Airplane Rides (5 page)

“If you would be so kind as to reload us, young lady,” said
Raymond with flawless enunciation, confirming for me that “inebriated” was a
routine at which he was also well practiced.  Without obvious hesitation, Katie
went for the refills and returned a few moments later. I still hadn’t finished
my second drink and, convinced I would object to being denied my ration, she
thought to leave the third glass in alcoholic queue behind the second.  This
was the second time the young Katie had let me know who she thought I might be,
and for the second time, I had taken disturbing notice of it.

Raymond settled into his fourth and I tried to return to my
notes. I glanced at my watch and was surprised again at how quickly time was
slipping away.   I needed to focus, and neither the alcohol nor my seatmate
were helping.   Katie returned and sized us up for a moment, second-guessing
her decision to continue serving us.  I did my best to smile reassuringly, but
it was Raymond who took the conversational lead.

“So let me tell you where you should be spending your time in
South Beach,” he stated.

Katie listened patiently as the older man rolled off the names
of several nightclubs and restaurants, noting his relationships with the owners
and permitting her to use his name for entrance. He was careful to say where he
would be, making it clear that she and her friends would enjoy both his company
and his bar tab should they select that particular location.  His words were
smooth but came off as an illegal offer.

“Who knows, we may even convince my protégé to come along,”
Raymond said, motioning towards me with his head.

Katie continued to smile throughout, thanked him again and left
us to wash off our filth.

Raymond again returned to staring at distant memories.  I
didn’t enjoy the association, but it wasn’t worth protest. Still, I couldn’t
resist the temptation to take a poke at him in retaliation.

“Do you think she’ll show?” I asked, like an apprentice to his
mentor.

Raymond turned and looked me over.  Somewhere inside, I knew
the very questioning of his allure angered him.

“Of course.  They always do,” he replied arrogantly. “Get them
into the clubs, some booze down their throat, a little blow up their nose and
anything goes.”

I laid my speaking notes down, tucked my pen into my pocket,
and smiled at him warmly. Raymond smiled back and gave me an elbow tap to
confirm our camaraderie.

“How old are your children, Raymond?” I asked, engaging him.

He shot me a stare, knowing that he hadn’t mentioned having
any, before responding without the typical gratuitous parental elaboration.

“Sixteen and fourteen.”

“Boys, girls?”

Raymond shifted his massive frame towards me.  He looked me
over as if he was doing so for the first time in our conversation.  I was
easily four inches and three coat sizes smaller than he, but I held his glare
without discomfort.

“One of each.”

His expression screamed “Take your best shot,” and so I did.

“Do you get to spend much time with them?” I asked, conscious
that I was sailing into dangerous territory.

“Not really,” he replied simply after another pause.

“Things still tense with their mother?” I coaxed him, expecting
he would read between the lines, which he did without missing a beat.

“Who said I was divorced?” he asked, falsely quizzical.

“Oh, you’re divorced,” I replied confidently.

Raymond’s initial instinct was to swat me into the next row,
but then in a rush of control he smiled and let out a deep Charlton Heston
laugh that stripped away his designer façade, exposing an ugly and angry man. 
I contemplated the countless injustices his finely tuned charade had surely
perpetuated.  I imagined him pouring Katie a drink with one hand and running
his hand along her neckline with the other.  I imagined him driving a black
Ferrari and wearing his gold sunglasses.  In my own irrational anger, it became
my responsibility to erase the disturbing images that were flashing though my
head like a confusing montage of recurring nightmares.

Like a common criminal, Raymond Trevello began to explain.

“Things between their mother and me fell apart about nine years
ago,” he stated, continuing on with the timeline and spending a greater portion
of time on the happier moments.  They had met in law school, married and made
their home in New York.  Their life together was probably close to perfect
until Raymond’s professional expertise slowly evolved into defending drug
felons.  He performed well and was rewarded for it, soon spending most of his
hours immersed in the drug world at a billable rate of five hundred dollars
per.  Secretly he adored the lifestyle of first class airline seats, five-star
hotel rooms and bodyguard-chauffeured limousines.  Without full admission, he
implied that on several occasions exceptionally beautiful woman had been sent
to his room as an unspoken fringe benefit.  Slowly the distractions drove a
divide between his family life and his professional existence.  He chose the
latter again and again until it became the American cliché: young man from a
blue collar beginning wins the heart of a Junior League girl, only to become
successful in his own right and take her for granted.

His wife stopped practicing law when the children came. 
Isolated in her home, she was overtaken by the insecurities associated with the
undercurrents of Raymond’s weekly trips to Miami and Los Angeles.  Raymond left
his firm to set up his own practice, taking with him his high-paying clients. 
Free from the judgmental eyes of partners, he wandered even further.

“It was all very taxing,” he explained, trying to make it sound
like an admirable climb up the corporate ladder.

“Ultimately, we drifted apart.  She moved on.  It was
expected,” he concluded in a slightly bitter voice.

“And your relationship with the children didn’t recover?” I
asked, feeling justified in taking a final kick at the remains of his illusion.

“Not really.  By the time I took the time to notice, they were
teenagers figuring it all out for themselves,” he replied honestly, with a hint
of personal disgust. “The mistakes we make!” he said, raising his empty voice
and empty glass, straining for the drops of melted ice that remained at the
bottom.

I waited for a moment, giving him time for anything else he had
to say. Nothing came. In the silence I deemed him pathetic enough to leave
alone.

“You made your miserable bed Raymond,” I thought to myself.

Raymond must have heard the thought run through my mind because
he responded.

“Don’t look so critical. I’m no different than you,” he stated
defensively.

I thought to let it ride, but the alcohol mixed with my own
tense urgency directed me otherwise.

“I’m nothing like you,” I replied with forced certainty.

“Sure you are, kid,” he replied condescendingly.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.  Every part of
my mind was working to strike back.

“You need another drink,” I said, nodding at his empty glass.

I swung my hand out to get Katie’s attention and accidentally
knocked the emptier of my two cocktails into the aisle.

Raymond bellowed with another of his deep laughs.

“Shake you up a bit kid?” he asked tauntingly.

“Don’t be too sure of yourself counselor,” I replied in a
threatening tone.

Raymond studied my face and I stared back, watching him make
the decision to back off.

I nodded at him as if to commend a wise choice, and began to
pack up my notes. Katie arrived to clean up my mess, collect our glasses and
adjust our seatbacks.  We were about to land, I was unprepared for the
following morning and I couldn’t wait to get the hell off the airplane.

“So in using this platform to increase the velocity at which we
first deploy capital and then finance our position, the limitations of our own
equity base become less restrictive and we can afford the market share to which
we aspire.”

I paused to let the punch line sink in, thanked the audience
for listening and descended from the speaking platform that had been assembled
at the front of the convention-sized conference room.  Above the applause, a
few familiar voices offered compliments and quick handshakes as I moved across
the front row and towards the side exit.

“Tall order!” said the chairman of the firm, using a handshake
to pull me into earshot.

A smile conveyed my confidence.  He responded with an
enthusiastic back slap that felt more designed to demonstrate the effectiveness
of his new personal trainer.

I was relieved to finally be off stage and could hear the next
speaker being announced as I quickly made my way down the hotel corridor
towards the men’s lavatory.  I hurried inside and braced myself against the
marble counter as I washed my face with a cold terry cloth towel that had been
folded neatly in stack of fifty more on a gold serving tray.  With my pulse
dropping back into the normal range, I stared into the mirror, checking to see
if I recognized myself.  The bathroom lighting was less-than-flattering, and I
could see the hairline crow’s feet around my tired darkened eyes.  I laughed at
my reflection for having pulled off another performance. I looked much older
than I had remembered and I knew that eventually my luck would run out.   Again
I leaned over the basin and held the cold cloth over my eyelids. I heard the
bathroom door open and a deep laugh that sounded like Raymond’s over the
running water.  My heart skipped a beat as I shot a glance into the mirror to
see two bankers making their way to the urinals.  I replaced the washcloth and
held it firmer to push Raymond’s image from my mind in a vain attempt to give
myself more time.

UA Flight # 3102
Washington DC (IAD) to Saint Louis (STL)

Lindsay was a perfect child, sent from the purity of heaven
into the toxic caldron of life.  She was the first of two children and older
sister to a brother named Warren who followed her by less than eighteen
months.  For her small town outside St. Louis, it was as though Zeus had sent
his daughter, a miniature Olympian with golden hair and radiant brown eyes. 
She stood out across all physical measures and was gifted in the gymnasium
sports that mattered so much in her grade school years.  Stronger and more
agile than most boys her age, she bested them in the combats of soccer and
softball, discovering her only confidence on the playing field.  As years
passed by, she continued to excel, focused on the sports that defined her. 
Lindsay’s teachers, coaches and family all expected nothing less, as they were
all convinced of her athletic abilities.  What these people weren’t prepared
for was how beautiful Lindsay had become.  By the age of 14, while still a
child, her body began to take the shape of a woman and her golden locks had
grown long.  Apparent to everyone but herself, Lindsay was a mortal with
goddess-like magnificence.

Things at home were not so beautiful.  An alcoholic mother and
combative father eventually brought their torturous marriage to an end.  She
admitted to me that it was a relief the day her father finally left.

“At least they wouldn’t be fighting all night.”

Lindsay and her brother remained with their mother, whose
drinking only worse as time went on.  This left Lindsay to keep up family
appearances and tend to the emotional well being of Warren.  On the field and
the court, she continued to turn heads.  During the fall of her eighth-grade
year, she caught the attention of the new assistant coach.  He was a handsome
twenty-four-year-old who had recently arrived from Wisconsin and possessed
limited knowledge of the sex laws regarding minors.

His name was Matthew, and every junior high school girl
whispered his name in her adolescent dreams and sketched his face on in her
notebooks.   Matthew used athletics as his vehicle to interact with Lindsay,
and slowly made his intentions known.  Lindsay thought it unfathomable that he
might appreciate her for anything other than her contribution to the team.

“I couldn’t believe he picked me.  It was totally unexpected
that this man who all of my friends adored thought I was pretty.”

Matthew became Lindsay’s first in a long series of attempts at
validation, the need for which she acknowledged with an expression of
self-disappointment.

“I can understand why you surrendered to him,” I offered.

“I don’t like that word surrender,” she responded, sharply. 
“It means that you are knowing and willing. I didn’t know anything then.”

For the remainder of junior high, she didn’t date others. 
Instead, she was content with the periodic make-out sessions, stolen after
practice and easily facilitated under the rosy nose of her mother.  She claimed
that she and Matthew never fully consummated their relationship, but I
suspected they had explored significant substitutes carrying for him equal
criminal penalty.   The encounter was the first in a pattern that would emerge
again soon after.  In high school, all bars were raised as she began competing
with upperclassmen for both starting positions and the attention of an athletic
director some twenty years her senior.  The man, whose name she failed to
mention, was married, with a daughter nearly Lindsay’s age.  The respect she
had for him was undeniable, and when he crossed the line to become her lover in
an affair that would last until her junior year, she was once again in
disbelief that she was the first-round draft pick in a romantic arena.  Before
she finished high school, their affair would be exposed, the athletic director
would leave his family and the school’s principal would move quickly to hush
any potential scandal.

“They explained it would cast a shadow on the athletic program,
that it would hurt the school.  I can’t believe I listened to them, but there
was really no one else sober to talk to about it.”

In her senior year, Lindsay made extra money as a lifeguard at
the town’s only private country club.  It was there that she spilt her
attentions between a member’s son named Scott and a younger busboy named Dean,
who was from a blue-collar family on the less affected side of the tracks. 
Romantic with both and committed to neither, she was ultimately confronted by
Scott’s mother, who suggested Lindsay make her decision and seize the
opportunity to “trade up.”  Rebellious or intelligent, Lindsay thought she
wanted nothing to do with a boy promoted by his mother.  Without reflection,
she rejected the mother’s advice and made Dean her high school sweetheart.

“I think I really picked Dean because I was more comfortable
with someone I thought I was better than,” she admitted.

Like she had taken care of Warren, she began to take care of
Dean.  Lindsay used sports to get through college and Dean, a year younger,
followed along as best he could.   She continued to be a tomboy surrounded by
men, always under the impression that they enjoyed her company on account of
her physical abilities.  She was only slightly off target.  When she made it
out into the workplace following graduation, her attractiveness began to
surpass her athletic capabilities, and she became more aware of the effect she
had on the men around her.

“It was the first time I actually began to pay attention to the
way I looked.  I had never liked clothes shopping, never had a manicure.  I
just began the process of trying to fit in wearing something other than a
jersey.”

Lindsay and Dean wed in a small but beautiful ceremony arranged
by Dean’s mother.

“She went way out of her way to make me feel special and I
loved her for that.  For that day alone, I will always love her.”

The honeymoon however, was short.  Married days slid by and so
did her respect for Dean, as he continued to define himself within her
existence.  His umbilical cord moved without interruption from his mother’s
care to Lindsay’s.

“He played on being the victim.  There was no sense of honor to
it. He wasn’t the king of the castle and I didn’t love and respect him.  That
whole dynamic was never part of the equation.”

It was on a sales call to North Carolina that she had her first
affair.  He was the project manager on the account, and they had been working
together for several weeks.  She had been attracted to him, but had never even
considered the possibility that something could happen. More importantly, once
again she thought it incomprehensible that he could feel the same way.

“I had fantasized about being with him, but it wasn’t until the
moment that he kissed me that I even realized he was remotely interested.  I
wasn’t ready for it.”

“Did you try and stop him.”

“Not in the least. I needed that kiss like you have no idea.”

“Zero hesitation?”

“No. I felt like there was nothing that should hold me back.”

It lasted five months, but set the stage for another pattern in
her life.

I asked her how she felt about violating the bonds of her
marriage.

“You would think I felt some remorse but really I walked out of
the hotel room thinking ‘Fuck you, Dean.  Fuck you for bringing it to this’.”

Dean was soon afforded the opportunity to learn her feelings
first-hand.  Six months after the affair had ended, in a booze-induced girls
night “tell all” in her living room, Lindsay and her girlfriends confided in
each other regarding their various romantic excursions.   Always the high
scorer on the board, Lindsay topped them all with her account of the
anger-fueled breakdown that had landed her in the bed of another. The show got
better when Dean entered without warning, having been listening in the hallway
long enough to catch the last act.

“You’ve never seen a room clear so quickly,” she said, in an
attempt to distract me from the shame that flushed her cheeks.

The couple went into a spiral, which they tried to correct with
a semester worth of marriage counseling.  With a few new tension-breaking hat
tricks in their arsenal, Dean eventually moved back from the den and into the
bedroom.  Soon thereafter, convinced they were cured, the couple had their first
child, a beautiful girl just like her mother.  Things settled down after the
baby and Lindsay returned to work prepared to reenter corporate competition. 
Between the newborn and Lindsay’s career, however, Dean once again began to
feel untended to.  Looking to avoid the pitfalls of the past, he nobly moved to
proactively rekindle the relationship.  He presented Lindsay with a diamond
necklace, hung from a bottle of champagne on a romantic weekend getaway he had
arranged.  The weekend was a small advancement in a lifetime of setbacks,
yielding both a commitment to keep trying, and the conception of another little
girl.

The second pregnancy was harder than the first and by the time
the baby was born, Lindsay had little energy or patience for much of anything. 
Dean, comfortably convinced that two new children assured domestic harmony,
returned to his unfortunate routine.  Lindsay’s disrespect for him once again
began to flourish and in borderline premeditation, she volunteered for sales
accounts that were likely to get her out of town and away from home.

While her relationship with Dean was again on the decline, her
relationship with Dean’s parents grew into a foundation of Lindsay’s life. 
They continued to fill the parental void that had characterized her childhood. 
Dean’s mother recognized Lindsay as inheriting her old job, and loved Lindsay
for being there to take care of this grown but still needy child.  Lindsay
relied heavily on her in-laws as grandparents, making up the difference as she
ventured out of town more and more.

Again on the road, Lindsay found the excitement of infidelity
and began a year-long affair with a co-worker in Dallas.  His name was Michael
and he also was married.  Glasses of wine turned into late-night dinners and
then quiet confessions during walks back to the hotel in which they would both
be staying.  Soon thereafter, kisses turned into sex, and sharing a room after
making the required goodnight phone calls to their respective spouses became
routine.  I asked her if it was easier to cheat the second time around.

“Only in that it made me question the sort of person I was.  I
wondered if I was simply incapable of monogamy.”

She mentioned nothing about disrespecting her husband.

The affair soon turned eerily reminiscent of her relationship
with the athletic directors as the underground couple carelessly allowed their
relationship to grow too obvious.  Michael’s wife left him, taking his children
and for the most part the life that he realized too late that he still wanted,
even under the spell of Lindsay’s magnetism.  Dean, on the other hand, was
happy to resurrect his role as the victim and coaxed Lindsay back to take care
of him and the children.

“I told myself ‘never again’ after that one. It was a mess.
Dean told his parents.  His mom sat me down for this long talk. I really felt
like I had let everyone down.”

Committed once again to walking the straight and narrow,
Lindsay, with the encouragement of her mother-in-law, reentered marriage
counseling with Dean and tried for a final time to refocus on her husband.  The
effort was futile as the past continued to roar in between the otherwise
constructive sentences that they had been advised to use.  Lindsay sought
happiness in the distractions of her daughters and her job, and Dean remained
clueless.

Lindsay’s final act of adultery occurred two years later, the
last secret interlude in an eighteen-month-long affair with yet another
colleague, this time named Brian, and again with a family of his own. She
characterizes it as such because it was the evening prior to that in which Dean
asked the question and Lindsay decided to no longer deny it.

“He had been growing suspicious as well he should have been. 
We hadn’t slept together in months. So of course he started asking. Finally, I
just stopped trying to convince him otherwise.  He got it.”

A week later she asked for a divorce, returning Dean to the
den, his sleeping quarters for the three-month duration of their remaining time
under the same roof.  Lindsay finally pushed him out and into the effort she
claimed would do him the most good: taking care of himself.

As I heard her story, I realized that when I first noticed
Lindsay flipping through a magazine while standing in front of the gate podium,
I guessed her younger than the thirty-eight years she actually was.   She had a
spirited glow about her, like she had just finished a weekend at a spa where
the treatments include salt baths and optimism wraps.  She was wearing a pair
of tan riding pants that hugged her lean thighs, a black sleeveless top and tan
suede jacket that matched perfectly.  She still had the long golden hair that I
imagined she wore through her youth, now tied back in a ponytail, refined yet
certainly reminiscent of younger days.

She was returning from a long weekend with Brian. He too had
separated from his spouse to formalize the affair. Each of them had children,
complicating matters significantly as neither was free to relocate.  Like
Lindsay’s, Brian’s departure from his spouse was not painless.  His wife had
retained custody of their children and the idea of living twelve hundred miles
away was not an attractive one, no mater how much Lindsay meant to him. 
Lindsay did have custody of her daughters, however her pending divorce
agreement stipulated that she would not be permitted to move them away from
their father.