Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1)

by Noel J. Hadley

  “I started jogging this way as soon as you called.” She sniffed on my shoulder. Tears salted her eyes. “Where are you going next?”.

  “I leave for Hawaii in a couple of days.”

  “Can you promise me something? Can you take care of yourself? At the end of this summer, with all these place that you’re going, can you come home to me?”

  “I can try.”

  “Try isn’t good enough. I don’t want to loose you.”

  “Elise, you know I can’t promise that.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  I let go of her.

  “Joshua,” she said. “Please hold me a little longer. I just want to pretend for the moment like nothing’s changed between us. I want to feel safe with you.”

  I wrapped my arms her.

  “I don’t know if I could go on living knowing you weren’t a part of my life.”

  “I guess I’m still trying to understand that.”

  “Yes.” Elise kissed me on the cheek. “You are. I’m more confused than either of us. Whoever figures me out first, can we be sure to explain it to the other?”

  “Elise, I’ll do whatever I can to wake up with you in the morning when I’m old.”

  “How old are we?”

  “Like ninety-six or seven.”

  “If I wake up with you in the morning as a ninety-six year old woman, does that mean we had sex the night before?” Elise bit her lower lip.

  “Sex is a plural word, right?”

  Mm-hmm.

  “You’re going to be so hot as a ninety-six year old woman, I’m positively certain that I’ll never need Viagra.”

  “It’s a date.”

  2

  After surfing Bolsa Chica with Elise (for old times sake) I parked my Ford Country Squire at a gas station with Aristotle in the passenger seat, wedged open the gas tank and injected its nozzle in. A Jeep Rubicon pulled up on the other side of the pump. Ellie Alexander was its driver, and her face was beaming.

  “Well, if it isn’t America’s favorite naked atheist. What’s with the glow? Found religion?”

  “If I’m glowing its because I’m in love,” she sighed.

  “It feels good to be in love, doesn’t it?” Actually, I hated the thought of it.

  “If only you knew.” She sighed again. “Jack is the nicest guy. He’s taking me to Hawaii.”

  Oh, that’s nice, I wanted to tell her. I hope a volcano blows a new hole and swallows him into it, maybe even taking you along. The two of you can form a new island (I’d totally buy a condominium on that).

  “And we’re leaving tomorrow.”

  I choked on a reality pill, which was far larger, mind you, than the chicken bone that killed Mama Cass, and was terribly bitter. “You mean next weekend. You meant to say you’re leaving a week from tomorrow.”

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said. “Not that I’d believe you if you did.”

  “You’re going to Hawaii?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. We’re leaving tomorrow.” She blushed. “Oh Joshua, you aren’t jealous, are you?”

  “He’s taking you to Oahu, right? You’ll be spending the week on Waikiki.”

  “No, not Oahu. I can’t recall what island. I’ve never been, you know. Oh what was the name of it?”

  “Maui. He’s taking you to Maui.”

  “No, that doesn’t sound familiar.” Ellie twisted her mouth as she considered its title.

  “Molokai then. Sure, it’s got a leper colony, but I hear its lovely this time of year.”

  “Mmmm, it starts with a K.”

  “Oh,” I sighed with relief. “You mean Kauai. That island gets more rainfall than anywhere else in the world. Don’t forget to pack your poncho.”

  “No, that’s not it.” She continued to think on it. “Joshua, are you sure everything is OK?”

  “Ellie, please tell me you’re not going to the Big Island… Kailua-Kona.”

  “That’s it!” She held a finger up.

  I almost spiraled into a backwards somersault.

  “Ellie, you can’t be going to Kailua-Kona in the morning, because I’m leaving for Kailua-Kona in the morning.”

  “Oh god.” She held five fingers over her mouth. “You mean….” This time Ellie looked as though she’d swallowed a ghost.

  “Yeah, when you’re snorkeling, be careful whose hand you go for, because it might be mine.”

  “But it’s a BIG island, right?”

  “Not that big.” I pulled the pump from the gas tank and holstered it.

  “Oh god,” Ellie said again.

  “It’s nice to know,” I returned to the driver’s side door, “that the very thought of me brings you religion, Elizabeth.” I climbed in and started up the car. “See you in Hawaii, honey. If you get scared of the Humuhumunukunukuapuaa, just hold your hand out. I’ll be sure to find you.”

  As I pulled away I watched Ellie at the gas pump through the rearview mirror. She opened her mouth and finished off the trinity with a third and final declaration of Oh god.

  I actually hoped God would answer her prayer for both of our sake. I couldn’t handle the thought of bumping into this guy, Jack, with the knowledge that his associate had been the one to snatch my wife away. The world suddenly seemed small, like the ride, only unlike the ride this small world wasn’t nearly filled with so many singing dolls.

  3

  Michael filled two sixteen-ounce helpings of Samuel Adams Boston Lager at The Guide Dog and quickly turned down any further inquiries into the pursuit of alcohol. I left the pub with no intent of ending my binge or the self-satisfaction that accompanied it. As soon as I arrived home I fished a bottle of Wild Turkey from the kitchen cabinet and began another series of pours.

  My cell phone rang.

  “Chester,” I spoke into the speaker. “What can I say is the pleasure?”

  “After the wedding, after Ava and I chose not to go through with our vows, we decided to make a clean split.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that.” I attempted not to slur.

  “Don’t be. It’s for the best. We’re parting as the closest of friends. We’re free to pursue other people, and so long as we stay in each other’s lives, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  “Well, whatever happens, if you get back together or anything and either of you need another photographer, don’t hesitate to give me a ring.”

  “That’s why I called. I just wanted to say your photos, up to the time we broke it off in the limo, were beautiful.” I waited while he paused for a breath. “I mean, really beautiful.”

  “I appreciate the compliment.”

  “I want…. I mean, we both want, Ava and I, for you to use those pictures on your website, despite the fact that we didn’t go through with it, if that’s what you want. Those pictures of Ava and I on the beach with the waterspout…. it’s jaw dropping. We’ve shown it to all our friends. They continue to rave about it.”

  Not that I needed his permission to do so.

  “I appreciate it.”

  “What was that quote by Confucius, the one you told me when we were watching the waterspout?”

  “Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.”

  “Yes, that’s the one. I finally understand what you were talking about, because those pictures are really breathtaking. I guess what I’m trying to say is, when I was looking up at the waterspout, it wasn’t that beautiful. The way you captured it….”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. And besides, don’t argue with me. I’m a lawyer. And I was president of the debate club in college.”

  “There’s that.”

  “And if you don’t mind my asking, are you drinking? I’d say I could smell it on your breath, but that’s obviously not technologically possible…yet.”

  “No,” I said, and then thought about it. “Yes…. Maybe. Only a little.”

  “Sounds like fun, buddy. I’d join you if I wer
en’t a freaking continent away. If you ever come back out to Florida, we’ll have to go out together as two drinking pals. Let me tell you something. There are only two certainties in life. Women and alcohol.”

  “Ah, women.” I said in my best-drunk German accent. “They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.”

  “Who said that? It’s another one of your philosopher friends, isn’t it?”

  “Nietzsche,” I said. “Though I can’t say we’ve met.”

  “What are you trying to do, overload my sensory?” He spoke it with a grin. “You’re killing me, Chamberlain.”

  We said good-bye and hung up.

  I sat at my desk staring up at my own photographic Global Warming prints thinking about what Chester had said, that I saw beauty in things that others didn’t. But as I studied the bottle of Wild Turkey and its half-drunk glass, I couldn’t find any redemptive value, at least, not for its intended purposes, which made the decision to dump it into the sink an easy one.

  4

  After Bakersfield I had given Alex a two-day furlough. “On Wednesday,” I said while dropping him off at his house, “we leave for the Big Island of Hawaii.”

  Alex grinned. “I’ll pack my Speedo.”

  “Please don’t pack a Speedo.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I won’t pack anything at all.”

  “Then how will you go for a swim?”

  Alex just stared at me.

  “Oh dear Lord, please pack a Speedo.”

  When I arrived back at his house to pick him up, a beautiful woman answered the door. She had smooth olive skin (I guess that came from her father’s Italian origins), a cute petite nose, countless other appendages that correlated well with the frame of her body, and the most stunning doe eyes to contradict every other member.

  “I’m here for Alex?”

  “You must be Mr. Chamberlain.”

  She extended her hand.

  “Please, call me Joshua. I’m not old enough to be your father.”

  “I’m Alex’s wife, Gracie. We talked on the phone.”

  “You’re kidding me.” I smiled. She twitched her head. “You’re far too beautiful to be married to that shmuck.”

  Gracie blushed. “You must be old enough to be my father, because nobody my age says shmuck anymore.”

  “I knew Alex in college, so you have my curiosity. Schmuck remaining, how did he ever land someone as stunningly beautiful as you?”

  “Why, Mr. Chamberlain.” She blushed again. Her voice was hoarse, as though she’d just recovered from a cold. “Are you trying to hit on me while my husband’s occupied in the other room?”

  “Hey Alex,” I called into the house. “Your beautiful wife thinks I’m hitting on her!”

  “Stop hitting on my wife while I’m taking a dump in the bathroom.” Within seconds Alex walked out of the back house with his roller suitcase and carry-on. He was dressed in an Aloha shirt with tight fitting shorts, sunglasses, and flip-flops.

  “See,” I looked to Gracie, “you’re certainly not attracted to charming.”

  “Oh, believe me.” She blushed. “He can be charming when he wants to be.”

  “Bye-babe.” Alex kissed her on the cheek.

  “No sir, I’m not letting you leave that easy.” She grabbed her husband by the back of his neck and swept in for a long digestive kiss. I think there might have even been a little therapy of tongue.

  “That’s so you remember what you’re coming back to,” she said after they came back up for air. “And don’t hit on any girls while you’re gone.”

  “You’re the only one for me, babe.” He blew her a kiss from the other end of the driveway.

  “Wait, where’s my kiss?” I asked the two of them, but nobody seemed willing to offer one.

  5

  “You do realize,” I told Alex in the security line at John Wayne Airport, “that Gracie’s way too good for you. You’re a lucky man. How’d you manage to pull that off?”

  “What do you mean? I was some hot stuff rocking the stage in Dumb Angel. She had to fight for my attention among hundreds of other screaming girls. Half of them were throwing their tops off. I’m pretty sure Gracie was one of them.”

  “What do you mean, pretty sure?”

  “It’s hard to say. I’m not trying to brag, but there were often a lot of boobs at those shows. They all kind of blended together into one big nipple after a while.”

  “Admit it, you married UP, my friend.”

  “At the risk of sounding insensitive, she’s the one who married UP.”

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  6

  “This is paradise?” Alex took in the disappointing scenery from his window seat as our airliner swooped in for the runway. “I think we’ve taken that wrong flight home and somehow ended up on the moon.”

  Black volcanic rock, twisted, otherworldly and sharp as glass, governs the Big Island’s eastern landscape where the Queen Kaahumanu Highway zipped alongside the Pacific. It really was a sight for sore eyes if the unexpected tourist should anticipate lush valleys, coconut palm trees, Waikiki-brimmed beaches, and perhaps the earth shattering entrance of a treetop-eating Sauropod backed by a sweeping John Williams score like a scene from Jurassic Park.

  “You’re going to love this timeshare rental.” I told Alex in our Mustang convertible as he sped southbound along the Kaahumanu Highway. I’d brought my surfboard along. It was protruding from the backseat, a perfect picture. “It’s in the quaint little town of Kailua-Kona, rustic and practically hidden away from the commercialism of Waikiki. As far as I’m concerned, the Big Island’s snorkeling is far superior to Oahu. There are sea turtles everywhere, and the ocean is teeming with legions of Humuhumunukunukuapuaa.”

  “Humuhumu what?” Alex pulled his eyes from the curving landscape to stare at me.

  “Humuhumunukunukuapuaa,” I pronounced it faster this time, just to impress him. He apparently wasn’t impressed. Maybe I should have tried it again with an Italian accent.

  “OK, whatever, but how’s the local beer?”

  “On Hawaii, we liquor connoisseurs don’t drink beer.” I held my nose up high. “We do however eat platters of pu-pu and drink coconuts of Mai-Tai.”

  “Mm-hmm. You can keep the pooh-pooh and the Humuhumu-whatever to yourself. Just keep the coconut bikinis and the Mai-Tai coming.”

  “No, you don’t actually drink Mai-Tai from…oh, whatever, never mind.”

  I got jokes.

  7

  “You got to be kidding me.” Alex dropped his luggage at the entrance of our room and glared disdainfully at the king-sized mattress dominating the floor. “You manage a timeshare, and it’s got one bed?”

  “You know, when I booked this trip to Hawaii, it was months ago, and I originally intended it as a romantic getaway for Elise and I.”

  Mm-hmm, he grinned. “If you’re looking for a replacement, I just want you to know, if I haven’t gotten it across yet in our heterosexual relationship, I don’t swing that way.”

  I slapped his butt. “You don’t know how very disappointed I am.”

  8

  It felt nice settling back into the ease of Alex’s company again, just like old times. Screw you gray hair and singular wrinkle jetting out from a crease in my eye. I enjoyed his calming aurora and I couldn’t help but take a liking to Jacuzzi’s also. I believe it was the Tang Dynasty poet, Li Bai, who once referred to this sort of phenomena as killing two birds with one stone.

  “This is the life, Meat Duck,” I told Alex, spreading both arms across the rim of our boiling cauldron. “Palm trees sway in the cool humidity as the sun hangs behind a gathering of clouds, but never too far, and the Pacific is just a hop and a skip around the corner.”

  “A hop and a skip?” Alex frowned. “In college, we never would have hopped or skipped, even if it was just around the corner.”

  “A strut and a stroll, then.”

  “You’ve got that right. But I think you
’re on to something. It does feel like old times, exactly as we left it, even if we are hundreds of miles from where we last parted ways.” He stared at the prickled fingers of a palm for a time as he thought about it. “Remember when we went pub hopping with fake ID’s? Not that I’m endorsing under-aged college students employing fake ID’s or anything.”

  “No, certainly not.” I sarcastically agreed.

  “It was the closing hours of leap day, and we stumbled upon that dive-bar that only employed dwarfs as bartenders wearing referee shirts.”

  “That’s right. We enlisted Michael to return with us on the following Friday. We’d primed him up all week, and after several hours of searching every possible back alley, we finally stumbled upon it, only it had burned to the ground…the day after leap day a dozen years before.”

  “I still believe it appears once every four years, and for several hours, but only on leap day.”

  I cocked my head back and laughed at the mere insanity of it. “I don’t know if you can comprehend how excited I am that you came out here with me, that you even came back into my life again.”

  “Hey man, anytime.” He paused to gaze into the bubbles. “And I really am sorry to hear about Elise. That’s the most unpleasant sort of news a bro can hear. The two of you were meant to be together.”

  “Thanks.” I cleared a sudden lump in my throat, making sure to brush away any possibility of a tear seconds before it could precipitate.

  I thought Alex maybe caught sight of it. He quickly changed the subject. “Hey, remember that time in college when we went Jacuzzi hoping? We’d just help ourselves by leaping iron gates into an assortment of hotel pools.”

  “How could I forget?” The potential swelling of tears welcomed another explosion of teeth and laughter. “We got chased from a pool by that one security guard… while skinny dipping.”

  “Uh-huh. I stumbled over the lounging chair and I cried out just leave me!” Alex howled with self-reflective pleasure.