Flight 23, Seat 14B

Episode 8:
Chicago to Seattle, Cattle Class, Middle Seat.

The woman on my left is using a seat belt extender. She is also blocking out all daylight from the tiny window. The man on my right is also obese and his massive love handle is flowing into my space. There is nothing he or I can do so we pretend he is not fat and everything is fine.

I can’t open a paperback. There is no room. I don't own an iPod. All I can do is lean forward and rest my head into the seatback in front of me. The space that I evacuated, behind my upper body, fills up suddenly by the chubbies on my left and right. Nature abhors a vacuum.

It feels like a crypt and I have been sealed up alive.

Hamsini has to work all weekend.

I try to breathe smoothly and meditate. The air is filled with germs.

Suddenly, the man in front of me drops his seat violently and buckles my neck. I squeeze back into the space that was my seat.

The booze cart comes by and with a buck from Charlie, and four of my own, I buy gin which I drink straight from the miniature bottle.

I miss my Hamsini.

The Losing Ticket

Episode 7:
At O’Hare International Airport, the people that line up to buy MegaMillions tickets at the state’s kiosk wear uniforms. They are not traveling to Vail or Burbank or Miami. They are buying tickets at the end of their shifts, or they are buying tickets during mandatory breaks from jobs that may involve removing gum from the airport’s many urinals.

Their uniforms divulge their first names because it is their employer's policy, while I possess my anonymity from them. Their names include Hector, Celeste, Svetlana, and Manny. They wear navy blue and brown uniforms as not to show grime so easily. I am wearing French cuffs and cuff links. The cracker convention went very well for me.

If you are 59 years old and limping around the airport in steel-toed boots, you cannot afford to miss your chance at the mega millions. This week’s pot is worth $95 million.

On the other hand, I can afford not to play MegaMillions because I am young and beautiful and supremely cocky. I am certain that when I am 90 years old, my piss will flow freely through my donut-shaped prostate and I will be making love to women half my age at a resort on the Big Island.

I have never played lotto. Lotto is for the hopeless. Blackjack and Craps in Vegas, yes. And I have always walked away richer because I have options.

There is plenty of money to be made in the cracker business. Everyone eats crackers. The poor eat saltines and I sell those, too. The rich appear to eat a lot of Waterford wafers. On the Waterford box, the makers depict wafers with lox and a frilly herb that could be dill. On the saltine box, they depict no such accoutrements. I suspect the poor eat their saltines with butter, or they crumble them into condensed soup.

Charlie Ray plays lotto. I know this because he carries a losing ticket in his wallet. Charlie’s (un)lucky numbers are 3-9-12-18-and 23.

Today, I am going to play MegaMillions in honor of Charlie Ray Dalton. I use one of Charlie’s dollars and four of my own. I use Charlie’s lucky numbers and four random sets. I am arrogant today, but not so egotistical to portend to understand that which is arbitrary in the universe.



Speaking of a Losing Ticket, how about McCain and Palin?

Eddie Vedder

Episode 6:

I watched the convention last night on the bar TV in the Congress Plaza Hotel. I didn't know it, but Eddie Vedder was on the stool next to me. I bought him ($#4) a drink.

After he left, the bartender asked me if I knew who that was. I said, no. The bartender said, that was Eddie Vedder. I asked, who is Eddie Vedder. The bartenders said, have you heard of Pearl Jam?

When Barack Obama kissed Jill Biden (on the lips!), Mr. Vedder said, we've come a long way. I said, I'll drink to that. I was drinking a rum and coke. Mr. Vedder was drinking wine. We clinked our glasses.

Off to the Cracker Convention.

Episode 5:

I must leave my beloved Hamsini.

There is a cracker convention in Chicago. It is the same week as the Democratic Convention in Denver. Coincidence? I think not.

The real cracker convention starts next week in St Paul, if you catch my drift. I wonder if McCaine will select Darth Lieberman as his Veep?

It is not just crackers. It is all manners of snacks, cookies and confections salty and sweet. We have a booth with lasers. And bikini-clad models who pass out sample whole-grain crackers with various spreads. I picked the models last month from a catalogue.

Hamsini must go back to work, too. Rebuilding the urethras of soldiers at the VA. I don't take pissing upright lightly. I am grateful for my plumbing. Just wish the Sith didn't occupy the White House.

Charlie’s wallet travels with me.

On Tuesday, I spent a dollar ($#2) at Starbucks tasting their new Vivanno. Watch out Jamba Juice. Howard Schultz aims to take you out.

On Wednesday morning, I bought ($#3) an egg sandwich at SeaTac. Thank you, Charlie.

Soft Flesh Pressing the Leaning Tree

Episode 4:
There are many gin and tonics. We are sloppy. We hatch identify schemes and knock on the fish tank at the ugly algae sucker. There is much laughter and the agrarians are starring at us. Hamsini makes me happy. I would like to marry her someday. I would like our photograph to appear in the New York Times with the other beautiful, interesting people who attended the finest schools. Her family and I have never met. They are hoping for a Hindu son-in-law, I think. Her family hails from Pittsburgh. Her father is an optometrist. Her mother is a retired math teacher.

Should we track down Charlie Dalton? How would this be accomplished? We ask the waitress if she knows a man named Charlie Dalton. She does not. We sidle up to the bartender, Ben. He does not know this Charlie. We ask for a Vashon telephone book. After another gin and tonic, the telephone book appears seemingly from nowhere. There is, apparently, no Charles Dalton residing on Vashon Island. There is no Dalton clan living way up Shingle Mill Creek.

Before leaving Vashon, under a gravid moon, I make love to Hamsini as her soft flesh presses into a steeply leaning madrone tree.

I whisper to Hamsini, "We shall spend the money one dollar a day for the next year in honor of Charlie Ray Dalton."

She trembles. "Whatever," she says.

The first dollar has been spent already. Pocketed in the form of a tip to Ben and a waitress named Magdalena.

Gin & Tonic on Vashon

Episode 3:

This is the wallet of Charles Ray Dalton. It is the shittiest wallet I’ve laid eyes on. It must be at least 20 years old. It may be older than I am. The leather has worn paper-thin. It is torn and can no longer hold its contents properly. Does a man resemble his wallet? Mine happens to be eel skin.

On the wallet is a dull impression of a camel. I think Charlie got his wallet free by sending in the tabs from fifty cartoons of Camel cigarettes. Charlie must be a smoker.

Hamsini actually smells the wallet for smoke and nicotine. I scan the room to see if anyone notices. Then I search for anyone resembling the wallet. There are no scruffy, faded fellows suddenly short of cash in this tony bistro. There is no Charles Dalton here.

It takes fortification to go through the wallet of Charles Ray Dalton. In fact, it takes six gin and tonics between us. First, we count out the cash. It is a wad of $366. Then we lay out the rest of the contents. Remarkably, the owner of the wallet has no address or telephone number. There is no driver’s license. There is no picture ID. The wallet is full of odd, impractical things.

Warm Leather

Episode 2:

The wallet is still warm. We wonder together, how did this happen? Was the wallet’s owner riding a motorcycle, too? I check my back pocket and feel the auspicious mass of my own wallet.

We do not linger on the road. We gather up the bills and the wallet quickly. We do not examine the contents of the wallet. For me, there is some self-reproach in finding a stranger’s wallet. I hand the wallet to Hamsini and we get back on the bike. She hugs my waist tightly. I already said, I am the luckiest guy in the world. Hamsini is a resident urologist. She is smart and beautiful and funny.

We decide to stay on the bramble covered island a bit longer. We head to the island’s commercial center and enter a dark place called the Go-Go Girls. It turns out to be a restaurant full of lesbians wearing gum boots. This is not a scene to be affronted by; it is simply a fact. Everyone is fully clothed. If there are pasties worn, they are obscured by Carharts and flannel. I find this odd on such a warm evening.

We order gin and tonics and sushi. We sit next to an aquarium full of African cichlids raking the gravel bottom.

The Exhilaration of Found Money

Episode 1:

This is all true. And it is happening now. Or just a little before now.

There is something exhilarating about finding money on the ground. It is like discovering a cheerleader splayed in the dry grass on the side of the tracks. At first, her warped body is so beautiful. Then you realize what has happened. Some kind of horrible accident, initially, you hardly recognized the train wreck.

It was dusk, at the end of the hottest day of the year. A sultry day that is rare on the edge of the Puget Sound.

I was cruising across Vashon Island, taking the long way to Tacoma. Hamsini was on the back of my Enfield. She is so amazing. I am the luckiest guy on the planet. Found money, my girl, the smell of blackberries ripening on the cane.

The bills were blowing across the country road like leaves. We passed through them before it hit me. Money, littering the land.

We parked on the shoulder. Below us, sheep in a meadow overlooking the Colvos Passage. We scrambled for the loose bills blowing across the dividing line. Hamsini found the wallet. I scanned for onlookers, excitement laced with guilt, I suppose.

Nobody was watching but the sheep, idle as lawn ornaments.