Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1)

by Noel J. Hadley

  “I guess I’ve never thought of it quite like that. The way you talk about the world, you make Vegas sound…. almost like a bubble.”

  I didn’t immediately answer her. I stared down at my Canon EOS 1 D camera, which would, in only a few minutes, photograph her love for Corey in a last minute engagement session (two weeks before their wedding), and then back at her lifeless charcoal eyes.

  “So tell me, and I’m just curious. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but doesn’t it bother you that so many men, married men, come from all over the world simply to lustfully gawk at you? Does it jade your view of love…. or marriage?”

  I meant it kindly. At least, I think I did, but now, watching the hint of life, human life in the measure of deep-seeded pain and anger that I could not even begin to imagine, pop to the surface in her eyes, just one little bubble of it, I wasn’t so sure of myself. And then it was gone. It probably vaporized into the dry desert sun.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have said that.” Amanda didn’t answer. Her eyes became charcoal again. “I’m a man, an awful, dirty, smelly pig-of-a-man.”

  Amanda attempted a smile. “No,” she said. “I’ve seen your work. I love your work – the love and devotion that you put into it. If you’re anything, you’re clearly none of those things.”

  9

  “See, I believe that each person is responsible for his or her place in society. Government’s role, so far as I see it, should be to empower each individual to better live out those dreams…. by leaving us alone and keeping the hell out of the way,” Corey said.

  “Wow, I’m….” I began to tell him through the eyes of my camera shutter and stopped myself.

  Corey leaned against a pillar on the balcony of the Venetian, embracing his fiancée in his arms. In his slick fitting white suit he was almond skinned and graced with handsome features, but I couldn’t make out what ethnicity he sprouted from. He wasn’t black and he wasn’t Latino, and he certainly wasn’t Asian either.

  “You’re stunned, aren’t you?”

  Amanda stroked his hair, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Slow movements, I kept reminding them. I clicked another picture – and then another.

  “Well, not exactly, no…. it’s just….”

  “It’s OK. You can say it. I’m a strip club owner marrying the most beautiful stripper in Vegas and I’m a REPUBLICAN.”

  “Yeah,” I set my camera down. “I guess I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “So tell me.” He rested his forehead against his fiancée’s brow. “Come November, whom are you voting for?”

  “I’m not really sure I should be talking about politics during a photo-session.” I clicked another sequence of pictures.

  “Why not? Look around you. It’s Vegas. It’s not like I care what you believe so much as to what extent your knowledge goes in your actual convictions, so…” He turned from Amanda’s breasts to face me. “Whom are you voting for?”

  “We’ll see who wins the Republican primaries.” I continued snapping pictures. “Romney, McCain, or Huckabee. But I’m kind of setting my sights on the senator from Arizona. McCain has an excellent track record, and he’s proven himself to be a true patriot American.”

  Through the lens of my camera I could clearly see Corey in his slick fitting white suit silently telling me NO with big rolls of his lips while Amanda shook her head.

  “Furthermore, I like how outspoken he’s been against pork barrel earmarks and unnecessary spending.” I continued my rant while Corey sliced an index finger across his neck. “I like his emphasis on personal family investment over social security, and I stand strongly with him as an opponent of universal health care.”

  NO! Corey rolled his lips, slashing a finger across his neck. Amanda had taken to mouthing NO with her own lips as a brawny meat hook of a hand latched onto my shoulder.

  It was hotel security.

  “Get a permit or get the hell out of here,” he said behind a muscular jaw and heavy sunglasses and not a single stitching of emotion. “And if I ever see you around here again, I’ll drown your camera in the waterway and then run it over with a gondola.”

  “That’s OK, buddy.” Corey peeled an arm around my one sore shoulder as we left. “Don’t worry about the thugs around here. We’re outnumbered. There’s more of them than there are of us, and let’s face the facts, he was probably a democrat, anyways.”

  “Damn socialists are going to run this country into the ground.” Amanda scowled.

  “Tell me about it, babe.” Corey patted me on the chest. “Now lets get back to The Office Lounge and cut you a check… and maybe a lap dance if you feel up to it.”

  10

  “Care for some company?” The stripper said flirtatiously in a tube-shirt, skirt as short as her bubbled rear, perhaps shorter, and glittering high-heels to finish off the ensemble. She bent over to make her point evidently clear, just incase I’d overlooked it. Her eyes seemed uninhabited.

  It was wrong for me to be there. I had foolishly convinced myself it was just for business relations, but then the surge of excitement swept in and the heavier recognition of guilt, and next the realization that I didn’t actually like strip joints, despite the thrill. Everything about them felt fake and reeked of resentful customer service, but even worse was the possibility that I’d actually get used to the prospect of visiting.

  “No, I’m perfectly alright, thank-you, though.” I smiled at her, being especially careful not to gaze at the stage with even a hint peripheral vision, where a woman twirled an iron-board tummy and gluttonous helping of silicone that didn’t match the size of her body around a pole.

  “You look like you could use a girlfriend.” She plopped down rather unwomanly in a chair, scooted it towards my table and immediately maneuvered her toes onto my ankles. Her skirt rose to G-string levels. “I’m Alexis. What’s your name?”

  “Married,” I told her, lifting my wedding ring.

  “You’re funny.” Alexis laughed with inanimate drudgery, trickling her fingers across my upper leg. “I like funny guys. You know what else?”

  “What?”

  “You’re handsome.”

  “Thank you, Alexis. There’s a Place in France Where the Naked Ladies Dance is one of my all time favorite songs, but I’m really not here for a peep show. It’s strictly business.”

  Alexis produced another artificial laugh, or maybe it was genuine, it was hard to tell with those comatose eyes and gelatin breasts without a hint of sag. “You’re cute. That’s a funny name, Mr. Married. I don’t know that song. Care to sing it for me?” Even her provocative teasing felt fabricated, so far as I could tell.

  “I’m kind of burnt out on that song. Really, I just preformed a world tour to sold-out arenas performing it. But if you really want to hear it, you can download it on iTunes for a dollar.” I raised my voice over the thumping of loudspeakers. It was some bad techno remix of Britney Spears. It’s Britney, Bitch, the former Mouseketeer announced over loudspeakers. Of course, any song by Britney Spears sounded bad to me. “In the meantime, I’m just waiting for Corey to come out with a check for a photo-shoot that we did today, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  She leaned in, keeping her hand on my leg, and breathed into my ear. “How about a lap dance while we wait? I’ll even take you into the back for a private show. You’ll get so hard you’ll be begging me for more.”

  “No, really.” I pulled away from her. “Alexis, you’re a lovely young girl, and I think you’ll make some guy very happy someday. But with all due respect to your life decisions, I really don’t believe strip joints add value to the moral fabric of America. I really shouldn’t be here. It goes against my better judgment. Please tell Corey that I’ll wait outside.”

  “I don’t think you understand.” She pressed both hands over my knee and leaned so far in I feared her breasts might break from its faulty binding and slap me in the face at any given moment. “Corey told me to tell y
ou that this is an advanced payment. Just consider it your Christmas bonus.”

  Whoa, I stood up. “That’s quite enough excitement for one day. Thank you very much for your time, Alexis. You’re a lovely girl.” I began my retreat out the door.

  “What are you, some sort of fucking homosexual or something?” Alexis wanted to know. Finally, an emotion that was absolutely and indisputably real.

  “No Alexis,” I told myself as I exited the building, squinting under the blinding light of the afternoon sun. “If I were a homosexual, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten a hard on.”

  11

  One could only hope that all of this would prove to be a fantastical dreamscape in the morning. No black eyes, swollen lips or bruises to explain to Tim’s bride Tina, and perhaps far more importantly, Tina’s parents, who were still pocketing the bill for the wedding last that anyone spoke with them.

  The broken beer bottle shattering over the bald man’s head, splintered chair crested across the spine of his biker friend, even Michael, who I could have sword at one point was flung like a rag over the bar, would be substituted for church bells, Catholic vows, Corinthian readings and a sprightly release of cooing doves come morning.

  Logan was the best man. It was his idea to take Tim and all the groomsmen, including Michael and myself, to the worst bar in town, Hog’s Breath, as a sort of last minute bachelor party only hours before the calendar commencement of Tim and Tina’s wedding day. I’d never actually been in a bar fight before. But it was only the beginning. I got beat up a lot that summer.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good idea guys,” Tim told us when we arrived. A squeaker had apparently been wedged in his throat since adolescence.

  Three of his pimple-faced friends agreed. “We were sort of thinking along the lines of T.G.I.F or Chili’s.” Another added they’d even go so wild as Caesar’s Palace.

  “Really, I should have left you internet trolls at the Renaissance Fair last weekend.” Logan frowned at the very pathetic wedding party. Tim reminded Logan that the Renaissance Fair was his idea to begin with.

  “Are you sure you’re OK to come in and snap pictures of us?” Tim asked Michael and I.

  We studied the two dozen Harley’s lining the creaking porch, various neon lights advertising brand name beer, a moth burning itself on a flickering bulb, the C grade displayed on the window, and inside, a bakers assortment of bellied men in black shirts, leather vests, bare arms, jeans, boots, beards, and bandanas screwed on too tight over their skulls. They turned their heads, lowering pool cues and beer mugs as we careened through the door past a mosaic of pictures depicting topless women stapled shoulder to – um, shoulder, like crudely glued wallpaper. I was almost positive they were all taken in the bathroom.

  “Of course,” we both grinned, sitting down at the bar. “Totally cool with it.”

  Logan told all of us to blend in with the natural environment the best we could, by which Corey said he shouldn’t have worn his Physics Ninja t-shirt and Tim his Indiana Jones fedora.

  Corey asked the bartender for a strawberry martini rimmed with salt.

  “We have beer,” the bartender said.

  “How about a mimosa?” Another of Tim’s groomsmen motioned.

  “We have beer,” he repeated himself, pressing ten fingers down over the bar.

  I blamed Logan for the entire episode, not only his loose appetite for tetanus biker bars like Hog’s Breath instead of quality TGIF establishments, but the beer he forsook for the rather-booby woman; feathered hair, Van Halen t-shirt, leather-clad jacket and pants, chewing on gum and blowing it in flirtatious rhythms between her teeth.

  Logan nudged Tim in the ribs. “See that? She’s checking us out, buddy.”

  Tim and his groomsmen eyed the woman then smiled with giggling glee at the very notion that a person of the female form was interested in software engineers and big time Trekkie fans, let alone a leather clad biker with honking baby feeders, as Corey put it.

  “Hey, we were talking with the lady,” Corey said to the fat-bellied biker, baldhead gleaming of sweat, who had come across the room simply to annex her away after a brief but flirtatious conversation. I blamed Corey’s obnoxious mouth on the matter, freckled zits on his greasy chin suddenly more defined and needing popped than I could previously recall.

  “What did you tell me, nerd?” Baldy frowned.

  The entire bar stirred.

  Oh hell, Michael and I silently moaned, setting our beers down.

  “He said, we were talking with the lady,” Corey’s software engineer friend (I couldn’t recall his name) told Baldy. But whatever his name was, he too I blamed for the entire incident.

  “You heard the boys,” the leather clad woman with feathered hair told her two hundred and fifty pound guardian. She returned to the bar with her newfound space explorer friends, skin surrounding her left cheek suddenly more bruised than I could recall only moments earlier.

  Baldy pinched her arm. His knuckles were behemoth and his rings were even larger. He forcibly escorted her two tables over and plopped her into a chair.

  In the corner, underneath the Budweiser neon sign, someone else stirred in their booth. Despite his long curly hair and tight blue jeans he had more of a rocker look than a Hell’s Angel biker. In fact, I thought I might have recognized him from another lifetime, but it was rather dark in Hog’s Breath, and with the sudden influx of mercenaries surrounding the bar I couldn’t be sure. But one thing seemed entirely plausible. He appeared to be taking more of an interest in our own good than the dozen or so biker’s that now surrounded us.

  “Hey, that hurt, JERK!” The woman scowled at the two hundred and fifty pound biker.

  “You heard the lady.” Tim stood up at his best man’s side. “Like six of my friends here explained, we were talking with her.” Tim I also fingered blame. “If you’d be so kind as to step aside.”

  “Whose gonna stop me, nerd?” Baldy pressed the palm of one hand into his chest and pushed. He sounded like a flesh eating troll from one of Tim and Logan’s fantasy movies. “You and your other pimple-faced dorks?”

  Nobody answered him. Several other bikers with grizzly beards, mossy hair protruding from behind their neck, and tattoos, the whole works, arrived in a line to stare at us menacingly, licking lips, as though in desperate need of a meal. Maybe they ate nerds for a living. I wondered if they’d ever been to a Renaissance Fair or a Star Trek convention, an all you can beat and eat buffet.

  Baldy examined me, steamrolling his eyes over my Canon EOS 1 D hung from a strap over my shoulder. “And who are you? You photographing this fag parade?”

  “I’m the wedding photographer.”

  “And who’s this, your crust master?” He looked to Michael.

  “He’s my photography assistant.” I cradled my head high with another extra coating of sass. The person in the corner (who seemed familiar to me, I just couldn’t place it,) scooted himself to the edge of the booth, ready to jump in if the situation came down to it.

  “I change batteries and stuff.” Michael flicked his cigarette to the floor. He took the time to chew on it with the toe of one shoe. And now Michael and I were to blame.

  See, that’s about when the fight erupted, knuckle blows across an eye, broken bottles smashed over skulls, knees fisted in the groin, cue sticks broken over someone’s knee and used as nunchucks to club us with, and I’m almost positive Michael was the culprit who splintered a bar stool over Baldy’s backside. I swear the jukebox broke into Johnny Cash and June Carter’s Jackson duet the moment it began, thereby keeping this rumble strictly old school country, and the mysterious figure that had been watching the scene unfold from underneath the Budweiser sign stood on his table and lurched forward into the confusing mosaic of leather meets pimples to help us in the good versus evil struggle. That’s when I recognized him.

  “Alex?” I said as fists went flying around my head.

  “Prosexionist?” Alex Parker returned the greetin
gs, punching a biker in the face.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Another biker ripped my shirt from behind and hurdled me on top of a table. The table cracked on impact and sent me spiraling down. Two or three plates shattered across the floor.

  Alex kicked someone in the thigh and then that same someone kicked him in the ribs. “I was just wondering the same thing,” he groaned as he keeled over in pain.

  “I’m a wedding photographer.” I crawled on my belly under another table, but the same biker who’d hurdled me onto the last table grabbed my ankles and drug me out.

  “You call this a wedding?” Alex rose to his feet, picked up a beer bottle, and smashed it over that same someone’s skull.

  “They don’t vow for better or worse for nothing.”

  12

  In the summer of 2008, that’s how Alex Parker came back into my life again, in the first of many more fights to come. It was as epic and worthy a re-introduction as our time in college together.

  Meat-Duck.

  “Mighty good to see you again.” He collected himself seconds after all eight of us (Tim, Logan and the lot, including Michael) were barreled out the door by men of superior stature, scraping knees and ankles on impact.

  “The feeling is mutual.” I groaned from the pain. “Michael, Alex. Alex, Michael. You’ll recall that I went to college with this guy.”

  “How could I forget?” Michael shook his hand. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Saving your ass.” Alex tried to grin underneath the pain.

  “Looks like your ass is more scrapped up than mine.” I couldn’t tell if Michael was gasping for breath or trying to smile.

  Of course the beeswax of gossip during Tim and Tina’s Catholic wedding wouldn’t center so much on the fact that all eight of us (if you include Alex) were barreled out the door by a gang of bikers, but the arbitration that followed. Now that I think on it, I actually blame Beowulf, Le Morte d’ Arthur and Spenser’s Faerie Queen for our entire outlook on life. You know, CHIVALRY, Saint George spearing the dragon for a distressed maiden who knows more about pearl earrings and vacuums than running a company.