Now the uniformed attendants meant to keep people off the runway slowly noticed her. A young lady not quite on the plane, but not coming off. She blinked, hesitating there. She did look oddly chic. She looked like someone well known if lost here. My Alabama Byrnes was that now.

But the one who finally ventured down those metal stairs looked more like my plain ole Angie, the kid who’d bowed to us all at the clinic, bowed like a boy forced into some family ceremony, a boy making a joke of the dark rental clothes he secretly liked.

Her free hand held a prissy black leather purse that reminded me of a carryall for forty-five rpm records. She made it halfway down the ladder, clinging to its handrail like someone descending while on uppers. But I could tell she believed she resembled a thirties actress doing the spiral staircase while wearing chiffon to the tune of a wind machine.

“Is she … Bob?” Mrs. Gustafson asked. “I don’t think she’s well.”

“She’s well.” I sounded overinsistent. “She’s sad and she’s tired but well, understand?”

Then I slid past the guards. We’d been told to stand back because of propellers and insurance restrictions, but as I jogged, I thought: What can they do to me, what’s left to do to us now?

She, high heels having achieved asphalt, saw me. As I ran, dodging the pile of army equipment, she did too and grew bigger and, through her layers of widowhood, two white arms lifted. Angie barged so forward she ran past one of her own teetering high heels. She made a strange shrill laughing, “Hartley Airedale, son.” I caught and lifted her and she, if short, still hoisted me right back, the two of us bobbing, lifting coughing, shifting weight, taking turns.

“It’s true?” she shook me. She appeared far thinner; some white powder from her face was caking on the veil.

Then I saw her bend to peek under her own plane, scanning piles of luggage being carted here or there.

“What?” I asked, half stern in order to get through to her. And, beyond the dim gauze, Angie’s pretty dark mouth said, “Is … it … is he here yet?”

I breathed. “Yeah. Signed, sealed, delivered, in your cowboy top and his historic velvet with the star pin right in place. —Now, come be nice to the parents again. I think I love the mother. I also feel I’ve been sitting with them at this airport all my life. She considers you a film star, so do get a grip, this is not no West Village Halloween, girlfriend.”