer it. The phone said it was Millie.

"Hello?" Lourdes said weakly.

"Lourdes?"

"Yeah," she said without adding anything.

"Mike got here fine. Thanks for stowing things in the motorhome. I know Mike would have butchered that. I've seen him do it before."

"Okay."

"So— Hon, you don't sound so good."

"No big deal," Lourdes eeked out.

"Lourdes, are you okay?"

_No._ "Yeah."

The band outside switched to playing "Moonglow," a sentimental instrumental originally by the Benny Goodman Quartet with Lionel Hampton at the vibraphone.

The older crowd were charmed with the afternoon's small "concert," as it were.

"That's good music, guys."

Their smiles confirmed it.

The P-51's Merlin was replaced by a rotund "Jug" taxying by.

"God! That's a P-47," one ole fella said to the others. "That's a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double-Wasp engine up front!"

"Two rows of nine cylinders," another said. "Twenty-four hundred pounds of swinging steel. Twenty-one hundred horses! When those things start spitting and popping and banging—"

"Music to my ears!" they agreed.

"Lourdes! What's wrong," Millie said in the phone. "Tell me?"

Lourdes didn't answer.

"You do this, Lourdes. You don't talk when you're upset. Come on—it's me. Mike said Jim proposed to you but you turned him down? I thought you really liked him, and I know he's totally stuck on you. Tell Aunt Millie what's going on."

"Nothing— It's not him, it's me," she said.

"I thought the sparks were flying."

"They did. But there's more to it."

"There always is. But there's always more with everyone. Everywhere. What's going on? No, I'm sorry. Am I prying? Oh, this is about Jim as well, and telling me would be gossiping? Right! I support that! Not telling me is good. I see that. You gotta be discrete. Great. That's right. So what am I doing here?" Millie asked. "I'm trying to be supportive."

Lourdes felt so unworthy, she couldn't reach out and take what she needed, even when it was right in front of her.

_What could be lower than that_?

"I love you," Lourdes said. "Please tell Mike I'm happy for both of you."

And she hung up before Millie could say anything, then turned her phone off, shoving it back into her purse.

CHAPTER 30

Over the next few days, Lourdes wandered the airshow in a fog, like a ghost. She watched aerobatic displays with recognition but not connection. She walked by people without their notice. She lived. She tried not to think. She ate sometimes.

_No!_ was her immediate reaction.

She turned and walked away from the ice cream stand toward the Exhibit hangars.

Did anyone notice?

She glanced at people as long as she could without creating any more issues. They walked and talked without interest in her.

They didn't seem to notice.

Was she being paranoid again?

The way the man had looked at her.

Maybe it was nothing? she wondered.

No. It was nothing, she was sure. He hadn't done anything. Maybe it was one of those I'm-attracted-to-you looks? He didn't mean anything?

_Jim!_ Her mind called for his protection.

A pedestrian throughway was clogged with people. Everyone was in a rush to get somewhere.

Lourdes stood back and let them all pass.

Rain fell down the clear plastic sides of the large vendor tent where Lourdes sat, waiting, on a white-painted, wooden lawn chair. Every now and then, a gust of wind would blow a flap open, and some of the rain would blow in to wet her right foot.

She didn't bother to move it.

Lightning cracked through the sky directly overhead.

The airshow was temporarily interrupted.

Packed inside the vendor tent, a hundred people watched the storm pass overhead. People near her consulted their smart phones for weather data.

"It's a mess," one man said to his neighbor. "See here?" he showed his friend his smart phone. "The radar shows this green rain here, and red over there—and that yellow is coming straight for us, there."

"We're on the leading edge of it," another man said, showing the radar on his phone to others as well. "I bet that lighting there is part of it."

"And there's more behind that," a woman said who had stood beside them. "See the prog chart? On the N.O.A.A.'s site." She showed the men and they oooed and awed over the coming weather.

"I'm afraid it's going to be wet for a while," they concluded.

There was an electrical outlet available on an inner wall, away from the tent sides, but Lourdes didn't go recharge her phone.

_Why_?

It was in her purse, along with a recharger she'd been carrying since she got there, and her umbrella, and some toiletries. But she didn't have the energy to get up and go to the outlet.

_What would it matter_?

The only thing she could do with the phone was talk on it or get weather data for herself. But why bother? She didn't have anyone to talk to, and she didn't care if it rained. _Just leave it off_ , she thought.

She watched people so excited about the weather. You'd think rain was a bad thing, but it seemed to energize everyone. Their talk was happy and excited.

Lourdes sat alone in a chair. Grateful she had a chair to sit in, knowing it wasn't her chair and she'd have to give it up soon.

Hours and days dragged on in a daze. Lourdes found no meaning in them. She had nothing to do, no where to go, and it would end, she knew.

Clear and beautiful, the sun shining, people milled about for miles looking at everything aviation from carburetors to perfectly displayed, ready-to-fly aircraft...

Lourdes watched the one-man-band play...

She sat in the Theatre in the Woods, alone with three thousand other people, watching the evening programming...

She slept alone in her tent, her sleeping bag protecting her from the chill. There was neither wind nor rain, no airplane noise. It was quiet.

CHAPTER 31

"Hey!" a young, thin, wiry man called out to Lourdes in the flight line tent café where she was having lunch. "You're that T.O.R. lady? Your husband called out to me the other day about playing The Old Republic?"

Lourdes quit working on her cheeseburger to look at the man.

"I'm the Commando he waved to?" The guy sat down at Lourdes' table in the café along with two of his buddies, each loaded up with burgers and sodas.

"Hey, guys. This lady plays T.O.R."

"Hi," the other two men said.

The first man made the introductions. "I'm John, and this here is Ted—he's a tank—and Bill, a gunfighter."

"Hello," Lourdes said, trying not to encourage them. "I'm Lourdes. It's nice to meet you." She did not offer her hand.

"So what are you?" John asked.

"A Jedi sage," she said.

"Cool," Bill said.

"You got any ketchup?" Ted asked John

"Back up there abeam the register. By the weapons," John said, meaning the plastic cutlery. "See 'em?"

"Yeah." Ted left the table to go get some.

"So what does your husband play?" John asked Lourdes.

Lourdes quickly wondered how she should handle this. She refused to lie as a person, but she didn't want to go into everything, either. "He's not my husband," she said.

John and Bill smiled.

"But I am taken, so none of that," she said.

"Oh darn!" Bill said. "Happens to me all the time! It's a good thing I have a robot at home."

"I think I'm old enough to be your mother, too," Lourdes said.

"I can't tell," Bill said.

"He wouldn't care, either. If she's breathing, she's good enough. He dated once back in college, but you know how us geeks can be," John said.

Ted came back with some ketchup, dumping a handful of the little plastic packs on the table in between everyone, then sat down to devour his burger.

"Don't drool over this lady," John said to Ted. "She's heard about us and gave us a shot across the bow."

Ted complained, playfully.

"It's not you guys," Lourdes said, munching more on her burger. "I'm just taken, that's all."

"And I saw her guy," John said, "the other day. Right in here. You can't compete, anyway."

"A jock?" Bill asked. "I dated a jock's girl once? Then it went bad."

Ted said, "I didn't know that."

"It was when I was at M.I.T."

Ted and John looked at him doubtfully.

Bill continued, "We loved each other over a set of twin soft tacos in the food court—it was just the two of us, and she was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen."

"Did you get her name?" Ted asked.

"No. Her boyfriend came back. We shared lunch, anyway, right there together, because all the tables were full."

Ted, John and Lourdes all laughed.

Who were these playful nerds?

"It was humiliating," Bill said.

"So what's new?" Ted said to his friends.

"I'll never date another jock's girl," Bill said.

"So Lourdes is hands-off—" John said, letting it hang for Lourdes to finish.

"He's not a jock, no," Lourdes said. "But it's hands-off anyway. Anyone touches this?" she indicated herself, "you'll turn to stone."

"Biblical!" Ted noted with humor.

"Ha," Lourdes said sarcastically. Her look to him made it clear she was willing to play along with the teasing, but _fat chance in reality_. "Have you had your cougar training?" She looked at them. "Any of you?"

They shook their heads in mock shame.

"I didn't think so. I don't rob the cradle, chillins. But if anyone wants to talk F.D.R., I'm yours."

"You kids fly?" Lourdes asked, changing the subject.

"I fly," John said. "I have an old Cherokee that holds three people—and we're two from M.I.T. I'm from Michigan State, so we're way under the limit."

"We don't chip in for gas," Bill said.

"They're walking home," John said to Lourdes, then "You fly?"

Lourdes nodded. "I have a one-fifty over in Vintage. You other guys don't fly?"

Ted and Bill shook their heads no.

"At all?" Lourdes asked.

"Nope," Ted said.

"How do you get up in the morning," Lourdes asked. "What if John, here, keels over at the yoke?"

"Then I'll fly!" Ted said.

"How hard could it be if John does it?" Bill said.

"I told 'em," John said, "that flying is just like a video game—"

Bill jumped in to finish for him, "Only if you mess up you die for real."

"It's possible," Lourdes said, "But it's a lot more dangerous to take a shower—"

"That's why I always prefer to shower with someone else," Bill said with a wink.

"You play much?" Ted asked.

"A little. Not as much as Jim or his buddies, but yeah."

"What are your toons?" John asked.

"I have a few, but mostly I use my sage, because she's a healer." Lourdes said.

" _Awesome_!" The three of them exclaimed.

"What level?" John asked.

"Fifty," Lourdes said.

More "Oooooohs."

"Maybe you could give Numb Nuts here a few pointers?" Bill said about John.

"Because he's a level twenty-one Commando Medic, and he can't heal any better than my Grandma June who's been dead for twenty years."

"I keep getting killed," John said in defense. "I can't heal if I'm dead."

Lourdes asked John, "You have another toon? A higher one that you used to play?"

"Yeah," John said. "I'm normally a Sage, R.D.P.S.," he said, for "Range Damage Per Second."

"Well," Lourdes said, "That could be your problem."

"Normally," John said. "I stand back and dump D.P.S. on target. We like to do Flashpoints together, these dweebs and I. But we didn't have any heals, so we queue for one and it takes time. Because there aren't enough heals to go around, I think. So I," he referred to himself magnanimously—

His buddies jeered at him.

"I break down and decide, okay, I'll level us up a healer for us: a Commando Medic. They have cool armor."

"But he's such a total retard at it," Bill said.

Lourdes started to wonder if that was really so.

"No, really. He sucks at it," Ted said.

Lourdes looked at John.

"Yeah, I do," John said. "There's this one Flashpoint we've been working on? I can't believe these dudes stick with me on this, because it's eating my lunch over and over. _If_ we get past this middle part where all the adds come get me, we get to the big boss at the end—this total bad dude with wicked Area of Effect—and I think I'm hanging in there fine, healing, and then all of a sudden I'm dead! Bang! Like that. Then, usually, Bill over there gets killed 'cause he's lightly armored, and who ever else is D.P.S. right along with him, and Ted— He gets close. He almost takes the boss down, but then he gets killed and it's a wipe. So we have to resurrect back at the area starting point, repair all armor, and then run back in."

"We've been through that with this one three times, now. There's something that's messing John up as heals." Ted said.

"We tell him to avoid the AoE, but it's _not clicking_ ," Bill said.

"We might as well type '/getdown' and party, because we're not doing much of anything else," John said.

"You guys are friends," Lourdes said. "I can see that."

Heads nodded.

"You hang together, even when there's a problem."

"Of course," Ted said. "All except Bill. We trade him for pizza, but they keep bringing him back."

"That gig's been working out pretty well, though, if you like free pizza," Ted said.

The three young men giggled.

"Let me think, guys," Lourdes said.

Her burger was finished. She didn't want the fries, so Bill reached across the table and started helping himself. The other two guys chomped away at their lunch.

"Okay," Lourdes said, gathering her thoughts. "First of all, you realize this is U.C.L.A. talking to you dwips."

"Dwips?" They asked?

"Dweebs slash drips."

"Forget U.C.L.A.," Ted said in mock horror.

"Hey!" Lourdes said in mock umbrage. "We have a bronze bear in the quad, so don't mess with us!"

The young men laughed again.

"Okay," Lourdes said, feeling comfortable with the guys. "I haven't seen you play, but were I to guess? You're focused on your healing like you used to focus on your D.P.S. You can't do that. You still have to do all the hundred things in there you're supposed to do—as well as heal.

"Hundred? He's from Michigan State. Two is his limit," Ted ribbed.

John laughed at Ted and shook his head. "They never give up. Even though _neither one of them has a Ph.D._

"Neither do you," Bill said.

" _But I can fly_ ," John said, triumphantly.

Ted and Bill held their hands up in acquiescence.

Lourdes laughed at the screwy bunch.

"First of all," John said to Lourdes, "U.C.L.A. what? Computer nerd? The arts? What? Just out of curiosity."

"I'm a nurse," Lourdes said.

"See there?" John said to his geek buddies. "She's real heals! So give her some slack!"

Ted and Bill had smiles on their faces while they worked on their fries. They were comfortable with the banter.

"Okay," Lourdes said to the table. "You know how there are a lot of things going on in a Flashpoint?"

"Yes," they all said.

"And we each have a role to play to maximize our capability against foes?"

"Yeah."

"The tank develops a lot of aggro and has great armor, so he gets in the middle of the fray to attract the mobs and keep them on him—and off the 'fragiles.' D.P.S.—like the gunslinger here, or you, John, as the Jedi Sage in D.P.S. mode—dumps D.P.S. on target. You can stand back and bang away—all the while and at the same time, avoiding all AoE. And if you're focusing on a certain mob, or the boss, or whatever, and adds show up, you might quit focusing on the boss and hit the adds, then go back to the main mob and finish him off. Or something. Right?"

"Close enough for government work," Bill agreed.

"Depending," Ted said.

"Right. So when you're in a Flashpoint, you're trying to defeat the mobs, dump D.P.S. on target, while at the same time, you're avoiding AoE and switching to fight mobs when they appear."

"Right," they agreed.

"So," Lourdes said to John, "You're in there as a healer, now, and you're focused on trying to keep them alive—"

"Right," John said.

"So you're looking at their icons, clicking on the one whose life is most depleted, and hitting heals buttons."

"Right!"

"Which is why you all die," Lourdes said simply. "You can't heal well if you focus mostly on healing. If you focus more on your own survival, you'll find it's no biggie keeping everyone else alive, too. Usually."

They quit eating their French fries.

"In the game," she continued, "If you let either you or the tank die, then everyone else in your party will die."

"Right," they agreed.

"It's more involved than regular D.P.S., like with your Sage. You've got to attend to the game and all that's going on in there, avoid AoE, only you're firing your healing at your party—so you're on the mouse also, and you need to switch to D.P.S. now and then to fight your own adds off."

"And I can't heal when I'm on the move. If I'm running away from mobs or AoE, I can't heal, so they die."

"And when you suddenly die sometimes? Probably you were dying and you didn't notice, because your focus was on them. That, and AoE can kill you quick.

"So," she summed, "take care of yourself first, or you're no good to anybody else."

"What about the tank?" John asked.

"I think the tank is also a first, there. You gotta care for him, too. Watch AoE. When you need to heal and survive at the same time, survive _first,_ heal second _._ Any adds come your way? Hit the tab key, target 'em, and take 'em down. Gotta let one of your party die doing it? Then do it to save the team."

"Oh!" Ted and Bill pretend-complained.

"You can res 'em later, if you survive."

John laughed. "It makes sense."

"Yes," Lourdes said. "I think it's a harder role to play than the others. But more fun, because you're both a soldier and a healer, all wrapped up in one. And I like it, too, because if I'm alone fighting a bad dude boss? I am all set up to heal myself in the middle of the fight and outlast him. It's not a bad role. I like it."

"Oh, you have got to come show us!" Bill said. "We're too new at this. Never seen heals in action in person before."

"Right!" Ted said. "Tonight, we're having a T.O.R. party over at a vendor tent, over by Hangar A. The guy, there, plays. Got a wifi connection there."

"Excellent!" John said to them, then to Lourdes, "Come on!"

"I—" Lourdes tried a retreat.

"We have four or five guys coming. One gal, other than you. About five o'clock? You can play John's toon on his laptop, right there in the same Flashpoint we've been doing." Ted said.

Lourdes was immediately thrown into defensive mode, for no other reason than her years-long fear of getting in close to groups. "I don't know, guys," she said. "You don't need me."

"Would you rather we be left with him?" Ted asked, indicating John.

CHAPTER 32

Lourdes moved with her refreshed drink among six guys and two gals who stood around the four on laptops in the after-hours, closed, large vendor tent and watched the team try to perform. They were yelling and screaming helpful hints to the players—none of which were heard or followed, which was good, because the advice was mostly bad.

"No! Stop it on that one! Get that add! _Blast him_!"

"Don't you have an interrupt?"

"Not with a blaster! Use a push-back, then zap him! Use the blaster last!"

Ted was there as a Jedi Knight/tank in the middle of a melee frenzy along with some other Jedi Lourdes didn't know. Light sabers were flashing all over like Yoda. Mobs were yelling and growling. The evil Boss was obviously a megalomaniac with issues—and a lot of minions, because Adds kept appearing out of nowhere adding to the fray, some going for Bill as a gunslinger, some going for John as the distant medic.

"Lead him back over this way," someone behind yelled.

"Use the Force!"

With all the noise, it was hard for Lourdes to get through to John, but she gave it the old college try. "Adds coming in from the left!" She yelled.

They were on John before she could finish her sentence, and he was still trying to heal the tank.

"HIT YOUR TAB KEY!" Lourdes yelled, spilling a little of her drink. "TARGET THOSE ADDS!"

It was information overload, Lourdes knew. She took another sip of her drink. "It does no bloody good," she said to some man standing next to her. "He's too busy."

John got killed by the adds.

Then the other knight in melee got killed.

Then Bill as gunslinger got killed.

Then Ted as the knight/tank got killed, last.

"Bloody friggin' wipe," Lourdes yelled, and the boss stood there with (she imagined) a smug grin on his face.

"See?!" John asked her.

"Yup. I saw," she said. "Train wreck," she said about the fight. Then, "What's this stuff?" Lourdes asked him about her drink, sipping again.

"Cowboy Lemonade," some guy behind her said.

"What's in it?" she asked.

"Everclear," came the reply.

"That's a hundred ninety proof," John said, "so take it easy."

"Okay," she said, downing the rest of her drink and tossing the cup into a trash can. "I've already had enough, anyway."

All having been killed, the flashpoint team was standing on the space station outside the flashpoint entrance, waiting on direction.

"You get on here and show me," John said. He got up giving Lourdes his seat.

Lourdes sat down. "How am I gonna do that? All your buttons are different."

"These green ones, here, are for healing," John said,

"You mind if I rearrange the little buggers?" Lourdes asked.

"Sure, go ahead," John said.

Bill laughed. "When you get tipsy, Lourdes, your British starts hanging out."

"It's not me, it's a friend of Jim's," she said. She typed in "Muahahahaha!" and they all looked at her funny.

"So," she said, "Okay." She ran John's Commando toon over to the repair droid to repair all her armor, and then headed back near the start of the flashpoint. "Getting killed hurts the armor. So, where are your buttons?" She started looking over the laptop, unfamiliar to her.

Someone brought her some pepperoni pizza and she took a bite to help her think. "Good pizza!" she said, and when she laid it back down, part of it went onto the keyboard, causing her toon to jump and run.

"Hold it!" Ted said.

"Okay! I got it," She said, bringing the toon back over to stand with the others.

She preferred to work the mouse with her right hand, so to organize her action bar, she brought the healing skills to the left side of the keyboard, buttons #1, #2, #3, and #4. Then—she took another bite of pizza.

"Good pizza," she said. "Did I say that again? Got any soda that has no alcohol in it? ' _Gimme another beer, bartender_!'" she ordered, like Don Knots in "The Reluctant Astronaut." " _Lo que es esa mierda_!"

One man behind her burst out laughing at what she said in Spanish.

The other guys behind her laughed at the scene.

"Honey, can you get her some coffee?" a lady said to a man beside her.

He looked at her absurdly.

Let me find something to shoot with," Lourdes said. "Where are your guns? You have some kind of cannon? I'm a Sage. I don't know from Commandos. _How do you guys get through life without the Force_?"

"Big, honkin' guns," someone behind them said.

More good-natured laughter.

Jim showed her the firing skills, and she loaded a few of his better shots into the right hand keys.

"So, I'll click on their icons with the right hand mouse—if the mouse will hold still for me—and I'll heal with my left hand as needed. All very quickly. I'll not stand in AoE stuff, and when the mobs attack me, I'll hit the tab key there, which switches me into targeting them, and I'll fire with my right hand on those keys. Then when they're done, I'll click on our party members' icons again and heal with my left hand.

" _READY_?" she yelled to the crowd.

" _Ready_! They yelled back to her.

"We'll do it or die trying, got it?" She yelled back.

"Got it," they said, among general laughter.

Ted as Tank led the four of them back into the Flashpoint. Lourdes trailed along behind the group, keeping everyone in sight, periodically healing them, even without any mobs attacking, to practice her new keys. A large green laser, like Val Kilmer would have loved, beamed out of her gun right at them, with one of her healing keys—and her helmet emanated beams of energy to heal with her more powerful skills.

"Do you have anything that imparts Endurance or something like that?" she asked John.

"Yes. Here," he said, pointing to a skill on a side action bar.

While they ran, Lourdes clicked on each person's icon and then the endurance skill John pointed to. A little flag appeared above their icon to show they'd been buffed.

"We take all we can get," she said.

When they got to the middle, the Boss there—the one that had wiped them all a few minutes prior—was a stinker.

Ted lead the charge and the fight was on.

Lourdes yelled at the screen while she played. "Aaaah!!! Get—that! Ooooh!"

She watched the entire battle, all the time. Twice— "See that, John? The tank and one D.P.S. went out of range. Their icons faded. Can't heal. Gotta close in." She moved closer to the battle. They brightened, and she healed them some more.

"See here?" she asked.

"Yes," John said. "I'm losing some health. Not sure why. But—" Lourdes clicked on her own icon and hit a healing key to— She suddenly yelled, "ADDS FROM THE LEFT!"

With her own health at half, she hit her tab key to target the adds attacking her, and fired into them. They were weak, so they went down fast. She clicked on her own icon again to finish healing herself.

The crowd behind her cheered her on, laughing.

"Look at that, John. Blasted, she plays better than you!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" John mock laughed, defending. "She's been at it a while!"

Then the Tank's health was down, so she clicked on him and healed him mostly, then clicked on the two D.P.S. and gave them some, then, "My health is still okay, so I'll stay on the tank." She clicked on the tank again and healed him...

And the Boss for that phase of the flashpoint died.

All team health near one hundred percent.

There were cheers from the 'cheap seats' behind them.

" _I want a SITH LORD_!" Lourdes yelled, jumping up from her chair and turning to play with the crowd. "I am fed up with bad dudes!"

"Yeeeaaaaa!" Others yelled. Most laughed, enjoying the spectacle.

"Right now," she told everyone, "I'd like nothing better than to get in there with all of them bad dudes and _sass 'em off_! _That'll_ show 'em!"

Several laughed.

"I have a sith," someone yelled into the fray. "An inquisitor. And he's 'light side.'"

"How's that work?" Lourdes asked. "He's a bad dude."

"He does good things, and the Imp's hate it, but what are they gonna do? He's the one paying the subscription!"

More laughter.

"Get back in your chair!" Bill yelled. "We have one more boss to go!"

"Lourdes! We're still in the flashpoint!" John told her.

The other team members in the flashpoints waited at their laptops for their healer to reengage.

Lourdes didn't notice, walked away to the pizza table. "This is good stuff. Where'd you get it?" she asked.

Several of the people laughed.

"She's drunk," someone said to everyone. "She beat that boss drunk," then to John, "so surely you could do it sober."

The look on John's face was a mixture of humor and pain.

"John?" Ted asked.

"Okay!" John said, sitting down.

Lourdes grabbed another slice of pizza and started working on it. Noticing John was at his laptop, she went over to cheer him on. "Hey! Atta boy. You can do it," she said.

Ted as tank headed out further through the flashpoint, and the team followed.

John trailed, clicking on their icons, healing them with the beam from his gun as they ran, a couple of times, to top them off.

As they approached the final Boss, Lourdes remembered the flashpoint and yelled, "Wait."

The team stopped, before attacking.

Lourdes said, "This boss has wicked AoE. Avoid the fire he floats around."

"We already know that," Ted said.

"He's killed us a three times, already," Bill said.

"Okay. Sorry," Lourdes said.

John, by habit, typed, "r" to indicate "ready."

The "r" appeared on every one else's screen, who was in their group.

Ted attacked and all hell broke loose.

Both knights were in the fray.

Bill was off to the side firing his guns at the target.

"Yeeeaaaa! Get 'em!" the crowd yelled.

John was watching the scene as a whole, clicking on group member icons, healing them as needed, when fire started floating around in the air over the players.

"That's the AoE!" Lourdes yelled.

"It'll kill you if you don't move," someone behind yelled.

John stopped healing for a moment and maneuvered around behind the fire—so it went away from him, not toward him—taking a little heat, with loss of health, as he passed the edge of it. He stopped healing others, clicked on his own icon and healed himself, switching back—

"That's it!" Lourdes yelled. "Yeah!" Then, "Gunslinger taking heat!" " _Get away from the fire_!"

"I know," Bill said, moving.

John healed him quickly.

The megalomaniac, evil boss boasted wickedly for a moment, then attacked again. The team fought valiantly. Fire moved around the scene trying to catch people.

John switched from the team members to himself to heal, back and forth, running when needed to avoid the AoE.

The crowd behind them helped in their way.

"It's over there!"

"Look out!"

"That's it!"

"Blast him!"

Until they started noticing the boss' health beginning to run low.

"We're gonna make it!" John yelled.

"Yaaaaaaa!" Ted screamed as he swung his light saber another thousand times at the boss. "S _ith spawn_!"

There was such a melee frenzy no one could tell who was swinging what. Light sabers were flashing at blinding speed with their customary sound: _wom wom wom_. The boss fought better than two should have been able, and the party fought mightily, dumping D.P.S. into the boss, until finally John hit his tab key, "Switching to guns!" he yelled, firing his huge blaster repeatedly into the boss to help finish him off.

The boss keeled over, dead.

"Yeeeeaaaaaaaa!" the crowd yelled.

"Die evil skum!"

"All the way!"

Ted congratulated John by shaking his hand. "Well done," he said.

John smiled and slumped into his chair.

There was general laughter and back slapping, and sipping of Cowboy Lemonade.

Somebody handed a very happy Lourdes another slice of pizza.

CHAPTER 33

Even though it was raining, the dawn sun shone over Runway Three Six onto the bellies of all the planes, illuminating the bottom half of Lourdes' tent. Lourdes peeked out her door flap, underneath the tarping there, and looked: it was an isolated shower, blue sky everywhere else. No problem.

She zipped the door flap closed and sat in her tent, in her underwear, cross-legged. Scrounging around—

A nausea grew in her stomach. Was it the drinking the night before? Sometimes, if she overdid it, ill effects would linger into the next day, but this time—

No, it wasn't the drinking, she knew. It was because she had to leave.

She didn't want to. She didn't know where she should go.

What should she do?

Who should she be?

She had no home.

She could climb into her plane and take off, but into what kind of life?

Literally, which direction should she point her plane?

She was a nurse, she told herself. She could work anywhere. Just point the plane and go until you need to land, and she could find work and live there.

So why did it matter?

Her old fear of abandonment resurrected. Her husband had left her. Her family had effectively disowned her. But also, if it made any sense, her own life had abandoned her when she was born.

Few believed her on that, she knew, but it didn't have to make sense to others to be true.

So here she was, she thought. Alone in a tent—beautiful airshow. Ending. Need to leave. Go. Somewhere.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent, she slowly began readying things for a possible departure. A little bag of this got put over there, another little bag of that got put over here. The sleeping bag? She scooted it over and rolled it up beside her.

She dressed as well as she could in her short tent.

When she was ready, she unzipped her door flap, again, and crawled out to stand under the wing of her one-fifty.

The sun painted everything orange from the side, while the rain made everything sparkle. There wasn't enough rain to puddle. Millions of tiny drops floated down from the heavens and dripped off everything on earth with a gentle _splat_ on the grass and a _tink_ on her plane. There was not a breath of wind to disturb their fall.

A fellow with an umbrella walked past her to the south, between the rows of planes, and greeted her. He looked like he had just had a shower. "Good morning," he said with a smile as he passed.

"Good morning," she said to him in return.

She lied. It was beautiful, but not— No, it _was_ a good morning. She didn't feel good about it.

The shower had stopped, and the sky was a soft, clear blue.

Lourdes stepped out of the portable toilet letting the plastic door _whack_ shut behind her. She looked around herself at miles of green lawns, trees now and then, at people smiling as they walked from planes to showers to flight line cafes. The smell in the air: it was a mixture of cut grass and fuel and food. She could hear people talking far in the distance. And in spite of an airplane that was obviously taxying north up Poppa, she could hear bird song that, she swore, must be half a mile away.

It was picturesque, for her. Heaven, for any airplane buff.

The pit in her stomach gnawed at her.

She noticed the gaggle of Cubs along the flight line—beginning about where she was and ranging to the south along Taxiway Poppa and Runway Three Six. It seemed like a mile of yellow Cubs parked side-by-side, wing-tip to wing-tip, as far as the eye could see.

Other people walked into the flight line café to eat, but Lourdes didn't have the stomach for it.

She crossed Wittman Road and walked over to the Cubs. Some with wooden props. Some with larger wheels, what pilots called "gear." All taildraggers. The yellow was striking against the green lawns, which may have appeared greener than usual with the periodic rains they'd had.

She stood ahead of one cub and looked under its wing to the south. It looked to her like one of those images produced when one mirror is set facing another mirror, and the reflections continue to infinity. It was row after row of Cub on grass.

"Hi," came a man's voice.

Lourdes jumped and turned around. It was the man she'd met the other day in the café.

"Heath!" Lourdes said. "You surprised me a bit."

"Sorry," he said. "And your name is?"

"Lourdes."

"Ah. Right." Heath stepped forward, with a cane. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he said indicating the Cubs, then stood there gazing with her, saying nothing.

"Yes," she said simply, mesmerized, loving the peace of the moment and needing—pleading, inside—for a way to make it a larger part of her life.

Time passed with neither of them moving, neither of them saying anything.

Lourdes noticed they were there—two people, on such a beautiful morning, side-by-side, doing nothing other than loving part of life together.

She reached over and gave Heath a big hug, holding his back with her arms, feeling his hair against her cheek.

He returned the hug.

"This is what it's all about, isn't it?" Heath asked.

Back at her camp site, Lourdes pulled the last stake that held her tent and began rolling it up. The grass was brownish and squashed flat, where the tent had been, but she knew it would revive within days. She rolled the tent and tied it with twine.

A Vintage biker, wearing an orange vest, came by on his scooter and asked her if she were leaving. Over the sickness in her stomach, Lourdes nodded.

"I'll be right back," the biker said with a smile. "Don't fire up 'till I get back."

Lourdes nodded again.

She felt sick.

She walked slowly around her plane, preflighting. She lowered the flaps for inspection, checked the fuel, oil, all nuts and bolts visible, pulled all three tie down stakes.

She patted the side of the fuselage just behind the left wing. The plane had been her only friend for as long as she could remember. Helping to keep her alive. She needed its comfort, had needed the plane to love her, for something to love her, for as long as she could remember. "We'll find a home," she consoled herself. "A way to survive."

The biker returned, and they chatted about her departure. Another ground crewman stood along her intended taxi near Wittman Road, to block traffic as she crossed over it.

Lourdes had her "V.F.R." card, and she'd read the NOTAM.

Her stomach ached with fear.

"Lets move it forward about a foot to get it out of your tire imprints," her biker said with a smile. "Otherwise, you might be stuck here."

The biker and Lourdes each pushed on a wing strut. The plane moved easily forward one foot.

"So we're ready," he said. "Please wait for this signal," he rotated his finger in the air, "before you fire-up, okay?"

Lourdes nodded and got into her plane, adjusting her tablet computer onto her passenger yoke for her right hand to manage, displaying charts and weather information.

When she was ready, she nodded to the biker who was at that time standing in front of her plane and to the left.

The biker checked to make sure no pedestrians were around and rotated his finger in the air.

Lourdes started the engine. It's purr was familiar. It's propeller patted the air, ready to go.

After a minute of Lourdes checking instruments and letting the engine warm up enough for the oil to begin lubricating her rings, she nodded to the biker who raised his hands in the air, moving them sequentially toward his head, meaning "taxi forward."

Lourdes added throttle to move forward. The plane rocked a little with the thrust against the damp ground, but moved readily.

When she was half way into the taxi lane, the biker moved both his hands to his left, indicating for Lourdes to turn right.

She added throttle to help her turn, blowing whatever tents may have been behind her. Her plane rocked slightly as it moved over the grass, bouncing a little as she went over slight perturbations in the lawn.

Two ground crew at Wittman Road held traffic at a distance, including one tram full of vacationers and several pedestrians watching a plane cross in taxi.

Inside the cockpit, Lourdes advanced and retarded the throttle as needed to keep the plane at a steady pace while crossing past the Vintage Ops Shack and toward Taxiway Poppa.

At Poppa, another ground crew motioned for her to turn right and taxi south.

Lourdes knew not to talk on the radio but to monitor it, listening for her instructions. It was part of the NOTAM that governed operations during the airshow.

At the south end of Poppa, she did a run-up to make sure all systems were go—oil pressure, oil temperature, ammeter, carb heat, magnetos... She listened to the engine. Everything seemed functional—the fuel was turned on and she was full of oil, she re-checked in her mind—so she turned the plane slightly to look at the tower, which cleared her for takeoff Runway Three Six.

Lourdes looked one final time at the lawns of the South Forty and turned her attention to the runway and its associated traffic.

As she taxied onto the runway, she looked south up final approach for any indication of incoming, landing traffic. Seeing none, she proceeded, turning left, facing north, on the runway.

She slowly advanced the throttle, and the little plane began its take off roll.

At speed, she pulled back slightly on the yoke, which angled her rear elevators up, which increased the down-force on her tail, which angled her nose up, increasing the angle of attack on the wings, increasing her lift, and her little plane slowly rose into the air, breaking free of ground which had been her haven for over a week.

As she rose into the air, she could see the large, colored dots on the runways, the Cubs on her left, trees, event booths and hangars, and miles of lawns and planes which were parked to enjoy the airshow.

It was over for her.

She felt her stomach knot again as she banked her plane to the right, per NOTAM, away from everything there.

CHAPTER 34

Lourdes flew over forever-green fields of the upper Midwest. From her altitude, it was hard to distinguish corn fields from patches of trees, except for the color. She assumed that the lighter, richer green was probably crops of some kind, particularly if it was in a defined geometric shape, and the darker color greens were probably woods or other trees.

She was flying.

The sky was clear.

No winds at her altitude she could detect.

Her plane flew well.

Yet her stomach still ached.

She adjusted the mixture, leaning it for max endurance, careful not to over do it and hurt her engine. She could hear the engine's steady beat through her headphones, feel it in the panel.

_What had gotten her into this?_ she wondered. Her transition?

That contributed, but it had to _BE_. It was that or die, for her.

Her fears? They contributed also.

Other people's fears? Yes. Also a big part of it.

Something in the way she looked at it all? Yes.

But there were realities she had to grapple with—or they'd grapple with her.

In her situation, she felt, _you have to accept some pain sometimes to avoid even greater pain from other things that could result if you don't._

Okay.

_So, combining all that, what was the path of least pain and the greatest happiness_? she asked herself. _And could she ever be "happy" by some definition, if she was also in excruciating pain at the same time_?

That was her life, she knew. Trying to live with one while searching for the other. That was living with her kind of birth defect, her kind of difference.

So where—?

She realized she was forcing rationale on herself—to make herself make a decision by force of her mind, when her emotions weren't up to it—because her time was up. Her issues wouldn't be resolved, now or ever, as far as she could guess, but she had to make a decision.

She was up in the air; she would have to come down.

While the upper Midwest slowly rolled by underneath, she reached into her flight bag in the passenger seat and withdrew some cabling, hooking her tablet into her headset, so she could hear music without interfering with her radio.

She found her phone in the flight bag as well, still shut off in an effort to keep him at bay. She looked at it for a second and put it back in the bag.

She scrolled through her playlists on the tablet until she found Joan Baez.

Joan's soothing voice in "Diamonds and Rust" began to play through her headset, mixed with the sound of her engine.

" _Well I'll be damned_

Here comes your ghost again..."

She closed her eyes for a minute, feeling Joan's comfort, begging Joan to find a home within her.

She looked at her watch, adjusted for local time. It was ten thirty. She'd been in the air about three hours.

She looked out the window for area land marks.

There was a town over there and another over there.

That one had a grain elevator.

That one had a river running past it.

While Joan sang and Lourdes' engine droned, Lourdes consulted her displayed sectional chart on her tablet, moving it with her finger, making it larger by spreading two fingers apart on it, moving it over again.

The she made the chart smaller by bringing her fingers together, displaying a larger area of northwest Missouri.

There was Kansas City.

There were a grouping of other towns.

There was no landmark she was aware of to look for, and she hadn't previously researched the exact location of the town, because she hadn't made up her mind to even go there.

But—

Joan Baez finished "Diamonds and Rust" and began singing "Jesse," a loving, gentle song that lingered in Lourdes' heart beneath thousands of scars. Joan's guitar at intro pulled on Lourdes' heart, even before Joan began to sing.

" _Jesse come home_

There's a hole in the bed

Where we slept;

Now it's growing cold..."

In her mind, Lourdes substituted "old" for "cold." She felt she was so old, she could barely move the yoke—proof the plane had a spirit, as it flew itself.

The sound of the engine seemed to fade as Lourdes fell into the hypnosis of her needs. In shock, unable to face her own actions while facing fears she'd long held, her hand moved on its own to charts on the tablet, finding nothing amid a hundred towns, yet remaining on one.

She looked out the window of the cockpit as she approached.

On the west side of town, literally across a north-south street, was a little farm with a landing strip by it, aligned east and west along a dirt road.

The strip was not marked on her chart.

Circling over the town, she picked out what may be a Main Street, two churches, a grocery store? A couple of larger buildings with landscaping that looked like schools with a track and football field. A water tower. A highway running by the southeast edge of town, northeast to southwest, with a gas station at it.

"Oh my God," she said to herself, seeing her intentions.

Her stomach was in pain.

With "Jesse" playing through her headset, Lourdes circled slowly overhead, watching the town turn beneath her, wondering. The streets all looked clean. Jim's farm was on the west side, literally across the street from town. He was down there somewhere. Rooftops— Few people were about, either by car or on foot. She watched them slowly turn as she flew in wide circles.

A dog played in someone's front yard, evidently not enclosed with a fence.

The occasional car drove down the highway.

"Jesse" played in her headphones saying, she needed to believe, that Joan would protect her if she descended into her own fears.

She watched herself raise a shaking hand to the radio and dial 122.9. Maybe that could be their multi-com.

She dried her sweaty hand on her jeans and paused her thumb over her push-to-talk switch before she pressed it. "Jim Ranch, Greenhills." Her voice was unsteady. "Cessna Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, over town at two thousand A.G.L. Anyone in the pattern?"

There was no answer.

Her thumb pressed the push-to-talk switch again. "Jim Ranch, Cessna Two Hotel Sierra, over town, make left traffic Runway Two Seven, Jim Ranch."

While on the left down wind leg of her approach, at one thousand feet, Lourdes looked over the strip for anything that could be a problem: pot holes, height of grass indications, how well it was mowed—there were worn tire tracks in the grass, mostly on the east end as if traffic usually landed to the west—telephone poles beside it, by the road, by the house at the east end. There was no fence around it, so she worried about cows that could wonder on the strip. But she didn't see any cows anywhere. There were some trees by the farm house, but they were only about forty feet high, she guessed. There was a barn and—

_Oh, God!_ Her heart skipped a beat.

There was a large shed attached to the side of the barn.

She was downwind abeam "the numbers," as it were—the approach end of the runway—though there were no numbers on the private grass strip.

She dried her right hand on her jeans and pushed the fuel mixture control in to "full rich," pulled the carburetor heat control to "on," retarded the throttle to twelve hundred RPM—about zero thrust—and pulled her Johnson Bar, flaps on full.

She felt the little plane slow and begin descent.

"Jesse" continued in her ears. She silently begged Joan to help her.

"Jim Ranch," she said as well as she could. "Cessna Two Hotel Sierra, left base, Runway Two Seven, full stop, Jim Ranch."

She heard nothing on the plane's radio.

Her plane came down smoothly, and in no time she was on final.

"Jim Ranch, Cessna Two Hotel Sierra, on final, Runway Two Seven, full stop, Jim Ranch."

She saw herself float over the farm house, a comfortable distance perhaps fifty feet above the trees in its yard, and pulled the throttle the rest of the way off.

Lourdes engine idled, her slowly turning prop now a drag item.

All attention on her flare, Lourdes glided past the barn and onto the tire ruts she'd seen from altitude.

The plane slid onto the grass in a soft touchdown, rolling over bumps in the soil until she was at taxi speed.

She stopped.

She closed her eyes and thanked the Lord for His miracles, then looking out the windows at miles of crops and fences.

Carb heat off.

Flaps up.

Transponder off.

She throttled up and sat on the left brake, turning the plane around to taxi back to the barn.

Climbing out of the cockpit, putting her feet on grass beside the shed, Joan still singing in her mind, she was attacked by a brown-black warewolf, wiggling, and licking her all over.

She fell down on the ground beside her left gear and got licked in the face, then on the backs of her hands as she tried to protect herself—realizing the only way to do that was to bear-hug the beast and wrestle it to the ground, which seemed to delight the thing further.

Two ladies approached Lourdes, calling the dog off, and one of them hugged Lourdes in a close embrace that could only mean desperation.

Jim's mother showed Lourdes around the house, especially around a huge kitchen on the south side with its two ovens and over-sized windows on three sides.

Elaborate directions were given with a show of hands, pointing in the direction of town.

Lourdes got another hug.

"Jesse" stayed with Lourdes every minute, never fading, protecting her.

Lourdes walked through the town.

It was so clean and tidy. Homes and businesses freshly painted. Yards kept. Well cared for.

The streets were worn, enough to look used, but wide and smooth.

A church ahead—classic scene of people filing out of the front of the church, a preacher shaking their hands at the door. Some went to cars, others to mill around picnic tables on the lawns next to the church, under the shade of oak trees. Kids played. Parents beamed. Older folks enjoyed. Some folks headed toward a table of food. Lourdes looked for Jim—

Her mouth fell open.

At the same time, Jim turned to see Lourdes, his blue ministerial robes gracefully flowing around him. His face registered both need and pain, as if he were thankful, but also fearful.

Lourdes slowly walked up to Jim, as if for the first time, staring at him in his robes.

"You're—a _minister_?" she asked.

"We take turns," Jim said quietly.

Lourdes stared at him and tried talking, but failed.

He said nothing—looked into her eyes.

Her face began to twist into a cry. She turned to leave, but he drew her into a desperate hug, holding her tight, squeezing her, rubbing her back with his hands, whispering into her ear.

She held his neck as tightly as she could, crying, answering into his ear when she could between sobs.

People around the church, Mike and Millie as well, cried for them both.

The church picnic tables were full of fried chicken, potato salad, mashed potatoes, garden salad, soda pop and cupcakes.

Mike was popping off excitedly about something.

Millie was laughing at him.

Jim's mother was beaming at Jim and Lourdes, loading their plates with food.

Lourdes' hands shook too badly to hold her own plate.

Jim and Mike pushed Lourdes' plane into the shed by the barn.

Joan Baez still sang in Lourdes' ears. Lourdes begged Joan to stay with her.

Lourdes and Jim explored each other, making love on the plush, King-sized bed, for hours, it seemed, lost to the world.

Sharon wheeled Benny out of the front door of the hospital to their car. Lourdes put Benny's bag into their trunk.

Jim helped Benny get up out of the hospital wheelchair and limp the two steps to his seat on the passenger side.

Sharon hugged Jim and stifled her tears.

Lourdes walked up the front steps to the high school, stopping at the top.

She stood in the principal's office, talking to him in Spanish.

_Stay with me, Joan_.

A cold wind blew outside.

Lourdes brought some hot chocolate to Jim and Mike as they worked on his RV-9A in the shed.

Mike quipped.

Jim laughed.

They both sipped their hot chocolate.

Lourdes sat beside them on the concrete shop floor.

Jim and Mike played Star Wars on side-by-side laptops in the living room, yelling and screaming at the game.

In the kitchen, Lourdes gave a slice of fresh pizza to Moff Tarkin, then delivered the rest to the end table between the two gamers.

Lourdes and Jim sat together on the couch, watching "Love Actually."

"So what are you gonna be for Halloween this year," Lourdes asked Mike.

"I'm going as the most vile, the most evil thing I can imagine."

"What's that," Jim asked.

"The treasurer," Mike said, "of a corrupt, non-profit organization."

"And you?" Lourdes asked Millie.

"As a Republican," she answered.

The Halloween parade made its way up Main St. with people in every kind of outlandish costume. The streets were lined with more people than could fit in the town, all enjoying.

Jim was on a float doing a zombie Elvis impersonation.

Lourdes stood with Mike and Millie, laughing at him.

Mike was dressed in a plain, simple, two piece suit and tie, with his hair combed neatly back, wearing a non-threatening smile.

Millie was dressed exactly the same.

Lourdes was June Cleaver, in sympathetic magick.

Lourdes walked down the hallway at school, eyeing everyone, trying not to show it.

Two tenth graders looked at her.

She and Jim argued vehemently. Lourdes stormed out the front door of the farm house.

Lourdes put a large bandage on a boy's knee during a Friday night football game, then patting him on the helmet.

The boy ran back to the coach demanding to get back into the game.

Lourdes chased after him, "No!"

Thanksgiving meal was in Mike and Millie's house. The house was full of close friends and family.

Millie showed her new wedding ring to some of her family who had come in from out of town.

They smiled and held her hand to get a better look.

Jim and Lourdes sat on one side of the table. Jim was talking to Millie's relatives, his arms flying about, obviously describing something he had done in his plane, putting his hands to his mouth to simulate regurgitation.

Lourdes looked embarrassed, then tried to defend herself.

The table laughed.

Mike carved the turkey at the head of the table, and everyone could see the look on his face: as if he had been rescued. "I am so thankful, he said, for everything."

The little Cessna flew with the two of them over frozen fields of white as far as the eye could see, the morning sun gleaming off snow and ice to the east.

It was cold outside, especially at altitude.

But in their coats, together in the cockpit, they were warm.

Lourdes and Heath bent over his dining room table looking at aircraft plans, his hands moving in the air, simulating work to be done.

Lourdes hugged him mightily.

Jim shook his hand.

Wearing coats and boots, after dark, Lourdes and Jim walked up Main Street in the snow, arm in arm, looking at Christmas lights, saying "Hi" to people they met, enjoying each other.

Moff Tarkin played along with them, darting across the street now and then to get some love from someone he knew.

"Go home, now," Jim told him, a strong arm pointing back to the farm.

Moff Tarkin ran back.

The movie theatre was the brightest thing on Main, neon lights illuminating the whole street. Friends were waiting for them at the front. They walked in together, talking, taking wraps off, stamping feet to get snow off.

Lourdes was teaching Spanish in front of a class of tenth graders, laughing with one of them good-naturedly over what she accidentally said.

A boy was unkind to the girl.

Lourdes corrected him gently.

The boy apologized.

With a smile, Lourdes told the class proudly, "That's what we do."

She wrote something on the board and turned to sound it out for the class again.

The wind was still, but it was cold and gray outside. Everyone was wearing coats and breathing steam.

Mike's RV-9A was parked out in front of the shed with Mike sitting in the left side of the cockpit.

Jim gave him instructions.

Mike turned it over. It caught, missing for a second, then ran perfectly. He kept the R.P.M. low for thirty seconds, then slowly increased the R.P.M.

Lourdes, Sharon and Millie watched form the side.

Lourdes and Jim enjoyed a movie in K.C., then pizza.

The young man was ecstatic with his new Cessna 150.

Lourdes hugged the left wing strut of her old love and cried as she walked back to Jim.

Jim held her close as the young man took off, disappearing with Bes to the south.

_Joan_! Lourdes begged. "Jesse" still played in her mind.

An antique Cub sat in the shed, bare to the frame.

Jim, Benny and Millie sipped chocolate while Lourdes worked to recover the left wing, taking care to keep the seems straight.

Benny teased Lourdes.

Jim laughed.

It was warm inside the kitchen, looking at a picturesque spring evening outside through the large windows. Leaves on the trees were budding. The grass was greening.

Everything was calm and still.

Jim stood by the counter, holding Lourdes in his arms.

"So?" Jim asked.

"So what?" Lourdes asked.

He leaned down for a kiss, which she warmly shared.

"Remember what I asked you at Show Center?"

Lourdes stopped for a second and looked at her feet then at him then at the town, backing away.

Moff Tarkin sat in the vet's office, a front foot bandaged.

The vet gave him an in injection.

Lourdes cupped the dog's sad face with her hands and kissed him on the forehead.

Lourdes and Jim sat together, holding hands, in the eighth row at the playhouse in Kansas City, watching a musical.

Lourdes stood in the kitchen cleaning the counter tops, looking out the large windows to the east, south, and west. The early summer sun was low in the western sky, but she could still see the tractor by the barn that Jim had been using all day.

She went into the living room to get Jim's plate. The TV was on. His plate was empty. And he was fast asleep in his recliner.

Lourdes thought about her life and looked back at the man in the next room.

On a warm summer day, Lourdes sat with Moff Tarkin under a tree on a small hill overlooking Greenhills to the east.

He slept, his head on her lap.

She stared at the town, unmoving.

Lourdes walked up, tentatively, behind Jim at the kitchen sink and lightly put her hand on his waist.

He turned to look into her eyes as if a question were still there, though he said nothing.

He raised his hand to touch her arm, and ever so slightly, she flinched. He withdrew it.

Slowly, more slowly than she thought possible, he lifted his hand again and touched hers, lifting her hand gently, holding it there, steadily.

Lourdes wore a beautiful, white gown, and Jim, a black tuxedo. They faced each other before the altar at Church. Their friends were beside them.

Jim was smiling.

Lourdes was near tears.

Millie officiated in her ministerial robes, lawfully ordained, marriage license obtained.

Lourdes hands trembled in Jim's.

She looked again at his chest, his arms, glancing at herself and the congregation, at Mike behind Jim, letting her eyes come to rest on their hands.

She started to pull away—a reflex—but he held her fast.

She gripped his hands tighter for strength.

Feeling light-headed, somehow she heard herself say meekly, "I do."

Jim kissed her warmly in front of everyone.

Rice didn't wait for the door.

Lourdes and Jim laughed with Penn and Teller, they were intrigued by Lance Burton, and they sang with Barry Manilow in Vegas.

Relaxing, enjoying French cuisine at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant, overlooking the strip, Jim held Lourdes' hands across the table.

Lourdes gaze drifted from the fountains across the strip to Jim's hands.

She thought of his RV-6 at the airport, her partially refurbished Cub at home, their friends, Moff Tarkin, her new career at school, and the fear that had held her back for so long.

They sat together on a swing bench Jim had suspended beneath the oak in the side yard of the farm. Tarkin was sleeping at their feet.

The sun was setting to the west. They could see it melt like butter into the horizon. Everything was bathed in gold.

Jim had his arm around Lourdes, resting it there, staying.

Neither of them spoke.

Lourdes relaxed onto him the rest of the way, feeling for the first time in many years a peace that comes with love and a sense of belonging.

As the sun drifted below the horizon, and the light faded, she laid her head on his shoulder and moved his hand over her heart.

He kissed the top of her head.

She laid her arm across his chest.

She did not notice the music in her mind as it faded.

All she could hear was the sound of his heart beat against her ear.

Slowly receding, Joan finished her song to a healing part of Lourdes' soul that no longer needed to hear.

" _Hey Jesse...it's lonely...come home_."

### EMANCIPATION

I beg your forgiveness for a moment that I may share some things not directly related to this novel in an objective sense but which are nonetheless vital to its heart on every page: subjugation and inequality, the lack of empathy, the self-centered way people are willing to limit other people to better themselves. It has been inspired in me throughout my life and was related to me, again, so well in the major motion picture "Lincoln." It's a problem most people who are different, or who are disadvantaged, still face today and is central to trans issues.

Thomas Jefferson—author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, founder of the University of Virginia, third president of the United States of America—in his first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, stated, among other things, "All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."

President Jefferson's quote ran through my mind while I watched Spielberg's "Lincoln," with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. Yes, I thought about the lessons related. The majority in any case will vote, and will they let the minority suffer?

For as clear as it was that "Lincoln" deserves at least a dozen Oscars in recognition of its excellence, it was all too painfully clear to me that the movie wasn't just about Lincoln's mastery of the politics of his day or the process the government went through to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was also about the very idea that some people—sadly a lot of people—were willing to suppress others, to hurt them, oppress them outright, _own_ them, and even torture them in order to— What? To better the course of humanity as they saw it? To do the right thing as God intended?

_Balderdash_ —as well as several foul expressions I would like to use.

Nothing about it could even pretend to be so righteous.

What I felt was so clearly depicted was the simple truth that people existed who would subjugate and hurt others, to damage or even ruin their lives, so that they, the oppressors, could get something they wanted, so they could compensate for diminished inner securities and feel better than someone else, so that they could pretend to go to sleep at night comfortable in bigoted views without pressure to change—or worse, because they actually enjoyed the suffering of others.

And I was inspired in watching a story based on truth, on real history, of people struggling within themselves and with each other to rise above such a disastrous practice as slavery, and also symbolically to help society consider: What is the value of human life?

Whose life is worth more than someone else's?

What is equality?

What is one man's right to be more in society than another?

How on Earth can one person limit the life of another human being—or of any life—for his own benefit? Does he not care about his own life? Does he not seek love and happiness? Does he not flee pain and fear? Can he not see the needs in his own heart and then perceive the value of a life? And if seeing that, does he think no one else should care?

It is a testament to great story-telling that I cried during the movie, that I cry now writing this, that I cheered for them in Congress when voting for the Amendment— _Yes!—_ and that I am sickened to remember the way some people can value their own life so much, and at the same time value other lives so much less—and to remember as well, that that quality of oppression and superiority is _still_ a part of the human condition. It still happens a billion times a day, knocking people over and then kicking them when they're down.

It happens still when people who are different are killed. It happens when gossip and presumptions destroy reputations and joy in relationships that could have been. It happens when someone prefers his own loneliness to association with someone different, when a job is not offered because a difference is not understood, when the difference of another is so disliked, that understanding is not even desired. When this happens, the life of the one who is different is diminished, and with that, so is society.

The one who is different, then, may not feel able to revel as much in his own identity, may not reach his full potential, may not be able to contribute to society his genius at solving a problem, or not feel as able to share his wisdom, his diplomacy, his strength, or his love.

What is needed, then, is greater consideration of equal rights. People are not all the same; in fact, people are all different. But all persons have the same value, the same right to be, and should be equal both before the law and in the mind of society.

Thank you, Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Colman Domingo, James Spader, and every other wonderful film maker on the project—and _thank you_ President Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Congressman Stevens, Private Harold Green, and W. N. Bilbo, and everyone else who helped in history to fight oppression and embrace our fellow humans.

This film and these acts in history are not just about themselves, to me. They're also about trans populations and hearts who are different, who haven't yet found equality, and yet whose lives matter just as much.

Aimee Norin

### ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aimee Norin writes about transsexual and transgender experiences in an effort to entertain and illustrate aspects of phenomena which are rarely shared. Ideologies are usually in dispute, so in her books, characters experience lives and share views which are all different. Usually, there are multiple views given within each novel, and some novels as a whole present views quite different from other Aimee Norin novels. As well, her characters are normal in their humanity in that they also have issues in life with which they struggle while they search for love and happiness.

Trans lifestyles are not yet commonly accepted in most societies, and transpersons are usually heavily schachtered on an ongoing basis, with daily diminutions, or "daily dimunitions," as they are sometimes felt. Prejudices and oppressions, soft and loud, misleading and painful, can exist for a transperson throughout life in more ways that can be known or counted—not just in larger, social exclusions but also in assumptions closer people make that also keep transpersons on the fringe. A person living in these lifestyles may have to deal with all that on a daily basis—while at the same time needing to wear a smile, interacting with those same, oppressive people at work, in public, or at home, in such a way as to downplay internal fear and pain: smiling while hurting.

Saying things are fine when they're not.

Aimee's experience is that most people do not really understand transpersons and tend to keep them at arm's length. People have opinions, and they may _believe_ they understand—because they've treated patients, or known some transpersons elsewhere, or had one in the family. But those contacts are superficial and rare compared to a mutually interactive, decades-long, daily involvement, through every situation good and bad, or even actually being a transperson in self.

Aimee believes if most people got to know transpersons more closely—if they gained enough trust to be admitted to inner thoughts and private experiences, if they were to show the courage to ask insightful questions, if they were open to new ideas as they emerged—a different, more human, and more genuine reality could well emerge with reasons revealed for things that, before, had previously seemed eccentric or even spurious. Instead of a transperson appearing to be someone who is unduly concerned about social rejections or prospects, real reasons may be revealed that indicate the transperson is dealing with issues of which others are unaware—yet who, still and at the same time, needs to function as the helpful co-worker, the friendly neighbor, the loving husband, the devoted wife, the inspiring parent, the loyal friend.

Being a transperson takes more courage and inner strength than most people begin to conceive.

As such, a greater effort is needed to peer into the heart of transfolks—to see what is really there, what is really being dealt with, much of which is likely not shared—and to convey a greater and more sincere compassion than previously considered.

### CONTACT AIMEE NORIN

 aimeenorin@gmail.com

<http://aimeenorin.wordpress.com/>

Because I have been offering these novels for free, I must schedule most of my time for other occupations, and hence, I cannot manage most correspondence as often as I'd prefer. As a consequence, I may find it best to respond to most concerns in the aggregate on my web log, or Facebook, or Twitter, and even then, perhaps, intermittently. Please do write, though, as I do read them. Your comments and feedback are most appreciated and valued.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

"Someone like _you_ should understand!" The bloodied young woman scolded Lourdes for no reason other than her presence.

Chapter 2

Lourdes watched herself throw a small overnight bag on the bed and stuff it with essentials.

Chapter 3

High over western New Mexico...

Chapter 4

During the week of the airshow at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Wittman Regional becomes the busiest airport in the world.

Chapter 5

"Ok," Jim said to her. "I'm an international jewel thief!"

Chapter 6

"He'll have a vat of Tobasco with a little dish of butter sauce, and I'll have the salmon with mashed potatoes."

Chapter 7

Two pilots talking planes: that is a cliquish conversation. Two pilots shopping for camping supplies at Oshkosh: that is a specialty.

Chapter 8

_Crrrack!_ A bolt of lightning seared the night sky in a jagged path from cloud to cloud, its thunder shaking everything for miles.

Chapter 9

"You go to church anywhere?" she asked.

"Every day," he answered. "Mine is the church of life. I worship, as it were, every time I breathe, every time I see, every time I love someone. I'm in church right now."

Chapter 10

Pioneer Field was another example of heaven on earth. Antique airplanes being restored, old-style hangars, a grass stip. Lourdes could just about see Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart working on planes.

Chapter 11

His kiss never ended but changed into a caress with his lips on hers, moving back and forth to feel them, then nibbling her lower lip with his teeth.

Chapter 12

"Matt Damon—! _He doesn't look like Matt Damon_! He's not nearly as good looking!"

Chapter 13

"Yank and bank?" he asked her?

Lourdes smiled at him. "Or as we say in Star Wars: 'tank and spank.'"

Chapter 14

"No. I'll be fine," she said. "It's not the flu. I just have to wait another few minutes..."

Chapter 15

_Oh my God! No! He couldn't be!_ She panicked.

Chapter 16

"You're one of _them_!" Lourdes scolded, crawling out of her tent.

Chapter 17

"Why do you hate yourself so much?" Jim asked.

Chapter 18

"You know what? Not everyone cares about that," Jim said. "I know it's been something that you've carried around with you for decades, but we're not in the eighties any more."

Chapter 19

"What matters in life," Heath said, "is the golden moments. Especially the moments spent doing 'nothing,' when you simply appreciate being here."

Chapter 20

"Then I take out the leaf blower and clean the floors,

starting in the west so as to use the wind."

She laughed at him.

"It's harder than you think!" he said.

Chapter 21

"Because I'd like to ask you out on a date tonight," he said.

"And I'd like everyone there to know you're with me."

Chapter 22

"Okay," he said. "I voted for Steve Martin, because then as our President, when he was in the middle of the latest SNAFU, he could tell us all 'Well, excuuuuuuse meeeeeeee'!"

Chapter 23

People all around danced to the Steve Miller Band.

Lourdes stood frozen, touching Jim's chest, unable to think or move, let alone dance, still lost in his kiss, and the song, and—

Chapter 24

The phone went silent for a second. " _Lourdes! Is he with you!"_ Millie gasped and wheezed, laughing. " _No! I think it's wonderful! Welcome to the family!"_ she said.

Chapter 25

" _Are you kidding me?"_ she scolded him. "Five days I know you! I marry you, divorce you. I take half your farm 'cause you're so naïve. And then I sell it because it turns out _I'm the real thief_."

Chapter 26

"You can really lecture me a new one, you know that?" he said.

"You, too," she said.

Chapter 27

That's why I don't melt down, nowadays," Mike said, "when I work another fear into my life. Because I learned fear is just an emotion. It's not a thought process. It's not a real thing in life like poverty or hate crimes. It's just an emotion, and my fear is in my head, not other people's."

Chapter 28

She knew what had happened, but she didn't feel like talking.

Chapter 29

The band outside switched to playing "Moonglow," a sentimental instrumental originally by the Benny Goodman Quartet with Lionel Hampton at the vibraphone.

Chapter 30

Rain fell down the clear plastic sides of the large vendor tent where Lourdes sat.

Chapter 31

"You're that T.O.R. lady? Your husband called out to me the other day about playing Star Wars?"

Chapter 32

With her own health bar at half, she hit her tab key to target the adds attacking her, and fired into them. They were weak, so they went down fast. She clicked on her own icon again to finish healing herself.

Chapter 33

She felt her stomach knot again as she banked her plane to the right, per NOTAM, away from everything there.

Chapter 34

As the sun drifted below the horizon, and the light faded, she laid her head on his shoulder and moved his hand over her heart.

