Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (9 page)

She greeted Alma warmly, a handshake that was ladylike and proper both. “Mrs. Gilchrist! I’m Mary Patterson, Mr. Kershaw’s personal assistant. It’s a very great pleasure to meet you. He’s spoken of you on so many occasions.”

Alma looked flustered, which only pointed up the difference between them, not just a decade and a half in age, but Mary Patterson’s cool charm contrasting with Alma’s obvious discomfort. “It’s nice to meet you too,” she said.

Jerry, on the other hand, brushed past her with barely concealed haste. “Mr. Kershaw said that I could work in his office.”

“Yes, Dr. Ballard. Mr. Kershaw is waiting for you there. I can show you or if you….”

“I know the way,” Jerry said, and stumped off rapidly down the hall.

Mary Patterson affixed a smile to her ruby lips. “Well. Then I will show you to guest rooms where you can change. Mr. Kershaw said that he hoped you would find everything you need. If you’ll come upstairs?”

Alma frowned after Jerry, but short of dashing after him there wasn’t much she could do.

“We appreciate it so much, Miss Patterson,” Mitch said, his hat in his hand like a gentleman. “Thank you for your trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all, Mr….” Her pretty face brightened. Mitch was handsome, in a broad shouldered, rugged kind of way, and when he put on his best Southern manners women did tend to melt.

“Mitchell Sorley,” he said, putting out his hand. “And the pleasure is mine.”

“Mr. Sorley,” she said. “Thank you.”

Alma cleared her throat, and Lewis realized Mitch had just covered Alma’s uncomfortable moment with perfect smoothness. Oh yes. There was a reason Mitch was an ace.

Mary Patterson led them upstairs. Evening was falling, and the house seemed dim and cool after the bright heat of a Los Angeles day. “The guest rooms are right here,” she said, her hand on the dark carved wood of a Spanish style door. “This one is for Mrs. Gilchrist, and you gentlemen are two doors down. The door between is a bath if you’d like to freshen up.”

“Thank you,” Alma said, pushing open the door.

“Please call if you need anything,” Mary Patterson said. She gave Mitch an especially bright smile and walked away, her heels silent on the tapestry floor runner.

“Right,” Mitch said. “Lewis?”

“Here,” Lewis said, and followed him into the other guest room.

It was large, though probably not one of the house’s grandest, and the windows looked out over the drive. Lewis twitched the sheer under curtain aside to look down at three cars lined up below, waiting for someone to take them around to park. As he watched, an elegantly dressed woman got out of one, her lowered face entirely obscured by the brim of her hat.

He turned to see Mitch watching him, his jacket over his arm. “Don’t let it bug you,” Mitch said. “Henry made a lot of money in the last few years. That’s all. He’s a good mechanic but only a fair pilot. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“It wasn’t bothering me,” Lewis said, letting the curtain fall back into place. “It’s just that this stuff….” His gesture included the two neatly folded mounds of white clothes on the bed.

“Is kind of spooky?” Mitch grinned reassuringly. “I was nervous as hell the first time Gil took me to something. But there’s nothing to worry about with this. It’s a festival. It’s like watching a play. Nobody’s going to expect you to do anything.” He grinned again. “That’s when you should be nervous.”

Lewis nodded seriously. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“If you can or if you want to?” Mitch’s eyes were uncharacteristically keen.

“Either one,” Lewis said.

Mitch clapped him on the shoulder. “I don’t know either. If you can, or if you will. But don’t let Alma bully you into doing something you’re not comfortable with. She can be a force of nature.”

“Alma doesn’t bully me,” Lewis said.

“Then you’re the only man in all creation she doesn’t,” Mitch said. “You’d think Gil would have been able to stand his ground with her, but he didn’t. It’s a good thing, really. Alma has more sense than most people.” Mitch loosened his tie and picked up one of the two bundles of clothes on the bed. “I’m a pilot. I could care less about the business end of things. If Alma didn’t keep the accounts and manage the bookings, I’d be working for Henry, saying ‘Yes, Mr. Kershaw’ and ‘No, Mr. Kershaw’ instead of being part owner.” He picked up the second bundle and tossed it to Lewis. “I think we’re about the same size, so it probably doesn’t matter who gets which one.”

Lewis unfolded the bundle, which turned out to be a long white robe like the one he’d worn back in boys choir, stiff satin smelling just like that, faintly redolent of incense. The front fastened with half a dozen buttons hidden behind a placket. Mitch had taken off his tie and draped it neatly across the bed, then pulled the robe on over his head over pants and shirtsleeves.

Lewis shrugged and started unknotting his own.

“Technically we’re not supposed to wear anything under them,” Mitch said, smoothing out the folds of his sleeves. “But since we’re not doing energy work it doesn’t really matter. And it gets a little drafty.” He grinned at Lewis’ expression. “I expect these are actually choir robes,” Mitch said. “Ordered from a church supply company. Easiest way to fit out a big group, if not as good as sewing your own to specs.”

Lewis digested that for a moment. There was something obscurely comforting about the choir robes. How much scary black magic could you do in a choir robe? “Ok,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Mitch looked him over. “It’s like wearing a uniform,” he said quietly. “It puts everybody on the same footing, emphasizes the similarities. This is our uniform, just like the ones you and I wear in the Reserves.”

“I get that,” Lewis said, and he did. The robe’s weight on his shoulders felt right.

“Good man.” Mitch gave his arm a swift squeeze. “Now let’s go find Al.”

The upstairs hall was dark and quiet, lit by a dim lamp on a console table. Downstairs they could hear the sound of a few voices in the entrance hall. “I’m going to make a pit stop,” Mitch said, putting his hand to the bathroom door. “I’ll catch up to you in a few minutes.”

There wasn’t much Lewis could say to that, and hanging around in the hall seemed awkward. He knocked on the other guest room door. “Alma?”

There was no answer, so he turned the knob carefully and went in. The lamp had been turned off, and a quick glance convinced him she wasn’t here. She must have already finished dressing and gone down. Lewis pulled the door shut and headed for the stairs.

The sun had set, and only the light in the foyer had been turned on. The hall was dim. There might be voices further back in the house, or maybe in the backyard, but here it was quiet. At the far end of the hall that Jerry had hurried off down earlier there was a spill of light through an open door, and cautiously Lewis went toward it. He hadn’t even met the master of the house, and it seemed rude to just wander around like this, like he was rubbernecking or maybe casing the joint. There were voices. Maybe he should go back…. No, it was Jerry’s voice.

“I don’t know what you expect,” Jerry said, and Lewis thought he sounded tired and resigned. “Sometime we have to take some risks. Otherwise we might as well not call ourselves a lodge. What are we? The lodge of ostriches that stick our head in the ground? If we’re not actually going to do anything we might as well pack up.”

Lewis took a few steps closer, his feet silent on the carpet.

Jerry sat in a chair at the massive wooden desk, a Tiffany lamp casting a warm light over the books and papers before him. Alma stood facing him, her back to the door. She wasn’t wearing a choir robe. It was a gown of cream colored silk, pleated and caught in many folds that dropped elegantly from a high waistband, and she wasn’t wearing anything beneath it except her combinations and maybe not that. The folds showed off her height and the curves of her breasts when she raised her arm, silhouetted against the light.

“It’s dangerous, Jerry.”

“Of course it’s dangerous,” Jerry said. “And fascinating and imperative.” She stirred and he forestalled her, his voice low. “Al, this is what I do. This is what I am. You can’t ask me to ignore this. I have to have something left, if this is the only one of my passions I can pursue.”

She took a breath, and Lewis heard the soft regret in her voice. “Oh, Jerry.”

His face froze as he looked past her, seeing Lewis standing there. “Lewis,” he said evenly.

“Hello,” Lewis said, stepping forward into the light, his face flaming. “I was just coming down.”

Alma turned around, and Lewis heartily wished he were anywhere else. That conversation was not meant for his ears. Bad enough that Alma had chosen him over her old friend without him hearing Jerry’s humiliation. He’d thought maybe she didn’t know that Jerry had it bad for her, but clearly this was something that had hung between them for a long time, Jerry playing the gentleman and stepping back for Lewis. Hell, maybe he’d stepped back for Gil too. Lewis felt a wave of sympathy wash over him. It couldn’t be easy, being the one without a whole healthy body and without Alma too. It was understandable if Jerry’s good sportsmanship wore a little thin at times.

“So what are we doing tonight?” Lewis asked, his eyes on Jerry, not Alma, just as if he hadn’t heard a word.

“We’re going to join Henry out by the pool,” Alma said. She didn’t look away from Jerry, and there was a tiny frown between her eyebrows. “And Jerry’s going to work on this tablet for a while longer.”

Jerry nodded. “Just a while, Al. I’ll come out when it starts.”

“Ok.” Alma took Lewis’ arm like he was going to take her in to dinner. “We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Sure,” Jerry said, but he was already turning back to the work before him.

A
lma stood in the doorway from the conservatory to the loggia that overlooked the pool, her arm in Lewis’. Henry hadn’t been kidding that it was a big crowd. There must have been twenty-five people milling around the area near the swimming pool, dressed in various kinds of robes and pseudo-Egyptian finery. Most of them had congregated by the open bar, where a white-jacketed bartender was serving, oblivious to any strangeness. It had been a long time since she’d been to anything this big, and never something quite this fancy. There had been some big ones right after the war, before the lodge split. It felt like a million years ago, on the other side of a dark divide, back when she’d been almost entirely sure that everything would work out.

Of course it hadn’t. The wages of sin, some might say. Piss poor luck, Gil would have said, and she could almost hear him say it in imagination. Talking with the dead had always been beyond her, and while she could do a better job of finding a competent medium than almost anyone, so far she’d resisted the temptation. It would be like smelling food but being unable to taste.

“Ok?” Lewis asked.

Alma gave him a sideways smile. “Absolutely,” she said.

Henry had spotted her and was coming around the pool, leaning in to kiss her on both cheeks in a very European way. “Alma! You can’t guess how delighted I am that you decided to come tonight. You look exquisite.”

“This is a beautiful robe,” Alma said, leaning in to his gesture. “And you look good yourself, Henry.”

“Thanks.” Henry took a step back, looking Lewis up and down like a stereotypical movie dad. “So who’s this?”

“Henry, I’d like you to meet Lewis Segura. He’s been working with us.” At Gilchrist Aviation, Alma added silently, knowing that Henry would take it for something else. “I don’t believe you met during the war since he was on the Western Front, not in Italy.”

“Mr. Segura,” Henry said, offering his hand.

“Mr. Kershaw.” Lewis took it without hesitation. “I’ve heard you’re a pilot.”

“Well, you’ve heard right,” Henry laughed. “You too? Alma does run to a type.”

“I fly,” Lewis said modestly, and Alma knew better than to give him a testimonial. It would just make him sound like an amateur, and make her sound enamored.

“He has the DSC,” Mitch said, joining them, his white robe smooth over the collar beneath it. “So yeah, Henry. He’s pretty fair.”

Henry laughed. “Says the ace with seven kills! Ok, I’ll take that as the last word!”

Lewis tried to look humble, something Mitch had down to an art.

“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Segura,” Henry said. “I hope you’ll have a drink and relax.”

“Thank you,” Lewis said.

Alma steered him away from Henry toward the bar, leaving Mitch in conversation. She lifted her head in response to the faint breeze blowing across the pool, feeling it cool against her cheeks. “Let’s get a drink.”

“Ok,” Lewis said. He seemed perfectly comfortable, and she was glad.

“Thank you for coming with us,” she said.

“It’s no trouble.” Lewis gave her his lopsided smile. “How often do I get a chance to go to a Hollywood party?”

“I don’t either,” Alma said. She glanced at the bartender. “A gin fizz, please.”

“Same,” Lewis said.

It was a little surreal, watching the stars come out dimly over the hills, faded to nothing by the lights of the city. In Colorado the air was clear and the stars bright, bright as they were in the air, navigating by them like some wayward explorer. A clear night, with the moonlight to cast the ground in sharp relief, and the stars to guide by….

“You look really beautiful,” Lewis said, and she looked around. His hazel eyes were warm, lingering on her face like his hand against her cheek.

“Oh,” she said.

“I’m glad you told me about this,” Lewis said. “I really am.” He glanced around the pool, the milling people, Mitch still talking to Henry. Jerry had come out and joined them, leaning on his cane. He hadn’t changed, and his suit was a dark spot amid the white.

“I was afraid to,” Alma said frankly. She supposed Gil had been, when he’d told her things that would have sent any sane woman running for the hills.

Somewhere at the other end of the terrace unseen musicians struck up the opening chords of something Stravinsky. They were probably behind the white canvas marquee tent that hid proceedings around the pool from the neighbors. Rite of Spring, Alma thought. Of course. Suitable background music. From the tent emerged a slow procession, four young women in white gowns walking decorously, sistrums shaking in their hands, followed by four robed men carrying what looked like a gilt covered canoe laden with fruit. Well, as sacred barges went it probably wasn’t too far off, Alma thought. It did the job.