by Aimee Norin
She passed by the Bleriot in a daze.
"Are you okay?" someone far below asked, but thankfully they flew on so she didn't have to respond.
Lourdes' pain drove her heart into trauma, she was sure. If she felt enough pain, the tissues would tear. An atrium would rupture. The wall of her heart would cave, destroying itself like her will to live.
This had been her whole life, she thought. Always: fake highs and real lows. And the real lows were probably because of the fake highs and false ideas-she knew that-but she couldn't stop it. The need to be herself was overpowering, and she couldn't be. Medical science couldn't make it happen. And then those people had to step in and lie to everyone about what she was doing. And she had to feel this love for one of them?
She was certain it was a fake love. Infatuation? Just another fake high.
Her feet wandered toward Show Center on inertia and stood by the Waco. People milled around her.
She couldn't believe how stupid she was. Leave everything behind. Her home, her car, her job. And go to this place? Find this total fantasy knock-off and jump into the sack with him? Thinking she could be happy with him so fast?
When it was just a vacation affair.
Her eyes looked at the panel in the Waco, but her knees wavered.
"Lady," someone said, "Are you alright?"
She turned to leave, forcing herself to walk as steadily as possible so no one would notice her.
If her heart imploded- If she willed it to tear apart, crushed it with her pain, it wouldn't be suicide, she thought to herself.
There was a stone bench by Wittman Road at the Brown Arch, where people had engraved, memorable inscriptions set in the tiles of the pathway. Lourdes sat down and willed her mind to slow into nothingness. She let days pass, though she didn't know if it were minutes or years.
To hell with them all, she thought. She could do nothing. She was this junk of a person who couldn't be loved, a distortion of her sex with a life-threatening birth defect no one would believe, who people have to talk about behind her back-
Invalidate my whole life! she thought to them. Say whatever you want so my issues aren't my issues and my needs aren't my needs. All Asians look alike to you so lump them together as Chinese?
No friends, no love.
Maybe, she thought, that's why she got along better with animals and things-like airplanes-because they didn't invalidate her or set her up for hell.
She looked into the future at the rest of her life. Forty more years of this? If her heart quit in a minute, there wouldn't even be that.
So how was she going to get through those next forty years?
There she was, star dust reformed as life-broken so badly she could hardly stand to live each minute.
Distract herself, she thought. I suck at relationships, and every time I get close to someone, that never-ending conflict with the gender crowd comes up. So I just need to swear them off like a nun and distract myself, day by day, for the rest of my life-little anonymous concerts, flying the plane, anonymous festivals and fairs. Maybe travel some and see the planet-IT didn't do anything to me-and pack it all in my head so that when I die, I can pretend to myself I did my best with what I had.
The tan colored tiles held her gaze, but all she could see was her desolation.
How long she sat, she didn't know. The afternoon wore on. The sun fell behind her-as she was facing east through the Brown Arch-so the grasses beyond appeared greener, and the airplanes sitting on it appeared more and more golden.
Food.
She knew she was depressed and defeated, but she could do that while she gorged. Why suffer that way, too? No reason to watch her weight, she thought.
There was a tent caf? nearby, she knew. Like the ninety year old woman she felt she was, she ached herself off the bench into an upright posture, and shuffled in that direction-losing her way, stumbling aimlessly.
In the Warbird area, on the patio by some Liaison aircraft on display, before a gathering crowd of people, a gifted singer impersonated Billie Holiday at a forties-era microphone, singing "Stormy Weather." Some people sat on bleachers nearby while others sat on the grass, either holding hands or smiling past ice cream cones, all feeling the glow the singer crafted.
"Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky
As if on cue, a distant P-51 fired up, its deep, twelve cylinder Rolls Royce Merlin engine serving as perfect background accompaniment-another instrument in the band to the crowd in the Fightertown tent caf?.
"You hear that song? That's from the thirties," one old fella said to another, listening.
"Reminds me of that scene in 'The Glenn Miller Story' when they played 'In the Mood' while buzz bombs dropped all over London," a slightly younger man added.
"I lived some of that. I was over there and saw Glenn Miller," another older gentleman said.
"Well, I saw Benny Goodman at the Casino out at Catalina Island, once," yet another said.
"These are golden times, guys," the first said. "Man, what a life."
Lourdes didn't notice. She picked at a cheeseburger, ignoring her fries, people bustling around her, and everything else.
How could she be five pounds overweight? Two weeks ago, she had been ten pounds overweight.
Her phone rang and she put her burger down to answer it. The phone said it was Millie.
"Hello?" Lourdes said weakly.
"Lourdes?"
"Yeah," she said without adding anything.
"Mike got here fine. Thanks for stowing things in the motorhome. I know Mike would have butchered that. I've seen him do it before."
"Okay."
"So- Hon, you don't sound so good."
"No big deal," Lourdes eeked out.
"Lourdes, are you okay?"
No. "Yeah."
The band outside switched to playing "Moonglow," a sentimental instrumental originally by the Benny Goodman Quartet with Lionel Hampton at the vibraphone.
The older crowd were charmed with the afternoon's small "concert," as it were.
"That's good music, guys."
Their smiles confirmed it.
The P-51's Merlin was replaced by a rotund "Jug" taxying by.
"God! That's a P-47," one ole fella said to the others. "That's a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double-Wasp engine up front!"
"Two rows of nine cylinders," another said. "Twenty-four hundred pounds of swinging steel. Twenty-one hundred horses! When those things start spitting and popping and banging-"
"Music to my ears!" they agreed.
"Lourdes! What's wrong," Millie said in the phone. "Tell me?"
Lourdes didn't answer.
"You do this, Lourdes. You don't talk when you're upset. Come on-it's me. Mike said Jim proposed to you but you turned him down? I thought you really liked him, and I know he's totally stuck on you. Tell Aunt Millie what's going on."
"Nothing- It's not him, it's me," she said.
"I thought the sparks were flying."
"They did. But there's more to it."
"There always is. But there's always more with everyone. Everywhere. What's going on? No, I'm sorry. Am I prying? Oh, this is about Jim as well, and telling me would be gossiping? Right! I support that! Not telling me is good. I see that. You gotta be discrete. Great. That's right. So what am I doing here?" Millie asked. "I'm trying to be supportive."
Lourdes felt so unworthy, she couldn't reach out and take what she needed, even when it was right in front of her.
What could be lower than that?
"I love you," Lourdes said. "Please tell Mike I'm happy for both of you."
And she hung up before Millie could say anything, then turned her phone off, shoving it back into her purse.
CHAPTER 30
Over the next few days, Lourdes wandered the airshow in a fog, like a ghost. She watched aerobatic displays with recognition but not connection. She walked by people without their notice. She lived. She tried not to think. She ate sometimes.
No
! was her immediate reaction.
She turned and walked away from the ice cream stand toward the Exhibit hangars.
Did anyone notice?
She glanced at people as long as she could without creating any more issues. They walked and talked without interest in her.
They didn't seem to notice.
Was she being paranoid again?
The way the man had looked at her.
Maybe it was nothing? she wondered.
No. It was nothing, she was sure. He hadn't done anything. Maybe it was one of those I'm-attracted-to-you looks? He didn't mean anything?
Jim! Her mind called for his protection.
A pedestrian throughway was clogged with people. Everyone was in a rush to get somewhere.
Lourdes stood back and let them all pass.
Rain fell down the clear plastic sides of the large vendor tent where Lourdes sat, waiting, on a white-painted, wooden lawn chair. Every now and then, a gust of wind would blow a flap open, and some of the rain would blow in to wet her right foot.
She didn't bother to move it.
Lightning cracked through the sky directly overhead.
The airshow was temporarily interrupted.
Packed inside the vendor tent, a hundred people watched the storm pass overhead. People near her consulted their smart phones for weather data.
"It's a mess," one man said to his neighbor. "See here?" he showed his friend his smart phone. "The radar shows this green rain here, and red over there-and that yellow is coming straight for us, there."
"We're on the leading edge of it," another man said, showing the radar on his phone to others as well. "I bet that lighting there is part of it."
"And there's more behind that," a woman said who had stood beside them. "See the prog chart? On the N.O.A.A.'s site." She showed the men and they oooed and awed over the coming weather.
"I'm afraid it's going to be wet for a while," they concluded.
There was an electrical outlet available on an inner wall, away from the tent sides, but Lourdes didn't go recharge her phone.
Why?
It was in her purse, along with a recharger she'd been carrying since she got there, and her umbrella, and some toiletries. But she didn't have the energy to get up and go to the outlet.
What would it matter?
The only thing she could do with the phone was talk on it or get weather data for herself. But why bother? She didn't have anyone to talk to, and she didn't care if it rained. Just leave it off, she thought.
She watched people so excited about the weather. You'd think rain was a bad thing, but it seemed to energize everyone. Their talk was happy and excited.
Lourdes sat alone in a chair. Grateful she had a chair to sit in, knowing it wasn't her chair and she'd have to give it up soon.
Hours and days dragged on in a daze. Lourdes found no meaning in them. She had nothing to do, no where to go, and it would end, she knew.
Clear and beautiful, the sun shining, people milled about for miles looking at everything aviation from carburetors to perfectly displayed, ready-to-fly aircraft?
Lourdes watched the one-man-band play?
She sat in the Theatre in the Woods, alone with three thousand other people, watching the evening programming?
She slept alone in her tent, her sleeping bag protecting her from the chill. There was neither wind nor rain, no airplane noise. It was quiet.
CHAPTER 31
"Hey!" a young, thin, wiry man called out to Lourdes in the flight line tent caf? where she was having lunch. "You're that T.O.R. lady? Your husband called out to me the other day about playing The Old Republic?"
Lourdes quit working on her cheeseburger to look at the man.
"I'm the Commando he waved to?" The guy sat down at Lourdes' table in the caf? along with two of his buddies, each loaded up with burgers and sodas.
"Hey, guys. This lady plays T.O.R."
"Hi," the other two men said.
The first man made the introductions. "I'm John, and this here is Ted-he's a tank-and Bill, a gunfighter."
"Hello," Lourdes said, trying not to encourage them. "I'm Lourdes. It's nice to meet you." She did not offer her hand.
"So what are you?" John asked.
"A Jedi sage," she said.
"Cool," Bill said.
"You got any ketchup?" Ted asked John
"Back up there abeam the register. By the weapons," John said, meaning the plastic cutlery. "See 'em?"
"Yeah." Ted left the table to go get some.
"So what does your husband play?" John asked Lourdes.
Lourdes quickly wondered how she should handle this. She refused to lie as a person, but she didn't want to go into everything, either. "He's not my husband," she said.
John and Bill smiled.
"But I am taken, so none of that," she said.
"Oh darn!" Bill said. "Happens to me all the time! It's a good thing I have a robot at home."
"I think I'm old enough to be your mother, too," Lourdes said.
"I can't tell," Bill said.
"He wouldn't care, either. If she's breathing, she's good enough. He dated once back in college, but you know how us geeks can be," John said.
Ted came back with some ketchup, dumping a handful of the little plastic packs on the table in between everyone, then sat down to devour his burger.
"Don't drool over this lady," John said to Ted. "She's heard about us and gave us a shot across the bow."
Ted complained, playfully.
"It's not you guys," Lourdes said, munching more on her burger. "I'm just taken, that's all."
"And I saw her guy," John said, "the other day. Right in here. You can't compete, anyway."
"A jock?" Bill asked. "I dated a jock's girl once? Then it went bad."
Ted said, "I didn't know that."
"It was when I was at M.I.T."
Ted and John looked at him doubtfully.
Bill continued, "We loved each other over a set of twin soft tacos in the food court-it was just the two of us, and she was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen."
"Did you get her name?" Ted asked.
"No. Her boyfriend came back. We shared lunch, anyway, right there together, because all the tables were full."
Ted, John and Lourdes all laughed.
Who were these playful nerds?
"It was humiliating," Bill said.
"So what's new?" Ted said to his friends.
"I'll never date another jock's girl," Bill said.
"So Lourdes is hands-off-" John said, letting it hang for Lourdes to finish.
"He's not a jock, no," Lourdes said. "But it's hands-off anyway. Anyone touches this?" she indicated herself, "you'll turn to stone."
"Biblical!" Ted noted with humor.
"Ha," Lourdes said sarcastically. Her look to him made it clear she was willing to play along with the teasing, but fat chance in reality. "Have you had your cougar training?" She looked at them. "Any of you?"
They shook their heads in mock shame.
"I didn't think so. I don't rob the cradle, chillins. But if anyone wants to talk F.D.R., I'm yours."
"You kids fly?" Lourdes asked, changing the subject.
"I fly," John said. "I have an old Cherokee that holds three people-and we're two from M.I.T. I'm from Michigan State, so we're way under the limit."
"We don't chip in for gas," Bill said.
"They're walking home," John said to Lourdes, then "You fly?"
Lourdes nodded. "I have a one-fifty over in Vintage. You other guys don't fly?"
Ted and Bill shook their heads no.
"At all?" Lourdes asked.
"Nope," Ted said.
"How do you get up in the morning," Lourdes asked. "What if John, here, keels over at the yoke?"
"Then I'll fly!" Ted said.
"How hard could it be if John does it?" Bill said.
"I told 'em," John said, "that flying is just like a video game-"
Bil
l jumped in to finish for him, "Only if you mess up you die for real."
"It's possible," Lourdes said, "But it's a lot more dangerous to take a shower-"
"That's why I always prefer to shower with someone else," Bill said with a wink.
"You play much?" Ted asked.
"A little. Not as much as Jim or his buddies, but yeah."
"What are your toons?" John asked.
"I have a few, but mostly I use my sage, because she's a healer." Lourdes said.
"Awesome!" The three of them exclaimed.
"What level?" John asked.
"Fifty," Lourdes said.
More "Oooooohs."
"Maybe you could give Numb Nuts here a few pointers?" Bill said about John.
"Because he's a level twenty-one Commando Medic, and he can't heal any better than my Grandma June who's been dead for twenty years."
"I keep getting killed," John said in defense. "I can't heal if I'm dead."
Lourdes asked John, "You have another toon? A higher one that you used to play?"
"Yeah," John said. "I'm normally a Sage, R.D.P.S.," he said, for "Range Damage Per Second."
"Well," Lourdes said, "That could be your problem."
"Normally," John said. "I stand back and dump D.P.S. on target. We like to do Flashpoints together, these dweebs and I. But we didn't have any heals, so we queue for one and it takes time. Because there aren't enough heals to go around, I think. So I," he referred to himself magnanimously-
His buddies jeered at him.
"I break down and decide, okay, I'll level us up a healer for us: a Commando Medic. They have cool armor."
"But he's such a total retard at it," Bill said.
Lourdes started to wonder if that was really so.
"No, really. He sucks at it," Ted said.
Lourdes looked at John.
"Yeah, I do," John said. "There's this one Flashpoint we've been working on? I can't believe these dudes stick with me on this, because it's eating my lunch over and over. If we get past this middle part where all the adds come get me, we get to the big boss at the end-this total bad dude with wicked Area of Effect-and I think I'm hanging in there fine, healing, and then all of a sudden I'm dead! Bang! Like that. Then, usually, Bill over there gets killed 'cause he's lightly armored, and who ever else is D.P.S. right along with him, and Ted- He gets close. He almost takes the boss down, but then he gets killed and it's a wipe. So we have to resurrect back at the area starting point, repair all armor, and then run back in."
