Flying Too Close to the Sun, George Jehn [freda ebook reader txt] 📗

another country and generation. I asked my old man to forego the rent for a while and his answer was to go screw myself.” He hesitated but realized it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but you mentioned you were also in financial straits.” Shrugging his shoulders he asked, “You know of any way I can come up with a quick forty grand?”

Christina hesitated for a moment. “Yours is not a good situation. I don’t want to frighten you even more, but if the bank goes to management and garnishees your paycheck the airline could fire you. You also probably signed a contract agreeing to reimburse Shuttle Air for your flight engineer training if you either resign or get fired within the first two years…”

“Shit,” Erik groaned, “I forgot about that.”

“That’s another sixty grand.”

Erik felt like he was on a roller coaster, up and down but mostly down. “I can’t let this crap fuck up my life when it’s only starting.”

“We’ve both got money problems. But yours are a lot more immediate.”

Following several long moments of uncomfortable silence, Christina looked into Erik’s sea-green eyes and whispered, “I don’t want to raise false hopes, but I might have a way out,” closely watching as he absorbed that.

Erik knew a person’s life can alter in a heartbeat; each separate moment has the potential for tremendous change, good or bad. Sometimes it depends if a person is weighed down by conscience? She might be dangling some bait and he was pretty certain there was a hook hidden in it, somewhere. But he took it anyway. “How?”

“Gimme a couple of days.”

Erik was torn between a yearning to know and an inexplicable fear of knowing.

“Remember I told you to steer clear of O’Brien? Well, if he knew you were about to default on a loan he’d fire you. There’s a strict company policy requiring pilots on first year probation to be fiscally responsible.”

“C’mon. Then you gotta tell me. What’s your idea?”

She ordered another round. After the bartender brought them, she stood up and added, “Not just yet, ‘cause I still have more details to work out, but I will tell you it’s about money and lots of it.”

She might be just over five feet tall but Erik sensed her last sentence might have a towering effect on his life.

They gulped down their remaining booze and left. Standing outside, greased by the smooth runners of alcohol Christina flaunted a seductive smile and told him, “You have my word. I won’t delay.” She recalled David was off the next day and wouldn’t be home. “I feel a bit woozy. Would you mind following me?”

“No problem. Where do you live?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Fifteen minutes later Erik pulled up in front of a boxy brick Cape style cottage located on the wrong side of the tracks in Kew Gardens, Queens. The street was narrow with many parked cars and her place was replete with security bars partially hiding unwashed windows that could have had hopeless written on them. The street was deserted, almost treeless and the pothole riddled pavement no doubt fried when the sun was shining. Christina and Erik found parking spots and he walked her to the front door along a buckling sidewalk bordered by grassless dirt and an occasional weed. When finished unlocking two deadbolts, she offered a smile as appealing as a European bonbon suggesting, “come in.” Stepping into the darkness of the silent hallway, after she flipped on a light Erik noticed with the exception of a giant screen television, the décor of the living room with peeling vinyl floor was Spartan, furnished with what appeared to be Garage Sale bits and pieces. There was a threadbare fabric sofa, along with a table and a stick floor lamp, all of which corresponded with the stale smell of poverty. The kitchen had scratched, light brown Formica countertops and a wide open window facing the rear of the house with no air conditioner protruding through the bars. She opened a grimy looking ‘frig and offered him a Bud, which he declined. The quick tour of her refuge from the world ended in the bedroom. Surprisingly, there was new furniture here including a double bed, with the edge of a clean white sheet protruding from its innards, a nice dresser and one end table with a reading light. There was a poster of Key West hanging on the wall along with a framed picture of a handsome, smiling teenaged boy on the bureau that Erik presumed was her son.

Without uttering a word he began unbuttoning his shirt, but she also had an unspoken melancholy creating an inexplicable reflex to run. Could he summon up a life rope of passion to throw her? No words were spoken as she also began disrobing and he immediately took note of how soft her skimpy lace bikini underwear appeared. Although his dick might eventually say yes, the larger head was saying no. This mysterious brew of crosscurrents and conflicting emotions was a new-fangled feeling to him. Without explanation his thoughts shifted to Carol Rodriguez and he immediately buttoned up his shirt. A silent alarm screamed out something wasn’t right and he heard himself saying, “I gotta go.”

“What’s the matter?” Christina asked while facing him, her eyes a beseeching blue with beckoning written all over them.

“I just gotta leave,” he stammered. He felt guilty standing there fully clothed staring at her now half-naked body. An undefined awkwardness enveloped him like a mist, so thick he could hardly see her through it. Quickly retreating from the bedroom, he slammed the front door closed, hurried to his car and drove off, very confused. But a short ride on that train of thought dictated he had to make a quick U-turn, not out of longing but out of worry she wouldn’t bring him into whatever might resolve his problem. After again parking the car, as he jogged back toward the house, his rest of the world-be-damned fake façade