The one test they face that others don't is the test of celebrity itself. Even then we watch. Someday it will be us in a spotlight, and examples are always welcome.
Whatever happened, I thought, to the airplane pilot from the fields of the Midwest? Had he turned so swiftly from simple flyer into frilly playboy?
I got up and walked across my empty house to the kitchen, found a bowl of corn chips gradually going stale, walked back to the Eames chair by the picture window and looked out over the lake.
Me, a playboy? Ridiculous. I haven't changed, inside, hardly a bit changed.
Do all frilly playboys say that, Richard?
A Piper Cub from the seaplane school next door practiced glassy-water landings ... the long slow descent, power-on, and gentle touch on glistening Lake Theresa, then a step-turn and taxi back for takeoff.
The spotlight, it showed me how to hide, where to build walls. Everyone has plates of iron and rows of spikes somewhere inside that say this is as far as you go with me.
For the outgoing, recognition's fun. They don't mind the cameras; cameras come with the territory, and there are some pretty fine people behind those lenses. I can be nice as long as they can be nice, and about two minutes longer.
Such was the height of my wall that day in Florida. Most of the people who knew me from a talk-show here or a magazine cover there or a newspaper story across the way were people who couldn't know how grateful I was for their courtesy, for their respect of privacy.
I was surprised at the mail, glad for the family of readers to whom the strange ideas that I loved made sense. There were many people out there, inquisitive learning men and women every race age nation, every kind of experience. The family was so much larger than I had imagined!
Side-by-side with the delightful letters, once in a while came a few strange ones: write my idea; get me published; give me money or you'll burn in hell.
For the family I felt happy close warmth, sent postcards to reply; against the others was another ton of iron bolted to my wall, daggers welded along the top, rag of a welcome-mat snatched away.
I was a more private person than ever I thought. Had I
not known myself before, or was I changing? More and more, I chose to stay alone at home, that day and that month and those years. Stuck with my big house and nine airplanes and cobweb decisions I'd never make again.
I looked up from the floor to the photographs on the wall. There were pictures of airplanes that mattered to me. Not one human being there, not a single person. What had happened to me? I used to like who I was. Did I like me still?
I walked down the stairs to the hangar, pushed out the airshow biplane and slid into the cockpit. I met Kathy in this airplane, I thought.
Shoulder harness, seat belts, mixture rich, fuel pump ON, ignition ON. Such promise unfulfilled, and she's pushing me now about marriage. As though I've never told her the evils marriage brings, nor shown her I'm only part of the perfect man for her.
"Clear the prop!" I called from habit into the empty place, pressed the starter.
Half a minute after takeoif I was rolling inverted, climbing 2,000 feet per minute, the wind blasting over my helmet and goggles. Love it. A super-slow roll, first, to a sixteen-point. Sky clear? Ready? Now!
The green flat land of Florida; lakes and swamps rose majestically, immensely from my right, turned huge and wide over my head, set to my left.
Level. Then VAM! VAM! VAM! VAM! around went the land in sudden hard jerks, sixteen times. Pull straight up to a hammerhead stall, press left rudder, dive straight down, wind howling in the wires between the stubby wings, and push the stick forward to recover 160 mph upside-down. I threw my head back and looked up at the earth. Stick suddenly full back, hard right rudder, the biplane reared, stalled
her right wings and spun twice around, a skygreen earthblue doubletwist; stick forward left rudder and HN! she stopped, wings-level inverted.
A split-S to squash me five Gs into the seat, tunnel my vision to a tiny hole of clear surrounded in grey, dive to a hundred feet over my practice-area and then through the routine again at low-level, airshow-height.
It clears the mind, Spanish moss roaring up toward one's windscreen, a swamp full of cypress and alligators rolling three hundred degrees per second around one's helmet.
The heart stays lonely.
twelve
HERE HAD been not a word between us for minutes.
Leslie Parrish sat quietly on her side of the walnut-and-pine chessboard, I sat on mine. For nine moves in a breath-stopping midgame, the room was silent save for the soft thock of a knight or queen moved into place or out of it, an occasional hm or eek as lines of force swung open on the board, clanged shut.
Chess-players sketch their portraits in the motion of their pieces. Ms. Parrish neither bluffed nor deceived. She played eyes-open straight-on power chess.
I watched her through my laced fingers and smiled, even though she had just captured my bishop and threatened next move to take a knight I could ill afford to lose.
I had first seen that face years before, we had first touched in the most important of ways. By coincidence.
"Going up?" she called, and ran across the lobby to the elevator.
"Yes." I held the door open till she was inside. "Where you headed?"
"Three, please," she said. Three was my floor, too.
The door paused a second, softly rumbled shut.
Bluegrey eyes glanced my way in thanks. I held the glance for less than a quarter-second, to tell her that it had been my pleasure to wait, then politely looked away. Darn politeness, I thought. What a lovely face! Had I seen her in movies? Television? I dared not ask.
We rode upward in silence. She was as tall as my shoulder, golden hair swirled and tucked under a spice-color cap. Not dressed like a movie-star: faded work-shirt under a surplus Navy coat, bluejeans, leather boots. Such a beautiful face!
She's here on location for the film, I thought. Is she a technician on the crew?
What pleasure it would be, to know her. But she's so far ... Isn't it interesting, Richard, how infinitely far away she is? You two are standing thirty inches apart, yet there's no way to bridge the gulf and say hello.
If only we could invent a way, I thought, if only this were a world when unmet people could say you charm me and I'd like to know who you are. With a code: "No thanks," if the charm might not be mutual.
But that world hadn't yet been made. The half-minute ride finished without a word. Softly the door rumbled open.
"Thank you," she said. Barely on the walk side of running, she hurried down the hall to her room,
opened the door, entered, closed it behind her and left me alone in the corridor.
I wish you didn't have to leave, I thought, entering my own room, two doors from hers. I wish you didn't have to run away.
By moving my knight, I could shift pressures on the board, blunt her attack. She had an advantage, but she hadn't won, not yet.
Of course! I thought. N-QN5! Threaten NxP, NxR!
I moved the piece, and watched her eyes once more, pleasuring in beauty strangely unflickered by my counterattack.
A year after our meeting in the elevator, I had brought suit against the director of that film, over changes he had made in the script without my approval. Even though he was required by the court to take my name off the credits and reverse some of the worst changes, I could hardly keep from smashing furniture while discussing the matter directly with him. A mediator had to be found with whom each of us could speak.
The mediator turned out to be actress Leslie Par-rish, the woman who had shared the ride with me from the lobby to floor three.
Rage melted, talking with her. She was calm and reason-I trusted her at once.
Now Hollywood wanted to turn the latest book into a film. I swore I'd see the story burned before I'd let it be wrecked on screen. If it were to be made, would it best be made by my own company? Leslie was the one person I trusted in Hollywood, and
I flew to Los Angeles to talk with her once more.
On the side-table in her office had been a chessboard.
Office chess-sets are most often designers' whims, fancy things with queens like bishops like pawns, pieces scattered in random wrong places. This set was a wooden tournament Staunton, three-and-a-half-inch king on a fourteen-inch board, white-corner square to the players' right, knights facing forward.
"Time for a quick game?" I had said when the meeting was finished. I was not the best chess-player in town; neither was I the worst. I've been playing the game since I was seven, and had a certain arrogant confidence at the board.
She had looked at her watch. "OK," she had said.
That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.
The next meeting, we played for best two games out of three.
The next month we formed a corporation. She set to work to find a way to make the film with the lowest probability of disaster, and we played for best six games out of eleven.
After that there were no meetings required. I'd strap myself into my newest airplane, eight tons of ex-Air Force jet trainer, climb to 35,000 feet and fly from Florida out Jet Fifty to Los Angeles to spend a day at chess with Leslie.
Our games became less tournamental, words allowed, cookies and milk at table.
"Richard, you beast," she frowned over the pieces. Her side of the board was in real trouble.
"Yes," said I smugly. "I am a clever beast."
"But . . . check with the knight," she said, "and check with the bishop, and guard your queen! Isn't that a pretty move?"
Blood drained from my face. Check I had expected. Guard-your-queen was a surprise.
"Pretty indeed," I said, years of emergency-training forcing me casual. "My goodness . . . Hm . . . There's a move to be framed, it's so pretty. But I shall slip like a shadow away. Somehow like a shadow, Ms. Parrish, the Beast shall slip away. . . ."
Sometimes the beast twisted free, others he was herded into a corral and checkmated, only to be reborn half-a-cookie later, trying once more to catch her in his traps.
What strange alchemy between us! I assumed that she had a variety of men for her romances as I had women for mine. Assuming was enough; neither of us pried, each was infinitely respectful of the other's privacy.
Then once hi the middle of chess she said, "There's a movie tonight at the Academy that I ought to see. The director might be good for us to think about. Want to come along?"
"Love to," I said absently, tending my defense against her king-side attack.
I had never been inside the theater of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; I was glamour-struck driving past the building. But here was I inside, watching a new film with a crowd of movie-stars. How odd, I thought. My simple life of flying is all at once connected to the inside
of Hollywood by a book and a friend who beats me often as not at ray favorite game.
After the movie, as she drove us east on Santa Monica Boulevard through the twilight, I was struck by inspiration:
"Leslie, would you care to ..."
The silence was so tantalizing she said, "Would I care to what?"
"Leslie, would you care for a hot fudge sundae?"
She recoiled. "A what?"
"Hot . . . fudge . . . sundae. And a round of chess?"
"What a depraved thought!" she said. "The hot fudge, I mean. Haven't you noticed that I live on seeds and raw vegetables and yogurt and only rarely even a chess-cookie?"
"M. Noticed I have. That is why you need a hot fudge sundae. How long has it been? Honest, now. If it was last week you have to say last week."
"Last week? Last year! Do I look like I've been eating sundaes? Look at me!"
For the first time, I did. I sat back and blinked to discover what the dimmest male saw at once, that here was an extraordinarily attractive woman, that the thought that had built the exquisite face had also built a body to match.
In the months I had known her, she had been a charming bodyless sprite, a mind that was a dancing challenge, a reference-book of film production, classical music, politics, ballet.
"Well? Would you say I've been living on sundaes?"
"Beautiful! That is, no! That is definitely NOT a hot fudge body! Let me say this for certain ..." I was blushing. What a stupid thing, I thought, for a grown man . . . Richard, change the subject fast!
"One little sundae," I said swiftly, "it wouldn't be harm,
it would be happiness. If you can make a turn there through traffic, we can get our hands on a pair of hot fudges, small ones, right now. ..."
She looked at me, flashed a smile to assure me our friendship was safe; she knew that I had noticed her body for the first time, and she didn't mind. But her men-friends, I thought, would mind indeed, and that could bring problems.
Without discussion, without a word to her, I erased the idea of her body from my thought. For romance I had my perfect woman; for a friend and business-partner I needed to keep Leslie Parrish just the way she was.
thirteen
"IT'S NOT the end of the world," Stan said quietly, even before I had settled in the chair on the other side of his desk. "It's what we could call a bit of a reverse. The West Coast Commodity Exchange collapsed yesterday. They filed for bankruptcy. You've lost a little money."
My financial manager was always understated, which is why my jaw tightened at his words. "How little have we lost, Stan?"
"About six hundred thousand dollars," he said, "five hundred ninety-some thousand."
"Gone?"
"Oh, someday you might get a few cents on the dollar from the bankruptcy court," he said. "I'd consider it gone."
I swallowed. "Glad we're diversified. How go things at the Chicago Board of Trade?"
"You've had some setbacks there, too. Temporary, I'm
sure. You're having the longest string of losses I've ever charted. It can't go on like this forever, but for the time being it's not the best. You're down about eight hundred thousand dollars."
He was talking about more money than I had! How could I lose more than I had? On paper, he must mean. It's a paper loss. People cannot lose more money than they have.
If I could learn anything about money, maybe it would be well to pay closer attention to this business. But I would have to study for months, and money-handling is not like flying, it is suffocating dull stuff; even the pictures aren't easy to follow.
"It's not as bad as it sounds," he said. "A loss of a million dollars will cut your taxes to zero; you've lost more than that so you won't be paying a cent of income tax this year. But if I had a choice, I'd choose not to have lost it."
I felt no anger, no despair, as though I had stumbled into a situation comedy, as though by turning fast enough in my chair I'd find television cameras and a studio audience instead of Stan's office wall.
Unknown writer makes millions, loses them overnight. Isn't that some worn cliche? Is this really my life? While Stari explained the disasters, I wondered.
People with million-dollar incomes, they've always been somebody else. I, on the other hand, have always been me. I'm an airplane pilot, a barnstormer selling rides from hayfields. I'm a writer as rarely as possible, when forced by an idea too lovely to let die unwritten . . . what is the likes of me doing with a bank account of more than a hundred dollars which is all anyone could possibly need at one time anyway?
"Might as well tell you, while you're here," Stan went on
uietly. "The investment you made through Tamara, that high-interest, government-backed foreign development loan? Her client disappeared with the money. It was only fifty thousand dollars, but you ought to know."
I couldn't believe it. "He's her friend, Stan! She trusted him! And he's gone?"
"Left no forwarding address, as they say." He studied my face. "Do you trust Tamara?"
Oh, my. Please not that cliche^ Pretty woman takes rich fool for fifty
grand?
"Stan, are you saying that Tamara had something to do. . . ?"
"Possible. It looks to me like her handwriting on the back of the check. Different name, same handwriting."
"You're not serious."
He unlocked a file drawer, brought out an envelope, handed me a canceled check. SeaKay Limited, it was endorsed, by Wendy Smythe. High sweeping capital letters, graceful descenders on the y's. Had I seen those on an envelope, I would have sworn it was a note from Tamara.
"That could be anybody's writing," I said, and handed it back across the desk.
Stan didn't say another word. He was convinced that she had the money. But Tamara was my department; there would be no investigating unless I asked for it. I'd never ask, never say a word about it to her. And I'd never trust her again.
"You do have some money left," he said. "And of course there's new income, every month. After a long streak of bad luck, the market has to turn. Now, you could put the remaining assets in foreign currency. I have a hunch the dollar
might fall against the Deutschmark any time now, so that you might earn your losses back, overnight."
"It's beyond me," I said- "Do what you think's best, Stan."
For all the warning-lights flashing and danger-bells clanging, my empire could have been a nuclear powerplant three minutes to melt-down.
At last I stood, picked my flying-jacket from the arm of the couch.
"Someday we'll look back on this as our low point," I told him. "From here on things can only get better, can't they?"
As if he hadn't heard, he said, "One more thing I've been meaning to tell you. It's not easy. Do you know that saying: Tower corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? Well, it does. I think that might be true for me, too."
I didn't know what he meant, and I was afraid to ask. His face was impassive. Stan, corrupted? Not possible. I had looked up to him for years, I couldn't question his honesty. "That might be true for me" could only mean that on an expense account, one time, he might have overcharged a little, by mistake. And corrected it, of course, but felt guilty nevertheless, duty-bound to tell me. And clearly if he were telling me now, he intends no such mistakes again.