“Definitely old school,” Dragomir said. “I want to learn from the best. Someone who knows what they’re doing, who has been flying a long time.”

“Well, as the old saying goes, there are old pilots and bold pilots,” I said, trotting out the dustiest aphorism in the history of manned flight, “but there are no old, bold pilots.”

He wanted to get started right away and said he could be by within the hour. I said my airplane and I would be ready.

Twenty minutes later, Eugen Dragomir rolled into Larry’s hangar on a skateboard with a “Sex Wax” sticker on it. Gangly didn’t begin to describe him. He was built like a 3-iron with a backpack and dark, Eastern European dreadlocks. He was wearing black Chuck Taylor high-tops, laces dragging on the ground, surfer shorts that came down below his knobby knees and a T-shirt with a visage of Bob Marley on his chest. A shark’s tooth dangled from a leather strand looped around his pencil neck. He bobbed, swinging his spaghetti arms, as we strode out to the flight line. He was from Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a fifth-year senior studying petrochemical engineering because that’s what his petrochemical engineer father wanted.

“But I’m thinking of switching majors.”

“To what?”

“Astronaut. I want to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

“You mean, ‘To boldly go where no person has gone before.’ Space is a very politically correct place these days, Eugen.”

He nodded like I was Confucius. He was all business, there to learn. I liked that.

I walked him through the preflight inspection, showing him how to check the Duck’s control surfaces for loose rivets, climbing up on the wings to make sure there was adequate gas in the tanks, checking the oil, looking inside the engine compartment for anything that didn’t look right, undoing the tie-down lines. He shadowed my every move, cocking his head as he listened, soaking it all in. When the walk-around was complete, I opened the left side door for him.

“Hop in.”

“You want me to fly?”

“That’s generally what pilots do.”

“This is sick!”

After we got in and locked the doors, I explained enginestart procedures and let him do the starting. I demonstrated how to dial in the ATIS frequency for current conditions on the field, including winds, dew point and altimeter setting.

I changed frequencies to Clearance Delivery and let the controllers know who we were and where we wanted to fly.

“Good afternoon, Clearance,” I said, “Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima.”

“Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, Rancho Bonita Clearance, good afternoon.”

“Four Charlie Lima is a 172 slant uniform, northwest departure with information Yankee, 4,500 feet. We’ll be doing some maneuvering outside the class delta. Request traffic advisories.”

“Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, on request.”

We waited.

“Dude, this is, like, the baddest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Eugen said. “I mean, once I took my girlfriend to bungee jumping and she was all, ‘I’m freaked,’ and I was all—”

“Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima”—I held up my finger for Eugen to be quiet while the controller came back on the radio with our clearance—“expect Runway One-Seven left. Fly runway heading after departure. Maintain VFR at or below 1,500 feet. Expect own navigation within three minutes. Departure frequency, 125.4. Squawk 4621.”

I jotted down a shorthand version of the instructions in a small notebook I keep in the plane for such purposes and read them back to the controller.

“Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, read back correct. Contact ground, 121.6. Have a good flight.”

I explained how next we contacted ground control to receive taxiing instructions.

“Tell them, ‘Ground, Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, ready to taxi from Premier with Yankee.’”

Eugen keyed the radio and repeated what I’d said.

“Skyhawk, Four Charlie Lima, roger. Taxi to One-Seven left via Bravo, hold short 2–6.”

The kid was totally jazzed. I let him steer the plane. We nearly ran off the taxiway, but only once. Not bad for a beginner. At the run-up area next to the runway, with the airplane’s parking brake set, I showed him how we revved the engine to 1700 RPMs, to make sure everything worked properly. Then we taxied to the hold-short line of the assigned runway. I switched radio frequencies to the tower.

“Rancho Bonita tower, Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, ready One-Seven left.”

“Four Charlie Lima, Rancho Bonita Tower, traffic on two-mile base. Runway One-Seven left, cleared for immediate takeoff.”

“OK,” I said, folding my hands placidly in my lap, “you’ve got the airplane.”

I’ve watched fighter jocks with 5,000 hours take off with less elegance. The kid took to flying like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. We flew for an hour. Steep turns. Turns around a point. Climbs. Dives. Standard stuff for a fifty dollar introductory lesson. Just enough to make it all look effortless. Eugen Dragomir was a natural. I almost let him land.

“You sure you’ve never done this before?” I said as we were walking back toward my office.

“Maybe, like, in a previous life or something.” He dug a damp, crumpled fifty dollar bill out of his board shorts. “If my father wrote a check for five thousand, would that be OK to start?”

“Sounds mucho bueno to me.”

Another five grand. My day was looking better and better. I found a fresh logbook in my desk. I filled in the particulars of Eugen Dragomir’s maiden flight, signed my name, and gave it to him. He held the book in his hand like it was a precious thing.

“Fortunately for you,” I said, “my schedule’s pretty flexible at present. Lemme know when the funds arrive. You’ll be soloing in no time, guaranteed.”

“Can’t wait.”

We bumped fists, then he retrieved his skateboard where he’d left it, against the wall of Larry’s hangar. As he coasted toward the security gate, he smiled and waved with his thumb and pinkie extended, one of those Hawaiian “hang loose” signs.

I returned the gesture, feeling rather foolish.

California State University, Rancho Bonita, with its 18,500 undergrads and architectural hodgepodge of a campus nestled on a picturesque bluff overlooking the Pacific, is known perennially as a top-ten party school. Few students who ventured off campus and wanted me to teach them how to fly ever came close to mastering that goal. Surfing, boozing, blazing, and getting laid invariably took precedence. Eugen Dragomir seemed different. A studious kid. A great potential pilot.

Working with Alpha had compelled me to be distrustful of my fellow man. It was liberating, watching him roll away on his skateboard, to realize that you don’t always have to question the motives and hidden agendas of everybody you meet. You can’t go around being suspicious of everybody you cross paths with, I told myself. Not everybody’s out to kill you.

Driving home that afternoon, somebody tried to kill me.

A car was following me. I first noticed it in my side-view mirror as I merged from the airport onto the southbound freeway, just past the Orchard Avenue exit. It was a white, two-door Honda Accord coupe, fifty meters in trail. No front license plate. Rear spoiler. Fat rims. Lowered suspension. Windshield tinted impenetrably black. A ride for dweebs convinced that tricking out a Japanese economy car will somehow improve their odds with the ladies.

I drifted casually into the fast lane. The Honda followed. I angled back into the center lane. The Honda did likewise, its driver careful to keep at least five car-lengths between us. My speedometer showed seventy. I bumped it up to seventy-five. The Honda driver pulled out into the fast lane and passed the cars separating us to settle in behind me once more, still keeping his distance. I knew I couldn’t outrun him, not in an aging Tacoma with nearly as many miles on it as the space shuttle. What I could do, though, was fall back on my training and evade him.