Necessity by Brian Garfield

kills me.”
    â€œNo,” he says. “You mean if it kills me .”
    She draws a long breath. “Okay Charlie. Let’s do it again.”
    â€œShee-yit.”

23 On the fourth approach he keeps his hands off the yoke and she lands the airplane by herself. To be sure it is one tire at a time: there’s a good deal of bouncing and pitching but she manages. She even remembers to steer with the pedals instead of the wheel.
    She brings it to a stop at the edge of the pavement. “Do you want me to take it in?”
    â€œThanks just the same.”
    He taps her hands. She lifts them off the controls. Charlie taxis toward the hangar and idles into the parking slot, fitting it neatly between an Aercoupe and a Bonanza and cutting the ignition. Then he sits tense and still with his eyes squeezed shut. His huge hands engulf the control yoke.
    She says, “You don’t have to make a comedy act out of it.”
    He pushes the door open and swings his legs out onto the strut. He needs to climb out carefully because he’s so big; he tends to bang his head and he’s always getting caught in spaces another man might negotiate with a foot of room to spare.
    Without waiting to help her he drops down off the step and walks away toward the hangar.
    She smiles slightly, knowing him a bit now. She’s confident he’ll go for it. He’s as good as most—and as inconsistent—but he’s not all bluff. And he’s got his mercenary side.
    A good thing too because time’s getting very short. It’s August 8. Four weeks from today they’ll have left Fort Keene and it will be too late.
    If Charlie refuses there’ll be very little time to get someone else.
    She’s going to have to put it to him today. No later than tonight.
    She watches him go into the hangar. The heavy rolling gait is peculiar to him: as though he were a sailor on a wildly swiveling deck. He seems to hesitate before planting each foot, as if to make sure first that there’s solid ground under it.
    After a moment she follows him through the hangar. Two of the Beechcraft mechanics are working on a plane; they both wave to her and she smiles back. She stops at the coffee machine and plugs quarters into it and carries two cups of the wretched swill around the corner into Charlie’s sanctum. She finds him in the chair with his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands.
    She puts his coffee in front of him and tastes her own. “I wouldn’t’ve thought it was possible to get used to this stuff.”
    â€œI once thought it was possible to get used to anything,” he says.
    â€œWhat changed your mind?”
    â€œYou did, my love.”
    â€œAm I supposed to be flattered or is that another joke?”
    He says: “Some people are born piano players and some people are born aviators.”
    â€œAnd I am not one of the latter.”
    â€œYou don’t have the instincts, my beauty. Listen. A few years ago my kid was in a rock band. High school combo. They played for club dances and things. A couple appearances on some local public-access cable TV channel.
    â€œThey were all eleventh graders except this one guy who played the Fender bass. He was a senior and he graduated and went back East to college, and Mike’s senior year the kids had to find themselves another bass player.”
    His voice rumbles around the room, throwing ominous echoes. She enjoys the sound of it but she knows how a man’s deep voice can deceive by making him sound as if he’s got answers for everything.
    â€œThey hunted around school,” he says, “talked to the music teacher, all that, and it ended up they auditioned about five kids for the job. In my garage. I heard them all. Couldn’t tell much difference—all that junk sounds the same to me. Kids’ music always sounds like crap to a parent. I grew up on the jitterbug—I hear that stuff now, it sounds like crap