"Flip it, flip it, flip it," begged Thea, tugging at her skirt. "I want to see it fly."

I want to see it fly....

All the previous day, a mechanic had worked on Hoagie's plane. Hoagie had not come near her. This morning, at dawn, when the air was cool for takeoff and the feeble tide was out, he'd returned in Romeo's Cadillac.

She had run from the porch to wish him luck, then walked to the beach with him. He had been cold and distant to Mike and awkward and stiff with her.

She was hurt. My God, they had been through hell together the day before, and she had not panicked or cried or diverted him. She had been proud, and sure that he appreciated it and that he liked her very much.

She certainly liked him. So why was he so cool?

The wing was patched with a panel of bright aluminum—"al-u-min-ium," Hoagie called it—and the engine sounded fine. He had taxied down the beach under the palms, and swung the craft around.

The rest was out of a newsreel of the first Wright Brothers flight. With Mike and Jake holding the tail down, and herself crouched in the prop blast to pull out his wheel chocks, Hoagie had revved the engine higher and higher until she was certain the propeller would fly off.

He shouted "Now!" She pulled the chocks. Mike and Jake let go. Ever so slowly, over the crunching, stinging sand, the plane began to move. It seemed certain that he would never get to takeoff speed; by the time he reached the ruins of Thea's castle, he seemed to be moving hardly faster than a walk.

But somehow, in the last fifty yards, the Cessna gathered speed. As she stood with her hand to her mouth, begging it to rise, it wobbled into the air. Ticking the bracken on Masthead Hill, it wallowed away, popping and belching smoke.

He circled, passed fifty feet above the sand, and waved them thanks. She was sure, at the very end, that she saw him blow a kiss.

But why the coldness, why the silence, as they'd walked down to the plane?

"Flip it, Grandma, flip it!" insisted Thea.

She flipped the pancake, and it landed, half in the pan, half out.

The story of her two-day affair with Hoagie. Half in the pan, half out.

She made Thea a new pancake, and they sat down to eat.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Carlos Flores—el Conejo Grande—lay on his back in the newest of Rico Lomas's ski boats. His feet and hands were tied.

On his head he wore a bunny hood they had taken from one of Lomas's bar waitresses. From somewhere he heard laughter and mariachi music.