“Rio tower to B-17. Please receive taxiway 14-R, at ahead on your right hand.”
“Roger, tower.”
The problem with a B-17 on the ground is, the pilot can’t see directly ahead because the tail is on the cement and nose is raised high in the air—a normal situation for any tail-dragger.
Autumn used the pedals to fishtail a little to see forward. “There’s 14-R, two hundred yards.”
“Speed ninety,” her grandfather said.
The plane slowed quickly now. When the speed fell below seventy, she tilted the pedals forward, applying the brakes, decreasing to fifty miles an hour. When she was within forty yards of 14-R, she braked more and took the turn to her right, revving the outboard port engine to help pull her around and off the runway.
Autumn turned to her right window to see the American Airlines Boeing 777 touch down on the far end of the runway.
“Wow,” she whispered, looking back at the taxiway. “He sure had confidence in me.”
Her grandfather slid open his window for some fresh air and reached to pat her shoulder. “So did I, Clicker. So did I.”
She glanced at him and saw the gray Oxford shirt she’d bought for him in Buenos Aires was soaked with sweat.
Chapter Two
On that same day, on 9th Avenue in New York City, Rigger Entime left an office building and tried to remember where he had parked his car.
He was ten paces beyond the little girl before the image of her eyes registered on his foggy perception of that cold December afternoon—the end of his longest day. His doctor had put him through the stress and strain of a raw recruit. He was exhausted, and he wanted it finished; all of it.
When he turned back toward the girl, an enormous baldheaded man with a cane in one hand and the Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm, bumped into him. Rigger stumbled but kept his grip on the gray slips of paper in his hand.
“Drunken fool,” mumbled the bald man as he straightened his overcoat and trudged on.
From a distance, the girl’s eyes looked both melancholy and almost gleeful. It seemed to Rigger her sadness was a tender veil, a valiant attempt to disguise her urge to play with the Barbie doll tucked in the crook of her arm.
Her fingers toyed with a bare plastic foot as she stared at Rigger. The doll’s other foot was stockinged in faded blue and covered by a tiny black slipper, with the strap swinging loose.
A cardboard sign hung around the little girl’s neck, lettered in childish crayon, “Wil work 4 food.” Some imprinted words were torn in half along the bottom edge of the cardboard, “It’s the real thing.”
Past, present, and future fused into a frozen tide of emotion. The Earth lumbered on toward the winter solstice, and compassion warmed his aching heart. Rigger stuffed the five slips of paper into his coat pocket and knelt before her on one knee, feeling the icy cement through his tweed.
“What kind of work do you do, sweetheart?” He guessed she was about four years old.
The woman standing next to the girl spoke a daggered, “God bless you” to the back of a departing pedestrian who’d dropped two coins into her outstretched hand. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and slipped her hands into the pockets of a dark Navy pea-jacket, the type one might buy for two dollars at a military surplus store. The outline of a torn-off chevron marked the shoulder of the jacket’s right arm. Her legs were bare below a short skirt. Thin socks and castoff Nikes rounded out her collection of old clothes. She stared up the street, over Rigger’s head, where a lady dressed in sable left a jewelry shop and came their way. Slick crimson nails tucked a fur collar tight over a harness of jewels.
A hand slipped from the pea-jacket pocket.
Rigger carefully fastened the strap on Barbie’s shoe as he watched the child’s face. He knew it would take only a wisp of a breeze to topple her into his arms, where he could hold her close until she was warm and cozy.
“Can you drink hot chocolate with little marshmallows?” He smiled, trying to soften his expression.
He saw her face start to brighten, but then she caught herself and looked up at the woman. Rigger looked up, too. The woman ignored them as her eyes followed the sable. The eyes of the sable focused on some distant point where parallel lines came together. She elevated her nose and quickened her step.
An empty hand returned to the pea-jacket pocket.
The girl’s mother didn’t look down at the two people at her feet, but instead shifted her gaze to a young man getting out of a taxi and motioning the driver to keep the change.
“How about you, ma’am?” he said up to her. “Could you go for a cup of hot chocolate?”
She looked down at him, and he saw only bitterness. Not the slightest trace of happiness was in the woman’s face, hidden or imagined; perhaps there never had been. The shrug of her slim shoulders conveyed much more than ‘I don’t care.’ She said without a word that she hated him and every rich bastard who walked by and insulted her with a few tarnished coins. Yes, she would take his stingy offering of a hot drink, but only because she and the girl hadn’t eaten anything all day. That’s what he saw in her cold shrug.
“I help Mommy clean ‘partments,” the little girl said after a sip of the hot chocolate. She gave her sweet brown mustache a lick.
The three of them sat in a window booth at Hannibal’s Cafe, three blocks from where he met them. They were on one side of the table while Rigger faced them on the other. He slipped off his coat and let it fall behind his back. The woman and girl kept their coats on and buttoned.
“Oh,” he said, warming his hands on the steaming mug. “I bet you’re a big help to Mommy.”
The girl nodded as she held a sticky marshmallow to Barbie’s lips for a second, then popped it into her own mouth. She picked up her cup and slurped another marshmallow. Her mother stared out the window, with her hands wrapped around an untasted mug of hot chocolate.
Rigger looked to see what held her attention and was startled to meet her eyes in the reflection of the glass. She watched him in the mirrored window, not shifting her gaze. He blinked and took up his cup.
“We gonna get a pet l’phant,” the little girl said to Rigger.
The woman looked at the girl, narrowing her eyes. The girl narrowed her eyes back at her.
Rigger tried to interpret this fragment of intercepted communications. Was it a secret that the girl wanted a pet and strangers shouldn’t be made aware of it? Was ‘pet elephant’ a code phrase for something forbidden, perhaps an exotic bird, or maybe a father? Whatever it was, Rigger envied their easy relationship.
“Hurry up with your chocolate, Mama,” her mother said. “We have to go.”
“So,” Rigger said, “you do cleaning work.”
“Wait, don’t tell me.” The caustic knife of her words formed with practiced precision and cut without qualm. “You just remembered your maid went on vacation.”
“No, I don’t have a maid.” He kept his voice soft in spite of her combative attitude.
Has life been so difficult for her that every man is a threat? Or perhaps a menace to something close to her? Why can’t she see she has nothing to fear from me?
“Then your apartment is suddenly very dirty.” It sounded like an accusation.
“As a matter of fact, I keep it fairly clean.” This exchange was wearing Rigger down and getting them nowhere.
“What, then?”
“I just wondered