Page 73 of Triple Threat

“I’veneverbeen on an airplane,” she said again. I put my hand on her knee.

“It’ll be okay, I’ve been on so many airplanes that I don’t even think about it. We’ll spend a little while in the sky lounge, then have priority seating, the flight down to Atlanta is one drink long.”

“One drink?” she asked.

“One drink, that is all they have time to serve, between takeoff and landing,” I said.

“That doesn’t seem long.”

“It isn't,” I said. “Certainly not long enough to get you into the mile-high club,” I said.

“What, you mean you and Roan couldn’t swing that upgrade?” she asked. I barked a laugh and smiled at her.

“Sadie, the mile-high club,” I leaned over and whispered in her ear, “you can’t claim to be a member until you’ve fucked on an airplane, midflight.” Her eyes grew large, and she goggled at me.

“Certainly not a on a shuttle flight, those are short, and full of unimportant people going boring places,” I said.

“What about us?” she asked.

“We are most definitely important people and we arenotgoing somewhere boring.” I gave her a nod.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out in Atlanta. Let me keep this surprise,” I said. She relented, and we drove to the Indigo City airport. This wasn’t normal protocol, but this also wasn’t work. Work flights went through DC, never Indigo. She was nervous as we went through the mundane check-in, walking through the x-ray scanner, and metal detectors, and the rest of the TSA nonsense. I gave the people working the turnstiles a haughty look. They wouldn’t deter anyone but the most idiotic terrorist or the most self-absorbed Karen, insisting that her water bottle was exempt from the flight restrictions. We walked through with ease, and the few times I saw the tension at the corners of the TSA mook’s eyes, I covered deftly. Her first flight, and that she had never even been on an airplane before. Between her innocence and my charisma, I was fairly certain that I could have smuggled a tactical nuke, or a flamethrower onto the flight.

Instead, I was smuggling an incredibly nervous woman onto a mundane shuttle flight. Thankfully that went off without any enhanced security, no pat downs, and no opened luggage. There was nothing to find, no concealed weapons, no special tools, not even anything conventionally embarrassing other than the normal toiletries and unmentionables. The thought of some minimum-wage government goombah fondling Sadie’s panties made my eye twitch.

Less than an hour later we were aboard the flight, and shortly after that, we were winging our way to Atlanta. I skipped the offering drink service, only taking the little biscotti cookies and a swillish coffee, while Sadie giggled at getting a soda and a package of peanuts. She was almost giddy once we got over the apparently terror inducing takeoff. I realized that maybe I was more jaded than I realized, but when I had been in the Marines I hadn’t just been on airplanes. I had shot at them, jumped out of them, and in the case of that one time with the POS Blackhawk near Marjah, had survived crashing one.

Fucking Blackhawks.

If I hadn’t been in a first-class seat, I would have spat on the ground.

The plateau of the flight was all too short. Not long enough to settle in, or sleep. Certainly not long enough for a movie, a meal, or even really a decent drink. The landing had Sadie gripping her armrests again. Hopefully the shuttle flight would ease her through some of this flight anxiety.

The layover in Atlanta was brief, and she struck me as almost star-like. I could have imagined her being superimposed over Audrey Hepburn in one of the movies Roan liked. When we got back, I might have to ask him about that.Was it Audrey? Were there other Hepburns?We were in the second pre-board group, expectant mothers and handicapped still went on first, but that was fine.

Once we were in our first-class seats Sadie was all eyeballs and elbows. The seats were much larger, the stewardesses much better dressed, and we were still boarding when our stewardess came by to take out food and drink order. Sadie looked like a fish when she was given her choices for the lunch service.

I order the chicken Milanese and told the stewardess that I would like something like three to five gin and tonics, depending on how long it took to get in the air, and how long we would spend circling the field.

“I can’t believe we’re going to St. Henri,” she said. “I don’t even know where that is.”

“It’s completely real, I went back and forth several times over this,” I said. “And I asked myself if I was Roan and wanted to take you to a totally over-the-top exotic vacation with a three-day limit, where would I take you?”

“What were the other choices?” she asked.

“The Florida Keys, the Bahamas, any of the islands listed in that Beach Boys song,” I said.

“We could have gone to Kokomo?” She looked up from the Sky Mall brochure.

“There is no Kokomo,” I said. “Well, there’s one in Indiana and another in Arkansas, but those aren’t exotic destinations.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Don't worry, St. Henri is better than Kokomo. Everyone speaks English or French. It's all sand and palm trees, and every island photo-spread you’ve seen in any magazine.”

“Are you going to try to get into the mile-high club?” Sadie asked me about an hour into the flight, giving me a raised eyebrow.

---