The Taste of Gravy

The stewardess started talking about seat belts and cigarettes. He swallowed away the growing tightness in his ears as they settled down through the blowy night. First class was thinly populated. He yawned and gathered up the paperwork he had spread across the empty seat and the two service tables and put the raw data along with the almost-finished report into his dispatch case.

He looked at the time and felt disoriented. Ten past nine. Airplanes are never so early.

"Helen?" he said. The stewardess stopped and turned and came back to his seat.

"Yes, Mr. Catlett?"

"What's going on? We're off schedule, aren't we?"

"Gee, I guess you didn't hear the announcement. We diverted to Syracuse. (continued on page 220)Taste of Gravy(continued from page 159) That's where we are now."

"Why?"

"Some gadget isn't working the way they think it ought to work, something to do with the directional-beam stuff, and it's all blind at Kennedy and clear here. It's a standing order, if that particular gadget acts funny, go no farther. They say replacement is like thirty minutes, so make it an hour, and we were already forty minutes behind schedule. Sorry about all this. Why should I feel it's my personal fault, huh?"

"Because it is, it is," he said, smiling.

She hurried on. He slid the dispatch case under his seat. He made himself relax. CatCo East would have a limousine waiting and the comfortable corporate suite would be waiting. He could finish the report on the Syracuse-to-Kennedy leg. Not exactly a report. A proposal. The meeting was set for ten in the morning, and by then there would be ten perfect copies of the report for study and discussion.

A gust shuddered the descending aircraft. The stewardess woke the girl across the aisle. The girl tilted her seat up and the stewardess put the pillow overhead. She was a big girl, young, with a strong pale face now blank with sleep. She wore a pants suit in a shade of rust he did not care for. She wore it over a white high-throated sweater, a jangle of gold necklaces. Her hair was dark blonde, heavy and healthy.

She hunched and shivered and thumbed her hair back, then cupped her hands against the black glass and tried to see out. A city was tilting down there. He saw traffic on an interstate and soon the speed-blurred runway lights. They were down with squawk of rubber, a little wind waver.

The captain spoke over the intercom with a brassy voice, saying that they could wait in the boarding lounge if they desired. Don't go too far.

Catlett stayed aboard. The girl got off, wearing a limp leather shoulder bag the size and shape of a rural mailbox. After leafing through a magazine, he got off and went through the waiting room and along the corridor that led to the main part of the terminal. He bought a paper and sat at the counter in the coffee shop and checked the closing on CatCo. Twenty and three eighths. And holding. It had varied a quarter of a point up and down all day on over 26,000 shares traded.

He heard flight 509 announced ready for reboarding. Last call, they said. First, last and only. So he lengthened his stride going down the corridor. Ahead of him he saw the big girl in the rust-colored suit involved in some kind of hassle at the check point.

As he got up to her, he heard her say in a deep husky voice, "I don't care if your buzzer rings, friend. I've got nothing on me to ring it."

Catlett walked through the little electronic arch and a buzzer rang. He walked three strides before he realized what it meant.

"Hold it, you, there!" the guard said just as he stopped. "Come on back here," he said, hand on his gun.

"Their goddamn toy is busted," the tall girl said to him. "They're waiting for some matron person to come to search me. Listen, you with the gun, I've got to get on that airplane."

A small Eurasian girl stood behind the table, looking worried. The tall girl's big shoulder bag was on the wooden table, all searched and cleared.

"Empty your pockets," the guard told Catlett.

"I really don't think there's time. I haven't got anything on me that--"

"Empty your pockets, I said!"

"He's a doll," the tall girl said.

"May I suggest you ask that little girl who's assisting you, officer, to walk through the arch?"

"Huh?"

"Just to see if she rings it, too."

The guard's forehead wrinkled up. "OK, Annie. Go on through."

"At a dead run, please," the tall girl said.

The little attendant also rang the buzzer.

"You got anything at all on you, Annie, that could--"

"Nothing. You know. Nothing, Dave."

"We really don't want to miss our flight, officer."

"Well, go ahead...."

The girl was a few feet behind him when he got to the boarding lounge. It was empty. He went to the window and saw 509 moving rapidly out toward the designated take-off runway.

The girl stood beside him, almost his height in her platform shoes, and breathing hard from running, her breath misting the glass.

"Oh, boy," she said. "Great! Don't they count heads or something? The one time you don't need a big rush, there they go."

"Inconvenient, all right."

"Got any ideas?" she asked.

"I think we check Allegheny first."

She smiled. "Want to be the leader?"

"I'll give it a try."

She put her hand out. "I'm Sheila Christopher. Sheil for short."

"Paul Catlett. How do you do."

"Poorly, at the moment, Paul Catlett. Oh, that absolute idiot! Is that us out there? Yes. Wait a minute. I want to see my luggage take off."

He stood with her and watched 509 take off, big headlights bright on the runway, red and green navigation lights blinking. It lifted into the clear windy night, toward a diamond sky. He turned away and suddenly she took hold of his forearm with such shocking strength it made him gasp. He turned back toward her and saw her staring, her eyes wide and mouth slack, sagging open. He thought for an instant she was having some sort of seizure, but then he looked toward 509 and saw a long trail of orange flame, a dirty orange that made an arc, a gentle long curve toward the ground. There was a sudden bloom of orange-and-white flame that made him think of those television pictures from the Cape, when the booster separated and it would look for a few moments as if the whole rocket had blown up. The bigger blossom of fire continued along the same arc, while smaller burning pieces fell out of it. It coasted down out of the sky and disappeared behind a distant hill, and then a bigger flare lit up all of the night. Moments later, there was an audible "Whumpf" sound that shook the big window.

Sheil Christopher turned into his arms quite blindly, bumping her forehead against his right eyebrow. She hugged at him with strength, saying, "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God."

He held her and thought of Helen, the stewardess, who had remembered his name from another time or from television.

There were sirens then. Hoarse shouts inside the terminal corridors. She pulled back away from him, snuffed and dug into her purse for a tissue. She blinked at him and tried to smile. "I can't...I just can't seem to...."

"Come on," he said, and he turned her and led her back toward the main part of the terminal. There seemed to be a great deal of running and shouting going on. He look her into the cocktail lounge, to a banquette table in a dark corner, and sat across from her, his back to the room.

The waitress said, "There's been a crash, folks. On take-off."

"W-we saw it g-going down..." Sheil said. She cleared her throat. "Bourbon on the rocks, please?"

"Sure, honey. In a hurry, huh?"

"Two doubles. Wild Turkey, if you have it," he said.

"I think so."

She slid her hand across the table toward him and he knew she was not even aware of the gesture. He took her hand and held it, not speaking and not releasing it even when the drinks arrived.

She drank, shuddered, pulled her hand free and gave him a wan smile. "It was so damned casual, Paul. You know? Sort of floating and unreal. Fireworks at the country club. It if hadn't been for that broken search thing and that dumb ugly guard.... Excuse me. I keep getting a funny kind of chill."

"I know."

"Suppose the airline lost my bags. I would have been furious! I would have had the uglies like you never saw before. But all my stuff is gone for good and right now I couldn't care less. All those poor people! Where did you get on?"

"Los Angeles."

"Me, too. Did you see those twins come on?"

"No."

"Dear little boys. British, I think. Very correct and polite. What a damned terrible waste, Paul. I know they didn't get off in Chicago. I was awake then and watching for them. Are you reacting at all? What are you thinking? I mean really."

He reached for the casual answer and then changed his mind. "Really? I keep thinking about the work I did on the plane and I keep wondering if I made any mistakes in the projections, and I keep thinking that I will never know. I try to think of other parts of it, of the people, but my mind keeps wheeling back to that work I did. I think it's some kind of protective reaction. I think of the work because I can't quite make myself think of all the rest of it. Like trying to touch a hot stove."

"Maybe the other part of it is that the work didn't really mean as much as you thought it meant."

He stared across at her. His eyes were used to the muted light. He thought she would be better looking if she accented her colorless brows and lashes. Her face looked too blunt and fleshy and unreadable.

"Or," he said slowly, "it meant too much to me."

"You're saying the same thing another way, right?"

"I guess so. I guess we've got phone calls to make."

"I know."

"They'll cut into television and radio programs with a spot news flash on this one. There will be people worrying about us."

"I know."

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know. I don't know if I can say it. I have the feeling that something...valuable has happened to me. I want to sort of sit back and put it together and see what it says to me. If I go rushing about, inserting myself back into place, right where I was before, then I won't know what this meant. God, I sound as if this great booze got to me."

"I think I know what you mean. But isn't that a big ego trip, really?"

"How?"

"You want to find out how much people really care. That's the rationale of a suicide, isn't it?"

"Who are you? I keep thinking I know you from someplace."

"It happens to a lot of people. I spent a full day on television a couple of months ago."

She frowned. "Catlett? Paid Catlett? Watergate stuff?"

"No. It was whether or not I got--or my company got--special favors from the Securities and Exchange Commission."

She nodded. "Now I remember. Sure. And you were sort of orchestrating the whole thing; I mean, you had those lawyers on one side and that assistant-boss type on the other, and those guys behind you, handing you papers over your shoulder. You were really articulate. I mean, I liked hearing you talk. I got hooked for a half hour or so and then I turned it off when it got into financial money."

"That's the best kind."

"Why don't you ever say my name? It's strange. I keep calling you Paul. Now I feel funny about that, knowing who you are."

"Sheil, don't feel strange."

"How old are you?"

"Almost forty."

"You look more like thirty, really. Married?"

"Technically, yes. Twice. You?"

"Me? Hardly. You have kids?"

"By my first wife. Two. Aged fifteen and sixteen, and legally adopted by her second husband."

"What happened tonight has to mean something."

"Not necessarily."

"Haven't you ever wondered what would happen in the world if you were dead?"

"Everybody thinks about that at times. I guess it is one of the standard fantasies."

"You know, it would be a lot easier if the terrible shock of seeing our flight go down made us...lose our memories for a while. Then we could find out if we're who we think we are. Or were. I mean find out who we are, really. What could you lose?"

"I could lose a year and a half of very tricky maneuvering, designed to extricate me from what used to be called the executive suite, and spring me on an unsuspecting world with enough golden booty to last me forever."

"Golden booty! Listen to him. Then what? Tropical islands? Beautiful girls? And all the toys a boy could ask for?"

"It isn't that simple, Sheil. I spent some hot years moving too fast. I put three and three together and made eleven. I built something so big there is a lot less there than meets the eye. So they have been tracking me down. Steal from the wolves and they come after you. There is a primitive way to get rid of wolves. You freeze a very sharp knife, blade up, against the ice, with a little frozen gravy on the sides of the blade. The wolves lick the blade. It is so cold they can't feel it slicing their tongues. They taste fresh blood, their own, and keep at it until they swoon and freeze. While I am far away, over the icecap and the mountains, and down the other side."

She stared at him. "Jesus! That is horrible!"

"Tomorrow morning I am supposed to be in New York, putting gravy on the blade."

"I sure don't like the way you explain it. Can't you...keep hold of what you are doing and make it live up to what it is supposed to be?"

"The analysts call that internal growth. I might make it. I might not. I wouldn't know. I think I'm very tired of trying. I think I am very tired of what I do and tired of the people who work for me, tired of lawyers and hearings and judgments, tired of Annabelle and her little affairs."

"Your wife?"

"My second."

"She cheats?"

"Frequently. And then she is very sorry, when caught. She's very lovely."

"And she must be out of her skull."

"Not really. I'm a victim of the male ego. I thought that a few years ago, when she cheated with me, I was the excepiion rather than the rule. I was so overwhelmingly fascinating nobody else would ever catch her eye."

"You don't hate her, do you?"

"No. I'm just tired of her, along with a lot of the other furniture of my life."

"That about Annabelle makes me feel weird."

"Why should it?"

"It's me. I'm not what you call lovely. This guy I go with, he's with NBC in Burbank, out there six months now and he hasn't moved his wife out from New York, because he didn't know how long he'd be there. We began to happen after he was there a month. Do I love him? I don't know. I really don't. The physical part is fantastic. He's hooked. So I've been testing my muscle, you know? Now we're taking a cruise together out of New York. He had to fix time off and make up some lies. Fifteen days. I'd decided that if I could get Don on that boat for fifteen days, he'd come home and ask for a divorce and marry me. Now I don't think it's such a great idea. But I don't know what else to do with my life right now, this year. You know?"

"If you're not a hundred and ten percent certain...."

"OK. Neither are you. Of anything. And we've got this chance to change things. Right? I've got three hundred dollars. What have you got?"

"Half that, I guess."

"So we buy a couple of cheap flight bags and toilet stuff and drip-dry things right here in the airport. With a can of hair spray, Paul, I could fix your hair line and that droopy mustache so you'd look a lot different. Then we take a night-coach flight South. We can hole up someplace like along the Gulf Coast, Mobile or Biloxi, where nobody will know us or give a damn. Dare you? Double dare you?"

Her eyes were very blight. He felt his heart lift for the first time in a year. He felt a hollow excitement in his belly. He reached to grasp her extended, challenging hand....

• • •

The girl was a few feet behind him when he got to the boarding lounge. It was empty. But through the window he could see the gray gleaming bulk of flight 509. He hurried through the canvas tunnel. Helen stood inside the doorway looking worried, then smiled when she saw him and the girl. She said to the man with the clipboard, "These are the last two. Thanks."

"Sorry about the delay," Catlett said. "We kept ringing the buzzer on their metal detector. It was out of adjustment."

"And they were being absolute idiots about it," the girl said.

They took their seats. The door was closed and dogged shut and they moved slowly back. He clinched his seat belt and looked over at the girl and saw the initials on the copper medallion on her purse, s. c. The girl smiled at him and said, "Thanks. If you hadn't suggested he let that cute little girl try, we'd still be there."

He wanted to tell her that he was very sorry they couldn't fly down to Biloxi together. But there is no way to apologize to the object of a fantasy, a sexual fantasy at that, a big strong, able girl. She would be confused, then irritated, and then probably alarmed.

Soon the runway lights merged into a long white line and he felt the aircraft lift off. And now, he thought, the way my luck has been running, the long orange flame, a dirty, smoky orange flame, will start to trail out behind us and....

Ironic amusement turned into a moment of pure terror. From forehead to knees, his skin leaked a sudden sweat, and his bowels cramped and roiled. Then it faded slowly, slowly, and he could look down and see the ground lights, with the first clouds of the front beginning to hide them intermittently. So much for extrasensory perception, Catlett.

He forced himself to finish his report. A proposal. Gravy on the blade. He leaned back when he was through and looked over at her. Fantasy, yes, but not a sexual fantasy. More of a freedom fantasy. An ever-more-compelling need to change the way things are. Change for the sake of change. He pinched the bridge of his nose and startled himself with the sudden feeling he was going to cry.

Flights were stacked over the three airports. They were a long time awaiting their turn. The captain was picking up local news. The ice storm had finally hit. They might get in and they might not. They might have to go elsewhere. But they were at last given permission to land.

After taxiing, as they were waiting for an unloading spot, he said to the girl, "Where are you headed?"

"Huh? Oh. Sixty-fifth near Second. Why?"

"Do you have transportation?"

"No. I don't."

"There'll be a company car there to pick me up. It may be the only way you can get into the city in less than forever."

"Well, sir, I have this pumpkin and these mice waiting there, and I wouldn't want--"

He laughed. "No strings. A friendly offer."

"OK, friend with friendly offer. I'm Sarah Cramer and you are Mr. Paul Catlett. I've been trying not to like you."

It startled him. "Why?"

"I saw all of your command performance."

"What did I do wrong, Miss Cramer?"

"I guess you were...are...a sign of the times. You know. Sleek and tricky. And you don't give a damn about anything but your own skin and your money. And power. I have the feeling I'm talking myself out of a ride."

"A person can get trapped into a situation where they have to argue a point of view they don't completely believe."

"Can they? Really and truly? Do you believe that crap?"

He smiled. "I keep trying to believe it in order to stay sane, Sarah."

She shrugged helplessly. "Damn you, I would rather dislike you. You know that. I hate to give up a moral position."

"You don't have to. What do you do with your life?"

"I'm a travel agent."

"And you sell the customer exactly what the posters and the literature and the travel folders tell him to expect?"

"Well...everybody knows that--"

"So nobody is ever let down. Nobody feels cheated."

"Let me up, please, sir."

"OK. You're up. And we can get off."

• • •

Harvey Ingleton was waiting there for him when he came off the plane. Ingleton was wearing his habitual expression, earnest anxiety. Catlett introduced the girl and said they would be giving her a lift into town. Ingleton said that he would go get the car and driver and bring them around to such and such an exit from the terminal. He said he had a good secretary on stand-by and perhaps they could stop there before dropping Miss Cramer. And leave the report?

Sarah Cramer pointed out her large and heavy suitcase and he lifted it off the merry-go-round and gave the guard her baggage check. The limousine, long and black and agleam under a fresh speckling of ice, was waiting where promised. The driver hopped out and stowed the suitcase and Catlett's carry-on bag in the trunk. Ingleton hesitated and stayed in front with the driver. Catlett got in the back with Sarah Cramer. And his dispatch case. "This beats a pumpkin," she said contentedly.

It was a hairy night, a slow trip. Cars slid into one another, blocking lanes. They had to wait motionless amid the blare of idiotic horns time after time. Catlett and the girl talked. He could hear himself going on and on. A talking jag. It was a symptom. It always happened when a big decision loomed. He could hear himself, like some frantic bore, picking his best stories out of his past and holding them up for her, to make her laugh, to make her feel close to him.

They had to stop on the bridge. Wind buffeted the big car. The noisy night gave them privacy, closed away from the two men in the front seat by the curtain of storm sound.

She said, "I'm a reincarnation person. A lot of people think it is absolute nonsense. But they can't prove it can't happen, just as I can't prove it can. Right? So what I mean is, I have a weird feeling about you, about us. As if we knew each other before. Do you know what I mean?"

"In some other life?"

"Or in one to come. We remember the ones to come as easily as we remember the ones we've had. Time is a circle and we keep going by the same places, over and over."

"All right. We met and our lives were not satisfying to us and we ran away together, to Biloxi, Mississippi."

"Hey! You're fun, you know? How did we make it?"

"We didn't make it at all. It wasn't right for us."

She cocked her head. "At least I can be sure you really don't want to con me into anything, because what you would have said, you would have said we were great, we were fantastic. Hey! Paul Catlett!" She put finger tips under his eye. "Why tears, man? What is it?"

"Maybe there should be more lives than one, and I miss the ones I wont have." His voice was thick and shaky.

She looked at the men in front, then leaned and hugged him quickly, one time, soft cheek touching his. "It's OK. It will be OK."

They moved off the bridge and turned downtown. The change of route made it easier to drop her first. The car stopped under a light. As the driver got her suitcase out, she dug a card out of her billfold and gave it to Catlett, after penciling a number on the back.

"Here's where you can get me if...you want to run through that Biloxi bit again. And thanks."

As the driver took her suitcase into the apartment building, Ingleton came into the back to sit beside him.

"It's really a terrible night, Mr. Catlett."

"First one of the year."

"Right. We've been lucky so far. Fred, we'll stop at Three Hundred Park next, then the hotel."

"Yes, sir."

"I guess you won't get much sleep, Mr. Catlett."

"Not very much."

When the limousine parked at the office building, Ingleton said, "If you want to dig the report out, sir, I'll run it up to Miss Villotti."

"I better go over it with her, I think."

"Well ... sure. Fred, can you wait right here?"

"I don't think anybody will bother me this late at night, Mr. Ingleton. If I get rousted, I'll just circle the block."

The security guard let them in. They signed the book and went up in the elevator. Miss Villotti was waiting. He didn't remember which one she was until he saw her. He thanked her for a long vigil and told her to wait a moment in the outer office while he talked to Mr. Ingleton.

After the door swung shut, he said, "Harv, I think I'm going to go the other route."

"I don't think I understand."

"I'm going to push for six months more."

Ingleton stared at him. "You've got to be kidding!"

"I think I can hack it."

Harvey Ingleton walked slowly to the big corner window. He looked out, fists in his hip pockets. He turned and said. "Paul, nobody can pull it out. Believe me. I have busted my ass for a year setting up this buy-out. I put my money on your number, damn it! We'll walk away with fat capital gains, yours one awful lot fatter than mine. A year from now, Paul, it's zip. You get to keep your shoes and a ballpoint pen. What have you got? A death wish?"

"Funny you should say that."

"Tell me the joke. I'll laugh myself sick."

"No joke. I'm going to give it a try."

"But why?"

"Lets say so that a lot of people who bet on Paul Catlett eight years ago won't have to settle for a dime on the dollar, and in six-percent debentures, at that."

"The great Paul Catlett Jesus!"

"Harv, you can go down and get my flight bag out of the car and come back with it, and you and I can revamp the report, and we can work right here with Miss Villotti until ten in the morning. And you can look forward to six months of sleepless hell. Or you can send Fred up with my bag and wait for him down there in the car and have him take you home. Think about it on the way down."

"But this is the chance we've been working--"

"It's a clear choice."

"What happened to you since we talked on the phone this morning?"

"Happened? Oh, I had one of those standard fantasies."

"Are you OK?"

"I hope so."

"Is there anything you know and I don't that makes things look ... different?"

"Financially? Absolutely nothing. You'd be smart to get off right here, Harv."

With his hand on the door, Ingleton turned and said, "But I won't get off. And I won't know why. We're both quite mad."

The door swung shut. The wolves waited out there in the dark night beyond the firelight. Catlett clicked the latches and opened the dispatch case and brought all his attention into total focus upon the new problem, the new presentation, the new risks.