Standing in the large master bath clad only in a camisole and panties, Mel swept a scented wash cloth over her arms and neck, inhaling deeply as the exotic fragrance of lilies and sweet sage rose from her chest. Toujours Moi. A gift from her lover, purchased in haste from a street peddler in Athens, expensive at forty American dollars an ounce. In a very short time it had become her signature scent. She'd rarely dressed without first daubing a bit at the hollow of her throat, or between her breasts, until the day four months later she had discovered it open and half evaporated on the window sill, a casualty of the merciless outback heat. After that, she used it sparingly, or not at all. Emptying the last few precious drops into the pool of cool water in the sink, she soaked the cloth, letting her hands linger a moment while her gaze traveled to the cracked mirror above the vanity.

"Look at you," she said. Her voice sounded strange to her and she couldn't help but look around the room before returning to the scrutiny of her reflection. She hadn't been in a salon in two months, the length of her stay at Coolinga Station. Jack had taken the only car for the long trip to Sydney for his induction. So, here she stood, in the middle of the outback, without the amenities large cities could provide. Looking at her short, blunt nails in the water reminded her how much she missed the little luxuries: a manicure, a facial. Her formerly alabaster skin was lightly tanned, the blue eyes some said were her best feature were naked, devoid of mascara or liner. Her raven hair was long...too long to wear in her trademark chignon, and so it hung loosely down her back...the way Janice liked it. Mel smiled, wringing out the cloth. Oh, if her genteel Southern mother could only see her now...she'd have apoplexy, she thought wryly.

She made one final pass down and under each arm with the cloth before pitching it into the hamper beneath the medicine cabinet. Before leaving the bath, she took a moment to place a new cake of soap atop the towel draped over the side of a claw foot bathtub. She could no longer see steam rising from the water's surface and without thrusting so much as a finger into its depths, she knew it was tepid, on its way to cool. "Serves her right..." she murmured as she moved through the alcove into the bedroom. A gray A-line skirt and simple print blouse had been laid out atop the faded bedspread. Both needed pressing but they were clean. She dressed without thinking, slipping on a pair of black pumps, one of only two pairs of street shoes she'd brought with her. She turned, facing the full-length mirror on the back of the door, smoothing the lines of the skirt with her hands. She looked at her face in frank appraisal and thought she just might join her mother in apoplexy.

* * * * * * * * * *

"So, Alice, what're your hobbies? Apart from flying, that is...more throttle... more... we're running out of track...good...now, pull back on the wheel...gently, don't yank on it. That's it. You've got the touch, kid. God, I love that feeling, don't you? The wings growing fat with lift...the way you feel that little drop in the pit of your stomach when the wheels leave the track...pull back just a hair or you're gonna take the tops off those trees." Alice responded accordingly, pulling the wheel back towards her chest. Janice watched her face intently and conceded the kid had a flyer's instincts. "When you're not flying Electras, what do you like to do?"

"I like school...English especially. Sister Bonaventure says it's one of the reasons my vocabulary is so impressive. I like sketching, too," she said, as if the idea surprised her. "No shortage of subjects out here," Alice replied, trapping the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth in a display of extreme concentration. Reaching above her head, she brought the flaps up another notch without being told; looking at Janice was an afterthought.

Janice conveyed approval with a subtle nod, although her mind was clearly elsewhere. "You ever sketch Mel?"

Alice never took her eyes off the horizon. "I don't do people." Her left hand drifted down to an instrument box anchored to the floor between the seats. "Throttle?"

"Listen for it. She'll let you know if you need more throttle...there'll be this little keening whine...let her climb at her own rate...you don't rush a lady." She reached across the aisle and patted Alice's arm. "You're a natural, kid. Okay, when we reach two thousand feet..." she tapped one of the round gauges with her finger. "...watch this gauge...when that needle hits two-oh, level off and make your cruising speed eighty knots."

"Eighty knots. Check." Alice blew a soothing breath out between her lips and looked sideways at the altimeter.

"You like Mel, don't you?" Janice persisted.

Alice shrugged, grateful for the relief it brought her aching shoulders. "She's all right, I guess. Two thousand on the nose..." She brought the wheel forward slightly, until the artificial horizon reflected level flight. "I've learnt not to become too attached to them...Dad's girlfriends, I mean. They don't seem to stick around very long."

Janice thought the girl's voice sounded distinctly, and prematurely, cynical. "Mel hasn't said anything about leaving, has she?" She took note of the girl's white knuckles. "Loosen up on the wheel..grip it like an egg."

Alice flexed her fingers briefly, her palms seated lightly against the surface of the wheel. "No, she hasn't said anything, but I don't think it'll be long."

Janice's brow furrowed. "What makes you say that?"

"Just a feeling. Sometimes she seems...I dunno... unhappy. I think she misses her old life."

"Her old life..." Janice's heart thumped in her chest; she was sure its deafening beat was reverberating off the walls of the cockpit, but Alice ears were primed only for the voice of the Electra. "Okay, apply the left rudder...gently...and make a wide turn to the right...that's it. Take your time. You've got plenty of sky. What makes you think she misses her old life? Has she said anything?"

Alice eased off the rudder pedal, her face slick with perspiration. When she had once again achieved level flight, she chanced a sidelong look at her companion and wondered just how much she should divulge. What were her perceptions and opinions to Janice if the only thing she had to back them was a feeling, an instinct. Although, Janice was a pilot, and ‘A good pilot,' her father had once said, ‘keeps close company with instinct.' Alice decided to take the risk; the odds seemed in her favor. "She hasn't said so...not in so many words..." Following Janice's orders to throttle down a notch and look for Coolinga's track, she once again turned her studious brown eyes to the world outside the windscreen, a wide brown scene painted in a neat oblong frame. Comfortable with her newly-acquired flight skills and thrilled at her instructor's seemingly nonchalant manner, Alice felt compelled to clarify her earlier statement. "She never said anything to me, but I could tell when the university contacted her in September that she was interested. That if Dad hadn't pressed her to give it up, she'd have been at Kakadu." Alice frowned, slightly uncomfortable with having voiced her father's shortcomings to a stranger. "Dad thinks a woman's place is in the kitchen, not on the dig."

"Philistine," grumbled Janice under her breath. She looked at Alice, who appeared not to have heard. "Okay...got the windsock in sight?"

Alice squinted at the horizon. "Yes, it's just over there..." She raised an index finger as a gesture of clarity and adjusted the craft's flight path accordingly, turning the wheel forty degrees while sparing the altimeter and speed indicator a glance. "Eighty knots...isn't that too fast?"

"You might cut the throttle back...just a hair...you don't wanna stall." Janice leaned back in her chair, lacing her fingers across her middle, affecting an air of nonchalance. "So, other than that one disagreement about the Kakadu dig, you think Mel and your dad get along okay."

Alice's fingers grazed the flaps control above her head, her lips moving soundlessly for a moment before giving voice to her thoughts. "Promise this is just between you and me?"

Janice drew a cross over her heart and held up her hand. "Word of honor...whatever you tell me doesn't leave this cockpit."

Alice nodded; it seemed like an oath she could live with. "I don't think she and Dad have...you know...done it."

"Done it," Janice repeated before realization dawned. "Oh. It." She shifted in her seat and peeled the shirt away from her skin; the air inside the small cockpit was rank and close.

Alice could sense Janice's discomfort. Sex, in general, was a source of curiosity for any healthy teen. Sex, or the lack of it beneath her own roof was sufficient cause for speculation. Thumbing the flaps to half, she ventured, "You like her, don't you?"

Janice was unprepared for a frontal assault. "Mel? Of course I do."

"No, I mean...you like her. You love her."

Janice blew warm breath slowly past her lips. "You know what, kiddo...it's none of your business."

At the same moment Alice realized she had overstepped her bounds, the dusty red-track runway gained definition, rushing towards the nose of the Electra at breakneck speed. She twisted the wheel in her slick hands, her voice vaguely urgent. "Janice...should I cut the throttle or pull back on the wheel at this point?"

"At this point?" Janice gazed mildly out the windscreen and reached for the cigar in her breast pocket. "This is where you crash and burn, sweetheart."