The First Billion

Reaching the count of one hundred, Gavallan exhaled audibly. For now, the anger was gone; the struggle for control won for another day. Happier, he turned and glanced at the pictures on his wall, wanting to share the victory, however minor. There was Gavallan and his father shaking hands on graduation day at the Air Force Academy. The old man looked as stern as ever, paying no mind to the fact that he was wearing his son's dress cap on his head. He never got over his boy's leaving the service, or the less than satisfactory general discharge that had made it official. Until the day he died, he insisted to his friends that his son had left the cockpit over the lack of decent pay.

"Money," sniffed Gavallan. "If only…"

The true cause of his sudden, and not altogether voluntary, separation from the United States Air Force could be found on a ninety-minute videocassette kept shut in the bottom corner of his flight locker alongside his jumpsuit, his flying scarf, and his old Omega Speedmaster. The tape was dated February 25, 1991, and titled Day 40- Abu Ghurayb Presidential Complex. It had been made with an infrared camera mounted on the underside of his F-117. The tape was a copy, a pirated bootleg, and his possession of it was a jailable offense. The original was kept in a more secure location, most likely somewhere deep inside the Pentagon where the United States Armed Forces hid its dirty laundry.

Gavallan's eyes dodged his father, only to land on himself. There he was, a twenty-six-year-old superman gussied up for combat, strapped into his G suit, helmet in hand, standing beside the cockpit of his Desert Storm mount, an F-117 he'd christened Darling Lil. Look at that smile. Top of the world, eh, kid? The photo had been taken in a hangar at King Khalid Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia. A giant American flag hung from the rafters behind him. Beat that, Tom Cruise!

Another photo showed his mother and three sisters standing at the base of Big Tex, the 150-foot cowboy, at the state fair in Dallas ten years back. Mom, meek and gray, with her haunted smile, the woman who'd gifted him the name of Jett, not out of any premonition of the future, but because of her long-held crush on an unknown actor who'd visited her hometown of Marfa, Texas, one teenage summer, to stand before the cameras as Jett Rink, impetuous wildcatter who struck it rich in the glorious Technicolor Texas epic Giant. James Dean did a number on Marfa. Look in the phone book. You'll find a dozen men aged forty and up carrying the ridiculous name of Jett.

Above the photos hung two wooden plaques with attached miniature replicas of an A-10 bomber. Flowery script declared: "Captain John J. Gavallan, USAF, Squadron and Wing Top Gun at Red Flag '89 and '90." Red Flag was the annual competition staged at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, where a pilot's proficiency was measured during several days of demanding flight exercises. As always, the mementos triggered a desire to fly, a yearning so strong he could feel it.

Trade your company, your career, to do it again? a skeptical voice demanded.

Any day, he answered.

To be at the stick of a jet was like nothing else in the world. To soar like an eagle and dive like a tern, while enveloped in the sky's royal blue cape. If there was magic in the world, Gavallan had found it in the cockpit of a jet aircraft.

Dismissing his longing, he continued on his nostalgic tour. There was only one place left to visit. Like any sentimental fool, he'd left his heart's graveyard for last.

Opening the bottom drawer of his desk, he rummaged through a dozen photographs, most framed with simple silver settings, a few loose, the dates and places written on the backs. Leaning to his side, he picked up one photo, then the next. With each, he stared into the woman's bold, ebullient green eyes, imagining the touch of her pillowed lips, sighing, smiling, longing, always wishing he could reshape the past. Flipping over the snapshots in turn, he read the inscriptions penned on the back: Manhattan, Valentine's Day; Chicago, Xmas Eve; Hong Kong, Easter Sunday. The script was looping and feminine, but never less than purposefully legible. Lingering over the words, he felt happily vulnerable, close to her again.

Cate who was kind but serious. Cate who was shy but sensual. Cate who was painfully honest yet a mystery even to those nearest to her. Cate who never raised her voice but let her eyes argue for her. Cate who declined his proposal of marriage with a single word and no backward glances.

Gavallan brooded for a minute or two, still in a kind of suspended state of disbelief that she'd turned him down. He hadn't seen it coming. Not after two years of dating and six months of living together. One moment, he'd popped the question; the next, she was out of there. Not a sock, stocking, or bobby pin left behind.

Cate who was gone.