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    through the open passenger door, placing the box of ashes between her feet.
    “Let me show you how you’ll open the window once we get over the ocean and I give you the signal,” the pilot said. “You see the window’s hinged on the top, and you’re going to press that small metal lever and then push very hard on the window itself. It will open far enough for you to reach out with the box in your arms, and then you’re going to make sure you hold the box low, on a level under the
    window, because of the wind and the prop wash. Got that?”
    “Got it,” Cee Cee said.
    “Let’s practice,” the pilot said, and closed her door. Cee Cee pulled on the metal clip, put both hands on the window and pushed. It opened. A cinch. Then she picked the box up from the floor in front of her and leaned out of the open window, moving the unopened box to a level below the window.
    “Good job,” the pilot said.
    Cee Cee nodded an oh-it-was-nothing nod, pulled the box back in, closed the window again, and buckled her seat belt. Not bad.
    “Ready to go up?” the pilot asked, closing his door, which sounded to Cee Cee like the lightweight door of an economy car.
    Ready to throw up is more like it, she thought, as she nodded. She and the pilot were sitting shoulder to shoulder, as close to one another as if they were in a tiny sports car. And in a second, he had put on his headset and the engine was running and the loud noise blasted in her ears as the Cessna began to taxi slowly toward the runway. The pilot was talking into the microphone on his headset, and Cee Cee wondered if he had a sense of humor in case she got sick all over him, which felt like a distinct possibility, and then the plane began to start down the runway slowly, picked up speed and then more speed, and as Cee Cee took a few shallow nervous breaths, the tiny airplane lifted into the clear blue Monterey sky.
    In all the years she’d flown in commercial airplanes, even large private jets, she had never been anywhere near the cockpit. Always it was some magical off-limits place she didn’t want to think about, probably to avoid the idea that humans who were capable of making mistakes sat in there working the big mechanical bird. But today the exhilaration she felt at the moment of takeoff thrilled her. Made her feel as if she were part of the sky. Looking right out the big front
     
    I’LL BE THERE

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    window and feeling the lift of the aircraft and seeing the ground disappear below, and seconds later having the tops of mountains at eye level, and the view of the Monterey Bay below, made her feel so elated she nearly forgot the reason she was up in the airplane to begin with.
    “Now this beats the shit out of TWA!” she said very loud to the pilot, who nodded at her but probably couldn’t hear her because of that headset of Mickey Mouse ears he was wearing. “I mean 1 could seriously get into this. My God. l,ook down. You can see eve.thing from here. I might even decide to get my pilot’s license. Wouldn’t that be a pisser? Amelia Earhart Bloom. Flying myself all over the place in my own plane,” she said to the pilot, who was flipping a bunch of little switches and not listening to her. “Like Meshulam Riklis. Ever see his plane? On one side he has painted the words ‘Here Comes Pia!’ for his wife, Pia Zadora; well, mine could say, ‘Boom Boom, here comes Bloom.’ Right?”
    With relief she leaned back against the seat, proud of herself for actually pulling this off. Doing at least part of what she’d promised Bertie she would do. Going up in a little model airplane that looked like it was made of balsa wood and Duco Cement, to disperse her ashes and to say goodbye. How ‘bout that for an act of love?
    The pilot flew south down the coast, and Cee Cee continued to look out at the mountains and the expanse of ocean below with a comfort that amazed her. For years in her therapy she had talked about the fears she had about so many things and