Flight Dreams (21 page)

A voice finally says, “Hello, Neil? This is Mark. In Chicago.”

The words hit Neil like cold water. His eyes spring open as he bolts upright in bed, checking the time. “Is something wrong, Mark? It’s six o’clock.
Are you all right?”

Manning laughs. “Yes, Neil, everything’s fine. I’m sorry to wake you, but I really need to talk. Are you angry?”

It’s Neil’s turn to laugh. “Hardly! I’ve been hoping you’d call for weeks. I’d have lost hope completely without the updates from Rox. She says you’ve … spent some time together.”

Neil interprets the silence as an audible blush. The only time Manning has spent with Roxanne, other than a few awkward phone conversations at the office, was their session in her apartment after the airport.

“That was a strange day for all of us, Neil. Whatever happened—I’m still not able to make sense of it.” Manning pauses, ready to change the subject, but careful to weigh his words. “You once invited me to come out and spend some time with you. I know it’s short notice, but I need to see you. Soon. There’s so much to talk about. There’s so much that hasn’t been said—or done. I can get away Thursday, day after tomorrow, if it’s not inconvenient for you.”

“Of
course
you’re welcome. How long can you stay?”

“Just a few days, a long weekend. I’ve got a hell of a lot going on here right now.”

“That’ll be wonderful. Do you have a ticket? Thursday is Christmas Eve, so flights are bound to be booked solid.”

“Oh,” says Manning. He hasn’t given the holidays the slightest thought. “I made up my mind about this only a few minutes ago, and I wanted to check with you first.”

“Let me see what I can do,” offers Neil. “I know a travel agent, and he owes me a favor.”

“Please, Neil, don’t bother. Truly, I forgot about Christmas. You
must
have plans. I don’t want to intrude.”

“Nonsense. Christmas is a
family
holiday. I have no family out here, and I have no plans that can’t be broken gracefully. Besides, Mark, I’d rather be with
you.
I actually dreamed about you last night. Must’ve been thinking about you when I went to bed. I’d just seen you on TV …”

“You
what?”

“Didn’t you see it? It wasn’t the
first
time, either.”

Manning won’t admit that he never watches television—it sounds so snobbish—yet the fact remains that he long ago lost interest in the tube.

“It was on the evening news,” Neil continues. “It was just a crowd scene in some hallway, but there you were, and they flashed your name on the screen. You’re becoming quite the media darling, Mr. Manning.”

O
’HARE IS CHAOS.

Bud Stirkham was right. The snow has come, and there’s “a heap of it.” The blanket of slop that began to cover the city yesterday—and still deepens by the hour—glistens in the delighted eyes of children who have yearned for a white Christmas. And it brings a nostalgic warmth to parents secure in their homes as they tuck in the young ones and remember the giggling excitement of bedtime that is known only on this night of the year. But to the holiday throngs milling at O’Hare tonight, the snow has brought endless delays, unexplained cancellations, growing fatigue, and flares of temper.

Manning has been at the airport since early morning and found, as Neil guessed, no open seats on any flight to Phoenix. A booking agent for one of the airlines laughed in Manning’s face. So the best he could do was to buy a standby ticket and lug his bags from gate to gate in the hope that a booked passenger would fail to appear. He wishes he had let Neil pull some strings with that travel agent.

As the weather gets worse and air traffic gets more tangled, Manning finally gets lucky. A planeload of travelers from another city, scheduled to connect in Chicago with the last CarterAir flight to Phoenix, will not be arriving, and Manning is assigned a first-class seat at half the coach fare.

He has to move quickly. He’d like to phone Neil to let him know that he’s at last on his way, but there’s no time. Manning called earlier, because of the uncertain flights, to caution Neil not to try meeting him at the Phoenix airport. They agreed that Manning will call when, and if, he arrives.

On the plane, Manning can at last relax as he sinks into the wide leather seat and snaps the safety belt around his waist. The plane is running late and begins at once to taxi toward one of the constantly plowed runways. Manning peers through the little plastic window and watches, through the darkness and the falling snow, the spinning yellow lights that flash atop the plows that scurry around the airfield.

Once in the air, Manning orders a drink, truly needing it after his daylong ordeal. Waiting for it to arrive, he notices that there is a phone at his seat—one of Ridgely Carter’s last pet projects, he remembers—so he fishes a credit card from his wallet and dials. As he listens to the ringing of the other phone, he intends to tell Neil not to wait up for him, that he will take a cab from the airport, but there is no answer.

The vodka arrives in its tiny bottle, and Manning notes, as expected, that it is not the Japanese brand. There’s no point in asking for a slice of orange peel, which is surely not available, so he drinks the vodka straight over ice. It goes down quickly. Soon, Manning is asleep—sleeping so soundly that the steward decides not to rouse him for the meal.

T
HE STEWARD FINALLY DOES
awaken Manning to tell him they are landing. Manning studies his watch, dazed; he has slept nearly three hours. The captain’s voice crackles that it is Christmas in Phoenix, just past midnight, fifty-five degrees under clear, starry skies. He thanks his passengers for flying CarterAir, then switches off the intercom and drops the plane silkily onto a runway that has
never
been plowed.

Manning gathers his luggage from the closet at the front of the cabin and walks the Jetway from the plane to the terminal, anxious to call Neil. He shuffles through the yattering crowd of friends and relatives who linger with arriving passengers at the gate, then emerges into a concourse and shoots off, bags in both hands, in search of a phone.

“What’s the big hurry, Mark? You won’t get far without me.”

Manning turns. As Neil walks up behind him from the crowd at the gate, Manning puts his bags on the floor and reaches to embrace him. They hug for long moments without speaking, patting each other on the back with a silent language of tenderness that reveals the toll of their separation—the weeks they were apart that dragged into months, connected only by the thread of Neil’s one awkward letter. Manning finally utters, “You’re here. How’d you know I’d be on this flight?”

“I’ve been here since midafternoon.”

Manning opens his mouth to reprimand him, but Neil continues, “I came because I couldn’t get a damned thing done at work, because everyone else left early for Christmas Eve, and because I’d rather wait here to meet you than wait at home for the phone to ring. I stuck around till the last flight left Chicago, then checked with the airline. Sure enough, you were on it. And here we are. Welcome to Phoenix, Mark.” Neil produces a bouquet of delicate red flowers, like a magician yanking them from nowhere. He has made no effort to hide them, but Manning didn’t notice them in the scuffle of their embrace.

“They’re beautiful,” says Manning as he studies the profusion of strange crimson buds. Flower names have always eluded him, but he can tell that these are some exotic species, rare if not unknown in the Midwest. “No one’s ever given me flowers before.”

“You’re kidding,” says Neil, dismayed that no one has paid so obvious a tribute to Manning’s charms. “Merry Christmas, Mark.”

“Merry Christmas, Neil.” Then Manning adds, “It’s all been so rushed—this trip, I mean—I’m afraid I didn’t bring you anything.”

Slyly, Neil answers, “Oh
yes
you did,” and picks up the larger of his guest’s bags. Manning rolls his eyes as he lifts the other bag. They walk down the concourse together and exit the terminal.

Outdoors in the parking lot, Manning is chagrined to discover that
it is not cold.
Neil wears only a light sweater. Manning’s topcoat is far too warm, and he wonders why he bothered to put it on as he left the plane. He knew what temperature to expect—the captain announced it—but the words meant nothing until he felt the spring-like midnight air of December in the desert.

Once in the car and beyond the airport grounds, Neil drives swiftly through the city along boulevards that resemble expressways more than local streets. There are few tall buildings, not by Chicago standards, but the horizon is broken instead by the hulking peaks of mountains, some rising from within the city limits. Manning has always prided himself on a keen sense of direction, but he finds this environment disorienting. At home he thinks in terms of Lake Michigan—there is always water to the east. He has no such bearings here.

“So they’re having a white Christmas in Chicago,” Neil muses as he guides the car up a road on the side of a mountain.

“They certainly are, and they’re welcome to it,” says Manning, relishing his own escape. “It was a bitch of a storm.”

“It’s probably the same one that rolled through here on Tuesday. It
rained,
Mark. Rained hard. Now everything’s washed and clean and blooming. Just wait till morning. We’ll take that run together that I promised you. You’ll see how spectacular Christmas Day can be.”

He pulls into the driveway of a low house hidden by a wall. They emerge from the car into a parking court where soft lighting washes upward across the white stucco facade of the house—a boxy structure that blends with the wall concealing the terraced courtyard from the street. A black sky stretches overhead, pierced everywhere by stars. Manning is aware of nothing else, for the courtyard has the privacy of indoor space. Neil removes Manning’s bags from the car and places them at his feet. As the bottoms of the bags scrape the terrace, their sound seems amplified in the stillness.

“Neil, where
are
we?” Manning wonders aloud. “Where’s the city, what happened to the mountain, how far is your nearest neighbor?”

Neil laughs—a satisfied noise that says his efforts have succeeded. “There are houses within thirty feet of us. You’re
standing
on the mountain. And the city’s over there,” he says, pointing through and beyond the house. He picks up the bags and motions with his head for Manning to follow.

They walk through a narrow passage that slits the front wall of the house. There’s a slatted arbor overhead, a boardwalk underfoot. On both sides of the boardwalk, narrow beds sprout with leafy ground cover, cactuses, and little flowering bushes that bear the same red buds Manning still holds in one hand. At the end of the walk is a tall slab of a door, which Neil unlocks and swings open. He reaches inside to switch on a few lights, then steps aside so Manning can enter first, alone.

Manning walks into the room and is drawn to the wall of glass at its opposite end, to the panoramic display of city lights that flow down the side of the mountain then endlessly across the floor of the desert, interrupted only by the dark forms of other mountains. He crosses the room slowly, but with the confidence of having been there many times before, as though the setting were not new to him. Approaching the big windows, he finds that some of them are doors leading to another terrace, similar to the one in front except that it gives the impression not of enclosure, but of openness, like a viewing platform perched above the city below. He opens one of the doors, again as though he has done it before, and steps outdoors.

The dominant feature of the back terrace, other than its view, is a small swimming pool, perfectly square, no more than fifteen feet to a side. Its inside is tiled with black, not blue, making the water’s smooth surface strikingly reflective. Interlocking rectangular decks descend toward the pool, forming ledges for sitting or lounging. The lowest of these decks, at the water’s edge, is covered with long flat cushions upholstered in raw canvas. The stucco walls of the house extend outward from the sides of the building so that the terraces and pool are enclosed on three sides, hidden from the view of other homes, exposed only to the anonymous city and sky.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” says Neil. He has followed Manning through the house and out to the edge of the pool.

Manning turns. He stammers, “I’m … overwhelmed.” He waves his arm in an arc that embraces the house, the pool, the grounds. “Only you could build this. This is yours. This is
you.
” He drops the red flowers from his other hand onto the mat beside the pool and breathes a sigh of admiration for Neil’s talents. “Pretty? It’s sublime.”

Neil tells him, “I was referring to the view, but I’m delighted that you approve of the whole package. Welcome to my home.” He walks toward Manning and extends his arms.

Manning steps forward and for the first time in his life presses his lips to those of another man. He surrenders not only to another person, but to an idea, to the imagined scorn that others will hurl at him, to a drive that has been locked and buried deep within him. How long? he wonders as his tongue probes the teeth of the man whose body clings to his. Why only now? his mind asks, mocking, as he tastes the new substance of their mingled spit. It is a passionate kiss, but its physical message is one of warmth, not lust—not tonight.

Neil finally says, “It’s chilly out here. Let me show you the house.”

Manning obeys without protest, for he is eager to see the full product of Neil’s design talents. They reenter the main room of the house, Neil closing the glass door behind them, switching on more lights. The living room, dining area, and an open kitchen are contained in the one large room, tranquil and elegant, painted a dark, nondescript color. Limestone flooring extends the depth of the house from front to back. Furnishings are sparse and expensive.

Manning’s eye is drawn to an antique console table placed against an otherwise bare wall. The table is five or six feet long, barely more than a foot deep, crafted of honey-colored birch, accented with black trim. A row of shallow drawers runs beneath the mottled marble top, supported by a row of simple, classically proportioned columns that rise from the front of the wooden base. The overall style of the piece is restrained and masculine—offset by Neil’s whimsical addition of bright silk tassels that hang from each of the brass keys in the drawer locks.