"Chicago?
Well, I guess I’ll have to go after him."
I put down the telephone and looked at Jennie.
"The weekend's coming up," she said softly. "I'm not doing anything.
Chicago's a great town."
"You'll come?" I asked.
She nodded.
"We'll fly, won't we?"
"All the way," I said.
7.
Jennie looked at me.
"This is the way to travel," she said. "A whole plane to ourselves."
I looked around the empty cabin of the ICA that Buzz had put on special flight for me when I had called.
I checked my watch. It was almost nine o'clock. I moved it forward two hours to Chicago time.
I felt the slight change of pressure in my ears. We were starting to come down.
"It must be great to own an airline," Jennie said, smiling.
"It comes in handy when you have to get someplace in a hurry."
"I don't get you."
''What don't you get, girl?"
"You," Jennie said. "You baffle me.
Most guys I understand. They got their eye on the ball and they're always for making points.
But you, you're different. You already got everything."
"Not everything."
She nodded at the lights of Chicago below us.
"By that, I suppose you mean you don't own what's down there."
"That's right. I don't want much though, I'm satisfied just owning what's in here."
Her eyes grew cloudy.
"What happens if we go boom?"
I snapped my fingers.
"What the hell! Easy come, easy go."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
She glanced out of the window for a moment, then turned back to me.
"I guess you do own me in a kind of way."
"I wasn't talking about you," I said. "I was talking about this plane."
"I know, but all the same, it's true.
You do own everybody who works for you, even if you don't feel you do. Money does that."
"Money does lots of things for me," I said.
"Why don't you let it buy you a pair of shoes?"
I looked down at my stockinged feet.
"Don't worry," I said. "I got shoes. They're somewhere on this plane."
She laughed, then became serious again.
"Money can buy you time. It also lets you make people over, into what you want them to be."
I raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't know you were a philosopher as well as an actress."
"You don't know that I'm an actress – yet."
"You better be," I said. "Otherwise, I'm going to look awful foolish."
Again, her eyes were serious. "You wouldn't like that, would you?"
"Nobody likes it," I said. "I'm no different than anybody else."
"Then why do you do it, Jonas?