Angels in Heaven

enough for folks to shower, change their clothes, and finish packing. I
neither showered nor changed clothes because I wanted to go on looking like a
Globetrotter and also because I only had one change with me and I’d be needing
that later. I’d left all my luggage except for one oversized carry-on at
Jorge’s for him to air-freight up north with the hammocks. The last thing I
needed was for some custom zealot at the border to say, “Open, please, señor,”
and out tumbles my collection of FBI paraphernalia, amongst other goodies.
    I hung out in Happy’s room till we
boarded the bus again, and glued myself to Mr. Peanuts and Mr. Snowy when we
got off at the airport, which wasn’t exactly crawling with cops but it was
certainly seething with them, all armed, all jittery, all watchful. One of the
things they never tired of inspecting was the Generals, us folks they just
smiled at or waved at every time we passed, so I took back my evil thoughts re
Benny’s intentions, for the nonce.
    Then we were blessedly at thirty
thousand feet straight down again, and I was opening my first but far from last
libation and regaling the delectable Joy with amusing anecdotes from my
daredevil juvenile days when I was the possessor of the most unstoppable hook
shot in the history of American penal reform.
    There were plenty of cops about, too,
in Mexico City, where we had a long stopover, but again my crafty disguise,
coolness, and powers of mimicry foiled the boys in blue (only in their case,
gray). The only remaining danger point for me was at Monterrey, where, as it
was our last stop in Mexico, we all had to deplane, with luggage, to go through
Mexican customs and immigration. I was in line behind Happy, hoping that I
wasn’t sweating all my tan off.
    When it was my turn, the official
took a half-hearted look at my entrance permit, tossed it in a box of the same,
then asked me where the rest of my luggage was.
    I said the carry-on was all I had.
    He asked me if I had any livestock
with me.
    I said I didn’t.
    He asked me if I had any fruit,
vegetables, plants, seeds, flowers, bulbs, or dirt.
    I said I hadn’t.
    He waved me through. Through I went,
with the merest touch of a skip in my step. Onto the plane I went. Up into the
atmosphere we went. Down a lot more beer went, despite the time of
day—exceptionally early. Down, down onto the friendly tarmac at Houston we went. Toward U.S. customs and immigration we went. On the way, I ducked into a
men’s room and, with the help of a lot of cold cream, a lot of tissues and a
quick-change act, metamorphosized back into my true persona, the one and only
V. (for Victor) Daniel, white, unmarried, forty-four, and considerably grayer
of hair.
    I caught up with Joy and said
good-bye. She said she’d love to meet me sometime and get the real story out of
me, but it would have to be somewhere awful crowded, given my awful reputation.
I goggled. She giggled. I said gooid-bye to Mr. Peanuts and Mr. Snowy and
slipped Happy a two-hundred-buck tip when I shook hands with him.
    They went off to wait for the
carousel to deliver their luggage, and I went off to check up on flights
westward. Was I a different man, a changed man, mayhap, as the result of my
having been, for however short a time, not only black but visibly invisible?
Amigos, you know what foolish questions get.
    I had time for a quick breakfast
before catching a TWA flight direct to L.A., during which I slept the whole
time.
    At LAX I hopped the free shuttle bus
that went to a certain hotel’s parking lot where I’d left my car for nothing.
Ignoring the jealous glances directed at my souvenir sombrero, which I was
toting, I found my chariot, dusty but otherwise untouched, and homeward we
went, at least one of us with a song on our lips, except for the time I spent
trying to add up in my head how much the whole venture had set me back. I
stopped when I began grinding my molars.
    L.A. was hot, muggy, smoggy, ugly, dirty, and oh,
was it good to be back. Mañana I’d worry about Mom and going to work for Mel
The Swell’s old boss. Today I’d think about other matters, pleasanter matters.
Evonne. Wouldn’t she look darling in the sombrero. And we had sprung Billy,
after all, and gotten back with a whole skin, after all.
    “ ‘I took a trip on a plane, and I
thought about you,’ ” I sang as I tooled northward up the freeway.
    “ ‘A tinkling piano in the next
apartment,’ ” I sang as I cruised down the far side of the