Chapter 7: Pan Am to Paname

The day arrived.

Crusty was elected to drive the prodigal children to Vancouver to catch the Amtrak bound for Seattle. Since his pickup truck was still loaded with kitchen sinks from the weekend's flea market, he slid, cursing and moaning, behind the wheel of Belle's vintage Beetle. Crusty rarely rode in the car, let alone drove it. "I'm happy to keep the goddamn thing running," he bitched, "but it's the size of a Chinchilla warren and I'm--"

"And you're a big old Pit Bull," chimed Meg.

"Hey, don't forget the Terrier part," chirped Olney, dodging a blow from the big man's fist.

Though the engine was in good condition, Belle's Volkswagen suffered from two decades of paralactic parking and misguided backups. The driver's door, as well as the trunk and hood, had to be secured with bungey cords.

Crusty moaned anew as he pulled the old car onto the King George Highway. He was suffering a hangover of worlds-in-collision magnitude. The four of them had celebrated the night before, a "Last Night on Earth Party," as Olney called it.

"Tempt the gods, why don't you," Meg had complained. "We may not be doing the right thing, but don't include me in your suicide wish."

Belle went to bed around midnight. She had a job, the practical girl, and wouldn't be on hand for the leave taking. Meg dropped out around two, sensibly predicting a better morrow with a little sleep. Olney himself stumbled upstairs at three, leaving the massive Mantlecore with the better part of another bottle and plenty to worry about.

Crusty sat up all night sucking the ginny Schweppes from his cowcatcher moustache, wondering how he was going to come up with the money to get "his kid" back from Paris. That it would happen, he had no doubt. It had certainly happened before.

They were long time friends, part of a brotherhood of eight or nine dopers who fled San Francisco at the beginning of the "peace 'n' love" era, when the media moved in and brought with it a nation of pinheads. By then it was all over, the good old, damn near heavenly days, when their livelihoods consisted of leisurely selling electric all-female-tops of Michuacan, with each baggy-busting ounce containing a tab of acid thrown in as the Crackerjack prize, and all for a mere ten dollars and a lot of good will.

The "brothers," as they called themselves, were scattered all over the world now, some barely speaking to each other. But they had lived through hair raising and liberating times, had endured prison terms together for possession of a single joint, had beaten methedrine and heroin habits for all the right reasons, had embarked on formless voyages of many micrograms through which they danced and dissolved and died and died again and returned with hummingbirds at rest in their hands. They had also burnt out a few neurons along the way, but that was a small price to pay, for they'd learned that "one" really was all there is.

When Belle came down in the morning, she found Crusty asleep at the kitchen table. She made him drink a pot of coffee and drive her to work. He was back by the ungodly hour of seven a.m. and just crawling into bed when Meg got up and made him come downstairs to drink another pot.

"Come on, Crusty, you have to drive us to the airport."

"Drive yourself. Leave the car in the parking lot. I'll look for it tomorrow."

"Now stop it. Here's more coffee. I'll cook you bacon and eggs. You feel like bacon and eggs?"

Crusty lumbered to the bathroom and vomited.

"Hey, brother, what's going on," Olney wanted to know as he staggered downstairs for the morning's bladder-bursting piss. He stepped into the bathroom. "You can't be sick, man, this is our big day. We're off to Paradise and you're puking?"

Crusty heaved and retched and wished they were dead.

"Bacon and eggs for the big, bad man," Meg chanted as the pig bits sizzled on the stove.

"I'll kill ya both. I'll wipe y'off the face of the map soon's I stop barfing."

"Say, Crusty," said Olney, "I fucked up yesterday and put all our cash into traveller's checks. Spot me a twenty so we can toast you in-flight, ok?" Olney's hand involuntarily shot out for a greasing.

Crusty's lips and cheeks started to quiver.

"Aw, come on, man, don't cry," Olney said, and ran for his life.

Only an unconditional love could have moved Crusty to put up with Olney Garkle; a friendship, he was sorry to say, which too often held his wallet in usufruct.

He made it through breakfast on dry bread and BiSodol, looking the other way while they ate. Somehow he drove them to the train station. Meg was still waving goodbye as he disappeared, jerking and bucking in the backfiring old car. Crusty was on his way to a pub to relieve his misery and drown any future sorrows. He was just starting to feel better when the VW ran out of gas. Crusty pushed and kicked the unholy machine into a loading zone and hailed a taxi to the nearest watering hole. Belle didn't see him for two days and the car cost hundreds to get out of hock.

§§§

Out on the tarmac, their jumbo trembled in gusts of wind for a good two hours after the scheduled departure time. The would-be passengers were given no explanations why. Olney paced and fumed in the waiting room. He and the others were in limbo, sealed off from the world they had come from, especially the bar, and unable to fly to the world they were going to. Nothing to do but wait.

Olney finally grew weary of being outraged. He sat down next to Meg, who had taken a seat in resignation after the first announcement. He stared with disgust at the others, picking on them in his mind: That's the ugliest son of a bitch I ever saw. Look better with two heads, so why's he hiding the other one, the stupid shit. Doesn't even know enough to make us feel sorry for him. Oughta be a law against hideous crapasses in public. Shouldn't be allowed out of their hovels, much less soil the air and seats of high-toned airliners like Pan Am. They oughta be shot, and, by Jesus, if this plane doesn't load soon, I'm gonna do the shooting. "Christ!" he said to Meg, "we gotta make that Hovercraft by four p.m., GMT. Don't tell me we're gonna miss it and have to stay a night in London. We don't have the money for that kind of shit."

"Relax, Olney. You're anger's not going to make the plane take off any sooner."

Cunt, he raged silently. They always have to be so reasonable. And that fat sow over there. If she gets the seat next to me, boy, I'll make her life so miserable she'll wish she stayed in Walla Walla. Goddamn buncha losers, TV watchers. Probably won her plane ticket playing bingo.

And you sir? asked a meddling inner treacle beak.

He got up and paced again. Meg was upset too, but Olney did it so much better, what was the use? She spent her time smoking and trying to get his mind off hating everything.

At last they were herded aboard. Olney began to relax as the 747 sped down the runway and nosed into the sky. "Hey, here we go, only two hours late. Well, whoopee anyway." He was just settling back with an uncustomary highball, when, somewhere over Alberta, a loud thud came from the belly of the aircraft. "What the hell's that?" he demanded of the silly drink in his hand. He turned to his demure companion: thirty minutes out of Seattle and she was already Maggie. A Maggie in the early stages of vulnerable purity, suddenly so small and helpless and ... arousing! Maybe he could talk her into joining the 30,000 foot club. The plane wasn't exactly overbooked and the toilets ought to be empty most of the time. But no, she'd refuse, of course.

Another vibrating thump resounded across the entire belly of the jet. "Hey--" He looked around at the other passengers. The plane was only half full. "How come?" he asked Maggie. "It's December, so where are all the holiday travellers?" She shook her head angrily. "I hope you didn't jinx us with your 'last night on earth' quip. I'll hate you for eternity, Olney Garkle." "Don't be ridiculous," he said, choking on the words.

Olney looked down at his brand new shiny Florsheims, purchased in a panic at the airport. He'd whimpered and fretted over which pair to buy before settling on these high-topped westerny-looking boot-like kicks. They were ugly in a kind of face-lifted TV Preacher way and he hated them. And now they were doomed to go down in flames, the wind whining like Jap Kamikazes past their paper-thin leather soles. What was happening?

Thump again. "Olney, what is it?" Maggie reached for his hand, frightened now. Two stewardesses passed by in either aisle, foot-racing to the forward compartments. "Where are they going," she asked wildly. "They're going to the pilot's cabin," replied her helpful beau, "to join him in his little inflatable planelet, the one he keeps in his hip pocket for emergencies such as these."

Thump-thump.

"This is your captain speaking."

Converts to life in all its glory listened tensely as the pilot explained that the wheel doors had malfunctioned and he was unable to bring them up. ("Why's he waited this long?" Olney snarled at Maggie.) As a result of the estimated wind drag, the fuel would not be likely to hold out. The pilot apologized profusely for the inconvenience, but he was forced to turn back to Seattle. ("No! No! No!" Olney groaned with a roar.) The other passengers, quietly retreating to inward screenings of temps perdu, plugged in their headphones and drifted away. ("The fools. Only an American would listen to Julio Iglesias at a time like this.")

Time passed. They ordered more drinks. Joked a lot. Held each other. "It'll be all right," said the one. "Pan Am won't let us down," tongue-bit the other. The plane banked on its approach over SeaTac, presenting their intense viewing pleasure with a vast expanse of blue-black emptiness. Framed in the little window on Maggie's right, the void's immensity appeared to contain something after all. For there, in the devouring darkness, red halos whirled in clusters of lonely solitude. "Oh, I'm so glad," she exclaimed. "Fire trucks and ambulances." Summoned from the sad and faraway, they were gathered like old dying stars to await the end of time. "They're going to pick up our pieces!" rasped Olney, mind on a banana peel, eyes clawing at the window for a better view. "This explains why the flight crew returned from the cockpit with faces ashen unto mortis," he hissed in Maggie's ear. "They knew we were going to die. And that pious, quavering, pucker-lipped rendition of 'The High and the Mighty' from the elderly passengers ... only under threat of extinction did they unplug Julio!"

But death stayed in Basra that night, and the plane landed safely. All passengers were kept aboard, dashing Olney's plan to excuse himself for that pack of cigarettes so he could run right out of the airport and keep on running in a southerly direction until a good night's sleep under the Mexican stars would, for the rest of his life, be uninterrupted by cold and responsibility.

Mechanics worked on the wheel doors for two hours. Two hours in which, up inside the belly of the whale, Olney drank and sweated and feared: not of crashing, but of not crashing. The unbearable omen, he cried silently, wringing his in-skull hands.

They'd made it, though. Olney praised the Good Lloyd for sparing him the role of soothsayer, and all of them the spectacle of one hundred and fifty passengers going mad before disintegrating in blood and gore; loved ones torn and shredded in front of each other and carrying that karma on over to the next life. No one deserved such a fate, not even the worst serial murderer, not even the arms manufacturers.

But, he fretted further, the omen says this trip's gonna be a disaster. Indeed, even Maggie's Tarot reading had warned them of Voided Project.

By the time the plane taxied back to the runway, Olney was drunk. An eternity of flying time lay ahead. "Maybe I'll get some sleep for once," he slurred to Maggie, herself in the throes of inebriation. As the troublefree bird finally got under way, they snuggled together and slept fitfully. While crossing the Atlantic, they shared a dream in which they were fleeing over narrow precipice paths in a cold and suffocating fog.

§§§

Chapter 8: Les Dutronc

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