Apologizing as I leaned forward to sponge up the liquor from the coiffure of the lady seated in front of me, I noticed that the stewardess was gamely picking herself up off the floor of the aisle with her smile intact. It was the practiced motion of an experienced skier, arm locked around one knobby knee, smooth, isometric pressure, heave, vertical once more and set to slalom. A real pro, she leaned into the wind and dovetailed to a halt in front of my seat when I beckoned.
“I’d like another double,” I told her.
“I’m sorry, sir. Rules are only one to a passenger.” Her gray smile lingered on as she took off down the aisle.
Sighing, I studied the second vial. There was still a swallow left in the bottom of it. The hell with the ice and the glass, I decided. I raised the vial to my lips and upended it.
“Whoops! Heh-heh-heh. There we go again, ladies and gentlemen.” This time the pilot sounded a little sheepish.
It was a while before the alcoholic wash cleared enough so that I could see out of my left eye. When it did, however, the eye felt a bit more stable. Miraculously, it hadn't lost its grip on the wing in the interim. The rest of me, alas, felt jittery and miserable.
The pilot’s next pronouncement didn’t alleviate this feeling. There was more than a hint of panic in the crackling that now came over the loudspeaker. “It is the policy of this airline,” he announced in a very formal tone, “never to lie to its passengers. Now, we’re all adults, and I’m sure we’ll all keep control of ourselves in the face of what I have to say. I am afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that we have come up against a rather dire emergency.”
There was a long pause. A few people threw up quietly, inconspicuously. The stewardesses collected the neat little paper bags. One of the stewardesses fainted. The others revived her. I trembled with frank cowardice. The pilot's voice finally resumed.
“Yes, a serious emergency. One of those one-in-a million catastrophes that occurs in flight even today, when modern technology has provided every conceivable precaution to guard against such mechanical failures. Nothing is infallible. Courage, ladies and gentlemen! Courage in the face of what I must now reveal to you! Courage as I too must have courage to perform this most unpleasant duty! Ladies and gentlemen—-” He took a deep breath which was more than half a sigh of fatalism. ‘—I am afraid that our movie projector has broken. There will be a half-hour delay in the showing of our feature picture. I’m sorry. I--” His voice cracked and the p.a. system went from static to silence.
A moan swept over the cabin. Chins out, the stewardesses followed in its wake, pouring the syrup of surcease from anxiety over the smitten passengers. Quickly, luncheon was produced and headsets hooked up to salve the deprived eardrums with stereo offerings.
My elbows kept getting hooked in the wires leading from the inserted earplugs. Folk-rock was being piped direct to my brain cells, but my muscular coordination was off and the inevitable creamed chicken kept dancing out from under my speargun fork. I couldn’t quite get the beat, and stereo’d Bob Dylan blew gooky asparagus all over my pants legs. A second chorus of “Tambourine Man” squashed prunes between my jacket sleeve and my shirt cuff. The finale splashed untasted coffee over my shoe-tops. It was a relief when the stewardess swooped down to remove the trayful of debris.
Almost immediately, modern technology regained face. There was an announcement from the pilot and an under-sized screen was dropped for the showing of the movie. It was, I supposed, the logical end-result of the Industrial Revolution.
The film was a remake of Ecstasy, the famous Hedy Lamarr teaser of the 1930s. Half of a mottled Viennese forest appeared in Technicolor on the screen. The other half was somewhere on the ceiling of the plane’s cabin with a littlebrook in the distance running down the neck of the passenger in the front seat. A hazy, naked female figure leaped over the passenger’s neck and vanished behind the foliage on the ceiling. The title of the picture appeared with the nude coyly curved for concealment behind the “C”. Meanwhile, stereo’d Donovan was screaming into my ears that destruction was imminent. From the corner of my eye I confirmed that the wing of the plane was still attached.
The stewardess caught me checking and clucked disapprovingly. She reached over me and pulled down the shade. The mottling on the half-screen lessened somewhat. Now the stewardess eyed the dial controlling my in-flight entertainment. Her look said I was a backward child. She switched the channel and Donovan’s moaning was replaced by a full orchestra building to the crashing of cymbals as the nude on the half-screen undulatingly managed to keep her vital parts hidden behind the name of the film's fashion coordinator.
The cymbals crashed again as the name of the female star appeared. Craning, I put the letters together over ceiling, neck and screen. Now my interest was aroused. The Lamarr role was being played by Misty Milo.
I knew Misty. During my last sojourn to Hollywood, we’d been—ahh-friendly. In a sense, I’d represented something of an exception to Misty. She was’ a girl whose -ahh—friendships had been built one on top of another toward the goal of furthering her career. I had been in no position to contribute anything toward that goal. Nevertheless, we’d been-ahh—friendly. Very, very friendly!
Studying the screen now, I decided that she hadn’t changed much in the interim since our last meeting. She still had the same wild, long black hair. Her face was still Eurasian, green eyes slightly slanted, lips shaped into an invitation. Her figure was still petite and slender, bosom still twin inflated balloons, legs lithe and smooth as ever, plump hips on a hair-trigger. And, I saw upon closer inspection, the mole on her small, high left buttock hadn't been removed.
I watched the mole play hide-and-seek over the psuedo-Austrian landscape for the next hour and a half. It brought back memories. The memories filled in what the scenery so artfully concealed. Thus I was only half watching the picture when the pilot’s voice broke into the soundtrack.
“We are directly over Los Angeles and have been cleared for landing,” he announced. “However, there is no cause for alarm. I have contacted Flight Control and our aircraft has been assigned a cruising altitude for the next thirty minutes. I repeat, there is no cause for alarm. This flight will not land until the movie has been concluded.”
A sigh of relief swept over the passengers. Like the others, I settled back to watch the end of the picture. As Misty leaped like a lewd gazelle with the hero in hot pursuit, it occurred to me that she well might be more than just a pleasant memory. Ex-Lax, according to Putnam, was someone in Hollywood who knew me. Misty certainly had to be included among those who might be the Russian agent. Now I looked at the screen less with the memory of lust than with a certain trepidation. That mole, as I recalled and now confirmed, was definitely sickle-shaped! Nor did it take much imagination to see the dimple adjacent to it as a hammer!
Finally the film was over. My eardrums made noises like a shooting gallery as the plane dropped to the runway. I swallowed hard as I removed my seat-belt, and a passing stewardess sneered at my cowardice.
A few minutes later I retrieved my luggage and snared a waiting cab. We turtled onto the Freeway heading towards my hotel in Beverly Hills. The other automotive tortoises we found there were at a standstill. Night fell as we all inched forward in tortuous unison. It was pitch black by the time I arrived at my destination.
Much might be written about the particular hotel at which Putnam had elected for me to stay. Much will be written, but not right now. The hotel, and its part in my subsequent adventures, will, I assure you, be exposed in all its glory. But for now, it’s enough to skip over the details and simply report that I checked in at the front desk and was taken to my room by a bellhop.