“Is this part of that mistress-humiliation-handcuff stuff?”

“No, that’s extra. I’m just making conversation.”

“Oh, I see.” He was beginning to have second thoughts. He had to fly to Houston in the morning, and he really should get some sleep. Still, this would make a great story to tell the guys back at the hangar—if he left out the part about him being a suicidal rodent and her being a prostitute. But he could tell the story without really doing it, couldn’t he?

He said, “I probably shouldn’t fly. I’m a little drunk.”

“Then you won’t mind if I go back to the bar and grab your friend? I might as well make some money.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” She smiled.

“No, I mean really dangerous.”

“I have condoms.”

Tucker shrugged. “I’ll get a cab.”

Ten minutes later they were heading across the wet tarmac toward a group of corporate jets.

“It’s pink!”

“Yeah, so?”

“You fly a pink jet?”

As Tuck opened the hatch and lowered the steps, he had the sinking feeling that maybe the businessman at the bar had been right.

Most jets (especially those unburdened by the weight of passengers or fuel) have a glide rate that is quite acceptable for landing without power. But Tucker has made an error in judgment caused by seven gin and tonics and the distraction of Meadow straddling him in the pilot seat. He thinks, per-haps, that he should have said something when the fuel light first went on, but Meadow had already climbed into the saddle and he didn’t want to seem inattentive. Now the glide path is too steep, the runway a little too far. He uses a little body English in pulling back on the steering yoke, which Meadow takes for enthusiasm.

Tucker brings the pink Gulfstream jet into SeaTac a little low, tearing off the rear landing gear on a radar antenna a second before impact with the runway, which sends Meadow over the steering yoke to bounce off the windscreen and land unconscious across the instrument panel. The jet’s wings flap once—a dying flamingo trying to free itself from a tar pit—and rip off in a shriek of sparks, flame, and black smoke, then spin back into the air before beating themselves to pieces on the runway.

Tucker, strapped into the pilot’s seat, lets loose a prolonged scream that pushes the sound of tearing metal out of his head.

The wingless Gulfstream slides down the runway like hell’s own bobsled, leaving a wake of greasy smoke and aluminum confetti. Firemen and paramedics scramble into their vehicles and pull out onto the runway in pursuit of it. In a moment of analytical detachment, one of the firemen turns to a companion and says, “There’s not enough fire. He must have been flying on fumes.”

Tucker sees the end of the runway coming up, an array of an tennae, some spiffy blue lights, a chain-link fence, and a grassy open field where what’s left of the Gulfstream will fragment into pink shrapnel. He realizes that he’s looking at his own death and screams the words “Oh, fuck!”, meeting the FAA’s official requirement for last words to be retrieved from the charred black box.

Suddenly, as if someone has hit a cosmic pause button, the cockpit goes quiet. Movement stops. A man’s voice says, “Is this how you want to go?”

Tucker turns toward the voice. A dark man in a gray flight suit sits in the copilot’s seat, waiting for an answer. Tuck can’t seem to see his face, even though they are facing each other. “Well?”

“No,” Tucker answers.

“It’ll cost you,” the pilot says. Then he’s gone. The copilot’s seat is empty and the roar of tortured metal fills the cabin.

Before Tucker can form the words “What the hell?” in his mind, the wingless jet crashes through the antenna, the spiffy blue lights, the chain-link fence, and into the field, soggy from thirty consecutive days of Seattle rain. The mud caresses the fuselage, dampens the sparks and flames, clings and cloys and slows the jet to a steaming stop. Tuck hears metal crackle as it settles, sirens, the friendly chime of the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign turning off.

Welcome to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The local time is 2:00A.M., the outside temperature is 63 degrees, there is a semiconscious hooker gurgling at your feet.

The cabin fills with black smoke from fried wires and vaporized hydraulic fluid. One breath burns down his windpipe like drain cleaner, telling Tucker that a second breath may kill him. He unfastens the harness and reaches into the dark for Meadow, connecting with her lace camisole, which comes away in shreds in his hands. He stands, bends over, wraps an arm around her waist, and picks her up. She’s light, maybe a hundred pounds, but Tucker has forgotten to pull up his pants and Jockey shorts, which cuff his ankles. He teeters and falls backward onto the control console between the pilot seats. Jutting from the console is the flap actuator lever, a foot-long strip of steel topped by a plastic arrowheadlike tip. The tip catches Tuck in the rear of the scrotum. His and Meadow’s combined weight drive him down on the lever, which tears though his scrotum, runs up inside the length of his penis, and emerges in a spray of blood.

There are no words for the pain. No breath, no thought. Just deafening white and red noise. Tucker feels himself passing out and

welcomes it. He drops Meadow, but she is conscious enough to hold on to his neck, and as she falls she pulls him off the lever, which reams its way back through him again.

Without realizing it, he is standing, breathing. His lungs are on fire. He has to get out. He throws an arm around Meadow and drags her three feet to the hatch. He releases the hatch and it swings down, half open. It’s de-signed to function as a stairway to the ground, designed for a plane that is standing on landing gear. Gloved hands reach into the opening and start pulling at it. “We’re going to get you out of there,” a fireman says.

The hatch comes open with a shriek. Tuck sees blue and red flashing lights illuminating raindrops against a black sky, making it appear as if it is raining fire. He takes a single breath of fresh air, says, “I’ve torn off my dick,” and falls forward.

As with most things in his life, Tucker Case was wrong about the extent of his injuries. As they wheeled him though the emergency room, he con-tinued to chant, “I’ve torn off my dick! I’ve torn off my dick!” into his oxygen mask until a masked physician appeared at his side.

“Mr. Case, you have not torn off your penis. You’ve damaged some major blood vessels and some of the erectal tissue. And you’ve also severed the tendon that runs from the tip of the penis to the base of the brain.” The doctor, a woman, pulled down her mask long enough to show Tucker a grin. “You should be fine. We’re taking you into surgery now.”

“What about the girl?”

“She’s got a mild concussion and some bruises, but she’ll be okay. She’ll probably go home in a few hours.”

‘That’s good. Doc, will I be able to? I mean, will I ever…?”

“Be still, Mr. Case. I want you to count backward from one hundred.”

“Is there a reason for that—for the counting?”

“You can say the Pledge of Allegiance if you want.”

“But I can’t stand up.”

“Just count, smart-ass.”

When Tucker came to, through the fog of anesthesia he saw a picture of himself superimposed over a burning pink jet. Looking down on the scene was the horrified face of the matriarch of pyramid makeup sales, Mary Jean Dobbins—Mary Jean to the world. Then the picture

was gone, replaced by a rugged male face and perfect smile.

“Tuck, you’re famous. You made the Enquirer.” The voice of Jake Skye, Tuck’s only male friend and premier jet mechanic for Mary Jean. “You crashed just in time to make the latest edition.”