Her Birthday Celebration Was My Exit novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Days

Lisetta won't say when her birthday is, Remo expects Ilaria to fly them to Capri, and Sunday dinner at Pop's ends with Tommy deciding to come too, just as Lisetta posts a photo in Ilaria's flight jacket in the pilot's seat.

I turned and looked at her.

The drones were still spelling her name over her shoulder.

"Then when is it?"

Lisetta smiled into her champagne.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"I would, actually."

"It doesn't matter, Captain. He'll never check." She touched my arm, light as a moth. "And nobody believes the help."

She walked back into the light.

Remo opened his arms for her without looking.

I stayed at the railing until the drones came down one by one and the lake went dark.

At midnight two of Remo's men walked the last guests to their cars.

They wore their jackets open. Everybody at the manor knew why.

I went in through the kitchen.

The door to Remo's study was half shut.

A man in a gray suit was kneeling on the rug in there. His nose was bleeding onto the Persian wool.

One of Remo's captains stood over him, folding a handkerchief.

"Thursday," the captain said. "All of it. Or we come to the house."

The man nodded and nodded.

I kept walking.

Four years in that house had taught me which doors to look through and which ones to pass.

Upstairs I took off the white shirt with the epaulets and sat on the edge of the bed in the dark.

Remo came up at one.

He washed his hands for a long time before he got in.

The mattress dipped. He smelled of cigars and her perfume, which was my perfume.

"You embarrassed me tonight," he said to the ceiling.

"I fetched the candles."

"You put the jet keys on a birthday cake in front of forty people. Half of them work for me. Now they think my own pilot talks back."

"Your own pilot does talk back."

"Not in front of my men." He rolled toward me. His voice went soft, the voice he used when he wanted something to be over. "Look. Lisi's had a hard year. The divorce. Her father. I owe that family more than you know."

"I know about her father."

Everybody knew. Fifteen years ago Lisetta's father had stepped in front of a bullet meant for Remo's.

"So she gets a party. It's one night." He found my hand under the sheet. "You fly us Tuesday. I'll do a dinner next week, just us. Wherever you want."

"She told me it isn't her birthday."

He laughed. It was a real laugh.

"Lisi? She was teasing you. She does that."

"She wasn't teasing."

"Ilaria." His thumb stopped moving on my knuckles. "Don't be jealous. It's beneath you."

I lay there and listened to the lake.

"Sure," I said.

He was asleep in five minutes.

I wasn't asleep at all.

On Sunday I drove myself to Bridgeport.

Pop's two-flat smelled of garlic from the sidewalk.

He was at the stove in his undershirt with a dish towel over his shoulder, the same way he'd stood every Sunday since Mom died.

"You're thin," he said, instead of hello.

"I'm the same size I was last Sunday."

"Then you were thin last Sunday too. Sit."

Tommy came up from the basement with a wrench in his back pocket and grease to his elbows.

"Lali! I fixed the water heater. Tell him I fixed the water heater."

"He fixed the water heater," Pop said. "He also flooded the basement."

"Briefly."

"There's a canoe down there now."

Tommy kissed my cheek and left a black thumbprint on it.

The lasagna came out bubbling. Pop cut it in squares the size of bricks.

Tommy ate two before I finished one.

"So," Pop said. "The big night. Let me see the hand."

I put my left hand flat on the oilcloth.

Nothing on it.

Pop looked at it for a long time.

Tommy put his fork down.

"He threw a party for somebody else," I said. "On our anniversary. With drones."

"Drones," Tommy said. "Like the army?"

"Like her name in the sky."

Pop wiped his hands on the towel very slowly.

He had worked thirty-five years on the O'Hare ramp. He did not like men who took things for granted, and he had never liked Remo.

"So what are you going to do, Lali?"

"I took a job in Anchorage. Cargo. Seven-thirty-sevens. I leave Tuesday."

Nobody said anything.

The radiator knocked twice.

Then Pop got up from the table and went into his bedroom.

Tommy and I looked at each other.

He came back with a little blue book, soft at the corners.

He set it beside my plate.

My first logbook.

The first entry was in my handwriting at nineteen, all careful capitals. Cessna 172. Lewis University. Pattern work. 1.2 hours.

Under it, in the instructor's remarks, someone had written "Student is fearless. Needs to talk less on the radio."

"You kept this?"

"I paid for it." Pop sat back down. "Eleven thousand dollars of my overtime, I'm keeping the receipt."

I laughed, and then my eyes went hot, and I looked at the lasagna until they stopped.

"Alaska's far," he said.

"I know."

"Good," he said. "Far is good."

Tommy cleared his throat.

"I'm coming."

"You are not."

"I got laid off in September, Lali. I'm sitting in Pop's basement fixing things that aren't broken. They got planes in Alaska? Planes need mechanics."

"You don't even own a coat."

"So I'll buy a coat." He grinned. "Somebody's got to make sure you eat."

Pop pointed his fork at him. "He's right. You can't cook."

"I can cook."

"You can make toast that's on fire."

Tommy was already on his phone, looking up one-way fares.

I let him.

I was still laughing when my phone buzzed on the oilcloth.

A notification. Lisetta had tagged me.

I opened it.

It was a photo of the Gulfstream's flight deck, taken from the cabin door.

Lisetta sat in the left seat with her legs crossed and red-soled heels on the rudder pedals.

She was wearing my leather flight jacket. The one with my name stitched over the pocket.

My sunglasses were on her face.

The caption said: "Captain for a day."

Underneath, Remo had commented first.

A heart.

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