Chapter 42

The next morning I walked into the terminal and got a cup of coffee and sat next to Jerry. I was a bit surprised when he asked me for my log book, and dug it out of my case. He looked through it, and seemed pleased with how I had recorded our flight.

Then it was a repeat of the day before. Doing the inspection, but this time he had me rest my hand on the back of his as he manipulated the throttles as we took off. And it was little different than doing it with a single engine, just that there were two of them. He then had me take over and as the last time he would ask questions between giving me new instructions. And about an hour in he told me to try and lower the throttle as much as I could without losing altitude.

I took them in my hand and started to lower the engine speed. I finally reached a point where I saw the altimeter start to drop, then raised the throttle just a little and lifted the nose until I was back at the altitude he wanted. He said “Very good”, then told me to keep it there as he gave me a new heading. I took a very long turn, trying to keep the altitude the same. Finally he directed me to turn back to the runway and to increase the air speed to 110 knots. Then after keeping my hand on his and watching closely we landed the airplane.

He tied it down as I did the post-flight inspection, then we went to the lounge where I put everything into the logbook. He then said he was going to try and get us clearance to do some touch and go landings the next day. He wanted to have me at least try a few before moving on to more advanced things, and I nodded. I asked him why he needed permission, and he smiled.

“Oh, I do not need it but it makes it easier. They will try and find me a spot where nothing is scheduled so we can do that without interrupting routine traffic. Generally we get about fifteen or twenty minutes where we can do that each hour.”

“Hell, why not just use Pete’s runway?” He looked at me, and I reached into my case and pulled out my chart. I pointed on the map where it was, Mandy had carefully penciled it in for me. “It’s right here, just over 8,000 feet and paved. There’s no tower, but it should not be a problem. I’ll ask them if we can use it, I can’t see why not.”

“OK, that’s an even better plan. OK, if we can use it we will head out there. If not, we will just do it here. OK, see you tomorrow morning.”

I again decided to drive to the resort and get lunch. And as I walked up I saw Grace was working, and flirting with two guys that were in front of her stand. And like the day before she barely gave me a glance, then charged me for my lunch. Then when I sat down I saw the two guys were back in front of her again. And I did not like that they seemed to be about my age, maybe a year or two older. And flirting with a girl that was only seventeen. So I finished my lunch and headed over to Gem.

The gal at the front smiled and asked if she could help me, and I asked to see Pete. “Oh, I’m sorry. He’s out of the office at the moment. Would you like to make an appointment?” I just shook my head and asked if Mandy was in. She picked up the phone, then after speaking into it asked my name. And she actually blushed when I told her, and two minutes later Mandy came out and hugged me.

“Lucy, this is Larry and Dee’s son. Just so you know, he had free reign of this and can go where he likes. So next time, just wave him in and you can save us all the trouble of calling me.” Mandy was smiling as she said that, and Lucy said she would and apologized to me.

“Ma’am, no need to apologize. You didn’t know who I was, and were just doing your job. But you might say I almost grew up in here, since it was just a small concrete building even.” Mandy took me upstairs to her office, and handed me a soda as she sat down behind her desk.

“OK George, what’s up? Not that I’m not happy to see you, but most times if you come here it is to see your mom.”

“Oh, I will go to see her next. But I need to ask something that only you or Pete can give me permission for.” I then explained how Jerry wanted me to do some touch and go’s, and if we could use their runway. She smiled at me, and quickly got on the phone. And a moment later nodded. “Tina has an early morning run to Winnemucca, and will be gone all day. So go ahead, nobody else is scheduled to be using it at all.” She then told me the runway at Strevell was open to use also.

“Well, that might be a bit far I think. But I will tell Jerry, we might stop there when he has me doing longer flights.” We talked for about ten minutes, and as she had always been kind of like a big sister to me I asked her if she knew what was up with Grace. She gave me this look that was almost like one my mom would give me, and asked what made me think there was anything up with her.

“Well, we went skating the other night, and she has not spoken a word to me since then. The entire drive home she would not talk to me, and the last two days I went to see her when I had lunch. She not only refused to say more than the absolute minimum, she actually charged me.”

Mandy raised her eyebrow at that, and asked if I objected to being charged. “No, actually not at all. It is not that I have to pay, is that she is having me pay and I never have before. That also tells me something is wrong, but I have no idea what.”

She sighed and shook her head slightly, then looked into my eyes and bit the corner of her lower lip for a moment. “OK, I gotta be a bit careful here. But let me ask you, what happened the other night?”

I told her about going to see Grace at the snack bar, and as we ate telling her I was going skating and asking if she wanted to join me. And as I was saying that she nodded, then prompted me to what happened next.

“Well, while we were there Trudy came up to me. Remember her, my last girlfriend before I move to California? Well, she joined us for a bit, then I started skating with her. And for the rest of the night Grace avoided me.”

“Uh-huh, and idea why that might have been?”

“Honestly, not really. She knows Trudy, we were together for almost six months. And she has even gone skating with us before and never had a problem with it.”

“And I take it you skated with Trudy?”

“Well, yeah. We actually skated together for the rest of the evening. I tried to skate with Grace at the end, but she was not interested.”

Mandy did this clucking noise with her tongue, and shook her head. “George, you honestly have no idea why she was upset with you?”

“Well, no. I mean, I have heard the stories about you all in school. All the girls skating with Pete whenever you all went out. How is this any different?”

“Oh George, it was way different. OK, first of all, how did you see that night?”

“Well, Grace and I going skating. What else would it have been?”

“George, do you think that maybe in her mind it might have been a date? Not as in you two just going skating like before, but an actual date date?” I know my jaw almost dropped open, and I quickly took a drink as my mouth suddenly felt a bit dry.

“Well, I guess I can see that now. So yeah, maybe that was a date I guess. But you all changed who was with Pete on dates when he was with Linda.”

She smiled and took a drink herself and nodded. “Oh yes, at those we all skated with Pete. But George, here’s the difference. On those nights, Linda was his only date. We all took turns skating with him, or the boyfriends of each other. But here is the big difference, it was at our instigation. We girls made the call to share our boyfriends, not the guys. And sometimes we would tell each other we were not going to change partners and we only wanted to skate with our boyfriend. Oh, Pete might for instance ask Linda if he could skate with Holly or me next, but it was always up to Linda and us if we did that or not.”

I looked at her with open eyes, and she nodded. “So yes, you blew it there. Big time. In her mind, that night was indeed a date. And then shortly after you both got there, you stood her up for most of it.”

“But she was welcome to stay with us, neither of us told her to stay away.”

“George, I can’t believe I have to say this. You hurt her, and the fact that you barely paid attention to her the rest of the night hurt her even more. Yes, I have talked to her about that. In case you did not know, she often comes to me when she has troubles. I guess I fall somewhere between big sister and aunt with her, so Grace often comes to me when she’s troubled. And to be blunt, she told me she felt like shit when you blew off the rest of your evening with her to go off chasing pussy. Because that is exactly what she said, to ‘go off chasing pussy’. And I can even see why, you do not even seem to understand what you did that hurt her so much.”

I sighed softly, and actually felt ashamed. “Well, I guess I am an asshole. Mandy, that was never my intention, it was just the first time I had seen Trudy in years.”

“Oh, I know that. And Grace knows that. And I bet that if after the first couple skate with Trudy you rejoined her, an apology would have been enough. I think she would have understood, and been happy that she again had you for the rest of the night. Hell, I bet if you had asked her if you could have every other couple skate with Trudy she would have been fine. But George, here is the difference between you and your brother.”

Oh, great. I was about to get another lecture on “Peter the Great!”.

“Now get that look off your face, I am being absolutely serious now!” I looked into her eyes at her sharp tone, and she nodded. I had no idea it was so obvious on my face.

“George, the difference between you two is that if that had been Linda, or me, or any other girl he would have asked us permission. You, you tend to do that much less than he does and just do what you want. Whereas he would have looked at me and asked if he could skate every other skate with say Kim or Linda, he would have asked me if he could do that. And at least to a girl, that makes all the difference in the world. It is our choice, our decision. And one that in reality we are making together, as a couple.”

I nodded as she said that, and was feeling even more ashamed than I had earlier. Mandy came over and sat on the edge of her desk in front of me and rested one hand on my shoulder. “George, you are a great guy. But you can also sometimes be a bit of an asshole. You need to stop thinking about what it is you want, and start thinking a bit more of what others may want. In Grace’s mind, that was a date. And not necessarily as a ‘boyfriend-girlfriend’ romantic date, but a date none the less for just the two of you. And right after you get there, you take off with another gal for the rest of the evening.”

She reached behind her and pulled out a tissue and handed it to me, as I was actually crying a bit. Realizing that I had hurt my sister, and I was indeed an asshole. I thanked her softly, and asked what I should do now.

“Well, for one I would suggest treading lightly with her. Give her a few days, time is often a good way to heal wounds like this. We both know she loves you, and will forgive you. Hell, my sister and I had more than a few big fights over the years, but we always forgave each other eventually. In fact, can I make a suggestion?”

And when I nodded, she suggested trying to limit any time I spent with Trudy, and try to spend more at the campground. “Cliff told us that you had worked at the show last night. Maybe offer to do that more often. You do not know this, but about half the time Grace works them also. Especially on weekends, she often does trick riding on Saturday.”

I looked up at her and she nodded. “On Saturdays even a lot of locals show up now. That show is a lot longer, with a bigger shootout and with Grace often doing riding tricks. Even Pete and I bring the kids down sometimes to see that.”

I told her about the night before and her flipping me off when I revised the script and called her “Princess Kimama”. She looked at me in puzzlement, and asked what I meant by that and what it stood for.

“Oh, I had no idea it was Grace that would be doing it. Cliff told me there was a change in the script, and that the girl kidnapped would be ‘Golden Sage’. And I thought immediately that was a stupid name, obviously trying to sound like an Indian name and failing. Like something you would see in a bad Western movie. So I changed it to Kimama, which is Shoshone for ‘butterfly’. And they were so far away, I did not even realize it was Grace out there. And at the end I just adlibbed she was ‘Princess Kimama’, and that Hank was going to ask her father the Chief if he could court her. That’s when she flipped me off.”

Mandy laughed at that and nodded, and returned to her chair. “Well, I bet she thought you were mocking her. And just so you know, Grace is the one that picked that name. So that might be something else against you. That you changed her stage name without her permission, and might have been double mocking her. Why did you make her a princess?”

“Mandy, remember I did not know that was Grace! She had on a traditional style outfit with turquoise shoulders, and I simply thought that was too nice for just some random squaw to be wearing. So I made her a Princess, and at the end made it like she might marry her savior.”

She shook her head and chuckled. “Yeah, and one that is a couple of years older than her own father. George, you really dug yourself in deep here. One night you snub her on a date, then the next you pretty much make her out to be a Disney Princess. And trying to hook her up with an old man. You know how she might take that?”

“Why? What’s wrong with that? When we were kids she loves playing like she was Pocahontas. I even teased her back then that she was Powhatan, and more appropriately she should actually be Sacagawea, as she was Shoshone.” Mandy just laughed at that, and nodded saying she remembered those arguments.

“But remember, Disney Princesses are all perfect ideals of what some think girls and women should be. Beautiful, graceful, eternal virgins who never grow up and remain that way forever. Even in those sequel movies they made on video, they would have kids and still look like they did at the start of the first movie. We may like the idea of being a Disney Princess when we are young, but we do not want to remain one forever.”

I actually got that and nodded. “Kinda like I used to pretend I was Peter Pan, and Grace was Princess Tiger Lily. It was fun then, but I would hate to imagine trying to spend my entire life as Peter Pan.”