The Flight Path

I've only had to run to catch a plane twice in my life. The first time happened two years ago when I flew to San Francisco on a knee-jerk weekend caper with a moderately disturbed, slightly unshaven, bi-polar, bear of a real-estate agent, some dental floss, one torn contact lens, and a portable computer. The second time was in 2006, after I'd finished making a mad dash across the urbanized concrete schoolyards of Chicago's western suburbs in a black Buick Lucerne. Had I been in my tank of a car, TastyCakes, I would have gone though the school buildings themselves while sputtering Algebra equations at school children dodging my tires. Imagine Cruella de Vil, only eons younger, and aptly named Butterfingers Coupe De Ville.

But... I digress from the real story at hand. It's late Saturday night; there's a group of us sitting in one of four seance dinner rooms at the Chinese Cultural Center in Phoenix. Perusing the menu, I suggest M sprawl out and spin atop the Lazy Suzanne to be fed stir fry tidbits by our dinner companions via chopstick insemination. To my demise, that doesn't occur, but we all laugh and order.

Sitting across the table is the aggravatingly punctual, undeniably flaky, yet smolderingly sexy, and bewitchingly gorgeous Y, with her lively fiancee, Mr G. "So, R-Baby, you're flying back to Montreal tonight? Is it a direct flight," Mr G asks S's husband, R-Baby. Responding in a very French-Canadian accent, R-baby says, "No, actually. I have a stop-over in Chicago, and then my flight to Montreal in the morning."

Looking up from his yellow curry beef tips swimming in broth, Mr G's cheeks queerly light up in a flash of memory. "Oh, I thought you had a direct flight. I remember one time I was on a flight back from Asia, that connected in LA." The table turns toward Mr G as he continues, "We got in a little bit late, so I was running and running and running as fast as I could." Interrupting his train of thought, M playfully says, "Could anyone catch you, Gingerbread man?" Y slyly looks over her wine glass toward M, who then curdles into her chair.

Not hearing her valid question, Mr G gleefully goes on, "Yes, so I arrive at the gate with messy hair, clothes hanging out of my bag, one shoe untied, and grasping for dear life to my ticket. I give it to the ticket lady and proceed into the gate. When I get inside the plane, the stewardess tells me there is a seat in the rear, and gives me a look like this..." Mr G proceeds to pucker his lips while exhaling in an exasperated manner. His brow furrows and lines form around the edges of his eyes as they squeeze together slightly, and his head slowly shakes from left to right. He looks kind of like he's experiencing both a mild bout of flatulence and an episode of empathy indicating "I'm sure glad I'm not you right now".

Zooming to the edge of his seat, S blurts out, "Oh, what happened?!"

"Well, I walk down the aisle, and notice people start snickering at me. Others give me the same look as the flight attendant. Some just grimace and shake their heads at me." Mr G takes a sip of wine, and clears his throat, bound in his retelling, "I approach the back of the airplane; the looks of desperation become more and more dreary. Then, I see it."

"What'd you see?" I say, absentmindedly burning myself on fragrant tea.

"At the back of the packed aircraft are two people but no available seats. I look at them and ask no one in particular where to sit. They look at each other in a meager frown. I realize then, the seat the stewardess was referring to is sandwiched from view between them. I mean, these people were so big, you couldn't fit a piece of paper between them, much less me."

"Oh my god! So what did you do, sit on top of their laps?"

"Actually, it was pretty cool. I got to sit in the jump seat the whole way, but man... to be launched into that other seat, I'd need Crisco and a wrecking ball!"