The Fly Boys Page 4

  Gold parked in front of the house. As he went up the front steps, Erica swung open the oak double doors.

  “I’m so surprised that you’re home at this hour,” she said, smiling.

  “Good surprised or bad surprised?” Gold teased, putting his arms around her waist.

  “Oh, very good,” she murmured, kissing him.

  Her shoulder-length blonde hair shimmered in the sun. She was wearing no makeup as far as Gold could tell, except for the lightest touch of lipstick. As lovely as Erica had been when she was a young girl, Gold thought her more beautiful now. Time had replaced her dewy radiance with a serene and wise beauty.

  Gold closed his eyes, hearing her pleased sigh as he lost himself in her embrace.

  “It’s usually impossible to tear you away from the office, Herman,” Erica said, stepping away to lead him into the house.

  “Not today it wasn’t,” Gold replied as he followed her into the cool, dark front hallway.

  She was wearing a green and tan striped wraparound skirt over a black one-piece bathing suit, a tan cotton cardigan sweater over her shoulders, and tan leather open-backed sandals. Around her throat was a slender gold chain, and on her wrist was a gold tank watch on an alligator strap. Her simple gold wedding band was on her left ring finger. Long ago when they’d become engaged Gold had been too poor to buy her a diamond. Since then, despite all the other jewelry she’d accepted from him, she’d refused his attempts to give her an engagement diamond, saying that the wedding band meant everything, and that no diamond could improve upon it.

  “You sounded so funny on the phone,” she said, turning toward him, her expression concerned. “But I’m so glad that we’ll have the rest of the afternoon together,” she added, brightening. “First you’ll have lunch—”

  “I’m not very hungry,” Gold said, loosening his black silk knit tie.

  “There you are! Something is bothering you,” Erica frowned.

  “Just because I said I wasn’t hungry?” Gold asked mildly as he unbuttoned the collar of his light blue cotton shirt.

  “And because you come home early. It’s so unlike you. When Susan found out you’d left the office, she called home, worried sick.”

  Gold smiled. His daughter, Susan, had moved back in with them after her husband was killed in action overseas. She had recently gone to work at GAT as a secretary in Teddy Quinn’s department. Gold had tried to talk her out of it. He’d felt that her place was here at home, caring for her infant son. Suze, however, had been adamant. She’d argued that these days GAT had more female employees than male —which was true—and that like those women, she wanted to do her part for the war effort. Gold had been convinced when Erica had pointed out that letting Suze go to work might help her to come to terms with her recent widowhood.

  “Where’s my grandson?” Gold demanded.

  “With his nanny. But you can play with Robbie later. Right now I want to know what’s bothering you.”

  Gold nodded. “Tell you what,” he said as he shrugged out of his gray linen suit coat. “Let me go upstairs to change, and we’ll talk by the pool.”

  “You’ve got yourself a date. And I’ll have Ramona bring your lunch out to the patio. Lately you’ve been working too many eighteen-hour days, and skipping too many meals.”

  “Tell it to my belly,” Gold muttered, patting his ever-thickening middle.

  “Just more of you to love,” Erica said, giving him a pinch. “Go change.”

  He moved quickly through the house with its high, gilded ceilings and mahogany paneling, going up the central, curved marble staircase and down the long third-floor hallway to their bedroom suite. In his dressing room he changed into a pair of navy-blue boxer swim trunks, black leather sandals, and a white belted terry-cloth robe. He went back downstairs, and out through the solarium’s French doors, to the flagstone patio landscaped with shrubbery and redwood flower boxes. The maid was setting out sandwiches and iced tea on the white enameled table in the patio’s screened dining area. Gold ignored the food and went out to the deck chair surrounding the Olympic-sized, rectangular pool.

  He stretched out on a duck canvas chaise longue beneath the shade of a eucalyptus tree. He closed his eyes and listened to the birds and the drone of the bees in the rose bushes. A few minutes later he heard Erica come out. He opened his eyes and watched her kick off her sandals and unwrap her skirt, revealing her long, shapely legs. She was tanned all over and her hair looked like burnished gold. The black stretch fabric of the strapless suit fit her curves like a second skin. Gold imagined that it was due to all that tennis and swimming she did, or maybe it was just plain luck, but at forty-three her body was as firm and lithe as when they’d first met. He’d seen her turn the heads of men young enough to be her sons.

  Gold felt himself stirring and thickening beneath the thin fabric of his trunks as Erica moved with a she panther’s supple rhythm to the edge of the pool, to sweep the surface of the water with her nut-brown toes.

  “Ooh,” she murmured languidly. “Nice and warm.”

  “That’s some body you got there for a grandma,” Gold said.

  She cast him a dazzling smile over her shoulder. “It comes from clean living, and a wholesome childhood spent on the farm. I remember all that work I used to do plowing the fields.”

  “You grew up on a tree farm!” Gold laughed. Erica was the daughter of Carl Schuler, a German American who ran one of the biggest, most prosperous fruit tree nursery operations in the Midwest. “And the only work you ever did, as I recall, was work the gearshift on that sports car you used to tear around in.”

  “That was hard work,” Erica laughed. “And what about all those long, sleepless nights I spent trying to figure out new ways to spend my daddy’s money?”

  “Poor baby—”

  “And now look how much brain work I put into spending your money,” she teased.

  Gold shook his head. “Our money,” he said quietly. “We’re a team.”

  Erica just smiled. “Anyway, all that farm-fresh milk and fresh air must have blessed me with good bone structure.” She slapped her haunch. “I guess it holds up all my flab.”

  “Why don’t you come over here and let me hold it up for a while?”

  “Speaking of bones …”

  The way she was looking at his groin—and the way she was smiling at where she was looking—made Gold even harder—it was as if he had a tent pole beneath his navy-blue fabric. “God, I do love you,” he told her.

  “That’s what they all say in your predicament, bub,” she wisecracked, but there was no joking in her dark eyes so full of love.

  “I really think you should come over here right now,” Gold said.

  “There is a chance you could get lucky,” Erica nodded, coming over, “but first I want to know.”

  “Know what?” Gold evaded.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  Gold moved his legs to give her room to sit at the foot of the chaise longue. “Couldn’t it just be my hormones acting up?”

  “No,” she smiled. “You’ve got very horny hormones, my love—”

  “And I’m going to have to have the GAT metallurgy department whip up a pair of duralumin swim trunks if you keep denying me.” Gold tried to interrupt.

  “But not even your hormones have ever kept you from your work,” Erica continued, becoming serious. “A moment ago you told me that we were a team, and it pleases me so to hear you say that, but now you’re going to have to prove it to me by telling me what’s wrong.”

  “Ah, shit,” Gold muttered. He could feel his erection going limp. He avoided her stare, gazing up at the shifting light patterns filtering through the lacy green latticework of tree boughs overhead, but he could feel her attention focused upon him. She could, and would, wait quietly like this until he gave in and told her.

  “Something happened today at work….” He explained about the failure of the XP-4, and his decision to scrap the entire project. />
  “But Herman,” she began tentatively after he was done, “I’m still not sure I understand why you’re so upset. Is it the money?”

  “Nah,” he shrugged. “Not really. Sure we lost a bundle, but we’ll write it off. Uncle Sam will pick up most of the tab.”

  “So if it’s not the money …?” she trailed off.

  He took hold of Erica’s hand. “Try and understand,” he said. “Since the war began I’ve been pretty much content to just sit back and rest on my laurels.”

  “You make it sound like you’re lazy,” Erica laughed. “My God, Herman, nobody we know works as hard as you do.”

  “But what have I been producing?”

  “My love, you’ve been producing marvelous airplanes for the military!”

  “But they’re just more of the same,” Gold complained. “Don’t you see? GAT became the power it is today thanks to innovation. Take our Monarch series of airliners—”

  “Exactly!” Erica said triumphantly. “You’ve been constantly improving the Monarch line. The GC-6 and GC-7 versions were among the first airliners in the world with pressurized cabins.”

  “Honey, listen a minute….”

  “No, you listen, Herman!” Erica scolded. “Versions of the Monarch are being flown by virtually every airline in the world. And you’ve sold millions more to the British and our own military as cargo and troop transports.”

  “And millions of dinosaurs ruled the earth,” Gold cut her off. “Until they suddenly became extinct!”

  Erica stared at him a moment. “Now I get it,” she said softly.

  Gold nodded. “Piston-engined airplanes are fast becoming technological dinosaurs.”

  Erica shrugged. “So GAT will build jets,” she encouraged. “It’s as simple as that.”

  Gold chuckled humorlessly. “As simple, and as complicated.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s a new technology, Erica. I’m not sure I understand it.” He swallowed hard. “I’m not sure that my day hasn’t come and gone.”

  “Failure is always frightening,” she said evenly. “You’ll get over it. You’ll find a way to accomplish your goals. You always have, and you always will.”

  “It’s true I always have in the past,” Gold said listlessly. “But this is the future. There’s a lot of fresh young talent out there. Competition that’s comfortable with the new technology.” He sighed. “I just don’t know.”

  Erica stood up and began to pull him to his feet. “Come on, come in for a swim.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Tough. You’re coming anyway.”

  Sighing, Gold got to his feet, stepped out of his sandals, and removed his robe. He followed Erica to the deep end of the pool, and the two of them dived in.

  Erica had been right; the water temperature was delightful. She was swimming ahead of him as he broke the surface. She was a superb swimmer, able to move through the water with a minimum of effort and splash.

  Gold, treading water as he watched her, felt an idea tugging restlessly at the edges of his mind. Something to do with Erica’s swimming.

  She slicked her wet hair back behind her ears. “Hey, com’ere, you,” she called to him. She was standing at chest depth at the pool’s center. Her eyes were bright with mischief as she slicked her wet hair back behind her ears.

  Gold swam over to stand next to her. She put one arm around his neck and began to nibble at his mouth. Her other hand slid underwater to the waistband of his trunks.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Gold pretended to demand.

  “Rebuilding your self-confidence,” she said, untying the drawstring and pushing the trunks down past his thighs. “And anyway, I’m horny.”

  “There must be a Bel-Air ordinance against this sort of thing,” Gold said as he stepped out of the trunks and let them drift toward the pool’s turquoise cement floor. “You know, ‘No running near the edge of the pool. No splashing. No fucking.’ “

  “You see a lifeguard around?” Erica asked between kisses.

  Underwater he was undulating like a serpent, but he began to stiffen as Erica stroked him.

  “The maid?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Told her under no circumstances to come out here. You’re trapped within my clutches,” she said, fondling him.

  Gold gave her strapless suit a gentle tug downward, and her breasts popped free. He watched them bob beneath the water, her pink nipples rising and falling as the water beaded and trailed in droplets down her cleavage. He bent to gingerly take one of her nipples between his lips.

  Erica threw back her head, cooing softly like a bird. She began to wiggle and squirm, rolling her suit down past her hips. At last she was able to kick one leg free. She pressed against him, spreading her thighs as she guided him home.

  Warm as the water was, it was warmer inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and began to rock against him. Gold held himself back until her movements began their familiar urgency. Her fingers, pressed lightly into his back, abruptly dug in.

  She arched her back and cried out shrilly as she reached orgasm. He growled into her hair, its texture like damp silk against his face, as he came.

  He was still shuddering against her as she abruptly came to her senses. Clearly mortified, she glanced around with impossibly large, round eyes. Once she had reassured herself that their act had gone unwitnessed, she begin to giggle.

  They were still locked together when Gold shifted his weight and lost his footing. He tumbled backward, and the two of them splashed beneath the surface. They came up sputtering and laughing like children.

  “Well, how do you feel now?” Erica demanded.

  “Much better than I did fifteen minutes ago,” Gold admitted. He put his arms around her to give her a kiss.

  He froze, staring at her.

  “What?” she laughed.

  “I was thinking about how you were swimming before.”

  Erica nodded. “So?”

  Gold grinned. “So, you’ve given me an idea about where we might have gone wrong with the XP-4.”

  “That’s not all I gave you, bub,” Erica smiled. “I mean, I’d always heard that men thought with their—”

  “It has to do with the angle of the wing,” Gold said, more to himself than to Erica. “An airplane meets something like the same resistance in the air that you met when you were swimming. You created a wake—a vee-shaped wake—as you moved through the water. An airplane forms something like a wake—of shock waves—as it moves through the air,” he continued, warming to the subject. “The XP-4 had conventional straight wings. Now, if we redesigned the craft around a swept-back wing that could fit inside those shock waves, drag would be lessened to such an extent that …” He paused. “I need a pencil and paper.”

  He gave Erica a quick peck on the lips, swam over to the edge of the pool, and hoisted himself out.

  “Darling?” Erica called out gaily. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “What?” Gold asked absently, standing by the deck chair. His head was full of sketches he was anxious to get down on paper. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” he added quickly, focusing on her. “I love you,” he called out.

  “You’re sweet,” Erica observed. “You also happen to be bare-assed naked.”

  Gold looked down at himself. “Oops!”

  Grinning foolishly, he grabbed his tangled robe and fumbled into it. Once he was decent he padded barefoot back toward the house. There was a drafting table in his study. The more he thought about the new wing design, the more convinced he became that it just might work.

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  (One)

  Santa Belle Airfield

  Solomon Islands

  22 October 1943

  Lieutenant Steven Gold smoked his first cigarette of the day slowly, meditatively. It was just a little after dawn. Steve was in his tent, freshly washed and shaved and dressed in a fresh set of khakis.

  The insects were setting up an unnerving
metallic racket in the high grass beyond the base perimeter. The occasional screech of a jungle bird sounded like somebody being tortured. The tent’s vent flaps were open, but no breeze was stirring. Steve’s cigarette smoke rose straight up through the humid air to collect in a miniature fog against the ridgepole and green canvas. He could feel the temperature rising. His khakis wouldn’t be fresh for long.

  The day had started out badly an hour earlier, when some goddamned bug had bitten him on the ankle, shocking him out of a sound sleep. He’d rubbed some spit onto the swelling bite as he swore loudly and freely. There was no one around to disturb. The pilot who’d had the tent’s other cot had been shipped out with two broken legs after he’d cracked up his airplane.

  Steve was sorry the guy had been hurt, but didn’t particularly miss him. He didn’t mind being alone. He’d been here six weeks, but he hadn’t yet made any new buddies, although it had been great to renew his friendship with his squadron commander, Major Sam “Cappy” Fitzpatrick.

  What Steve did mind was the boredom of the daily routine on this sweltering hunk of volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific. Santa Belle was a Marine-held island, which meant that the Marine VMF fighter squadrons got to hog all the action, while the single Army Air squadron on the base had to be content with practicing takeoffs and landings in its shiny new P-47 Thunderbolts.

  Steve liked flying his Jug, although he’d reserve final judgment on the airplane until he’d taken it into combat. If he ever got to see combat again. He was thinking he’d made the wrong decision when he’d agreed to join this so-called elite fighter squadron. If he was going to be kept out of the fighting, he might as well have gotten himself reassigned to Henderson back on Guadalcanal, where life was at least reasonably comfortable. On Santa Belle he had only the bugs and the stinking hot climate to distract him from his boredom.