In a calm, therapeutic manner, I said, "Sir, are you a nervous flier? I used to get nervous too, but my doctor gave me something to take before flights and now flying"s a breeze."
"My problem isn"t flying, Mr. Gunt." He"d remembered my name! "My problem is your rudeness."
I gave him a wounded look. Then I heard the tinkle of the approaching beverage cart. "Maybe a drink is what you need. Nothing like a drink to ease the nerves." It"d take a f.u.c.king Exxon Valdezfull of booze to get this whopper sozzled.
Mr. Bradley blurted out to Trish a request for a double Scotch and received that very American reply: "I"m sorry, sir, but the FAA prohibits the sale of alcoholic drinks over one point five ounces. I"ll be back to you shortly-beverage service is starting in row 8 tonight."
Purple changed to beet red. Dear G.o.d, this is fun.
When Trish at last reached row 1, she had his mini bottle ready. "Your Scotch, Mr. Bradley?"
"Thank you."
She poured the contents onto ice and was about to hand the gla.s.s to him with a pack of smoked almonds when she paused, put her hand back into the bin and removed two more nut bags. She set all three beside his drink without comment. "Mr. Gunt?"
Trust me, this was the only time in my whole f.u.c.king life I"d refused the offer of a drink, but it was just too good an opportunity to waste. "No, thanks-I have to make sure I fit into my swimsuit. Soda water"s great, if you have it."
My seatmate was maroon now, and I thought, Ahh ... three more hours of fun.
"I know the feeling, Mr. Gunt," said Trish, patting her minuscule waist with a wink. "Here"s some water. Nuts, maybe?"
"No. All those oils are really fatten-" I gently corrected myself. "They tend to linger in the body."
She nodded at me and then rolled the cart into the pantry.
I could sense the quickly spinning hamster wheels of hate in Mr. Bradley"s being.
I said and did nothing more until our food came. Instead of a hot meal, dinner was a disposable box containing a croissant stuffed by careless chimps. The bar-coded label on Mr. Bradley"s box read: "FIRSTCLa.s.s" CHICKIN CROISANT. Trish offered me one reading: "FIRSTCLa.s.s" BEEFE CROISANT.
Ah, the American education system.
I declined. Trish then asked me at the very least to have a roll with b.u.t.ter, and I graciously said, "Sure, why not?" On the tray was a pack of ketchup. I tore off the tiniest strip from the corner and then used the ketchup to write PIG on the surface of my bun. I waited for the right moment to hold it clearly before me and ask Mr. Bradley in distinct, soothing, broadcaster-like tones audible to all, "Mr. Bradley, are you feeling a bit better now that you"ve had a drink?"
He looked at me and then at the bun.
He burped.
Whatever he says, it"s going to be priceless ...
His body started shaking up and down like a hardware store paint-shaker, and then, spectacularly, he vomited onto the carpeted bulkhead wall in front of us. He lurched upward in a last cosmic gym crunch, then slumped forward, his head dropping onto his chest. He was still.
Well, f.u.c.k him if he can"t take a joke.
I shouted, "Flight attendant! Mr. Bradley"s in terrible distress!" And there"s the foulest puke you ever smelled all around him, and it is ruining my flight, so please mop it all up.
I, the hero, then shouted, "Does anyone here know CPR?" Even if they did, they"d have an easier time giving it to a bouncy castle at a children"s birthday party than trying to revive Mr. Bradley.
Some losers from coach peeked through the curtain to see what the commotion was about. Trish screamed for them to sit back down. She velcroed the blue curtain closed, then asked over the PA if there was a doctor on board. But even if there was, come on-what could he do? You"d need a forklift to lift the fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d out of the seat.
And then Neal poked his head through the curtain. "I used to work as a paramedic, ma"am," he said to Trish.
She practically wept with relief and waved him through.
"You never told me you were a paramedic, Neal. I specifically asked you if you possessed any real world skills, and you said you had none."
"Surprises make life fun, Ray. Here-help me lay him out in the aisle."
Christ, it was like trying to drag a melon wagon up an alpine meadow. "How much does this f.u.c.ker weigh, do you think, Neal?"
"Maybe twenty, twenty-five stone."
"He took one big puke and then slumped over."
"Probably a heart attack."
Neal, Trish and I finally got Mr. Bradley"s corpse into the aisle. All eyes in business cla.s.s were agog at having so much deadness so close by.
"You never really think of death too much in our culture," said Neal.
"I know. It"s unhealthy, really. We need to find the joy and laughter in death as well as the depressing bits."
"Amen, Ray."
Trish was wiping up the puke on the bulkhead wall.
"What happens next?" I asked Neal.
"Put him back in his seat, I suppose."
"You have to be f.u.c.king kidding. After what we just went through?"
"We don"t want rigor mortis to set in while he"s blocking the aisle. It"s our last chance to, umm ... bend him to our will."
And so we wrestled Mr. Bradley back into 1J, where he sat frozen as if in a state of permanent excitement while awaiting a truckload of greasy, heavily salted meals.
"Don"t expect me to keep this fat dead f.u.c.k company for three and a half more hours. You work for me, Neal, so you can sit beside him for the rest of the flight."
"Me in first cla.s.s?"
"It"s your lucky day, Neal."
"I"ll say. Hey, is that a croissant I see there at your seat? All we got in coach were snacks that kind of looked like what you"d find under the front seat of a well-used family sedan. Not too appetizing. But you-you got a sandwich."
"It"s yours if you want it."
"Thanks, Ray, you"re the best."
And thus I moved to seat 54F, entertained, relaxed, relieved and happy. The rest of the flight was a dream in spite of collective bleatings of amus.e.m.e.nt around me at the appalling Mr. Bean program.
f.u.c.king Mr. Bean.
Mr. Bean is a British comedy series of 19 twenty-five-minute episodes written by and starring Rowan Atkinson. The pilot was broadcast on England"s ITV on January 1, 1990, and the last episode in late 1995.
The series follows the exploits of Mr. Bean, described by Atkinson as "a child in a grown man"s body," as he solves various problems presented by everyday life-often causing mayhem in the process. Bean rarely speaks, thus making the series ideal for global domination in the crowd sedation sector of the TV industry. The show has been sold in 245 territories. It is relentless. It can be enjoyed with equal ease by three-year-olds and Alzheimer"s patients. Mirth: the universal language.
11.
Honolulu was a total donkeyf.u.c.k, starting with the ridiculous amount of respect paid to that repulsive corpse Bradley, as if dying on a plane is some big accomplishment. Thirty minutes were wasted while medics came to retrieve his husk, and there weren"t even any snacks or drinks while we waited at the gate for them to do their thing.
Finally allowed into the terminal, we pa.s.sed through immigration, which, its being the middle of the night, was a breeze, but then we couldn"t find Sarah, our TV network go-to.
So Neal and I sat and waited in the arrivals area, nighttime warmth nuzzling our travel-weary arms and plumeria scent filling the air like sugar. We imbibed the two dozen or so mini bottles I"d stolen from the drinks wagon during the death kerfuffle and contemplated our next step-locating our charter flight to Kiribati.
Travel had turned Neal into a f.u.c.king child: "Wow. Me in Hawaii. Whatever next?"
"Look, Neal, Hawaii is not some magical pixie wonderland; it"s an American state populated by atomic weapons, a remnant native population and people too stupid to spell their way out of a paper bag. Most of them came here to escape pathetic lives in the forty-nine other states, so in some sense, Hawaii is a scenic cul-de-sac filled with people who want to drink themselves to death without feeling judged."
"Smells nice, though, doesn"t it?"
"It certainly does."
"Where"s this Sarah woman, then?"
"If she"s American, she"s most likely playing Scrabble with a chimp and losing."
A jet took off in the background. Ukulele music was playing over the PA. The booze was doing its job, and I did kind of like this place. And then we saw Sarah: late twenties, long brown hair, dressed like women in ad agencies do: V-neck sweater with three-quarter sleeves-distinct upwardly mobile cleavage. I said, "Look at her. She"s not about to do anyone unless it ratchets her up the ladder."
"You sure, Ray? She looks kind enough."
"Neal, I stopped trying to nail that type a decade ago. Birds of her calibre have been getting hit on since they were two years old; by the time they"re four, they"re already technically out of my league."
As Sarah came closer to us, I realized she was sniffling as if something sad had just occurred.
"Are you ... Sarah?"
"Yes. h.e.l.lo." Her body language said almost too upset to shake hands.
"Raymond Gunt."
"Neal Crossley," Neal chimed in, then added, "Sarah, hey, what"s wrong?"
"It"s awful," she said.
"What"s awful?"
"Matt Bradley-he"s dead!"
Oh dear. I looked at Neal, and he at me, and he said, "Oh?"
I disingenuously asked, "Was Mr. Bradley with the TV network?"
"He was."
I thought about this. "Why on earth wasn"t he on a corporate jet?"
"I don"t know," Sarah said. "Something about wanting to be with the common folk who made him what he was."
I thought, Good f.u.c.king thing he"s dead, the way I treated him. "What was his role in the show?" I asked.
"He was the brains. The show"s soul. He knew the answer to everything, how everything actually worked: casting, cameras, human behaviour under stressful conditions." She honked her nose loudly into a tissue. "It"s just awful. I don"t know who"s going to replace him."
It took every molecule of falsity within me to say, "No wonder you"re so sad."
"Sad? About Matt Bradley? Good G.o.d, no. He was awful. I"m thrilled he"s gone. I"m just sad because my workload"s tripled and I was supposed to go to Fiji with my boyfriend and now I have to fly to Kiribati myself to oversee a bunch of imbeciles who, in turn, oversee our bikini-wearing human lab rats. It"s so unfair."
Now this is my kind of woman. I think that was when I first contemplated falling in love. "Join us for a drink? Nothing to mix it with, though."
"What do you have? Ooh! Tia Maria!" She grabbed the bottle and tipped it back.
I said, "It really is a terrible f.u.c.king thing, Matt Bradley being dead and all."
She held up a hand as Neal twisted the cap off another mini bottle for her. "Please, your language."
"Sarah, what is it with you Americans and swearing?" I asked. "You crow over enhanced interrogation procedures and the current destruction of s.h.i.tholes like Africa, but I throw in one "f.u.c.k" and you all go nuclear."
Sarah chugged her drink as she looked at me, then tossed her mini bottle in the trash. She was going to say something sanctimonious. Oh G.o.d ...
She said, "Bono still thinks there"s hope for Africa."
I blinked and we pa.s.sed a moment in total silence.
Then she laughed. "Come on! I"m totally fricking kidding. Look! You"ve got me swearing now! Pa.s.s me another Tia Maria."
Phew.
"I was sitting next to Mr. Bradley when it happened, you know," I confessed. (Actually, I was bragging.) "No!" She was uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the next mini bottle"s top.
"Seat 1K. Twelve inches away."
This sank in to Sarah"s mind as she guzzled the bottle. "They put you in business cla.s.s?"