“Did you always live in Florida?” I asked, already knowing he was a transplant, but allowing him some more airtime and keeping the focus off of me.
“Moved down in eighty-five,” he responded, without indicating the catalyst.
“Your family from down there?” I asked.
“No, all from New York,” he replied shortly, while shaking the ice cubes in his empty glass trying to get Katie’s attention.
I noticed a hint of redness in his cheeks hiding behind his bronzed skin.
“And you never married?” I asked carefully.
“No I did, I did it all,” he responded like a small confession, exhaling to demonstrate his increasing impatience with the young woman.
I looked at him for a moment, noting that he, too, was practiced at the art of avoidance, carefully dissecting the indications of weakness and noting how well they had been initially concealed. Katie arrived, still smiling, but eying us both for signs of intoxication. I smiled at her warmly in an attempt to convey that we were still manageable.
“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.
Chapter Four
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 cere
mony 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.
Airplane Rides Page 5