Flat Spin

I was. And then some. If I’d had the dough, I would’ve paid him every pe

“Look, I’ve got a government pension check coming in,” I said. “We’re talking $920. I’ll give you half as soon as I get it.”

“Sure you will.” He shook his head with disgust and disappeared once more into the Beech’s engine compartment. “You need to find yourself a job, Logan, a real job, cuz this flight instructor gig obviously ain’t working out too good for you.”

What can you say to the truth? I said nothing.

“I hear they’re hiring over at Sears,” Larry said.

“They’re always hiring over at Sears,” I said.

A ba

A woman was standing below the ba

“I know you,” she said with a cloying smile.

Some faint new lines around the eyes. A slight softening under the jaw. Not bad for six years gone by. She wore a sleeveless gray silk pantsuit and a black lace camisole that showed more cleavage than I really needed to see. Her feet were clad in patent leather high heels with Wicked Witch of the West toes. A Kate Spade satchel hung from her right shoulder. Her hair was a shade redder than when I last saw her, and shorter. She wore a gold wedding band. No other jewelry. No makeup. She needed none. My ex-wife, Sava

“The devil must be wearing thermal underwear,” I said.

Her smile faded. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Outside your attorney’s office. That morning we signed the papers.”

“I said I’d see you again when hell froze over. I was upset that day, Logan. I’m sure you could understand, under the circumstances.”

Her eyes were liquid mahogany, her gaze as penetrating as ever. I wondered if she could hear my heart slamming around under my polo shirt.

“You cut your hair,” I said.

“And you didn’t.”

She approached me slowly, shoulders back, accentuating her breasts, maintaining eye contact while biting her lower lip — classic signals of carnal interest. I was hoping she was going to wrap her toned arms around my waist and admit how much she’d missed me, what a terrible mistake she’d made by leaving. The biggest mistake of her life. But as she drew closer, I could see that her pupils were barely dilated.

She reached out and gave my beard a playful tug.

“Very Grizzly Adams,” Sava

“Whew. What a relief. The first thing I said to myself when I grew it was, ‘Gee, I wonder what my insignificant other would think?’”

“Still the same sarcastic jerk. Some things never change, do they, Logan?”

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to make love to her or crush her exquisite throat with my hands. A man doesn’t lose so rare a woman as Sava

“Still modeling?” I asked, doing my best to keep things civil.

“Nobody wants to see a forty-two-year-old woman walk the runway, not in a string bikini, anyway. Actually, I’m doing a fair amount of counseling these days.” She dug a business card out of her bag and handed it to me. In Ye Olde English script it said, “Sava

“That’s rich. You, of all people, telling people how to manage their lives.”

“You always did enjoy putting me down, didn’t you?”

I would’ve apologized but I was in no mood. I parked myself behind my desk and shuffled through a stack of outdated airworthiness directives like it was important work.

“So,” Sava

“Me? Top of the heap. Couldn’t be better.”

I was amazed my nose didn’t go Pinocchio on me. All she needed to do was take one look around my stuffy, windowless “flight academy” to see that things could’ve been way better: A card table littered with a dozen dog-eared Jeppeson flight manuals. A cheap plastic fan and a couple of green plastic lawn chairs from Kmart. A decrepit, Vietnam-era metal desk and an Army surplus filing cabinet, olive drab. A computer so old, I had to just about shovel coal into it to make it work. I resented the hell out of her showing up, invading my space, inviting herself back into my world without fair warning. But it was my own fault. I’d left the door unlocked. In the sun-kissed, seaside enclave of Rancho Bonita, with its red tile roofs and Italian climate and verdant hills overlooking the Pacific—“California’s Monaco” as the city’s moneyed minions like to call it — most everybody leaves their doors unlocked. At least they claim to. Admitting otherwise would be to concede that Rancho Bonita, like Los Angeles — its bloated, apocalyptic neighbor 120 miles down the coast — has a crime problem. Heaven forbid anything should undermine property values in paradise.

“So,” Sava

“Just trying to walk a different path, that’s all.”

“A different path. Sounds vaguely Buddhist.”

“I dabble.”

“Are you serious? Cordell Logan, a Buddhist?”

I shrugged.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone vegetarian, too.”

Another shrug.

“A vegetarian. I don’t believe it,” Sava

“You’d be amazed,” I said, “what they can do with mock duck these days.”

Let me be honest here. I struggle with the vegetarian thing. I mean, sometimes, a dude just has to have a chile verde burrito. But I wasn’t about to admit that to a woman who’d walked out on me. I was the new and improved Cordell Logan. A better man without her. The man she could no longer have. That’s what I wanted her to believe, anyway, even if it wasn’t close to being in the same hemisphere as true.

“Definitely not the man I married,” Sava

“Not the one you dumped, either.”

“I didn’t dump you, Logan. You filed on me.”

“Yeah, after you banged my boss.”

Her eyes flashed fire. “Whatever I did, I did long after you forgot what the word faithful meant.”

“You make it sound like I was some kind of womanizer.”

“Did you or did you not sleep with that flight attendant?”

“If you’ll recall, Sava

“Did you or did you not sleep with her? Yes or no, Logan?”

“I was drunk. I told you, she meant nothing to me.”