Her friend’s name was June, also a flight attendant. I wondered how much they had in common, but thought it too revealing to ask. June was a blond with milky white skin, naive blue eyes, and extra mascara intended to imply she might not be as inexperienced as she otherwise appeared. I immediately wrote her off as an amateur, but if it mattered, would have deferred to Leela’s good judgment. Ivan poured them drinks and asked if we would be looking for a table, a precious commodity on a Thursday evening. Leela confirmed with a nod. With fresh drinks in hand, we left the unknowing starlets to their own destiny and headed for the rows of pool tables on the opposite side of the bar. We had been playing for about an hour when a recognizable C-list actor arrived with some hangers-on to play at the adjacent table. It wasn’t long before he set his sights on June who cooed at his every attention and made it readily apparent she intended to live up to the suggestions of her mascara. The young actor was a buyer, and soon he and June were off to the land of make-believe in the city of broken promises.
Leela and I eyed each other, contemplating the reality that for the first time in our relationship we were on our own. I called in another set of drinks and sat on the edge of the pool table.
“Now what?” I asked, poking the ice cubes to the bottom of my glass and handing her the keys to the direction of our evening.
“Let’s get out of here.”
I paid the tab and waved goodbye to Ivan, who flashed me his movie star smile and saluted me with two fingers off the top of his brow. Outside, Leela and I walked quietly, clearing our heads on the Los Angeles evening air, north towards San Vicente and in the general direction of where we each lived.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked her.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Where I’ve always wanted to go.”
“Well then maybe tonight’s your night.”
I guided her to my apartment and stood to the side, allowing her to enter.
“So this is where my dark friend lives.”
“Expect a cave?”
“Something like that.”
”You’re not very big on furniture.”
I responded with a permitting smile and continued towards the kitchen.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Do you have a glass?”
“I’ll have to check.”
Leela found her way over to the sound system and tuned in a Spanish radio station while I fixed nightcaps. As the music filled the room and stirred my neighbors, she swayed back and forth with her eyes closed across the barren floor. I approached slowly with our drinks, stopping before I reached her so not to interrupt the performance.
When her eyes opened, I was there, staring back and asking her for the secrets she had never spoken. Leela took the drinks from my hand, fed each of us a small sip and then set them on the floor near the far wall. She danced her way back to me, reaching out her hands in a gesture to join in. My hands in hers, she pulled me close, stretching our arms apart at shoulder height in a two person cross until our faces were close. She then placed my hands on her hips so that I could feel them rock back and forth to the rhythm of the music, and together we began the slow dance into our mutual seduction. She unwrapped herself slowly, a brush of her pelvis, a breath on my neck and then the warm touch of her lips to mine. My eyes never left hers as she danced closer and closer, taunting my demons with each swell of her chest and purse of her lips. When finally there was no space left between us, her kiss melted into mine and the warmth of her mouth sent fire through my limbs.
I pulled back and took her by the hand into my bedroom and stood her against the footboard of my bed with her back to me.
“Don’t let go,” I whispered, placing her hands on the top of the wrought iron rail and wrapping her fingers around.
I moved her dark hair to one side of her back and pulled down the collar of her white silk blouse, exposing her neckline while running my fingers gently down the curve of her back. Starting just under her earlobe, I began a long series of kisses that stretched the length of her neck and between the ridges of her shoulder blades. Leela reached backwards over the top of her shoulders and pulled me against her by the back of my head. I reached up, removed her hand and returned it to the footboard railing.
“Don’t let go.” I whispered again.
I dropped to my knees and bit into the black leather belt that wrapped her waist, pulling it from behind so that she could feel the tugging on the front of her waist. My hands trailed along her taut legs, stopping at her ankles and griping tightly as I untucked her shirttails with my teeth and licked the base of her back, evaporating the remnants of my saliva with the heat of my breath. I could hear her draw short gasps of air, feel her arching her back and shuddering with pleasure. I reached around her torso, unhooked her belt and each of the metal buttons. Her pants open but still in place, I continued to caress her at the base of her spine while I ran my fingers on the inside elastic edge of the black lace lingerie inside her jeans. Leela turned quickly, reached down and grabbed me with both hands by the side of the face. I rose to her pull and she met me halfway with a deep insatiable kiss.
She walked me to the side of my bed and pulled me down on top of her. She was warmer and softer than I had ever thought possible on all the nights she had so artfully guided another into my arms. I had imagined her to be harder with more of a dangerous edge, but it wasn’t like that at all. Instead, this beautiful and unexpected angel flew to me veiled by a midnight cloud and for an evening wrapped me in the safety of her touch. In a blur of sensations, I tasted her lips, was deafened by her sighs, and with each piece of dismantled attire, felt the silk of her skin. Black and white flashes of ecstasy blinded me and I was washed away in her tidal wave of abandon.
Afterwards we lay in my bed, the moonlight trailing through the blinds and across her naked tan body that looked almost gray against the whiteness of my sheets. Her long dark hair draped across my pillow and her chest moved up and down with each of her peaceful breaths that reassured me that she was really there. I thought the moment could not be any more beautiful, and uncharacteristically I found myself wanting to stay. As unexpected as her surrender, in the most intimate of undeserved gestures, Leela began to sing while running her fingers through my hair. More a whisper than a song, the combination of her words and her touch spun me into a dream.
“Where are you?” Leela asked when her song was over.
“Right here.”
I thanked her for the song with a kiss on the cheek.
“You are so beautiful.”
“You’re intoxicated.”
“What took you so long?”
“I like to pick my moments.”
“I’d say that was quite a moment.”
“Now you can fly away.”
I smiled but wished she had said anything else.
“Sing me another song.”
“Sorry, one song per customer.”
“What about dances?” I asked.
“That was your dance.”
“Condemned to the memory of one dance?”
“Sorry, two dances is a relationship.”
I protested with only my expression.
“Of course it does, on the second date we can reflect on the first. History.”
“But we already have history.”
“Not the kind that I would build a relationship on.”
“My immense loss.”
“You’ll get through it.”
We were silent for a while and I contained my thoughts not risking what was left of the one dance I had been granted.
“Your house seems very lonely.”
“Thank you. I was going for lonely.”
“Sorry.”
“The truth is there is nothing to miss. It makes things much simpler.”
“A real live cowboy.”
“Our only dance, and you insist on taunting me.”
“Oh, my dark friend in his empty house has feelings.”
&nb
sp; She reached forward with her forefinger gently pulling forward my lower lip and let it rest on my upper into a pout, which I quickly dismissed with a swipe of my tongue.
It was time to check out of the conversation, and I began to get up.
“Too close for comfort?” she asked.
“I am getting a glass of water. Would you like one?”
“You stay here and I’ll go,” she replied lifting her naked body from the bed and stretching to full height in front of me.
It was the first time I had the perspective to see all of her at once. She was flawless.
Leela disappeared into the kitchen. I could hear her search through the cabinets and remove the glass bottle of still water from the refrigerator. She returned with two glasses, climbed back into my bed and propped herself with pillows against the headboard. I finished the water in a single draw, cooling the inside of my mouth still warm with her taste.
“You never talk about yourself,” she stated.
“That’s not true, I just told you what I wanted to do to you.”
“Cute, but I really don’t know anything about you other than you show up every once in a while.”
“That’s not enough?”
Leela shifted her position and draped her legs across my torso, locking me down from escape.
“Do you have family?”
“Like a mother and father?”
“I need to define family?”
“I have a mother and father.”
“Very funny. Are they both alive?”
“Yes.”
“Still together?”
“Not even close.”
“Bad divorce?”
“I’m surprised they didn’t try to set each other on fire.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding like she meant it.
“Don’t be, their not.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“I do.”
“I have all night.”
“Two sisters.”
“Did they deal as well as you?”
“No, they’re really pissed off.”
“Do you talk to them often?”
“Hardly ever.”
“And why is that?”
“I suppose because I don’t have the answers to their questions.”
“Sometimes it’s just about listening.”
“I know all about listening.”
“You do?”
“Listening is my specialty.”
“I don’t think it counts if it is to avoid talking.”
Leela shifted her position and pulled the comforter across her chest, making it clear that the conversation was just beginning.
“Ever been in a relationship?”
“Besides this one?”
“Take your time.”
“I have.”
“And?”
“It ended, They all did.”
“How many were there?”
“How do you define relationship?”
“Someone you really cared about.”
“I always cared.”
“Why don’t I believe that? All the women I have watched you cart home, and you’re telling me you cared about them.”
“You said relationships, not distractions.”
“Why did they always end?”
“I guess because it was time for me to go somewhere else.”
“And whose choice was that.”
“It isn’t always that simple.”
“It isn’t always that complicated.”
“Is this an intimacy problem or do you just not respect women?”
“You’re way off. I love women.”
“Love them ‘conquer’ or love them ‘adore’?”
“It’s not conquer but adore sounds too obsessive.”
“Then why all the conquests?”
“I don’t think of them that way.”
“I know, distractions. Have you ever been in love?”
“I have.”
“Do you wish things turned out differently?”
“If they did, I might not have met you.”
“Nice try. So is my dark friend my heartbroken friend?”
“I’m Ok..”
Leela took a long sip of water and unlocked me from beneath her legs.
“So are you hopeless?”
“I ask myself that all the time.”
“Have an answer?”
“Sometimes I am without hope.”
“Why?”
“Minimal disappointment.”
“So you drown it out with distractions of strangers and an endless stream of cynical sound bites.”
“What do you want me to admit, that I can’t deal or that I’m some selfish and abusive coward who would rather swim in a glass of vodka than look in the mirror?”
“Maybe.”
“Disappointment is an emotional charity for the gratification of others, and I already gave at the office.”
“Angry seems to run in your family.”
“That’s not fair. You asked.”
Leela climbed from my bed and began the search for her clothes in the darkness, putting on each item as it was found and identified.
“Finding me hopeless and worthy of solitude?” I asked softly.
She continued to get dressed without responding.
“Realize I’m heartless?”
Leela paused to take her last look, and bent down to give me a small kiss on the forehead.
“I know you have a heart.”
“You do?”
“Why else would I sing to you?”
Chapter Five
UA Flight #1382
Chicago (ORD) to New York (LGA)
A woman whom I had known only once, left me with a question that lingered in my mind long after the image of her face or the sound of her song had faded. She pointed to my hopelessness as if it were an accessory to the ensemble otherwise known as my existence? It was a simple but ominous accusation that began to burn its way into my daily conversations. In business I retreated further into my exactness, providing little if any superfluous information that might tip somebody off. During more leisurely pursuits, I eyed young women skeptically, wondering if they were attracted or simply responding with the natural female instinct to save me. It was more of a poker game than ever before.
Beyond my interactive paranoia lay other repercussions of hopelessness. To be without hope is to lack all of its inspirations and resultant passions. For the first time in my life, my superhero senses started to ebb. There was a time I could smell a glass of wine being poured three tables away – now I was lucky to recognize the label. Food began to lose its succulence, the personal theme songs in my head went quiet, and the touch of the women I seduced felt imperfectly dull. I found myself testing the limits of my vintage red Spider convertible around the turns of Benedict Canyon, verbally emasculating men twice my size in the strip joints on Sunset, and swimming past the point of retrieval from the lifeguard stands of Manhattan Beach. My hopeless nature, as suggested by a woman I would never see again, was beginning to detract from my attention to consequence.
Ironically, I was making more money than ever – apparently hopelessness was profitable, or perhaps I had simply found certain efficiencies in losing the friction of optimism. When you aren’t hoping for the way things might be, you are either dealing with how they are or wishing they had been different. The latter, for me, was not a consideration for obvious reasons, thus leaving me with a lot of time on my hands for the reality of what was. Noticeably absent the capacity for hope, people stopped suggesting I should, and in business that equated to them not wasting my time. Fine by me. Deal after deal, city after city, the endurance race between the aggregation of wealth and the loss of everything else was neck and neck and entering the final stretch under a cold mist that had settled over the city of Chicago.
I was eighteen-stories high, looking down at the waterlogged streets from a conference room window and awaiting the return of a r
eal estate owner named Martin Bowman. With me was his lawyer, whose name I never bothered to register. I was there to finance a building Martin owned that was fully leased to General Motors and used as a facility for the development of concept cars. The loan would amount to approximately $25 million, on which my firm would make a neat little profit of approximately $875,000. Not bad for the sum total of 50 hours work – but hey, that’s what being a real estate investment banker is all about, getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to take risk with other people’s cash. The issue on Martin’s deal was a simple one often faced in financing commercial real estate – how in the world would Martin pay back the $25 million should GM decide to vacate the building? The solution was to require Martin to fund an escrow account that could be used to make mortgage payments while a new tenant was signed up should the unthinkable occur.
It was a simple negotiation. I wanted the amount of that escrow as high as possible, and Martin’s goal was to keep it as low as possible. Circumstances, however, were in my favor, as Martin was short of time on multiple fronts. His existing financing on the building was supposed to be retired in less than a month. Despite this, he had the good sense to continue negotiating, even though I had made it very clear that I was not missing my afternoon flight to New York. Further complicating matters, Martin’s indulgence of steak and eggs and onions, apparently the Chicago breakfast of champions, had betrayed him, requiring him to make a dash for the bathroom every fifteen minutes or so. While I was respectful enough not to laugh out loud, I was perfectly willing to use all of these factors to my advantage.
“I am sure Martin will be right back,” offered the nervous attorney.
“I’m sorry he doesn’t feel well.”
“His stomach hasn’t been right all morning.”
“Well, we are going to need to wrap this up. I’m running out of time.”
“So if GM extends for another ten years, you will release the escrow?” he asked, trying to make some progress in his client’s absence.
Airplane Rides Page 7