Up in the Air

There’s a flutter of emotional cabin pressure as El Supremo slinks into the aisle and meekly heads to the bathroom. We understand, sir; we’re all God’s children here. Still, as his visit lengthens, I feel a shift as all of us stop thinking about ourselves and wonder why that closed door is staying so closed. A hand-washer? Normal travelers’ diarrhea? It’s painful to picture the Big Guy so confined. The cold steel john. The little tampon slot. Like most frequent flyers I’ve talked to, I sometimes thrill myself with hyper-detailed crash scenarios, and in my favorite I’m right where he is now when the death plunge comes. I balance myself in my new sideways world and squeak out a note with a soap bar on the mirror: “I loved you, every one. I’m sorry, Mom.” It’s a variable fantasy; my testaments change. Once I just drew a heart. How sweet of me. Lately, it’s been six zeros and a one. What would El Supremo write? “See you in hell, Saddam”? Or “Grrr”? I like that. In an actual crash, of course, the Christians among us would likely just draw a cross. Saves time, it’s manageable from every angle, and it well might open a few doors.

Mount Olympus reminds me how poorly I know my gods. The young redhead at check-in wears a light suede toga cut to resemble a deer or antelope hide and over one shoulder hangs a bow and arrows. As she hunts for my reservation on her screen a bellhop in a winged helmet scurries over and offers to carry my briefcases, the one still locked, and my strangely deflated carry-on. (Have my clothes shrunk?) I give him all of it and request a screwdriver, which he doesn’t find odd, apparently. Wings on his shoes as well. Mercury? Who’s Mercury? Evil? Good? Or were those old gods both?

“It looks like your companion checked in already. Alex Brophy. Keep this on her MasterCard?”

“Are you still in that cross-promotion with Great West?”

Nods.

“On mine,” I say. “Who are you, anyway? Your character?”

“The huntress.”

“Your name. Your powers.”

“Laurie. I water-ski. You have two messages.”

“Read them.”

“Art Krusk: ‘I’m at the Hard Rock. Nab some dinner? This Marlowe’s a pisser. Glad you hooked us up.’ A Mr. Pinter next: ‘Quite busy tonight but will see you at your talk.’ He’s staying here.”

“No Linda?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s good. It simplifies. Is my companion in the room already? You wouldn’t know, I guess. You’re Circe maybe?”

“It’s just a theme. It’s not a college course. Go ask at Excalibur which of you is Lancelot? This really isn’t the city for history.”

“That’s why it grows and grows and grows and grows.”

Pinter’s interest in my little speech renders me weightless in the elevator and puts a pair of wings on my feet, too. And Krusk likes Marlowe. I’ve brokered a great match. The idea of Alex, a jukebox, and a pool table suddenly blossoms with sexy possibilities. Good riddance, The Garage. It’s a world of flesh, not inky paper, and from this moment forward I only take huge bites.

A suite, as I understand it, is two or more rooms, but as part of the erosion of all fixed standards and the upgrading of the subpar, a single room with an alcove or an angle or any hint of partitioning at all now qualifies for the title. Here, the suite feature is a modest nook showcasing a scaled-down pool table but still too small, at first glance, to wield a cue in. The jukebox is the real thing, though: a vintage Wurlitzer featuring curved glass tubes of backlit jellies that generate long, sluggish bubbles as they’re warmed. The buttons are within reach of the king bed on top of whose satiny spread stand two black shoes next to a crossed pair of blowsy red roses.

I find other tableaux as I pace around the room, still waiting for my baggage and the screwdriver. Alex has been fussing like an elf. There are clusters of white votives on the nightstands and on the desk two slim black tapers standing aslant in hotel water glasses. The silk scarf lamp trick. Cones of incense on a plate. I sniff them. Jasmine? What does jasmine smell like? So much lost sensual knowledge with men like me.

Incense to me means drugs, a mask for pot smoke. Will we get high tonight? Might be nice. Or horrible. My last few drug experiences hurt. A line of coke with the cackling Vice President of Human Resources at Pine Ridge Gas sniffed in a Houston TGI Friday’s. My heart beat lumpily for hours. I cried. And just last month a pellet of red hash shared with a deadheading flight attendant in Portland. We partook while sitting up to our bare chests in a volcanic Homestead Suites hot tub, and when the stuff hit the chlorine fumes from the water whooshed up my nostrils and filled my vision with glowworms that fattened and brightened and wriggled when I blinked. I fled to the locker room for a cold compress, and when I tottered back out to the tub how many minutes later I couldn’t tell, my date and a bare-assed, crew-cut college kid were pressing their privates against the bubbling jets and toasting each other with pink wine.