Even to my inexperienced eye, this airplane isn’t exactly the raciest piece of metal aloft. It’s designed to carry tourists over the Hawaiian islands or else locals desiring a more snappy form of transportation than the ferries, and what you want for such purposes is an airplane that reassures passengers they’ll hit the ground again safely. It’s a chunky, sturdy beast of two engines and eight seats, not counting pilot and navigator, and what strikes me as I fasten the straps, taking care not to jostle the bottle in my lap, is that the pilot can’t exactly see out the cockpit window.

“Yes, I can,” says Lindquist.

“Not very well.”

“It’s better once we’re airborne, and the plane levels off.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m not complaining. The less I see the better. Are you sure I can’t have one little smoke?”

“Only if you let me take the bottle away.”

“Why am I here?” I wail. “What have you done to me?”

“I have a better question. What makes you think you can write a book about Sam Mallory without ever having flown in an airplane?”

“It is called imagination, Lindquist. You literal types wouldn’t understand.”

She puffs that away and continues doing whatever it is you do, when you’re preparing a machine to fly in the air. I hear the noise of engines like the buzz of angry insects. The air smells of gasoline and engine oil. Lindquist fiddles with her dials, scribbles something in her log, that kind of thing. I close my eyes and recall the way the water surged gently beneath my surfboard—no, hold on. That ended in disaster. Better to think of a ride that ended well, like Leo the other night. Leo before Uncle Kaiko. Leo before the fall. Leo—

The airplane moves. My eyes pop open. I suck down another mouthful of Scotch whiskey, and doesn’t it run smooth against the thump of my heart? The airplane turns. The engines spool to a roar. Build and build, until that ramshackle fuselage shakes under the pressure of so much power held in check, until the whole world rattles, something’s wrong, it’s an earthquake, it’s the end of the universe.