Read Online A View From a Broad by Bette Midler - Free Book Online Page B

realize,” the pilot said, “there will be some bumping about. Perhaps even some yawing. . . .”
    “Yawing?” Miss M yawned in his face. “What’s yawing?”
    “The unpredictable lurching of the aircraft from side to side,” the pilot explained. “Nothing to be alarmed about.”
    Miss M regarded the pilot with his firm chin, his steel-blue eyes. She surveyed his immaculate blond hair, his strong, broad shoulders. And she was reassured.
    And indeed, the flight began pleasantly enough. The lovely Swedish countryside swept by below them in all its fall grandeur: immense stands of dark-green firs, broken hither and thither by orange maples and pale-yellow aspens. And everywhere the lakes, like so many compact mirrors, reflected the afternoon sun. Miss M looked down on the endless stretches of the by-now familiar wilderness and felt the pressures of the tour slide off her back like a fine chinchilla stole. She snuggled back into her seat and closed her eyes.
    She wasn’t asleep for long. The first hint of trouble was a sharp, definite yaw to the right as the plane flew into a line of mean-looking clouds dripping with rain.
    “Just a bit of turbulence,” the tall, broad-shouldered pilot shouted to his passengers in the back.
    But Miss M’s ears, sensitive as a hound’s, heard the trace of concern in the pilot’s voice. Still, he had such blond hair. Surely nothing could go wrong.
    The second sharp lurch, however, was more than a yaw. The plane moved not only sideways, but definitely downwards as well. Miss Franklooked angrily at Miss M and dolefully up to the Lord.
    “It’s just a bit of turbulence,” said Miss M.
    “It’s the engine,” the pilot called back. “I’m afraid we’ll have to land.”
    Miss M looked out the window, her mind racing through every aviation movie she had ever seen. Land? There was no place to land. Only more of those endless pine trees and those goddamn maples.
    “I’m going to try over there by that farmhouse,” the pilot said.
    Miss M peered down intently. Not far below, she could make out a small wooden-frame house with a large open field behind it. How pitiful, Miss M. thought, that after blistering my heels so badly on the ladder of success, I should come to my end on this little plot of ground in the middle of nowhere. The headline she would never see danced before her eyes:

SUPERSTAR KILLS PIG IN FATAL PLUNGE
----

Began Career at Continental Baths
    The pilot shouted back orders: “Fasten your seat belts tightly. Re move all sharp or breakable objects from anywhere around you. Bend your heads towards your knees. Wrap your arms around your heads. Above all, relax!”
    T he plane lurched about more helplessly than ever in the wind and rain. They descended rapidly toward the field below. When they were twenty feet above the ground, the pilot cut the engine completely. The silence was terrifying. But Miss Frank was brave. The pilot was brave and tall and broad-shouldered. Miss M was none of the above. The plane landed in a field of clover as if nothing were wrong.
    “We are in Paradise,” Miss Frank announced. “Praise the Lord.”
    “Actually,” the pilot said, “we’re in Weldmere. About one hundred miles southeast of Stockholm.”
    “We’re up Shit’s Creek is where we are,” The Divine chimed in with her usual eloquence. “And what, may I ask, do we do now?”
    The pilot was about to respond when a loud Hallo! drew everyone’s attention outside. Running toward them through the field was a wild-eyed, white-haired man accompanied by two beautiful young women and a gaffer. Waving what appeared to be a megaphone, the man and his companions approached the battered plane.
    I magine The Divine’s surprise when she saw that the man, whom she had taken to be some crazed pig farmer, was in fact the renowned film director Vilmos Angst. Imagine his surprise when he saw it was The Divine who had fallen out of the sky into the middle of his location. Miss M threw off