She knows she’ll be lucky to pluck Ellen away with as much as the clothes on her back. There’ll be no time in that house to stop and gather blankets or toys. She’s going to need everything: baby food and spoon and bottle and toddler clothes sufficient to last several days. She’s got some of these things in her suitcase but there didn’t seem any point weighting it with Gerber jars or thick packages of disposable diapers.
Speeding on the hypodermic of nervous energy she whirls through a supermarket tossing things into a wheeled basket.
Now then. Stop. Breathe. Think. Forgotten anything?
To hell with it. If I did it’ll just have to wait.
There’s only one register open and she has to wait in line behind two matronly customers who are comparing at length the excellences of their respective teenage sons. Each of them has a cart piled high with purchases enough to equip a family for the entire season; and the check-out girl appears to be suffering from a case of terminal inertia.
She has to restrain herself from screaming at them but actually there’s loads of time; it’s only half past nine when she emerges from the store with her loot and settles into the back seat of the taxi.
The driver says, “That was quick. My wife never gets out of there in less than an hour.”
It’s turned into a clear summer’s day, a few cirrus clouds floating high; good flying weather at last.
A few minutes after ten the taxi decants her at the seedy little flying field. The rented Jeep, painted a dark forest green, is parked next to a motorcycle in the shade of what passes for a hangar; the place looks as if it may have seen previous service as a cow barn. Beyond it she sees Charlie in a row of pegged-down light planes, talking with a skinny little man in a cowboy hat. She waves to Charlie, pays off the cab driver and lugs her packages across the dewy grass runway. By the time she reaches the parking area her feet are soaked.
The man in the cowboy hat turns out to be not much more than a kid-Adam’s apple, peach fuzz and acne; he gives her a startled bashful grin of white buck teeth, nods his head several times with jerky nervousness and plunges toward the nearby glass-sided shack in full ungainly retreat.
She says to Charlie, “The grass is wet. Do you think we’ll have trouble?”
“Probably.”
The flat tone of his voice brings her eyes up to his. There’s a mask down over his face; she doesn’t like what she sees.
He says: “You didn’t tell me we’re going in against the fucking Mafia.”