Choices
by Phyll Ashworth

PROLOGUE

Monday, July 4, 1985—11 a.m.
Over the Pacific Ocean

Exactly an hour and fifteen minutes after taking off from Los Angeles International Airport, First Officer Reg Humboldt felt the strange vibration.  For a split second, a tremor of fear clutched at him, tightened his gut.  The DC-6 was heading to Honolulu at 22,000 feet and the last thing he wanted to think about was trouble.

He scanned every instrument.  Scanned them again.  No, everything looked fine.  So what the hell was the sensation that had spooked him?  Did he imagine it?  DC-6's vibrated a lot, even at best.  He glanced at the captain, then at the engineer-cum-navigator.  Neither showed concern.  He forced himself to relax.  It was probably nothing.

Cary Johnson was not only a helluva nice guy, but a damned fine engineer.  If anything was wrong, he'd be the first to sense it.  Cary'd been flying these old babies since 1954, and there wasn't anything about them he didn't know.  

There.  Reg felt the vibration again.  He glanced back at Cary, just closing his books after taking a navigational fix.   

"Whatsa matter?" Cary asked, "you still scared I'm gonna get you lost out here?"

"Hell, no.  Who needs a navigator to get to Hawaii in daylight?  All I have to do is follow all those jet contrails."

"Damn, you broke the code.  So what's that shimmy I felt?"

"You noticed it too?  Shit.  I hoped I just imagined it."  Andy Peel, the captain, pushed himself upright in the left seat and looked about the panel.  "Don't worry about it.  You'd creak a little too, if you were as old as this baby.  Besides, I just had her in to the corner gas station for a lube and oil last week and I happen to know she's fit as a fiddle."  Andy owned Conestoga Charters and its fleet of vintage planes.

"But you did feel it?" Reg asked him.

"Yeah, I felt something once or twice, but I think it's all  those artists in the back.  They're probably dancing in the aisle celebrating the Fourth.  I hope they don't have fireworks, 'cause Patty will have them pretty well liquored up by now."

"Artists?"

"Yeah," Andy said.  "You know, people who sit around smearing oil on canvas.  They're putting on a show in Honolulu."

Cary grinned.  "They must be doing all right if they can afford to go to Hawaii just to show their art work."

"I guess, although the guy who hired us--Frank Battenburg; he's the promoter or whatever--really pissed and moaned about the price."  Andy stretched around for a routine inspection of the two engines visible through his side window.

"Don't feel sorry for art show promoters," Reg said.  "My sister sells her pottery at those weekend arts and crafts shows.  She says the promoters make a bundle, and drive bigger cars than airline captains, if you can believe that."

"What are you charging 'em, Andy?" Cary asked.

"Six hundred round trip.  Plus another hundred for their gear."

"You mean their luggage?  You are a bandit."

"Not just luggage, you idiot, pictures.  Crates of pictures.  And sculpture and junk."

"Well," Cary said, "even if they don't sell anything, they get a pretty good vacation.  And it's deductible."

Reg slapped his forehead.  "A deductible trip to Hawaii; now why didn't I think of that?"

His laughter was cut short by a sudden more noticeable  vibration, which stopped almost as soon as it started.  

"Cary, what the fuck is that?" Andy demanded.  Without waiting for a reply, he added, "Go see what the hell's happening in the cabin and take a peek out at the wings."

"I'll go."  Reg was already unbuckling his seat belt.  "I have to take a leak anyway."  Cary extricated himself from his seat just behind the two pilots so Reg could slide out.

As Andy and Cary scanned the engine instruments, as if looking for clues to the trouble, Reg straightened his tie and donned his jacket in preparation for going aft.

"How about bringing back a black with one sugar?" Andy called after him.  "Want anything, Cary?"  If Andy was at all worried about his airplane or his ass, he hid it well.

"A Coke, if you can find one."

Reg glanced approvingly at himself in the mirror on the cockpit door, gave himself a flamboyant salute.  As he left the cockpit, he called out, "Don't mess with any buttons."

After relieving himself in the blue room a few moments later, he moved back among the passengers.  The cabin was less noisy than he expected.  Chartered flights were known for lots of talking, laughing and hi-jinks; after all, everyone knew everybody else and they were usually holiday or convention bound.  This group seemed sluggish; several people actually slept and it was not yet noon.  Here and there a small knot of people had gathered, but they weren't anything like the raucous crowds they had ferried in the past.  He remembered one trip from Hawaii a few years before when six women peeled off their clothes, put on grass skirts and did a two-hour hula in the aisle.  Now that was a charter!

His attention zeroed in on a blonde seated next to an old guy with a greying beard.  Young, pretty, good body, far as he could tell.  Maybe, when they landed in Honolulu, he'd ask her to have a drink with him.  After all, it was a holiday even if he was working.  He smiled to himself, kept walking down the aisle.

Behind the pretty blonde sat a man and woman, not much older than teenagers, and across the aisle a middle-aged couple.  And everyone looked normal.  You sure couldn't identify any of these folks as artists; they didn't look different from any other group of passengers.

He stopped over the wings, his aim being to inspect the engines and flaps visible out the cabin windows.  Not wanting to alarm anyone, though, he made small talk with the passengers seated nearby.  

Finding nothing more ominous than some oil streaks over the wing inboard of number one, he made his way to the galley to pour coffee.  Patty was mixing a drink with one hand and holding a clipboard with the other.

"Hi, sweetheart, what's cookin'?"  

"Hi yourself."  Patty looked up.  "Just trying to make sense of this list of passengers they handed me."

"Yeah, I noticed more empty seats than I expected."

"I guess some cancelled out at the last minute.  Look at this mess."  She showed him a piece of paper with names crossed out and others pencilled in at the bottom.  

"Who'd want to cancel a trip to Hawaii?"

"Beats me."  She put the clipboard down and picked up her tray.  "And I've got one dame who's been in the john practically the whole time."

"Sick?"

"I don't think so.  At least she keeps telling me she's okay.  It's not like we've got a lot of turbulence."  She frowned.  "But I did feel something funny a while ago and now I saw you looking outside.  What's going on?  You can tell me."

"Aw, I don't know, nothing serious, I guess.  At least I can't see anything back here, and we sure as hell don't see anything up front.  Andy says it's just old age creeping up on his ship.  Don't worry your pretty head about it."

"Easy for you to say.  We've got six hours to go yet and I don't swim that well."

Reg put sugar in Andy's coffee and picked up a Coke for Cary.  "See, I'm saving you all this work so you'll be rested up when we get there."

"Thanks a bunch."  

Reg laughed and left the galley.  As he passed the wing, a young man sitting next to the window on the left side of the aisle called out to him.  "Excuse me, could you tell me what that black spray is out near the engine?  It started a minute ago."

Reg glanced out.  Jesus Christ on a stick!  He didn't answer, just dashed forward, dropping the coffee as he ran.  

He reached the cockpit just as Cary shouted, "Andy!  Number one is showing out of oil!"  At the same time, a red light beneath the number one oil pressure gauge winked on.  

Reg leaped past Cary into his seat, not taking time to buckle in.  "I saw it from the cabin; number one is throwing oil like a gusher!"  

Andy spun around to look out his window.  When he turned back, two deep creases marred his forehead.  "Shut it down, Reg, now!"  He pulled the number one throttle back to idle, simultaneously pushing the mixture control to the floor.

Reg watched the pointer on the gauge fall into the red zone.  Damn.  Damn.  Damn.  He reached for the number one feathering switch and shoved it in, then yanked out the firewall shut-off lever to cut off fluids to the engine.  

"Goddam, Andy!  It's not losing RPM!"

"The fucking feathering line must've ruptured," Cary said. "That's probably where we lost the oil in the first place."

"It'll be dry in seconds-"

"Shit."  Andy voice was tense.  "We can't keep the son-of-a-bitch from windmilling, as long as the prop isn't feathered."

No oil and 2400 RPM!  It was bound to seize.  If it didn't melt first.  Reg was sweating, his mind sorting the alternatives, but Andy sounded calm, in control as usual.

"We'd better get this crate down to where there's some oxygen," Andy said, "and then depressurize.  If that prop comes off when the engine seizes, it could slice a hole in the fuselage.  We'd pop like a balloon.  Cary, radio L.A. our position.  Then get Patty on the cabin interphone.  Tell her what's happening.  Have her move the passengers out of line with the props.  Get 'em all aft and strapped in tight."

"Right!"  Cary, still out of his seat, leaned over to pick up the handset.  He reached out to press the cabin call button, but that's as far as he got.

A tremendous shock lurched the plane to the left.  A monster force tore at their eardrums, sucked the air from their lungs.  Everything that wasn't bolted to the plane, including passengers and crew, disappeared instantly, gone through a seven-foot hole in the forward cabin.

In seconds, a trail of debris stretched through space behind the stricken aircraft like a great torn ribbon.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1985

Chapter 1

Wednesday, June 29 - 12:02 a.m.
Thousand Oaks, California

The water, clear and sparkling, flowed smoothly across the volcanic rocks and over the edge into a cascade that thundered down to the pool below.  Sprays of foam shot upward, where tropical light turned it into tiny prisms that caught the sun and split it into rainbows.

Mariel Foster watched and listened.  The sound increased, finally broke into her consciousness.  She wasn't hearing Hawaiian falls; that was water running somewhere in her California split-level, the rushing noise only the normal sound of plumbing inside the walls.

She shook off the island dream and opened her eyes in the bedroom blackness; the red numbers on the digital clock glowed 12:02.

She was late.  She hadn't expected to fall asleep after she and Jason made love, and now she'd have to hustle.  She stretched an arm across the king-sized bed, touched cool sheets.  Jason had gone home.

No, not gone, the running water corrected her, in the shower.  But why hadn't he wakened her?  He knew she should have gone by now.  A niggling doubt-one she’d had before about Jason-gnawed at her.  She dismissed it as middle-class conscience, guilt for sleeping with a man to whom she wasn’t married.  But times had changed; no one thought like that anymore.  She shouldn’t either.  Throwing the sheet aside, she jumped from the bed and hurried toward the bathroom.  She’d shower with him to save time.  Only  she'd have to make sure it didn't end up with both of them back in bed again.  She'd planned to be on her way to San Francisco long before this.  At least she'd packed the car.

In the bathroom, steam swirled around her and misted the mirror to shiny grey.  She tapped on the sliding glass door of the stall.  “How about a little company in there?”

Jason slid open the door and Mariel stepped in, to be enfolded instantly in his slippery arms.  He ran his hands over her body; then, cupping her breasts, leaned over and kissed them, his dark beard tickling her flesh, his curly black hair brushing her chin.

“Whoa,” she said, “let's not get carried away; I have to leave in ten minutes.”  She reached for the bar of soap to lather her arms, and Jason slipped behind her, pressing her buttocks into his hot, soapy thighs.

“You have lots of time,” he said.  “You always allow more than you need and end up waiting for the promoter.”

“Not this time; I'm really late.”

Suddenly he let go of her, opened the shower door and stepped out, then opened the door to the bedroom.  “I thought the phone rang,” he said, but he didn't return.  Instead he grabbed a towel and went into the bedroom.

“Who'd be phoning at this hour?”  She closed the shower door and finished lathering her body, then dropped the soap into the porcelain holder and moved squarely under the flow of water.  When she returned to the bedroom, towel-dried, but naked, she found Jason already dressed except for shoes.  He stood combing his hair at her dressing table mirror.

“I wish you were coming to San Francisco with me,” she said.

“Mmm, so do I.  Two nights in a motel with you would be great.”

Smiling at the thought, she slipped into panties and bra.  “Then why not?  You could just as easily go to Frank Battenburg's show as the Crestview one.”

“No way; I'm not going to drive up there when there's an art show right here in L.A.”

“Not even to be with me?”  She came up behind him and rubbed her hands across his chest.

“Yeah, babe, not even for you.  Sorry 'bout that.  Besides, I can't stand the bastard.  He treats artists like crap.  Makes a bunch of stupid rules and blackballs people from his shows if he doesn't like their looks.”

“But we're going to his show in Hawaii.  We'll have an entire week there.  You said you'd put up with him for that.”

Jason didn't answer, and Mariel's scalp began to tingle.  There was that doubt again.  “What's the matter?” 

He released her, sat on the bench and began to put on his sandals.  “Yeah, well, I've been meaning to talk to you about that.  I can't go to Hawaii after all.”

“You can't go?”  Mariel stood still, her hands beginning to clench.  The doubt blossomed.  “But we planned it.  We paid half the money already.  We can't cancel now.  Why don't you want to go?”

Jason let out a disgusted sigh.  “I want to go.  I just can't.”  Finished with his sandals, he stood up.  Another long pause.  “I'm sorry.” 

“You're sorry?  Is that all?”

His gaze avoided hers.  “I guess I should have told you sooner.  But you can go to Hawaii anyway, whether I do or not.”  He came close to her, ran his fingers over her bare arms, sliding them down to her elbows.

“We were going together.”  He had promised.  “You already paid Frank.”

“Actually I didn't.”

“But you told me you did.”  A lie.  And now, other lies she'd caught him in came rushing to her mind.

“Okay, I lied.  So sue me.”  He left the bedroom.

She followed him into the living room, watched him pick up his car keys from the hall table.  

“Wait a minute,” she said.  “You haven't told me why.”

“I just can't.  Leave it at that, Mariel.”

“No.  You owe me an explanation.”

He stared at the floor, frowning, pursing his lips into a thin line.  Finally he looked up.  “Mariel, the fact is I'm married.  Very few people know it, but it's the truth.”

For a long moment she couldn't speak.  The news failed to register, didn't make any sense.   The silence grew.

Finally Jason said, “I'll call you when you get back from San Francisco Friday night.”

Her head felt as if it would explode.  This couldn’t be real.  This was someone else's nightmare.  Her breath came in gasps.  Words gushed out.  “You're married?  We've been seeing each other for six months and now you suddenly tell me you're married?”

His voice was low and tense.  “For God's sake, Mariel.  I thought you knew.”

“How could I know?  You never told me.  You let me think-”  But the signs she might have read flooded into her mind then.  That nagging doubt she sometimes had about him.  She should have known.  Perhaps somewhere deep inside she had guessed, but had deliberately swept the clues under the carpet of her subconscious.  Now she saw them clearly.  He often refused to do things she wanted.  Last December, when they would have had their first Christmas together, she had celebrated alone.  He said he was exhausted after doing that big six-weeks' art and craft fair.

Wasn't that the classic sign of a married lover: holidays were off limits?  Of course he wouldn't go to Hawaii on the fourth; it was another holiday.  How could she have been so stupid not to guess?  And he didn't want to go to San Francisco for the same reason, not because of his opinion of the promoter.

Jason shrugged.  “That's just the way it is, Mariel.  I can't do anything about it.”

“Why did you come on to me?  How could you?”

“Come on, get real!  Married people have been fooling around forever.  If you'd asked me, I would have told you sooner.”

“I was supposed to ask you?  You wear no wedding ring; you hang around the shows late like you have no one to go home to; you invited yourself here one night and crawled into my bed, and I was supposed to ask you?”

In the long silence that followed, she felt herself age a dozen years.  So this is what it was like.  Other women had affairs with married men.  Did they all find out this way, or did some of them go into it with their eyes open?

“I'll call you when you get back, okay?”

“No you won't!”  She wanted to scream, but stifled the urge, kept control.  “Just leave.  Now.  And don't ever come back.”  She trembled with anger.  Why could she think of nothing but dialogue from an old “B” movie?

Jason threw his keys in the air and snatched them before they fell.  “Just for the record, I didn't lie to you.  I never told you I wasn't married.”  His eyes narrowed.  “Don't call?  No sweat!  I can find a dozen women with the hots for men like you've got!”  He slammed out of the door.

Mariel stood still, her skin crawled, her breath taken away by his final insult.  She heard his car pull out of the driveway with a squeal of tires.  Tears stung her eyes, and she stumbled back to the bedroom.  The pain in her stomach increased, and then her knees felt too weak to hold her.  She slumped to the floor.

Slowly reality set in.  She had to get up, dress.  Habits of discipline, and necessity, demanded that she drive to San Francisco and show her paintings in the art show.  And she would probably go to Hawaii, too, even without Jason; because she'd paid the money and couldn't afford to risk losing it.  She had to keep painting and going to shows.  If she didn't make the mortgage payments, she could lose her house.

She pulled herself to her feet, put on her blouse, pants and sweater.  At her dressing table, she raked a comb through her hair, letting the curls spring back where they would, not caring how it looked.  She took deep breaths, fighting off tears.  But when she tried to leave the room, her legs wouldn't obey.

She had to talk to someone.  Jane.  She staggered to the bed, grabbed the phone, punched in the number.

“Hello.”

“Jane, it's me.” 

“Mariel, why are you calling me at this time of night?  Aren't you supposed to be on the road?  Is something wrong?”

“I'm—  I'm still home—”  She stopped, not knowing how to admit what a fool she'd been.

Jane's tone of voice dropped.  “What's happened?”

“It's Jason.  We broke up.  He said terrible things-”  She stopped to catch her breath, then blurted out the truth.  “He's married!  We talked about going to Battenburg's Hawaii show, and then he said he can't because he's married.”

For a long moment, Jane was silent.  Finally she said, “Mariel, I'm so sorry.  For a beautiful woman, you sure have bad luck with men.”

“We've been seeing each other six months; he never—”

“The man is slime; don't waste your time thinking about him.”

“He said—”  She couldn't repeat what he'd called her.  Her anger mounted; she wouldn't let him do this to her.  Damn him!  She took another steadying breath.  “I'll be okay; I just needed to hear a friendly voice.  I'm sorry if I woke you.”

“Forget that.  And forget the show.  Cancel it.  You shouldn't be driving anywhere now, not after that.”

“I can't cancel.  I have to go.”  Her voice strengthened, she cleared her throat.  “And I can't be late; everyone says the promoter is a terror about artists coming late.  I'm taking highway five; I can make it in six hours.”

“Don't be silly.  People should never drive when they're upset.  That's just asking for trouble.  And you have four hundred miles ahead of you.”

“No, really, I'll be all right.”  She cradled the phone at her neck and buttoned her sweater.  She wouldn’t think of Jason.  She’d think of Jane.  “Is George Stein really selling his business to you?” 

“The Crestview Mall show starts tomorrow.  That's his last one and then he's turning over all his records to me.”

“You'll be a great promoter, not like some I could mention.”  Mariel felt her shoulder muscles relaxing.  She'd been right to call her friend. 

“Well, it won't take much to be better than Frank.”

“I guess I'm about to find out just how awful he is,” Mariel said.  “Besides there's the show in Hawaii.  We leave Monday.”

“Monday?  You mean you're flying to Hawaii on July fourth?”

“What's a holiday to us?”

“Did you pay him yet?” Jane asked.

“Half.  I pay the rest Monday morning at the airport.”

“And he agreed?  That's not like him; the man is ninety percent Scrooge.  But then, with your looks-”

“I did it all by mail.  I've never even met him.”

“So what did he say?”

“That I won't get on the plane if I don't pay the balance.”

“That I believe.  Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if he threatened to throw you out over Catalina!”  She turned serious. “But really, how can you be in San Francisco until Friday night and then leave for Hawaii on Monday morning?  That's crazy.”

“It didn't seem so crazy when Jason and I planned to go together.  But I can't cancel now.  Frank would probably kick me out of the Hawaii show, and keep my deposit besides.  And I have to do both shows.  I need the money.”

“Okay.  But drive carefully and call me when you get back.”

“I will.”  Mariel put down the phone, grabbed her purse and locked her front door.  Outside, a warm, still night settled over her, the black sky dotted with stars.  She let the ten-year-old station wagon slide down the inclined driveway before turning on the ignition, then drove out of Thousand Oaks, heading for Highway #5 and San Francisco.

Jane was a dear friend and meant well, but she didn't understand.  Perhaps it would be better not to go, but that wasn't an option.  Besides, nothing would happen to her.  She'd been taking care of herself for five years with no help from any man.  She didn't need Jason—or anyone—ever again.