Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1)

by Noel J. Hadley

  “Why does this asshole keep showing up?” Skull Face said to EMINOR. His leader didn’t answer.

  “Did the beating hurt?” Michael stared at Skull Face. “How’s your neck back there?” He spoke to the Harlequin across the street. “I hate paper cuts, don’t you?”

  “Thanks, man,” I whispered to him.

  Michael nodded.

  “This doesn’t concern you.” I heard the woman with PORNOCRATES tattooed across her back (and looking like she’d come directly out of a Felicien Rops sketching) say to him.

  “Hey, I’m just taking my nightly stroll as a Community Watchdog. You know, making sure the streets are safe for the kids. It’s what I do whenever I’m up here in the Bay Area. And what do you know, I see these illustrations from children’s literature gone wrong barricading this young man’s entrance into that hotel when he clearly has a lovely woman waiting up there for him.”

  The man in the bowling hat rolled up his sleeves. “We were just having a little chat here with the man, and we were about to come to an understanding when you showed up again. But I guess you leave us no choice.”

  “Um, you know, if we’re all thinking about taking our clothes off like last time,” I said to PORNOCRATES, who had let her whip trail over my neck, “might I suggest Baker Beach. It’s just down the road, and clothing option, you know.”

  “Why do you wear those gloves?” Michael said. He turned around to see how close the others had moved in on us. His fists were at the helm. “How about we all remove our gloves and have a good look at our hands? Perhaps we can swap fingerprint records and be on our way.”

  “If there’s anything I hate,” the man in the bowling cap said, “it’s when people ask about the gloves.” He cracked his cane over one of them.

  “You know what?” I raised both hands up. “I’m not doing this tonight.”

  “You’re damn right,” PORNOCRATES said.

  “That’s all we ask,” EMINOR said. “You keep to your own business, and leave us to ours.”

  “Is this what you want?” Michael lifted his cigarette from his lips and spoke softly into my ear. “I’ll stand by you or walk away. Either way I’ve got your back. It’s your choice.”

  “This isn’t finished. I have the feeling we’ll be seeing each other soon,” I said to the leader of the Lost Boys.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he grinned.

  Michael kept to my backside. We started our slow retreat away from the hotel, keeping a good median distance between the Scarecrow and Harlequin, who’d maneuvered a little closer from the alley, and the others lining the entrance to the hotel, by straddling the center of the street. As we passed the Mad Hatter, I noticed he was still wearing the grenade belt across his chest.

  “You do realize those are probably illegal in all fifty states. If I were you I’d have my permits checked.”

  “How about I stick one up your donk and pull the pin?”

  “Haven’t you forgotten something?” Their leader said. I was careful to turn around. “Your cell phone.” He picked it up, held his arm out, and maneuvered out into the street. I took it from him.

  “See you around,” the woman in leather said.

  “I’ll be sure to wear my leather Jim Morrison pants.”

  “Or maybe nothing at all.” She grinned.

  “Thanks for following me and swooping in.” I told Michael once we were a fair amount of distance down the street.

  “Yeah, I can’t let you go out alone anymore. That bowling hat fella, the guy with the EMINOR tattoo, he was toying with you like a cat with a mouse ”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t try. I can’t believe I just walked away like that. Michael, I didn’t even try to push my way through them.” I thought about that for a second, how easily I gave in to their bullying, how easily I threw my hands up and walked away. “After tonight’s confrontation with the congressman, when Elise left me standing there, I don’t know, I….” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

  “It was six to two. We were about to have our badonkadonk handed to us. But I do know you, and that’s not why you walked away.”

  “It was Elise,” I said. I turned around to stare up at her hotel one last time before turning the corner. I studied the various lit windows, wondering if one of them was hers. I could still make out the woman in leather and the harlequin under the lamplights. Another horrid hyena like shriek pierced the night. “I couldn’t believe she’d hurt me again like that. The pain – it’s just – I guess I realized I wasn’t going to fight for her. Not after what she did again. She didn’t want to be fought for.”

  “I don’t know who these people are, but it’s all so crazy. I get this feeling that they’re not human, if you get my drift, almost demonic. And the leather gloves. There’s something about their leather gloves. It doesn’t make any logical sense, but…”

  “Look what time it is.” I showed him the digital clock on my cell phone. It read 11:46pm.

  And then, as if adding commentary to my observation, the digital clock dialed from 11:46 at night to 2:45 in the morning, and a car buzzed by, and several lights that had once been on suddenly shut off to account for the time lapse.

  “They froze time again,” he said, short of breath. “Our encounter with them took no more than five minutes, but in actuality, three entire hours passed.”

  “We don’t even know if this is Sunday morning yet. It could be a Monday, or Tuesday.”

  “Very true.”

  “That’s why I walked away.”

  “Because if they showed up to barricade your path…”

  “Yes.” I finished his thought. “It meant we had entered the space between spaces, the frozen world outside of time, or whatever you want to call it, purely as a roadblock while another man made his way up there to her room, and my wife was screwing him.”

  15

  Susan was waiting for us on the Sisters front porch, huddled in a USC sweater. As soon as she saw us she was up and sprinting down the steps to embrace her husband. Our worst fears weren’t realized. Unlike the last time when the world had rotated an entire three hundred and sixty degree circle without us, only three hours had passed.

  “Where were you?” She said. “I was getting worried.”

  “I followed Joshua from one side of San Francisco to the other. Lombard Street, Coit Tower, Diane Feinstein’s office. He practically gave me the complete walking tour. We were outside of Elise’s hotel and bumped into some old friends.”

  “Those men from a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Same ones. If you want to call them that.”

  “I’m sorry honey.” Susan wrapped her arms around me.

  She was connecting the dots. The man with the bowling cap and his posse shows up, Michael and I detour through the Twilight Zone, and Elise ends up in bed with another man. I thought she was beginning to understand the larger picture, and if so, maybe she could explain it to me.

  “Are the Sisters awake?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Susan said. “I’ve been sitting out here on the porch for the last couple of hours. I haven’t heard any stirring in the house.”

  “Good.” I started up the steps. “Because the last thing I want to do is explain this to them.”

  I opened the front door.

  16

  I shushed Michael and Susan as we entered. A light turned on. Aunts Nancy and Patty were sitting in two separate reclining chairs on either side of the Tiffany’s lamp.

  “Why are you back?” Patty wanted to know, sounding genuinely concerned.

  “Where’s Elise?” Nancy clarified.

  I didn’t answer either of them.

  “I thought you two were staying at a hotel tonight,” said Patty. “Is everything alright?”

  They were asking the kinds of questions that I had hoped to avoid. Michael and Susan hung by the front door with the theory that mimicking two dead possums would help them to remain unseen.

  “Elise has decided to spend
the night alone,” I finally said.

  The Sisters turned their heads like two dogs digesting an unusual sound.

  “Did the two of you have a fight?” Patty said. “Is that what happened in the parking lot?”

  “No, not exactly. I’m tired. It’s late. And if you don’t mind, I’d really like to get some sleep before hitting the road in the morning.”

  “If something has happened to our little girl,” Nancy said, “then we need to know about it.”

  “If you don’t mind, it’s a private matter. This has been a rough night, but it’s nothing that Elise and I can’t work out in the morning.”

  “Excuse me,” Nancy perked up in her chair. “But this is my house… and Patty’s… and our twin nieces. If you come in here then you make it our business.”

  Patty kept quiet. She always liked me better than her sister. Too bad it was Nancy who wore the bucking horns.

  “If you must know, Elise has chosen to spend the night with another man.”

  Both Sisters tensed their faces and reeled back as if I had hit them over the head with a shovel and might, at any given second, topple over backwards in their recliners. I second-guessed myself immediately after I said it. Truth told, I didn’t actually know if Elise had invited another man into her bed. It was a gamble, but history repeats itself, and the house always wins. Besides, I had said it. It was out there now, and there was no going back or denying it.

  “We raised our nieces well,” Nancy said. It was a mantra, like clockwork. I knew exactly how her statement was going to end. “And if there’s anything we taught them it was to follow their own heart.”

  I didn’t say anything. Blood is truly thicker than wine.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “With all due respect, and I’m not trying to wage a war against the hippies, but I know my heart and its intersection of open highways, with so many exits and choice destinations that I couldn’t possibly maneuver through life without a moral compass, the north star that keeps my position on the grid in focus.”

  “We raised our nieces with the same values that we found meaningful in the sixties.” Nancy elevated her nose. “They weren’t always traditional morals, as you might have it, but they were non-the-less moral.”

  I caught sight of Ellie on top of the staircase staring down at us. I wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there. She looked genuinely concerned. And there was something else. It was the feeling of anger and oppression, that feeling that I was standing under a black umbrella of depression. I thought perhaps the Green Man was standing somewhere in the room, maybe even whispering into somebody’s ear. I tried tuning him out.

  “Yes, I know, free love, drugs, and rock n’ roll.”

  “Your damn right. We broke down the shackles of our oppressive past. You don’t dominate our niece. She’s a grown woman and if anyone pilots her happiness, it’s herself. She should be able to make her own decisions without the consequences of ownership.”

  “And where does that leave me?” I didn’t like the way hundreds of dolls seemed to stare at me, wherever I turned.

  “If she loves you, then she’ll return. In the meantime, you need to set her spirit free.”

  “You can shout out all the mantras and slogans you want, but diseases and pregnancy aside, free love doesn’t always just affect the precipitant. It not only teeters your own soul along the razor sharp edges of destruction, but more importantly it destroys the people around you. We have a moral obligation not just to ourselves, but others.”

  “I don’t care what you say about all your modern studies and statistics. Morality was different in the sixties.”

  “This isn’t the sixties anymore.”

  Nancy attempted to rise from her chair. It took a lot of effort but she finally stood. Patty followed suit. “We’re going to bed,” she said. “Either come back with Elise or we’ll expect you to be gone tomorrow.”

  “I wonder if anyone ever wrote a song about that.”

  “Don’t you mean later today?” Patty said to her sister.

  “Whatever.”

  We watched the Sisters lumber up the staircase, past Ellie (who held her head down as they passed) and off to bed. Patty turned around to look at me. Her sister advised her to hurry along. She did as she was told. The presence of something dark and foreboding, evil even, remained.

  “I don’t know about you,” I turned to Michael, “but this was another totally wasted weekend of my life. This seems to be a growing trend.”

  “I really am sorry,” Susan squeezed my arm.

  “Whatever happens, I’m here for you.” Michael patted me on the shoulder.

  “Don’t say it.” I sighed. “I know. Our Full House dreams are over.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s the trouble with sitcoms. You can’t resolve real world issues in twenty minutes. And it’s not what I was thinking at all.”

  SAN FRANCISCO, DAY FOUR: THE TROUBLE WITH SITCOMS

  1

  Michael, Susan and I were sitting outside and drinking coffee at Over the Rainbow, a small restaurant on the corners of Haight Street and Clayton, scene of the legendary Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love (and only blocks from Alamo Square), when Alex appeared around the corner. I waved to him as he crossed the street. He scooted out a chair and plopped into it smiling. Susan was too busy trying to decide between the Scarecrow (more of an earth based omelet) and the Tin Man (a meat lovers), to pay attention to his arrival. Somehow the Scarecrow didn’t seem appetizing for obvious reasons. The Cowardly Lion, with its intrusive hot sauces, spices and promises of heartburn, wasn’t even under her consideration. Scott McKenzie was gently singing San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) over loudspeakers.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I said. We set our menus down to stare at him. The waitress had seen Alex cross the street and intercepted him as soon as he sat down. She lifted her pad of paper in hopes of taking our order. Alex said he’d have a cup of coffee until he decided. She didn’t scribble that on her pad of paper and left.

  “It’s the air here in San Francisco. She’s a mistress, she is, and I’m afraid she’s grabbed me by the heels. I’m in love. That, and I came down here to find some hippies.” He lowered his sunglasses to the tip of his nose and stared down the mostly vacant street. “I read somewhere that they were here once. So where are they?”

  “The Summer of Love ended forty-one years ago,” Michael said. “And seeing as how every attempt the hippies made at populating society failed miserably, including this one, I highly doubt you’ll be seeing another summer like 67 again.”

  Apparently the Die-In march on Diane Feinstein’s office had little effect on his GOP conservatism. Mine too. Susan was too busy making up her mind to notice his lack of patriotism for the Democratic Party. In the end she settled on Glinda the Good, a healthy selection of tofu, grape fruit, and cottage cheese.

  “That’s a shame,” Alex said. “I thought I read somewhere that they walked around topless or something.”

  Our waitress brought Alex a cup of coffee and stood by the table with her pad of paper, eager to scribble something down. Michael looked to his indecisive wife (who was shifting her lips back and forth as she scoured the menu) and told our waitress that we needed another few minutes. She didn’t scribble anything down on her piece of paper, and walked away.

  “Are you sure you weren’t confusing that with ETIQUETTE Magazine?” I said.

  “Same difference. It’s all anthropology. I’m a scientist, Joshua. You know that.”

  “Aunts Patty and Nancy are hippies.” I shrugged shoulders.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. Aunt Patty knew Gracie Slick and Jerry Garcia personally. Probably drank a little too much Kool-Aid with Ken Kasey too. So if you’re looking for anthropology, you could probably hide behind a bush in the backyard after everyone leaves. It’s supposed to be a scorcher today. The Sisters are nudist, you know.”

  “I’ve noticed they have
a pretty good tan on their faces and their toes,” Michael said. “I had no idea it was everything in-between.”

  “I’m afraid so.” I sipped on coffee.

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Sure thing, anthropologist. I just thought since you were an unbiased student of science, you wouldn’t want to pass up the opportunity of seeing real live hippies in their natural environment. You probably wouldn’t even have to hide in the bush. I’m sure if you expressed a common interest in the nudist lifestyle they’d be happy to….”

  “Shut up and drink your coffee,” Alex said.

  I did just that, but not because he told me to.

  Alex set his menu down to gaze uneasily over my shoulder. He wrinkled his eyes and tightened the corners of his mouth.

  “I can’t believe it.” He gasped for a breath.

  Jimi Hendrix jumped into a psychedelic recording of Purple Haze over the restaurant loudspeakers.

  “Believe what?” I said.

  “That’s him.”

  “Where?” Susan finally dropped her menu. “Is it a hippie?”

  “Him who?” Michael squinted his eyes.

  “There’s nobody there,” Susan said.

  But there was someone there. I recognized him immediately. He was straddling the street corner of Haight and Ashbury, just below the seemingly mythological sign

  “I’m going to kill the bastard,” he growled.

  “Wait, what?” I was confused now. “You can see him too?”

  “See who?” Susan said. “What am I missing?”

  Alex didn’t answer. He was already up and running, thumping our table in the lift and knocking our coffee cups across the floor in the sudden jostle. He hurdled his body over a Volkswagen Beetle, dashed across the street towards the corner of Ashbury, and thrust himself onto the onlooker, beating him senselessly.

  Our waitress returned to the table, eager to scribble something down on her notepad. I scrambled past her, hurdled over the VW Bug, barely avoided a honking car, and dashed to the Haight-Ashbury street sign to stop Alex, who from the looks of it was only a few kicks and punches away from murdering the man in a UFC fashioned battle, all to the soundtrack of Purple Haze. The bystander wasn’t fighting back.