“I’m sorry, I’m too worn out tonight, George,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow I’m leaving for New York.”

“When you get back, then.”

He leaned forward and kissed her and said that he loved her, that he admired her more than anybody he’d ever met, man or woman, and then he rose from Irene’s bed and went to his bed, and they both fell asleep.

By the time Irene woke up the next morning, George had already left for New York. He had to drum up publicity for her lecture tour before it turned into a disaster.

Hanalei, Hawai’i

October 1947

Lindquist isn’t shy on the subject of celebrity. “It’s a prison,” she snaps. “You can’t go anywhere. Even in private, with friends, you find yourself putting on the mask you wear in public. Eventually the mask becomes your real skin, and that’s when you know you’re finished, there’s nothing left of you.”

“Well, didn’t it also give you opportunity? Money? The means to keep flying? There’s no free lunch. You can’t have anything in life without giving something up. And you had a lot. You had everything you wanted. You had your airplanes, you had money, you had a nice house and nice friends and the admiration of everybody in America. You had marriage to a fellow who was more than happy to be Mr. Irene Foster, and believe me, that kind of husband doesn’t just grow on trees.”

“I know that. I accepted the cost because I wanted the prize so much. But then it went out of balance. The cost kept climbing, and the prize meant less and less. And I felt I had lost myself.”

I scribble all this down in my notebook. “How so?”

“Because I hadn’t really earned it, had I? Oh, I was a good pilot. I was maybe a great pilot. But so was Sam, and he didn’t have any of those things. He was living hand to mouth in those years, scraping together fees for air shows and stunts and derbies. Crashing for money, I used to call it. It was just the luck of the draw, and the fact that he’d married a different kind of person.”

“Was she so different, though? It seems to me that Morrow was using you as much as Mrs. Mallory used her husband. He just had more class.”

Lindquist stands. “That’s enough for now, Janey. I’m going surfing. You’re welcome to join me.”