Free Flight by GINGER STRAND

felt a small glimmer of satisfaction. She wanted his help. But he worried that he was letting her down. He told her to call whenever she wanted. Anything, he said to her. I’m always happy to talk.
    That Saturday he had dinner with the Kid. He’d been studying all day, sitting on his hotel bed with his back against the headboard and the little room radio playing a jazz station. He had a color-coded highlighting system: pink for crucial information, orange for places where the 767 differed from the DC-9, blue for items theinstructor said the FAA guys were asking that year. He’d lost track of the time, surprising himself when he looked up to see that it was six o’clock. All he had eaten for lunch was a packet of cheese crackers from the hotel vending machine, and he was starving. Almost unwillingly, he closed his book.
    In the bathroom he surveyed his face. He’d put on weight, and it showed in a paunchiness around his jawline. His beard was coming in, spilling gray like a cloud across his cheeks. It made him look old and haggard, but he decided he could get away without shaving this once. He’d go, get some dinner, and come back. Who cared if the folks at the local Pizza Hut thought he was a wizened old grandpa? He changed his shirt and headed out.
    As he was walking through the lobby, he heard a jovial voice.
    “Will!” It was Kid Flyboy, parked on an ugly lobby sofa with a newspaper.
    “Hey.” Will hesitated, not sure if he could get away with simply greeting him and walking out. The Kid was folding up his newspaper and standing up. His hair was damp, sticking to his face around the edges.
    “Did Bart call you up?”
    “Uh, no.” Will looked over his shoulder at the door as if expecting someone. “I was just heading out for some dinner.” For some reason, he thought of Margaret. Was she having dinner alone tonight, too? He’d call her later, see how things were going.
    “Perfect! Come with us. Bart knows some place that’s supposed to be great.”
    Will looked toward the elevators, and sure enough, here came Bart, an affable fellow captain, smiling as he bore down on them.
    “Steaks, Colonel!” he called out. “Best steaks to be had for a hundred miles.”
    They took Bart’s rental car. The restaurant was pole-barn-sized. Outside it was a large cement pedestal topped by a giant cow. Their waitress was a chirpy blonde, and when she leaned forward to pick up their menus, her uniform gaped open to reveal tanned breasts tucked into a shiny black bra. Bart raised his eyebrows across thetable at Will and the Kid. They had all ordered rib eyes. Will was annoyed that he got dragged into this, but he didn’t feel out of place. This was what it meant to be a pilot: eating dinner in some strange town, ogling the local college students, confident of receiving some measure of respect. He and Bart were used to it. Female attention as they passed through hotel lobbies in uniform was the air they breathed. It was a tribute to their position, to their responsibility for strangers’ lives. The Kid was still taking it all in, delighted with his new persona. He gave off, like heat, a desire to make himself known.
    “So, Will, how’d you end up at TWA?” the Kid said, breaking off a piece of bread.
    Will looked at Bart, who nodded as if to give him the go-ahead. “The way all the best pilots did,” Will said. “I came up through the Air Force. Trained on the Century series. I flew sixty-two missions in ’Nam.”
    “I met Will on the transport home,” Bart put in.
    “What happened?” The Kid looked seriously interested.
    Will shrugged. “Got shot down over the Tonkin Gulf. Broke an arm and a leg on a rough ejection. I came back and joined TWA. Thirty-one years ago.”
    “Will and I have been around,” Bart said. “We’ve flown every one of the airline’s routes.”
    “That used to be something, too,” Will said. “We used to fly to Cairo and Bombay and Tel Aviv. I flew into Rome two days after the