9. Couples Therapy 2

Lana sat on their couch and typed on her laptop, letting Amy tell some things. She sat with Mea on one side and Tory on the other. Her twin sphinxes were the chatoyant jewels of her life. The sun set and the shadows deepened. She got up and switched on a lamp. She was expecting Scott to be arriving at any moment, and sure enough she now heard his car pulling into the driveway and the garage door opening. She snapped her computer shut and shelved it. She sat on the couch and straightened the fabric of her skirt so as to prim and proper for her man’s return. Scott entered the room still carrying his luggage.
“Hey, doll. You’re a sight for sore eyes!”
“So are you, sweetheart.”
She remained seated. His body language suggested something still in motion, something still needing to be done. Flyboys always seemed to be working a checklist.
“I gotta put these bags upstairs. Then I’ll come back down and we’ll chat.”
“’K. I’m going to be sitting right here.”
She had the place polished up to a bright shine. Her housekeeping was legendary. Scott was a stickler. She listened as he trotted up the stairs. She listened as he not only put the suitcases down, but also unpacked them. She could hear him opening drawers. She could then hear him running water. She heard the toilet flush. More running water. Then, down the stairs he bounded. He was a thirty-five year old in great shape. He had a great deal of energy. Even after a long flight, he was all hopped up. He darted into the kitchen and yelled out to her.
“Great babe! You got a six of Fosters!”
“I thought you could go for one after your flight!”
She heard him pop the top and void the beer into a cold glass. She kept his beer mugs in the freezer. She knew her man very well by now. She ran a tight ship. He knew his wife quite well, too, he thought. He looked out for her best interests quite well, he thought. She needed guidance; she was younger and less experienced, he thought. He knew she was smart, but she seemed to lack direction. This is what flickered about the edges of his mind when he considered his wife. He expected the tight ship he liked to be well and efficiently run. He was pleased to observe that it had been.

Scott now sat down on the couch beside Lana, ejecting the cats with a swat of his hand. She hated the way that he treated her cats. He did not mistreat them particularly; he rather mostly ignored them. When she complained about this, he said, ‘I want a human centered household, not a cat centered one.’

He put a hand on her bare thigh. His hand was warm; she kept still at the touch. The touch, this particular touch, had a special meaning for them. It was the way he would touch her when in flight, in the two place, he’d reach over the console and touch her when there was a pause in his in-flight chores, after he’d gotten to altitude, when there was no chatter from the tower or from airspace on the radios, and the autopilot was flying. Between places, up in the wild blue yonder, his hand on her bare thigh (or even if she was clothed there in pants) was historically provocative. It meant that he was thinking, she thought, of the times when flying had really gotten her hot. Once, she’d told him that she’d had an orgasm at liftoff. He’d responded by asking if she wanted to have another one. That’s what his hand on her thigh meant, historically, for them. Now, she did not feel herself sexing up at his touch. He had, by banishing her law books, built a slight wall between her feelings for him and her regard for herself. He had, by disparaging her drawings for a bit too long and a bit too caustically, caused her to start to wall him out.
“Whatcha been doin’ with yourself while I been gone, babe?”
“I’ve been doing this and that. Work.”
“You say you can’t talk about the law office because of confidentiality.”
“Still as true now as it was week before last.”
“So talk to me about something else you did.”
“I went out with the girls.”
“Lisa and Christine?”
“Yep. Those girls.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Spats.”
“What’d you eat?”
“I split a duck.”
“Was it good?”
“It was salty.”
She recalled the salt of her tears on that occasion.
“What about you, old Scottie, old buddy old pal? How was Ohio, Texas, wherever all else you flew to?”
“It was really good. I hand delivered a bunch of parts, which greases the wheels. And Bruce tells me he shipped a bunch of other stuff. The sales calls were good. It keeps building, this business.”
“My businessman. I’m proud of you.”
The hand half-inched up at this compliment.
“Yeah my last port of call, the one in Ohio, turned out to be fortunate. Hilliard’s got a cute little airport, and Curtis Graham turned out to be a great guy and a fertile source of all sorts of stuff. Maybe he’ll be a good customer down the road. I got a good feeling about it.”
“That’s great, Scott.”
“Did ya miss me?”
“Of course. I always miss you when you’re gone.”
“How much did you miss me?”
He is now freely exploring her leg. This is starting to have its usual effect.
“I missed you enough to kiss you.”
She leans over to his face and lets her lips touch his. It is just a light touch. It is teasing.
He lets her tease, and his hand falls still. She pulls away.
“Babe.” He says this at just above a whisper.
“Sweetie, I missed you all to hell, and all of it is wrecking another pair of my best undies, but I need a drink. You’ve got your Foster’s. Mama need her poison.
“OK. I’ll sit right here and simmer.”
“That’s a good man.” She rises and kisses his forehead. He pats her ass on her exit. He hears her in the kitchen with a tinkling glass, opening cabinet doors. He supposes she’s mixing up a Manhattan. While she pours and mixes, she notes that she has lied about her arousal. She has begun to respond to Scott, for it is true that Scott is hot. She has not fully wept for him between her legs, though. It’s just not like it used to be. This is a problem. She guides her mind back to some of those intensities that she has stashed away in her memories. Times in flight, certainly, but those are full of awkwardness, since an aircraft makes a very lousy boudoir. Kick one wrong thing and it could be bad. A very bad bed. Times at the beach, much better. There was a time, out on a lake in an inner tube, in full view of the bathing public. That has potential. Plenty of times right here in this kitchen! She feels herself going there, leaning towards it, getting ready to make love to her husband, her Achilles back from the wars. By the time she’s back on the couch, she’s ready to begin to rock. But Scott has gotten a grip. He sits calmly regarding Lana Marietta Andersen Andrews. She is lovely. Her blonde smell is a clean lure and he’s always been caught in the net.
“A Manhattan?”
She sips and nods.
“The chemistry is so subtle.”
Again, she nods and smiles.
“Thanks, Scottie, for letting me make this drink.”
“You’re welcome. You need it. You wanted it. It’s yours.”
Now, she kisses him full-out. She does not back down. He melts into his lust. His babe is a sex genius. He lets her take the lead. She does the dance so well. She has soon felled him, like a majestic oak. He is done in again, ridden down like a wild horse, a stallion, and she a dressage master. In the end, their clothes all in a heap, and she rises, heading for the first floor loo, with her garments in tow. The last thing he sees is her ass disappearing around a corner. He himself rose after a minute and took his own pile of threads up the stairs and filed them in the dirty laundry cubbyhole. He found a pair of p-jays and suited up to again confront the Madonna. Let the record show that Scott Cyrus Andrews truly loved his wife with all of his heart. He was not an evil man, merely a passionate man, misguided by his training and by his lineage. He had a game all set up for himself. She played along. It just got out of control. Way out of control.

They returned to their couch, the scene of the recent crime, the nasty deed done all the way down. Lana in her jammies, and him in his.
“Sweetness.” She spoke in her usual nasal twang, but muted now almost to a whisper.
“Sweet Jesus.”
“Word play M’lord?”
“Say what?”
“I mean, do you want to talk to me?”
“Do I? I do, I guess. I can barely think.”
“You’ve had a long day in your flying machine.”
“Yes. The flying machine.”
“It was well behaved, that Skylark?”
“You mean the Skylane. Oh yes. Solid aircraft. Never lets me down.”
“Until you let it down.”
“Pardon?”
“I read about that young woman who tried to break some crazy record.”
“Don’t they all. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Let me cut you off at the knees, then. I’m talking about Jessica Dubroff.”
“Still in afterglow, sweetness. Not tracking.”
“A seven year old girl,” and she now stated the facts of the case in all of the matter of fact that her legal training and writer father, and, let’s be candid, her genius for language afforded, in ‘who, what, when, where, and how’ precision, “died, trying to fly trans-continental. Her Father, and her flight instructor were also killed. It was something of a publicity stunt. They called the doomed flight “Sea to Shining See.”
“She died?”
“She died.”
“How did we get on to this? What does this have to do with me and our Skylane?”
“She died in a Cessna. In the pictures…”
“…Pictures?”
“…on the internet.”
“…do I need to take away your computer?”
“…say what?”
“Well, you’re ‘cutting me off at the knees’ about an aviation accident, I guess, involving a child. This is a little too much information after you just fucked my brains out.”
“No, no, Scottie!
She wailed this. She wailed it because she too had had her brains fucked out. She’d been banged into thinking that she was an equal in this marriage. She was trying to tell her husband a flying story, one of the many, many flying stories that end in death. It was one that involved a Cessna. She had, let’s keep in mind, flown that Cessna illegally. She did not have a pilot’s license. Neither did little blonde Jessica Dubroff. She had digested so many aviation stories, and heard her husband tell quite a few doozies himself. She thought he’d appreciate a good accident story. She couldn’t imagine why he would react this way. Her computer was her lifeline. Would he also be confiscating the iPhone? Be keeping her off the internet at work?
“Oh, put a sock in it, Lana. I’m just kidding.”
“You weren’t kidding about the Bar exam. Or you were just teasing about Law School.”
“You…look. I just got home, we just had sex, hot, great sex. Let’s save the bickering for another occasion.” Even in the back and forth, in the pacing of their dialogue, he ruled. When he wanted a fight, they’d have one.
“…’K.”
“So. Tell me what happed to Jessica.”
“They were flying cross country. She was seven years old.”
“Right. Got that part.”
“It was said she had an affinity for flying. She was a natural.”
“Like yourself, perhaps.”
“Yes. They rigged the plane in certain ways. They put blocks on the pedals so she could reach them.”
“Who was in the left seat?”
“Jessica.”
“Seven years, no certification.”
“Right, but she had some 60 plus hours of flight time.”
“More that you. Way more.”
“Yes. So they had a camera and cassette recorders, and the news media hyped it.”
“Even though it couldn’t have resulted in a record, since Jessica had no certificate.”
“Right, and the CFI, a guy named Reid, said as much. He was just flying cross-country with a kid and her dad, who was paying him to do it.”
“So. What did them in?”
“They were overweight.”
“How much?”
“About 100 pounds.”
“Well, that’s gonna increase the stall speed.”
“By 2 percent.”
“Good, babe. Did you do the math?”
“No, I don’t have the specs on that Cessna.”
“You got this off the internet.”
“Yes.”
“It’s starting to ring a bell. I remember something about this after all. It was about fifteen, sixteen years ago. They went down out west somewhere. Took off in bad weather, overloaded.”
“Yeah. The media circus caught it all. They sort of forced the take off. Reid was not thinking straight. He felt some pressure to make a shot for it, to keep it on schedule. So he took the take off roll, and after lift off, the spectators saw the wings wobbling, nose high, climbing slowly. It seemed like he might have gotten away with it. But he started a turn. Visibility was poor. Heavy rain was beating down on that plane.”
“He was in the right seat. He had to look over at her instruments. Airspeed, attitude. And, to see the ground, he had to look out his window. He probably did not intend to turn.”
“They fell out of the turn at a few hundred feet and hit the pavement. Reid’s wrists were broken.”
“He had the yoke.”
“So it wasn’t that the Cessna let them down. He let the Cessna down.”
They sat for a moment in silence. After a time, Scott sighed and looked at Lana.
“Why did you tell me that story?”
“I was thinking about it because of you and your long flight, getting tired probably. I was thinking about flying in general, particularly the illegality of flying without a license. I was thinking about making love to you up there, and how dangerous it is…”
“As if making love isn’t dangerous down here.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, it seems like you kinda had to get a little drunk to do it.”
“Not true.” (But yes, it was. And also to think of a different Scott than the cat ignoring, law book banning one.)
“Oh. I’m just very tired. You’re right about that.”
“Anything else you want to say to me before we both conk out?”
“Oh… I talked to Bruce on the phone. We’re thinking about ditching the Skylane and getting a twin. It would speed things up considerably. Or if we can’t swing that, perhaps a serviceable Beech Bonanza.”
“The Beech is faster?”
“Oh yeah. And given your penchant, now so rampant, for flying disaster stories, ya know what they call the Bonanza?”
“No, what?”
“The Doctor Killer.”
“Ha. That does indeed stir the rampant penchant.”
“It’s not all that hard to fly. It’s a contender. But I really want a twin.”
“Boys and their toys.”
Now they padded towards their bedroom for a sleep, lost in their hidden thoughts. She thought she loved him when he broke character and used his larger vocabulary. She loved the sound of ‘rampant penchant.’ He thought she should have an aircraft she could fly. He thought of making a gift of ultralight for her birthday. She could fly that thing without a ticket in the small fields around Parkersburg and beyond. Or perhaps he’d get her a glider. Let her run off the side of a mountain and be a bird. He could see her getting a ticket and rating for that. She was light and she could run. Her birthday wasn’t until the summer. By then, his marriage would already be over. She’d never take wing, Lana Marietta Andersen Andrews.