Imperfect Delight

by Andrea de Carlo

  Nick Cruickshank smiles, his politeness evidently well practiced; he takes off his hairnet, shakes out his hair.

  Milena Migliari begins to tell the two girls to leave him be but holds back. Why should she be protective of someone who just disturbed her in the middle of her work and even gave her a surprise kiss, albeit on the forehead?

  Nick Cruickshank takes off his overshoes, too, follows Guadalupe and Delphine into the shop, stands with his back to the wall like he’s facing a firing squad.

  Milena Migliari looks on from behind her work table, half concealed by the doorframe; she thinks that once upon a time the two girls would have been content with an autograph to keep for themselves and maybe show to a few girlfriends; now they demand photographic proof to share instantly with an unlimited number of people.

  Guadalupe and Delphine press up against Nick Cruickshank, hip to hip and temple to temple, give toothy smiles in one, two clicks of each of their cell phones. Then, vibrating with excitement, they hug him and kiss him on the cheeks. They certainly don’t have any problems with physical contact.

  “Salut, je m’en vais.” Nick Cruickshank brings proceedings to a close with polite firmness, this, too, well practiced. He leans back into the lab, waves good-bye, still theatrical but significantly less emphatic than when he came in. “Thanks very much for the visit. And my compliments again, really. Bye.”

  “Thank you.” Milena Migliari smiles back in the most restrained way she can; she goes back to her blender, but before turning it on she waits to hear the shop door swing shut. Would he have stayed longer if Guadalupe hadn’t brought that friend of hers with the bright idea of taking selfies with him? To talk about what, though, after the conversation was ruined by that kiss on the forehead? Would they at least have clarified the nature of his gesture? Would they have figured out whether it was simply an impulsive act with no particular connotations, or the automatic reflex of a male accustomed to seeking confirmation of his seductive power in every female he meets, even those whom he doesn’t like and aren’t interested in him? But why should she waste time thinking about it now? And why does she continue to feel so absurdly agitated? Why are her legs shaking slightly, along with her hands on the blender?

  Guadalupe says a giggling good-bye to Delphine, locks the shop door, comes back to the lab, still high as a kite. “Did you see how nice Nick was? Can you believe it? And despite his age he’s still the coolest around! Just give me a moment to post the photos and I’ll come help you.”

  “Go ahead.” Milena Migliari turns on the blender, mixes the persimmon pulp with the creamy milk; Nick Cruickshank’s kiss on her forehead and his words and gestures before it whirl around in her head in the very same way, producing the same complete confusion.

  TWELVE

  THE AIRFIELD OF Fayence-Tourrettes covers an area of more than 110 acres. The runways are in grass; the main one is 2,700 feet long and 150 feet wide. Nick Cruickshank discovered it many years ago, while touring Europe in search of the best places to fly with a glider; and he liked it so much he ended up buying a house a couple of miles from here, and enlarging the original estate with successive acquisitions of bordering properties. It wasn’t difficult, since after a certain point everyone began carving up their land into smaller lots and selling them off for the construction of villas and cottages in the so-called Neo-Provençal style. The plain quickly filled with this rubbish, the hills likewise; the towns are quite happy to reduce the minimum requirements for licenses, assuring themselves as much property tax revenue as they can. The nice thing is that he now finds himself with a little breathing room around his home, a few dozen hectares of green where no one can pester him. Which makes it decidedly paradoxical (again) that he’s now actively encouraging the pests with offers of food and lodging, alcoholic beverages, and various other amenities. But Aileen was so insistent for months and months, with her delicate but constant pressure, never distracted or showing any signs of weakness. And she came up with the idea of combining the private party with the benefit concert, just one day apart, like a package deal to be sold to Star Life, the town governments, the local inhabitants, the fans, the other band members, him.

  So today the guests will continue to arrive; tomorrow even more of them will swoop in. As there aren’t many hotels in the area, Aileen has rented everything she was able to find in terms of villas and local houses. Which, of course, is guaranteed to provoke gratification and resentment in dozens of voracious egos who will measure their own perceived worth according to the quality of their accommodations, split up into opposing factions, those staying at Les Vieux Oliviers against those who aren’t. There will be those (such as Noel) who prefer to stay with their Russian oligarch friends in Saint-Tropez as a matter of principle; those (such as Kate) who commute back and forth from Cannes, even though Cannes in this season is pure misery; those (such as Reina) who pretend to adapt effortlessly to a mediocre lodging and then complain about it for the next few months. To say nothing of the perverse mix of true and fair-weather friends, acquaintances and collaborators and business partners, people who’ll come to sneak a peek and people who’ll come to be seen, photographed, filmed. Then add the sons and daughters, who’ll drag themselves here of their own accord or be dragged by female plus-ones ready to record and refer to their mothers every little detail that might someday be useful for blackmail. And, of course, the Star Life team, with the arrogance of the one footing the bill, will do everything possible to stir and spice up the various ingredients, to make things as attractive as possible for its voyeuristic and gossip-hungry audience. A lovely prospect, really.

  Then, of course, it still has to be figured out how in hell the Bebonkers are going to find the time and energy for a rehearsal that’s any more than a simple sound check before the concert Sunday, considering they haven’t played together in at least five months and that half of them will still be wasted after the party on Saturday. Considering as well that Sunday’s concert is going to be anything but low-profile: between the charitable cause and the morbid curiosity there are going to be a ton of people on hand for the unforgettable event, as well as local and national television and radio. Plus thousands of cell phones, whose digital zooms will distort Jimmy Rose’s carefully planned light effects into god-awful halos, whose three-cent microphones will butcher the efforts of that saint-maniac Jamie Cullingham on the mixer. Within half an hour of the end of the concert, fans around the world will rush onto YouTube to analyze every second of the hour and a half of music under a magnifying glass, make comparisons with last year’s concerts and those of ten or twenty or thirty years ago, ready to be inspired, get outraged, confirm their tribal pride, feed aching nostalgia, get riled up with hate. There will surely be those who say that the Bebonkers are amazing because they play each song the same as always, those who say they’re pathetic because they insist on doing so; those who say they’re living legends, those who say they’re dinosaurs. There will also be an army of genuine haters, ex-fans, or people who’ve never really loved them, anxious merely for confirmation of the fact that the Bebonkers have become a commercial product like Coca-Cola, a group of filthy millionaires who no longer give a damn about the original spirit of their music, despite the rebel image they still try to project. He can already imagine the indiscriminate barrage of accusations, heaped onto the enormous landfill of the Internet: the standardized sound, the lost Zeitgeist, the betrayed ideals, the self-interest behind the good cause, blah, blah, blah. Millions of losers incapable of making anything meaningful or even halfway decent sitting there in front of their screens of various sizes, ready to pounce on nonexistent or barely audible mistakes, to type Incredible clunker by Nick at 02:24! or Wally Thompson’s lost his touch and doesn’t give a damn or Seriously? or I’d like to know where all the money from this so-called benefit concert is really going to fucking end up or WTF??? And so on and so forth. The more he thinks about it, the more the benefit concert on Sunday turns into a sort of nightmare. And the party on Saturday is
even worse.

  The only thing he wants to do now is settle in at the controls of his glider, be lifted off the ground and circle up into the sky, gaze down at this valley and the hills and mountains from on high until the houses and streets and existences they contain become so small as to fade into irrelevance.

  Jean Leblanc is already there waiting for him beside the Glaser-Dirks DG-303 that he’s brought out of the hangar: he shakes his hand with the usual demonstration of strength, blue eyes sparkling in his long face. “Salut, Nick.”

  “Salut, Jean.” They’ve known each other for roughly a dozen years, and are always happy to see each other, but they tend to be of few words. Now they’re taking a walk around the glider for a final inspection: left side of the fuselage, left wing, tail planes, rudder-elevator-trim tabs, right side of the fuselage. They check the tow cable hook, the inflation pressure of the tire, with the blend of casualness and care that results from gestures often repeated but crucially important every time. Lucien, nicknamed “le Petit” for his young age and frail stature, arrives with the parachute. Unlike Jean, who has no interest in music, he’s a fan of the Bebonkers: each time he sees Nick he has this eager way of tracking his expressions, his gestures.

  Nick Cruickshank puts on the parachute, adjusts the straps on his own, though le Petit does his utmost to offer assistance. Nick opens the Plexiglas canopy, steps into the cockpit and gets settled in the seat, checks the closing lever, verifies the control column and rudder pedals, tests the button for the spoilers and the one for the tow cable. He loves these preparations; they give him the same rapid alternation of anxiety-reassurance he feels when he’s looking over the list of technical details with the stage director in his dressing room before a concert, even if he knows full well that he and his team have already taken care of everything with the utmost care.

  They’re off: Jean pushes the glider, le Petit holds up the right wing to prevent it from touching the grass. They stop about twenty yards behind the Robin DR400, which is already in tow position. The tow pilot waves hello, comes to check the cable, hooks it on, tries the emergency release, checks the glider’s safety link. He signals and goes to take his place at the controls, turns on the engine.

  Nick Cruickshank closes the canopy, fastens the safety harness, checks the ballast tanks, the control column and rudder pedals again, puts the trim tabs in takeoff position, closes and blocks the spoilers. He verifies the instrument panel, from left to right, first above and then below: anemometer, variometer, two-hand altimeter, turn-and-slip indicator, magnetic compass. He sets the altimeter to zero, turns on the radio, regulates the frequency. The tension grows inside him, like when he’s coming out of the dressing room and heading toward the back of the stage with the rest of the band, charged with anticipation for a familiar experience very likely to give him intense satisfaction, but in which the possibility of disaster is always present. Many years ago one of his first instructors told him that a glider pilot is three times more likely to kill himself in a flying accident than in a car accident, and that air sailing is one of the activities least tolerant of distraction, ignorance, and stupidity. He liked the idea then, and still does; it seems like a useful activity, a case in which the risk is most assuredly worth taking. He glances at the windsock hanging limply from the pole, gives the thumbs-up: ready for takeoff.

  The Robin DR400 slowly advances, the thirty-yard cable unwinds and goes taut, the glider begins moving across the grass. Le Petit walks faster and faster while holding up the right wing, starts jogging; he lets go. Jean is in the background watching, arms crossed. Nick Cruickshank grips the control column, moves it back; his heart is beating a little faster. Like in the last few steps before coming out in front of the stage lights, when the most primitive part of his brain makes every muscle in his body tense for impact with the crowd of thousands of people electrified with excitement, and the most evolved part forces him to relax his movements and facial expression, in the latest demonstration of “Cruickshank cool.”

  The tow plane picks up speed, its wings cut through the air and begin to generate lift, the structure of the Glaser-Dirks bounces on the grass with growing frequency. Then the glider rises off the ground, just before the Robin DR400 begins to do so; they both lift off, linked by the increasing tow tension and vibration. Nick Cruickshank keeps an eye on his instruments, moves the control column to keep himself slightly above the wake of the tow plane’s propeller, to avoid destabilizing it or himself. It’s a game of contrasting forces, a tug-of-war between gravity that wants to pull you down and the density of the air that supports you: an intense oscillation between natural and unnatural. The altimeter reads 60, then 80, then 100 feet; the numbers increase with the distance from the ground and the rustling of the Plexiglas canopy. Slowly and then more quickly the green of the airfield assumes finite contours, the roads crisscrossing the plain become visible and already look tiny, along with the cars driving on them, the houses, the blue swimming pools, the gardens surrounding the houses, the depots, the cement expanses surrounding the depots. One hundred and forty feet, then 180, then 200, then 220. Soon the details of the landscape will gradually start to lose their ordinary meaning, until at release altitude they’re practically invisible, no more than marks on the surface of the earth, the fruit of intentions increasingly difficult to decipher as altitude increases, increasingly difficult to take seriously.

  Suddenly there’s a violent snap: the tow tension is interrupted, there’s a sudden drop in speed. The cable has either broken or detached, the tow plane jerks, veers off to the left. Nick Cruickshank feels his heart slow, his blood run cold. He immediately pushes the control column forward in a reflex picked up during emergency simulations, puts the glider into a nosedive to gain speed and avoid stalling, veers to the right. The novelty is that none of the emergency simulations took place at less than three hundred feet from the ground, and he’s already fallen to two hundred, and keeps falling. The landscape comes toward him with vindictive rapidity, its elements regaining their ordinary meaning with each passing second. At this altitude the parachute is useless, the alternatives are landing on a knife’s edge or crashing. Fifty-five miles an hour; any slower and his room for maneuver is significantly reduced, along with the chances of getting out of this without catastrophic damage.

  It’s strange, because Nick Cruickshank is extremely focused on the mental calculations and necessary steps to make a 180-degree turn and attempt an opposite-direction landing on the airfield strip, and meanwhile thoughts come into his head that are of absolutely no help in such a maneuver, none whatsoever. The thought, for example, that his feeling of imminent doom yesterday morning in the olive grove was actually a premonition of this; that crashing only a couple of hundred yards from where the concert is scheduled to be held on Sunday would be a wonderful conclusion to the legendary biography they’ve constructed for him; that it would also be a perfect way to cancel Saturday’s party; that he wouldn’t be able to finish the song he was working on last night; that never again would he see Milena the Italian gelato chef and taste new flavors and maybe give her another kiss on the forehead. Instantaneous hybrids of images and sensations, more than actual thoughts: they flash through a part of his brain separate from the part still trying to control speed, altitude, angle of maneuver, and all the rest. The two parts run parallel to each other and function independently, one hot and one cold, in the super-compressed space of time that’s decreasing more and more quickly along with the physical space separating him from impact.

  Nick Cruickshank is only fifty feet from the ground, still in his turn, still more or less equally likely to either make it out by the skin of his teeth or sideslip and crash onto the highway down there or into the frighteningly close trees at the airfield’s perimeter, and yet a moment later he’s above the grassy field, no obstacles in sight; he’s able to level off, glide for a few yards, touch down not too brusquely, bounce around on the field, and roll to a stop.

  Then he sits motionless in hi
s seat, without unfastening the safety harness or opening the canopy. He breathes slowly, waits for his heart to start beating normally again, watches Jean’s old café latte–colored Volkswagen Beetle come slowly toward him across the field. For once he isn’t sorry about not being able to sail high up in the sky for as long as possible; for once he’s pretty happy to be back on the ground.

  THIRTEEN

  VIVIANE COMES BY to pick her up at the gelateria to go to the appointment with Dr. Lapointe at the Centre Plamondon, in Grasse. When they’re in the car together Viviane always drives; not because they’ve ever decided on it, it just happens. It might depend on the fact that Viviane is more familiar with the area, and spends more time behind the wheel each day. Anyhow she drives her Peugeot quite aggressively, with sharp turns, accelerations that nearly rear-end the cars in front, last-second braking, sudden downshifting, bursts of speed to overtake and race ahead along the open road. Milena Migliari thinks that at first Viviane’s driving made her feel both nervous and safe to the same degree, the way it seemed like an expression of inner tension but also of hurried practicality, a means to an end, without the slightest distraction to contemplate the landscape. Now it’s making her more nervous than anything: she digs her feet into the floor, clamps her hands on the sides of the seat, pushes into the backrest.

  Viviane checks on her with a quick look. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Milena Migliari thinks that in truth everything is pretty far from all right, but she can’t imagine explaining it to her: it would be brutal and disloyal, as well as incredibly overdue. But at this very moment she would prefer to be putting the finishing touches on her chestnut gelato, rather than speeding toward Grasse and ruin. It’s true that Guadalupe is now familiar with every step of production and can certainly handle things on her own, but it distresses her to leave a batch unfinished, particularly if it’s to go to a darn medical center to discuss the procedures of in vitro fertilization. Which whisks her back to the thought of not being able to work in the middle of summer, when people will line up in front of the counter and even out the door. She might even have to stop by mid-July, because if all goes according to plan she’ll be in her eighth month of pregnancy, and Dr. Lapointe has already informed her (with one of his condescending smiles) that the change in temperature from the cold of the lab to the heat outside would certainly not be ideal for an older expectant mother like her. Upon hearing herself thus defined she began to laugh, but Lapointe pointed out that there was no need to be offended, since in the 1970s a woman was considered older if she had a child at twenty-eight, whereas now it’s about thirty-five. Which certainly didn’t make the term seem less ridiculous to her; on par with the rest of the terminology that she and Viviane have absorbed from meetings with doctors and the Internet and have repeated to each other endless times at home like a couple of parrots, in meticulous summations of the phases of what’s supposed to happen in their life in the coming months (and years, and decades).