Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1)

by Noel J. Hadley

  “I can’t believe she married a nurse.” She guzzled down another helping of her Tokyo Tea. I looked to the bartender, nudged my head at her, and cut my finger across my throat, as if this should be the end of it. “I mean, a nurse. I raised both of my daughters to be respectable members of society.” Technically, if anyone deserved that credit, it was the Sisters. “I raised them to be a therapist.” She held up a finger for therapist. “And a lawyer.” She held up a second finger for lawyer. “Do you know how embarrassing it is having to tell my friends that my two daughters married a nurse and an artist?”

  “I never can convince Elise to sell everything and live under a pier. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “Exactly,” Andrea fingered my chest. She was having a very difficult time keeping her head up and her eyes open. “All my daughters husband wants to do is feel up woman’s boobies with a stethoscope…”

  “Actually, I think doctor’s do that. Nurses just write their breast sizes down on a chart.”

  “And live under a pier like some artsy-fartsy hobo.”

  “Well, you’ve got me there.”

  “Where’s the justice?” She sucked the last of her Tokyo Tea dry with her straw. “All I wanted was to have one wedding, and instead I got two funerals.”

  “Something tells me,” I stood up from my stool, “that you’d be the corpse at both of them if it meant all the attention was on you.”

  Andrea lifted her finger, opened her mouth to say something, and shut it. I think she had one of those moments where her head hurt…from all the thinking. But I couldn’t be sure.

  “No, you haven’t been listening to anything I’ve been saying at all,” she finally said.

  I caught sight of Bob standing several feet away. He was staring at one of the bridesmaid’s asses.

  “Hey, why don’t you ever stare at my buns like that?”

  “Because its ugly as hell,” he said.

  “That hurts, Bob,” I said as I passed him by, walking in a backwards direction. “You might want to consider taking her home.” I pointed towards his wife, who was already engaged in telling a couple of Josephine’s bridesmaids how there was no justice in the world. “She sets the bar high, but I think she’s about to outperform herself again and embarrass everyone.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” he said.

  “No, I’m pretty sure that’s your job.”

  10

  Carol apprehended Elise and I as we made our way through the reception hall greeting guests. As a wedding photographer I’ve navigated my way around countless drunkards (being the drunkards of other people’s family), but I’d never realized how unquenchably irritating they could be until I was thrust into a wedding with my own family and friends of that family.

  “Wait.” She pointed her index finger at my wife. Carol was Andrea’s best friend. Together they were like two peas in a pod, and her finger was apparently just as drunk as the rest of her. “I’m confused. Are you Elise or Josephine?”

  “Elise.” My wife smiled.

  “You’d think after twenty-something years of knowing you two girls, I’d be able to tell you twins apart.”

  “Yes, you’d think so.” Elise smiled. “Josephine’s in the bridal gown. That’s the big tip off.”

  “Oh hell, why don’t I just start calling you two E.J.?”

  “No, please don’t.”

  “Are you telling me I should know you two apart by now but can’t because I’m drunk?” Carol swayed with her finger.

  “Nope.” Elise kept her smile pasted on. I loved that smile. “I’m not.”

  “I bet you get them mixed up all the time.” Carol pointed her finger at me.

  “I haven’t yet.”

  “Don’t get self-righteous with me, Mister Wedding Pho-tag-ree-fer.”

  “OK,” I said. “I won’t.”

  “What did Josephine ever see in you?” She stammered.

  “I think you mean Elise.”

  “Hey, you’re not Elise,” she said. “You’re a boy. You think I’m too drunk to know the difference?”

  11

  Dr. Alexander had managed to wrangle yet another collection of atheists into a single table conversation as I made my way across the reception hall. Somebody had brought up the subject of Sinead O’Connor and her spiraling career downturn when she appeared on Saturday Night Live, dated October 3, 1992. I remembered when it happened. Michael and I were watching it at his house. We were almost twelve. She sang a haunting rendition of Bob Marley’s War a cappella, which was completely fine in and of itself. The real shocker came at the end of her performance when she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and beckoned her viewers to fight the real enemy. You could hear a pen drop in the studio, and probably the nation.

  “Doesn’t it make you sick,” I overheard Ellie tell her newfound friends, “how her career was destroyed, thanks to narrow minded religious bigots, and now twenty years later she’s been proven right?” They grumbled in miserable agreement. “The Catholic Church has indeed been covering up years of sexual abuse cases with children, and Pope John Paul has clearly been revealed as the culprit.”

  Another woman, I didn’t know her name but I thought she might have been one of Josephine’s legal friends, cursed the church and narrow minded religious people everywhere, utilizing a rendition of the word FORK before her you. And then a few others laughed about it. They were obviously drunk, a lot of that going around. Any other time I could have avoided them by hiding behind my camera. I felt naked without it.

  “Oh look.” Ellie told her new acquaintances. “It’s my friends estranged husband, Joshua.” Then she cupped her fingers to her mouth and drunkenly slurred in an outdoor whisper to them. “He’s Catholic. I hope he didn’t hear us take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  She sputtered into laughter with the others as they narrowed bitter, even judgmental eyes on me. Ellie had a way of sorting out the atheists from the deists, reaching down into souls and hooking onto the acidity, almost pleasurably.

  “Everybody this side of 1849 heard you say it, Ellie,” I stopped in my tracks.

  “Doesn’t it bother you when I take the Lord’s name in vain?”

  “Not when you say it.”

  “It’s a difficult habit to break, you know. But I’ve decided to keep at it, just because it challenges the establishment.”

  “Ellie, if you were to travel back in time, take the portrait of every Apostle, theologian, and saint that ever was, and rip their pictures up on live national television, you couldn’t even begin to challenge God’s establishment.”

  “Yeah, well Sinead O’Connor was right.” Ellie was a very attractive person when she wasn’t angry. I imagine it’s something that angry people seldom think about. “You call it a religion, but it’s basically a multi-billion dollar corporation that does everything from lying about contraceptives to poor Africans to organizing the persecution of gay people.”

  Someone swore at the church again.

  “I think it was horrible how Sinead O’Connor was molested as a child. I can’t imagine how so very alone she must have felt. The repercussions to any developing individual are atrocious and perhaps lifelong, and she was probably acting on her impulses out of sheer self-medicating agony. But in case you haven’t heard, she ascribes to Christian values, salvation and advocacy through Christ, and a belief in the Trinity.”

  Ellie didn’t like my answer, nor did her newfound friends. They even eyed the best selling author for a swift and clever response. I started up on my way across the reception hall.

  “Doesn’t it bother you that I’m going to hell?” She finally said.

  “I won’t be loosing any sleep over it.”

  12

  All in all, I’d say Charlie and Josephine’s wedding went over pretty well despite Andrea’s drunken speech on the injustice in her world at the DJ’s microphone.

  And then Tom showed up.

  “I think you arrived at the wrong wedding.” I set Elise’s bags down
in the parking lot. Several yards away, Jerk-Face leaned against the trunk of my Country Squire sucking on a cigarette.

  I apparently startled Tom because he reeled back, collected himself, fixed his eyes on me, and after a few seconds finally recollected who I was. “Oh yes, you’re um…” Tom clicked his fingers, “we’ve met before…”

  “The husband.” I helped him out.

  “No, that’s not it.” The congressman snapped his fingers. “Oh, you’re that guy she left me for.”

  “Tom?” Elise stood paralyzed several feet behind me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just asking him the same thing.”

  “Look honey,” he said, “I felt really bad over what happened the other night. I’ve missed you something horrible, and since I had some work over in Sacramento, I thought I’d fly in to good old San Fran and see how you were before heading over.”

  “You flew all the way up here to see me?”

  “No, technically he’s coming off a business trip from Sacramento. He only made a layover to see you, or so he claims. And this is a textbook example of…what were they again…egotistical, narcissistic, and controlling?”

  “I didn’t think you should be alone right now,” the congressman told my woman. “You’ve been going through some tough times, and I thought you needed someone to listen.”

  “She’s not alone right now. She’s with me, and last I heard, she broke it off with you.”

  Tom reeled back again, only this time for dramatic effect. “That’s not what I heard. Baby, you didn’t break up with me, did you?”

  “Elise, tell him.” Elise didn’t tell him. “Elise, why won’t you tell him?”

  “I…. I’m confused right now, alright?” A row of tears began to form in her eyes. “I’m not sure if that’s what I said. Joshua, we’re not discussing this right now.”

  “Is everything alright out here?” Michael arrived at the scene wearing a serious but somber expression.

  “Well, well, look who showed.” Jerk-Off swooped in from the trunk of my Country Squire. He flicked a cigarette on the pavement, crushed its head with the pointy toe of his boot, and immediately lit another. “This isn’t your fight, kemosabe.”

  “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.” Michael sucked on his cigarette, letting the smoke lift over his eyes. “Two-to-one is never good odds. I thought I’d help him even things out.”

  “You want to throw down, kemosabe?” Jerk-Off slid within a couple of inches from Michael’s nose.

  Michael never flinched.

  “Jack, let the boys friends alone,” Tom said.

  Jack took a step back, then two more. Michael never flinched.

  “Elise, get your head in the game. I’m not sharing you with this man.”

  Her lips trembled. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying if you walk off or drive off, share a bed, or get on a flight with this man, tonight, tomorrow, or anytime next week, that’s your decision, and the message is clear.”

  “You’re loss,” Tom said. He wrapped an arm around her. “It’s ok, honey, I’ll help you through this.”

  Elise tossed his arm aside and straightened her body stiff as a board. “Tom, don’t touch me right now.”

  “Why, because he’s here? He’ll just leave you again, honey, like he always does. He probably has somewhere to be tomorrow. We’ve been through this already. You said it. You need a man who can keep you safe and secure – every night.”

  “Don’t touch her again..” I pointed a finger at him.

  “Or you’ll what?” Tom poked me in the chest. “You even touch me, shrimp-dick, I’ll have so many lawyers coming down on you, wiping their ass on your porch, defecating in your Cheerios, pleasuring themselves in your mouth while you snore…you’ll wish you were never born.”

  “Tom, that’s not nice.”

  I laid a hand on him.

  “Joshua, don’t do that,” Elise said.

  Tom slapped me. “You heard what the lady said.”

  “Tom!”

  Michael swiftly moved in to retaliate but Jerk-Off slid right back in front of him. “You want a fight, kemosabe, you go right on ahead. But you come through me first.”

  “That’s it!” Elise cried, tears streaming down her eyes. She grabbed her bags. “I’m not going home with either of you!” She threw her arms down in disgust, grabbed the bags that I’d set on the pavement, and marched off. “I’ll take a cab to the hotel…my hotel!”

  A curious crowd of wedding guests gathered to watch the unfortunate scene unfold, including the photographers. Alex came swiftly up to Michael’s side now, and Andrea swayed in a stupor, finding more amusement with the situation than concern for her daughter. Perhaps justice had finally arrived.

  I considered following Elise. Should I apologize, plead for her exclusive love, or acknowledge and tolerate her desire to have two men in her life? I did none of those things. I just stood there like an idiot while the crowd watched. I weighed my options, and Elise marched off into the street, already calling a cab on her cell phone.

  “What’s the big deal?” Jerk-Off grinned. “I say cut the bitch in two and give each of you a half.”

  “Call her that one more time, and you can be sure that we’re throwing it down in front of all of these people.” Michael coolly said, unflinching. Alex clinched his fists.

  “Jack, let’s go,” Tom told his friend, “before he does throw it down and I have a controversial story on my hands in an election year.”

  “Save the last dance.” Jerk-Face squashed his second cigarette under the toe of his boot as he left with Tom. “This isn’t over between us.”

  They climbed into an SUV, which was conveniently parked right next to my Country Squire, and backed away. By the time Ellie arrived to see what the commotion was, Tom and Jack had driven off and Elise was gone.

  “Was that Jack?” She said. “Was my Jack here? Why didn’t anyone get me? How come he didn’t say hello?”

  “Good job choosing boyfriends,” I said. “When it comes to flapdoodles, that guys the real deal.”

  “Joshua,” she said. “What happened?”

  I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

  13

  I actually ended up going to Elise’s hotel that night, just not all the way up to her room. And I didn’t stay to see Josephine and Charlie off either, but then again, neither did Elise. After leaving the reception I took a long stroll around America’s most romantic city to collect my thoughts. I walked down Lombard Street and stood for a time at Coit Tower staring out at Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge before making my way back towards Diane Feinstein’s office, where only yesterday we’d been arrested. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out and about, but it must have been late, because it was unusually quiet near the civic center, only the random beams of an occasional passing car, shifting traffic lights of red, yellow and green, and the distant hum of traffic in less lonelier neighborhoods of the bayside city to keep me company.

  I loosened the tie from my neck, slugged hands into pockets feeling like the worst best man in marriage history, and strolled the half mile or so walk from the failed reception to where Elise was residing. I stopped outside her hotel, stared up at its numerous cold windows and the dozens of others sporadically lit and warm, and tried to picture which room she might be staying in.

  I pulled out my cell phone to call her. That’s when the Lost Boys returned. The time on my cell phone read 11:46PM.

  14

  From somewhere nearby, perhaps a hundred yards away, a horrid shriek, followed by what sounded to be the whooping howl of a hyena or a moaning ghost. And then another, this one less than a hundred yards away, maybe fifty, in the opposite direction. I turned around. The Scarecrow was the first to show his face from across the street. Then third whooping hyena like shriek. From the alleyway arrived the Harlequin. Gauzes hugged his neck.

  I caught sight of the Mad Hatter down the street, about two stoplights away, quic
kly trudging this way. He cupped his hands together under the glow of a headlamp and let out another grisly hyena-like howl. From the opposite direction, a couple of traffic lights away, the two-thirds nude woman, dressed only in voyeuristic silk straps, knee length stockings and elbow-length gloves, cried the ongoing ghost-song. I turned back towards the hotel. DECADENT, with his painted skull-face and bulging chastity belt wrapped around his waistline, coolly exited the double-doors with the Lost Boys leader, EMINOR, wearing the same white clothes, red suspenders, and a bowling hat.

  “You know, I’m good friends with a fashion buyer for Frank McCormick,” I said. “I’m sure she’d love to hook you guys up with some nice modern hipster trends since it’s clearly apparent that your wardrobe pickings are slim.”

  Another horrid whoop from down the street and the pale-faced leader swooped the cell phone from my hand.

  “Still a smarty-pants. Good thing we arrived when we did.” He spoke in his typical slithery Southern tongue. “Or you might have made a terrible mistake and dialed the wrong person.” He read the number on the screen. “Yup, wrong number.” He erased Elise’s contact information and threw my cell phone violently to the ground. It scraped across the sidewalk and bounced against the bottom steps of the hotel. “I hope you had a descent phone plan. These contracts don’t come cheap. You can have your phone back when you learn to get with the program.”

  “I’ve never been much for the program ever since they canceled Murder, She Wrote.”

  “You’re a long way from home,” said the skull-face.

  “I was actually looking for Trouble. He’s about yeah-high, a hundred and seventy-five pounds, of Miwok Indian heritage. Have you seen him?”

  “You keep to your own business,” skull-face widened his permanent grin, “and Trouble won’t go looking for you.”

  “Has Dateline NBC heard about you yet?” Michael said. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been following me, but came to my rescue and stood, both sleeves rolled, at my side, and smoking another cigarette, no less. “Really, Keith Morrison totally needs to interview you guys.”