Page 18 of Plane Passion

Millie narrowed her eyes. “I’m not interested, but I need to make him see the error of his ways. The sweet woman he’s dating clearly thinks they’re about to walk down the aisle, and you should have seen his cringe when she casually mentioned grandchildren. He’s stringing her along, and it’s inexcusable. The man needs to learn that women aren’t toys.”

“Oh, no. You can’t be serious. You’re going to try to reform him?” Beth’s wide eyes peered at her over the top of the martini glass.

“How can I stand idly by and let him treat the women in his life like this? I’d be doing a public service.”

Beth shook her head and drank deeply. “I know you can’t resist a challenge, but this is going too far. You’re not going to change him. No one will thank you for trying.”

People never appreciated Millie’s pigheaded persistence, but when did that ever stop her?

“I don’t need thanks. The knowledge that I’ve done a good deed is enough for me.”

“I bet you twenty dollars that every single person involved in this will be worse off by the time you’re done scheming, yourself included.”

Millie sipped and considered. On the rare occasions Beth gambled, she always won. That made this all the more tempting. Wouldn’t it be delicious when Millie emerged victorious against all odds?

“You’re on.”

Millie held out her hand, and they shook on it.

“I can’t wait to collect,” Beth said with a half-smile, raising her glass. “There’s a necklace I’ve had my eye on. By the way, when are we judging this? There needs to be a time limit.”

“One month?”

“Sounds reasonable. One month it is.”

Millie loved Beth. And Beth could not be allowed to win. It should have been illegal for Beth to win as much as she did. She won at tennis. She won at gambling. She won that dance competition when they were sixteen that Millie made her enter on a dare.

When Millie first earned her way into a small fortune and had to navigate the upper echelons of society, Beth, a delightfully wayward Park Avenue-born bluestocking, had volunteered to show her how things were done, and Millie had been so grateful to follow her lead. But as Millie got her feet under her, their friendship evolved into a cheerful rivalry, and Beth had uncanny luck at besting everyone she met.

One day, Millie was going to win. It would be a day of glorious vindication. Millie could practically taste sweet victory already. That twenty dollars was hers. She would use it to buy herself an enormous trophy engraved with her name and the date and time of her victory. It would be so big it would break the damned shelf that was already groaning under the weight of Beth’s trophy collection. Millie’s would be the biggest.

Not that she was competitive.

And she really did love Beth. Millie downed the rest of her martini. “I have to change. I have a meeting with Mr. Burleson.”

Beth raised her eyebrows and took a sip of her drink. “The head of the Postal Service? My, my! Best of luck, dear!”

Millie ducked into her room to dress for her appointment, already scheming how she was going to get Pritchard to change his ways. But first, she had to survive this meeting with Mr. Burleson.

She put on a long-sleeved green gown with a scoop neck, a low waist, and a full skirt that just covered her knees in the front and draped down to her ankles in back. It was the most conservative dress she owned, and she could only hope it did its job of convincing Mr. Burleson she was serious about their deal. She twisted her hair into a haphazard chignon and tied a band of green ribbon that matched her dress around her head.

She pulled on light wool coat to keep away the autumn chill and bid her friend goodbye.

“You really should let me do your hair, you know,” said Beth.

“I don’t have time, but thank you for offering.” She kissed Beth on the cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

Millie took a cab to Manhattan’s main post office on Eighth Avenue. It was so large that it took up an entire city block. Above the grand colonnade around the entrance was inscribed the motto of the Postal Service. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. As she climbed the marble steps, she tried not to think about the deadly consequences for pilots of living this motto.

After asking directions several times and climbing more staircases than she cared to count, she arrived at the heavy door to Mr. Burleson’s corner office. His ancient secretary looked up from pecking at the typewriter at the speed of a sloth. “Miss Aldrich?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The woman nodded slowly. “He’s expecting you. Go right in.” She turned back to her typing one key at a time without a second glance.

Millie opened the heavy door with a shiny brass knob and entered the dark, wood paneled office with a desk roughly the size of a delivery truck. The walls were hung with photographs of Mr. Burleson’s accomplishments—the first airmail flight with President Wilson looking on, opening post offices in rural areas, holding up a newspaper article with the headline ESPIONAGE ACT ENFORCER for his role in wartime censorship.

She’d heard rumors that he was a strict segregationist, and sure enough, everyone in the photos was white, making her gut churn. Not to mention male. If he wanted to keep minorities down, he must have loathed letting women gain a foothold.