“Then you’ll have to fight me for her,” Stone said. “Joan likes her, too, and that’s not easy to come by.”

“We’ll see,” Eggers said, “and we’ll see you on Friday in Virginia. Arrington is putting us up, and Mike, too.”

“See you then.” Stone hung up as Herbie came back in.

“Allison is very nice,” he said.

“When’s the wedding?” Stone asked.

“Oh, come on, Stone. I’m not that bad.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” Stone replied.

Herbie turned red. “Well, we are having dinner this weekend.”

Stone laughed.

Chapter 46

46

On Friday morning Stone went down to his office, and Joan handed him a letter for Peter from the Yale School of Drama.

“I wanted to open it,” she said, “but I didn’t.”

Stone called Dino. “Did Ben get a letter from Yale this morning?”

“Yeah,” Dino said, “but I haven’t given it to him yet. Eduardo called, though, and said there would be good news today.”

“Peter got his today, too.”

Early Friday afternoon, Stone packed Peter and Ben and their luggage into the car and drove out to Teterboro. The Patrick family met them in the lounge at Jet Aviation, and they walked to the ramp just outside, where the Mustang awaited them. There was half an hour of stowing luggage and doing a preflight inspection, and Peter walked around the airplane with Stone, as he pointed out various items for inspection.

Stone settled the Patricks and Ben in the four rear seats, and put Peter in the copilot’s seat, then he closed the door, gave the group a briefing about seat belts, the emergency exit, and oxygen masks, buckled himself in, and started through his checklist. Peter followed him with the copilot’s copy, and Stone pointed out each item on the instrument panel as he checked it. Finally, Stone called the tower for his clearance, wrote it down, entered the route into the flight computer, and got permission to taxi to runway one. Stone talked Peter through the whole procedure, then, when they were cleared for takeoff, explained what was going to happen. He pushed the throttles all the way forward and started down the runway. A minute or so later, at two thousand feet, they were handed off to New York Departure and began their climb.

“I want to learn how to do this,” Peter said.

“When you’re a little older,” Stone replied. “In the meantime, you can read the flight and avionics manuals.”

“I want to learn now,” Peter said.

“You’re learning how to fly to Virginia now,” Stone replied. “In two or three years, you’ll be able to do it yourself. Learning to fly goes better when you have a reason to have an airplane. You’ll be at university, and you won’t need to fly anywhere for a while.”

“Oh, all right,” Peter said. “Can I talk on the radio?”