Monday we packed and rested. Marilyn spent some time taking a bubble bath, and then afterwards invited me upstairs to help her shave. That kept us both occupied the rest of the afternoon. By God, that pussy was clean enough to eat off of, which I did! By dinner time, the refrigerator was empty and we ended up going out for Chinese.
We got up at 8:00 the next morning, ate breakfast (bagels and juice), cleaned up, and finished packing. We left the town house about an hour later, and drove to the airport in my car, and not Marilyn’s little clown car. One of these days Chrysler would invent the minivan and I could buy her a “Mom bomb” I could fit into. We were figuring that if we could get to the airport by 10:00, we’d be in good shape. According to the map, the Bahamas were about 1,000 miles away, and the Learjet was supposed to cruise at about 500 miles an hour or so, so we should get there around lunchtime.
I drove up to the terminal and around to the charter area, where we saw a small jet sitting on the tarmac near the building. “Is that it?” asked Marilyn, wide-eyed.
It looked tiny, at least compared to an airliner, but I could see the distinctive wing tanks of the first generation Learjets. “I told you, honey, stick with me.”
Marilyn turned to me and laughed. “You’ve told me a lot of things over the years!”
I smiled at her. “And the check was in the mail, wasn’t it?”
“What else?”
“I would love you in the morning, right? I did!”
“And what else?”
I gave my wife a big shit eating grin. “And I wouldn’t come in your mouth!”
“That’s the one! Liar, liar, pants on fire!”
We both laughed at that, and then I parked the car. I popped the trunk. Marilyn grabbed her purse and climbed out. She was wearing a new sundress, halter topped and mid thigh length, along with a pair of medium heeled sandals. It was warm enough that we didn’t need coats or jackets, at least as long as we stayed in the sunlight, and by the afternoon it would probably be very pleasant. I suspected it would be even more pleasant a thousand miles south of Westminster. I grabbed our bags and pulled them from the trunk. We had three suitcases and a hanging bag, and Marilyn stood there smiling expectantly. At least I got her to carry my cane.
A pilot came out of the terminal and headed over to me. “Mister Buckman?”
I dropped the suitcases. “That’s me!”
“Okay, excellent! I’ll be your pilot. I’m Jim Johnson.” He was in his mid-thirties. Lloyd had said he was ex-Air Force. I suspected that he was a flyboy who had gotten to the point in his career where he was spending more time flying a desk and less time flying a fast jet, and it wasn’t fun anymore. It was time to get out and either fly 747s for Continental as a junior pilot, or fly fast and nimble little private jets for a charter company. I bet Jim had chosen option 2.
I stuck my hand out. “Carl Buckman, and this is my wife, Marilyn.”
He turned to her and shook Marilyn’s hand. “Pleased to meet you. Just checking, but you’re going to Eleuthera in the Bahamas, right?”
Marilyn looked confused and turned to me. “I thought you said this was in a place called Governors Harbor?”
“That’s the airport on Eleuthera,” I answered, and she looked relieved. To Johnson, I said, “Yes, that’s right.”
“Just checking. I’d hate to get there and find you wanted to go skiing in Canada or something,” he said with a smile.
I laughed. “Has that ever happened?”
He rolled his eyes. “Not to me, but it happened to a friend of mine.”
“Well, you got it right this time.”
“Then let me give you a hand with that. Do you have your passports handy?”
Marilyn immediately began pawing through her handbag, but I simply reached into my back pocket and pulled them out. We had Marilyn’s, from when she had changed her name after we got married, and my new blue one, from when I had surrendered my red military version to get my new civilian model. “How does that work, anyway?” I asked.
“A Bahamian customs officer will be at the airport. You have to stay on the plane until he clears you.”
Okay, that made sense. But later? “What happens when we fly home? Are there customs officers in Utica?” That just didn’t sound right. There couldn’t be customs people at every Podunk airport in America.
He shook his head. “No. For one thing, we’ll need to tank up on the way back. We can’t make it there in one hop. So we’ll fly to someplace in between with customs officers, and then go through customs. Once we’re inside the US, we can refuel and fly where we want to go without problems. At that point it becomes an internal flight and nobody cares.”
“So we fly to Miami and go through customs there.”
“Probably north of there. I’m thinking Charlotte.”
“It’s big enough to have a customs office but not too big to get lost in the shuffle, and it’s about halfway to Utica. Why in the world do you want to fly to Utica, anyway?”
“Our baby is staying with Marilyn’s family. Otherwise, I’m with you!” Marilyn stuck her tongue out at both of us, which simply made me laugh.
Jim simply smiled and grabbed a couple of the suitcases. I followed him over to the jet and passed him the bags as he loaded them into the jet. Afterwards, we stepped back and Johnson allowed us to climb up the stairs into the plane. As a gentleman, I allowed Marilyn to go first. The fact that I liked watching her legs as she climbed up the stairs ahead of me was simply coincidental!
And it got me to thinking.
I stood there hunched over (it was surprisingly short, between four and five feet high) in the front of the cabin looking around as the pilot climbed on board. He was followed on board by a good looking blonde who was wearing what looked like a stewardess outfit. I looked at her curiously. “These little babies need a stewardess?”
“Flight attendant!” she answered with a smile. “No, not really. I’m Jim’s wife. I occasionally fly with him.”
“Hi. Carl and Marilyn Buckman.”
“Samantha Johnson. Let’s get you buckled in and airborne. Once we’re at altitude, we have a bottle of champagne courtesy of your travel agent.”
“Well, that’s nice. I’m sure I’m paying for it somehow, but it’s still nice,” I replied with a smile. Then I glanced back to where Marilyn was sitting. There were six seats on the jet. three rows of two seats. Marilyn was sitting in the first row, with her legs crossed and showing a lot of very nice thigh. I turned back to Samantha and lowered my voice. “Let me ask you, where do you sit during the flight?”
Samantha looked past me towards Marilyn, and then gave me a small smile. “I think I can ride up front with Jim. We actually have a partition door between the cabin and the cockpit.”
I returned the smile. “That would be very nice.” I turned and moved into the cabin. Marilyn was sitting on the right side of the jet and looking out the window. I sat down in the seat across the aisle from her.
Marilyn turned to me and said, “I can’t believe this!”
“I have to admit, it definitely beats the last airline I flew routinely.”
“Hmm?”
“You know, me and a hundred of my closest friends, and we didn’t even have to worry about whether we were going to crash when we landed! We weren’t going to be on board then!”
“Yeah, but I bet you didn’t have seats this comfortable.”
“And we didn’t have a flight attendant serving champagne, either.”