“’Sing your troubles to Jesus, the Chaplain’s gone ashore?” asked Bernie significantly. “Korea, ‘51,” he commented to Lindy. He seemed relaxed now that battle was joined. “How old were you, my child?”

“Don’t talk Hemingway,” Lindy said.

“Let’s cut the crap,” suggested Mitch. “She doesn’t like sea stories.”

“So she probably hasn’t heard this one. She should hear it, to know what a callous bastard you really are.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Lindy said dryly. “He hasn’t got your sensitivity. You sweet old Godfather, Bernie.”

“Thank you. Well, I took a few rounds over Wonsan. My wingman got hit and had to ditch. I had a disabled starboard aileron, a severed rudder cable, a main-fuel-tank leak, also hydraulic fluid was pouring down my neck. There was no lateral stability to speak of. I reported these problems to the ship. That blackshoe bastard had the duty in the Combat Information Center. You know what he said?”

“I was trying,” Mitch explained, sucked in against his will, “to get him to quit sobbing and listen. So we would vector him home.”

“He said,” Bernie reported, “’Sing your troubles to Jesus, the padre’s gone ashore.’”

“To Jesus?” marveled Lindy. “He said that, to an altarboy like you?”

“He’s a blasphemous mother,” Bernie assured her. “’To Jesus,’” he says, in his nice warm Center, sipping his coffee. To me, in extremis at twenty thousand feet, with ice-cold air shooting up my ass—”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Mitch pointed out.

“Thank you,” said Bernie without enthusiasm. “You’re right.

You saved my life. When a Chinaman saves somebody’s life he’s responsible for the rest of it.”

“I’m no Chinaman,” Mitch said tonelessly. “Your argument unmoves me.” Unmoves? He was drunk. “I will still pick up my chips and quit.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“A year, goddamn it?” Bernie was sitting erect now. His black eyes glittered into Mitch’s. “Two years?”

Outside the window, a fishing boat pulled away from the dock. She wore a jaunty red pilothouse and carried her nets hung high, like a pioneer woman crossing a puddle. A deckhand sang silently beyond the window, gesturing operatically, on her afterdeck.

With an effort, Mitch looked back into Bernie’s eyes. “Three months?” he blurted. It came out as if he were asking permission.

Bernie sat back. “Over my dead fucking body.”

She sat in the right-hand seat, next to Bernie, while he tested his engine and waited for takeoff clearance from the tower. Mitch had appropriated the rear seat, claiming a hard morning at the office. He began to snore. He never snored unless he was loaded.

Bernie’s own eyes were bleary. He craned back and shook his head. “That’s the guy who used to stack a half-dozen martinis on the bar at Happy Hour to chugalug on the way home.”

“He doesn’t get much practice. Can you still fly this thing?”