Airplane Rides Read online

  Airplane Rides

  Observations From Above

  By

  Jake Alexander

  *******

  Published by

  Jake Alexander

  Airplane Rides Observations From Above

  Copyright 2014 Jake Alexander

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Kindle.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter One – AA Flight #232, Chicago (ORD) to Newark (EWR)

  Chapter Two – UA Flight #1287, San Francisco (SFO) to New York (JFK)

  “Romeo and Juliet”

  Chapter Three – DA Flight #14, New York (LGA) to Miami (MIA)

  Chapter Four – UA Flight #3102, Washington DC (IAD) to Saint Louis (STL)

  The Contemporary

  Chapter Five – UA Flight #1382, Chicago (ORD) to New York (LGA)

  Chapter Six - AA Flight #1409, Dallas (DFW) to Los Angeles (LAX)

  Chapter Seven – AA Flight #268, Columbus (CMH) to New York (LGA)

  Chapter Eight – UA Flight #196, San Francisco (SFO) to New York (JFK)

  Chapter Nine – CA Flight #333, Las Vegas (LAS) to New York (LGA)

  Chapter Ten – AA Flight #569, New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX)

  Epilogue

  Introduction

  Sometime early in my adult existence I made certain career decisions that sealed my fate as a modern day nomad, flying from city to city with all of my tools for life organized neatly into a rolling carry-on bag. While qualifying as a young adult in years, I was more a child then; searching for heroes and, perhaps even more immature, still thinking I might be one of them. So as life would have it, I would complete my transformation from boy to man on the road, slowly blurring life’s rights and wrongs, polishing my act and, most importantly, learning how to listen to others.

  This book is hundreds of thousands of frequent-flyer miles in the making and is possibly the most perfect representation of who I am and how I came to be. Initially, I had expected that these memories would fade, but instead they continued to haunt me until I had no choice but to better understand why they mattered. The answer was not found in a particular encounter, no sudden realization about myself or the choices I’ve made. Instead, these interludes in their collective assembly are each a small but permanent and relevant component of my odyssey over the decade during which the stories occurred.

  I have chosen these conversations because they have been the ones to stay with me through the years, the voices that I remember most clearly while staring out at the clouds or into a miniature glass of cheap chardonnay on yet another excursion. So in some respects, while so much of my time has been lost, traveling from one place to the next only to land again a stranger, these conversations have become my adopted life experiences. Experiences perhaps understood more clearly when conveyed 36,000 feet closer to, or a mere mechanical malfunction away from, heaven.

  Early in this process, temptations frequently weighted me with confusion. I often found myself morally wayward and exploiting the weaknesses of others. Years of such behavior resulted in a low point, leaving me burdened by the realization of my hopelessness, as suggested by a woman who may have been something more than a casual romance. Later on there were the occasional enlightenments that elevated me to a more lasting clarity. These were opportunities to demonstrate a more selfless capacity and ultimately to be awakened by the unexpected and liberating nature of compassion.

  These stories come specifically and truthfully from people I have had the pleasure of sitting beside on journeys through the sky. I will never disclose the true identities of these individuals who are unknowing contributors to this work and I make the sincere representation that while listening, it was not my intention to take their lives to print but rather simply to lend an ear, learn and sometimes help pass otherwise very lonely time.

  As does each of us, these people had an important and captivating story to tell.

  Fitting these conversations together like small pieces of a lifelong collage allows us to see that people are hopeful when life is hardest on them. This hope is enduring despite their unfortunate nature to repeat the same obvious mistakes that tangle them. This hope captivates them as they observe the difficult situations of others, searching for reassurance that it is not foolish to hope in the first place.

  I expect you will find these stories remarkable and perhaps suspect that I have embellished. My response is that most people want to talk about themselves, and in many instances need to confess. You may play the skeptic if you like, but the truths of life are far more exciting than anything one may conjure. Life has a detailed reality inside a definitive context that no one except perhaps a brilliant artist could assemble. I am no such artist, simply a good listener who has honed his skills at reading between the sentences, asking the questions that race through each of our minds but rarely off our tongues and capitalizing on the power of knowing that in all likelihood one will never see a person again.

  Prologue

  I was on the ground in New York at a late night dinner gathering, hosted by an old business school friend named Marcus. There were six of us in all, evenly sided and subtly matched, no man under 30, no woman over 20. Marcus was the oldest of the group chronologically. His life was primarily about doing his best to enjoy the enduring goodwill of his family name while making his own as a perennial Manhattan bachelor. The other man at the table was named Jonathan, an equally “well-positioned” reluctant socialite who hailed from the more northern town of Greenwich, Connecticut. Jonathan was taking advantage of a four-hour furlough granted by the lady he was committed to marry on some undetermined date in a galaxy far, far away. I liked Jonathan, and found his pompous nature amusing. He was one of the few people I knew who could make smoking pot look aristocratic. In addition to selecting the restaurant, Marcus had provided the women: three young models, all recent arrivals to New York, all looking to break into “the business,” as it was referred to for the duration of the evening.

  The six of us gathered around the table, dimly lit by several small candles. We ate trendy Thai food with metal-tipped chopsticks and sipped fine Chablis. The women were flawless white canvas, tall and thin, their features perfectly proportioned. Each was addressed by a nickname for which only Marcus knew the derivation.

  “Really Marcus, where do you find these beauties?” Jonathan asked.

  Smiles were shared among the compliment recipients.

  The blondest of the trio, who Marcus referred to as “Blackjack,” gave Jonathan a friendly swat on the shoulder, a sign that she still relied on adolescent conveyances of affection.

  The waiter showed up to peddle another over-priced Chablis to Marcus.

  “We are going to switch over to red, so if you could be so kind as to show the wine list to my father here,” he stated, pointing graciously at me with an open hand.

  It was one of his standard lines that always got a laugh. This time was no exception.

  I pulled the trigger quickly on a bottle of 97 Martinelli Reserve so not to allow the conversation to get too far along without me.

  “Wait, I thought you were older,” inquired Kendra, a delicate brunette who was still made-up from the hair conditioner shoot she had worked that day.

  Always a sucker for the Audrey Hepburn type, of the three women, I was the most attracted to
her and it was not by accident she was sitting to my right.

  “You’re correct,” I informed her.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Marcus shot back.

  “How old are you Marcus?” asked Wendel, also a blonde and too young to have learned it was impolite to ask, even for a woman.

  “Twice as old as you,” jabbed Jonathan.

  “Stop exaggerating,” replied Marcus.

  “His birthday is coming up,” I offered, greasing the skids before ducking behind my glass of wine.

  “You do the math Wendel. I’ll whisper Marcus’s age in your ear and you tell everyone if I am guilty of exaggerating.”

  The young girl agreed, leaning into Jonathan and smiling so widely I had suspected he provided more than an age.

  “Really?” she asked, looking Marcus over for false teeth or a hearing aid to corroborate the claim.

  “Twice and then some.”

  The group howled in stereo, well above the voices of the other establishment patrons.

  “My God. They are children!” exclaimed Jonathan motioning at them with his manicured hands.

  “Here we go, Mr. Engagement is going to go moral on us, ” replied Marcus with a disappointed shake of his head. “These children my friend could teach you a thing or two.”

  The three young women sat up a bit straighter in unison.

  “Right, and next week we’ll be trolling for dates at the Junior High School.”

  Everyone laughed at the joke except Jonathan himself.

  “When are you getting married?” asked Wendel.

  “He doesn’t know yet. He’s on the relationship equivalent of death row. It’s going to happen, he just doesn’t know when,” said Marcus.

  More laughs were had.

  “With all your gallivanting, let’s hope you don’t end up with a faster sentence,” replied Jonathan.

  “Now that hurt.”

  Blackjack decided to speak up in Marcus’s defense.

  “I’ve had plenty of boyfriends, it’s not like anyone is taking advantage. I enjoy dates like this much more than the things we would do back home. At least when I have sex, now it’s in a bed.”

  The pre-dinner apple martini was showing its weight, causing an ever so minor slur in Blackjack’s delivery.

  “Jonathan, I’m having fun. You should try it sometime. But more to the point, they’re having fun, going to exciting places and meeting cool people and never once were they put in a bad position. Not once.”

  Marcus was making the zero sign with his fingers for effect.

  Wendel jumped in. “I love hanging out with Marcus.”

  “Ok, but what’s the price? He is clearly an adult and supposed to know better than to encourage you to trade excitement or access for sex.”

  The girls didn’t like the sound of that one, and as for the sex that he was referring to, I was fairly certain that Jonathan wouldn’t be having any that evening.

  “And what if I like the sex too?” retorted Blackjack.

  The very statement was arousing, and Marcus couldn’t help but smile at Jonathan.

  “Well then I guess it’s a good deal all around,” I said, raising my glass of newly poured red, ending the discussion and permitting Jonathan an honorable retreat into the new wine in front of him.

  Through the gap in the thick gold tapestry drapes, I could see the glimmer of dawn turning the sky from black to gray. A glance at the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock confirmed my fear that another restless night had gotten the best of me. I tried to remember back to when mornings made me happy, when they were a chance at another day. I couldn’t, in the same way I couldn’t recall the last time I had slept fully through the night. Mornings had become an end rather than a beginning, a long series of realizations that yet another opportunity to find at least a brief serenity had been lost.

  My throat was choked with dryness and my lips felt swollen with dehydration. Salty Thai food and pinot noir was yet another discovered poisonous combination. I shifted around looking for cool spots on the bed and silently kicking the excess pillows onto the floor. After twenty minutes of the same, I slid out from under the sheet that covered me and away from Kendra’s fragile body. I walked across the room to the armoire in which the minibar was concealed and in the dim light of the morning rifled through the undersized bottles searching for water. Unsuccessful, I grabbed a cranberry juice instead, gulping down the cold tart liquid before returning to the side of the bed. I looked down at the young girl, suspecting that she had padded her age by a year, and thought about what Jonathan had said about having known better. I should have, but lately that seemed very often the case. My list of moral infractions was growing so long there was a certain futility to it. What was another nineteen-year-old, another truth stretched, another impediment eliminated? It was all on the margin at this point anyway.

  I was so tired and wanted to lay down again, yet I knew that sleep would evade me. It would be another two hours before the hotel restaurant would be open and another three before the commencement of my first meeting. I headed into the bathroom to get myself cleaned up, putting off the shave so as to avoid withstanding the scrutiny of my stare in the mirror. The hot water of the shower offered little clarity as I struggled to free the tiny bar of hotel soap from the cellophane wrapper and ultimately gave up when it slipped from my grasp and out onto the tile floor. Wet and unshaven, I put on a thick white terry cloth robe bearing the hotel crest, headed into the salon area of my hotel suite and sat down on one of two large parlor chairs that faced each other and were separated by a small round ebony table on which a bud vase holding a single white orchid had been placed.

  For an hour I sat there, questioning my life and trying to imagine present-day conversations with the people of my past, people who had mattered. I pictured them sitting across from me as they might look today, slightly older but still vibrant. I wondered what words might pass between us and if they would notice all that I hoped to hide in the shadows of the morning. I tried to justify the expenditure of my existence into the brink of moral bankruptcy, rationalizing to a face that wasn’t there. The sleeping child in my bed was merely a symptom, and in the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, I “had some splaining to do.”

  As the new day’s light filled the room, the edges of the flower became more defined and its beauty and purity more apparent. Between the flower and I it was understood that the chairs I would share would continue to be absent familiar smiles, only strangers momentarily engaged for each business meeting, each destination and each step into the darkness of my self-designed isolation.

  Chapter One

  AA Flight # 232

  Chicago (ORD) to Newark (EWR)

  I remember religion as being Tuesday afternoons in Saint Mary’s, sitting in Catechism at tiny maple chair-desks from a previous decade, writing the names of my favorite rock and roll bands on the cover of my notebook or twisting paperclips into miniature wire sculptures. Anything to pass the time while receiving the religious instruction that would prepare me for the second and third stages of admittance into Catholicism - Communion and then Confirmation. It was also a sort of pre-junior high school mixer, combining the children of three neighboring public elementary schools. Together, we would stare aimlessly at the repressed arts and crafts of unknown Catholic school kids that hung on our borrowed classroom walls and occasionally commiserating about the authoritarian nuns who barked orders like “walk-ons” for a Nurse Ratched audition. Whether it was a history lesson or rulebook recital, I had no idea, and my ignorance had no apparent consequence. In Catechism like traffic school there is no homework, no papers, no tests and no grades. Just show up and somehow you are a better Catholic for doing so.

  Occasionally, a bible story would catch my attention. In particular I liked the one about Mary Magdalene - perhaps the foretelling of a future struggle for my own redemption, but more likely an early indication of a developing fascination with promiscuous women. In either case, it was a learning opportunity surely
hampered by riveting subject matter, world-class instruction, my budding romantic inclinations towards the mysterious girls from the other grade schools, and the periodic need to demonstrate my capacity to fend off their more territorial male counterparts.

  The Catechism program was run by the nuns, a stout little gang of women over fifty, who seemed to have a stranglehold on most of the action at Saint Mary’s. The nuns were in turn run by the Head Sister Dolorous who, as legend has it, was actually offered the “Ratched” role but passed. Dolorous was by far the meanest of all the sisters, feared even by the priest, whose sum total authentic human interactions was a series of overworked one-liners during Sunday mass.

  “Some of you may think it’s hotter than hell in here, but it isn’t,” was always a summertime favorite.

  Beyond that, the priests were merely words from a reading or voices behind a confessional screen.

  Tuesdays passed as did the years. During the seventh grade, with Confirmation only a week away, I could see the light at the end of the boredom to which I had been condemned. But the years of passing notes and fighting caught up with me. A minor altercation with a longtime elementary school adversary turned out to be the proverbial straw. I was summoned to the last of my long walks down the dimly lit corridor to the office of Head Sister Dolorous. Dolorous had a reputation of being from the “old school”; a term that I had originally thought made sense because she was in fact old and likely went to school many years prior. Not the case. She properly paddled my rear end with a yardstick only to then expel me upon completion, generously taking the time to explain, as she retuned her weapon of choice to an umbrella stand, that she had hoped a sufficient reprimand would yield adequate remorse. It was my humble opinion that she simply wanted to get in “last licks.”