Her Last Flight Page 6
“Nice puss,” I say. “What’s its name?”
“Her name is Sandy.” Lindquist straightens and makes for the kitchen, which is open to the seating area, this being a shabby, two-bit cafeteria, you understand, in keeping with the general tone of the town. She flips on the lights and proceeds to a large electric coffee percolator, made of chrome and remarkably modern for a dump like this.
“Coffee?” she says.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
I follow her to the lunch counter, which runs along the width of the kitchen space, six or seven stools lined up, all covered in worn leather. Along the way, I pause at the cat, who has the air of a local landmark, and reach down to pat her head. She swats at me with a set of razor claws that draw blood from the back of my hand.
Lindquist smiles a little. “Careful. She sometimes decides she doesn’t like a person.”
I suck away the blood on my hand and settle on one of the stools. “Evidently.”
“I find she’s an excellent judge of character,” Lindquist tells me, as she measures the coffee grains.
“Aren’t you clever.”
“You know, I’d have thought you might trouble yourself to be a little more charming, under the circumstances. I’m not likely to open myself up to some chronic bitch.”
“You’re not likely to open yourself up to anybody, I expect. I’m here on a bribe, that’s all, and I perfectly understand the nature of our arrangement. I’d be wasting my time trying to charm you.”
She raises her eyebrows and fills the percolator with water from the tap.
“Although I suppose you could just bludgeon me,” I continue. “A simple, elegant solution, and there’s no lack of convenient places to dispose of an unwanted body around here.”
“Oh, I could kill you, I guess. But then I wouldn’t learn much, would I? How you found Sam, how you found me. Not that I’m admitting to anything. There we are.” She plugs in the percolator and wipes her hands on a dishtowel. She’s changed out of her bathing costume to a white shirt and a pair of tan slacks, which suit her tall, angular body perfectly. Under the kitchen light, you can better see the scar that bubbles up from her neck to cover her jaw and ear.
“That looks like it hurt,” I say. “Burn?”
“Yes. Anything else? Eggs? Toast? I always make myself a nice breakfast when I’ve been out on the water. And I imagine you must be hungry.”
“Oh? Why?”
“No reason.” She bustles to the icebox. “Except I might have heard you left the bar of the Hanalei Tavern at eleven o’clock last night, in the company of the owner.”
“He was walking me back to the inn, like a gentleman.”
“The inn says you never slept in your bed.”
“I made it up before I left.”
She cracks open an egg and laughs. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Leo’s the catch of the town, and very particular. I’ll bet you had a lovely time.”
I snap my fingers. “Leo! Of course. Now I remember.”
“He’ll be heartbroken. I suppose he told you where to find me?”
“Not quite. He said you liked to surf early in the morning, that’s all. I figured out which beach on my own.” I tap my temple. “No flies on me.”
“Maybe not, but the town’s buzzing, all the same.”
“A town, is it? I’ve seen duck crossings with more metropolitan flavor.”
“And just look what it’s done for you. Buttered or dry?”
“What do you think?”
She takes the butter from the icebox.
When we’re settled in with coffee and eggs, side by side on the leather stools before the lunch counter, Lindquist loses the banter and falls silent. The cat comes wandering up and rubs its cheek against her ankle. She reaches down and lifts it into her lap, where it curls into a snug, neat ball and closes its eyes. Lindquist closes her eyes too. Thinking or remembering, who knows. Trying to decide what to make of me.
I lean one elbow on the counter, next to my plate. “I’ll bet you’re wondering how I got here.”
“Oh, I know how you got here, all right. You came in on Leo’s afternoon boat from Waialua, causing quite a stir.” She opens her eyes. “I just don’t understand why anybody cares about so much ancient history.”
“It’s not so ancient. It just seems that way, because of the war. It’s hard to believe anyone ever cared about daring pilots and their daring flights to nowhere.”
“Well, why do you care? You’re a photographer. There’s no photograph here. God knows I’m no picture portrait.”
“I’m not here for photographs. As a matter of fact, I’m writing a book. A biography of Samuel Mallory.”
“Of Sam?”
“You thought I wanted to write about you, did you?” I wag a finger. “Everybody knows your story, Foster, right up until the moment you disappeared. But Mallory’s been forgotten.”
“That’s not true,” she says swiftly. Then she catches herself and drinks the coffee. “Anyway, you forget I haven’t said I’m this Foster woman at all.”
I wipe my mouth. “Look. If you’re afraid I’m going to expose you, don’t trouble yourself. If I wanted the scoop of the century, I’d have wired New York already, and every reporter and photographer in the Western Hemisphere would be bearing down on this airfield of yours like a locust army. You can keep your privacy, since you want it so badly. I won’t quote you. All I want is the inside story on Mallory. I think it’s time history resurrected him, don’t you?”
“I don’t think Sam would have cared, one way or the other. He didn’t give a damn about fame or history.”
“Oh? Then what did he give a damn about?”
Again, she bites back some piece of candor. She’s on to me and my tricks, and still she nearly slips. She wants to unburden herself, I can see that. Most people do. We all carry some burden or another, pressing into that tender spot between neck and shoulder, invisible to others, which we wouldn’t mind shucking off for a blessed moment. But we rarely do. To shuck off our burden is to show it to the world, and then what would the world say? The world would judge your burden, that’s what. The world would judge it, and how you’ve carried it all these years, and whether your burden is more or less than any other person’s, and what all this says about you. Sometimes you’re just better off carrying the damn thing into eternity.
Evidently Lindquist feels the same way. She shrugs and digs back into her omelet. “Don’t you know the answer to that already? You’re the one writing the biography.”
“But that’s why I’m here, Mrs. Lindquist. To hear the truth from the person who knew him best.”
“Me? What makes you say that?”
I reach for my pocketbook. “Do you mind if I smoke, Mrs. Lindquist?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, call me Irene.”
I light up a cigarette, even though she hasn’t actually given permission. Gives me a moment to gather my thoughts. I toss the lighter back in my pocketbook and say, “You know something? I think I’ve gotten a little ahead of myself. What I should have done, right from the beginning, is given you some background. That’s a nice word we have in the newspaper world, background. Means everything you really want to know about a person.”
“I thought you were a photographer, not a journalist.”
“I’m a photojournalist, Mrs. Lindquist. I take pictures for newspapers. You know, a picture tells a thousand words? That’s what I do.”
“But you want to write a biography, you said. Not a picture book.”
I blow out a little smoke. “Not just any biography. I want to write a whole new kind of biography. I mean, have you ever read one? Start to finish? My God, they’re all so dull! Just facts and figures and dry little clips from letters, that kind of thing. I think it’s because the men write them. The little dears think life can be boiled down to facts, that the facts are what’s important, that facts are somehow akin to truth. I’ll tell you something, the facts are the least important thing about a person.”
“Oh? So what’s important?”
“The fictions. The lies we tell to other people, the lies we tell to ourselves. The stories we make of our lives, the heroes we fashion of our own clay. The myths of our own creation. Those are the real stuffing of a person, in my opinion. What makes each one of us different from the other fellow.”
“My goodness,” she says. “Aren’t you a surprise.”
“Oh, I’m full of surprises, believe me. Anyway, if you ask me, a biography should read like a novel, not an encyclopedia entry. All those facts get in the way of the truth. We ought to be able to see the world through our subject’s eyes, to live life as our subject lived it. To feel the ticktock of his pulse in our own veins. That’s truth. That’s what I want to do.”