Write me a Letter

betook herself home or into the arms of Willing Boy. I too betook myself homeward after making a couple of calls to put off what few appointments I had scheduled for that week. The last thing I did before leaving was to tear up into shreds Sara’s cab receipt for $44.50, take out of the back of the second drawer on the right a pad of receipt vouchers from Celebrity Cabs, which I had been fortunate enough to come across in the glove compartment of a Celebrity Cab one soiree when I was minding Lew and when the driver had hopped out briefly to buy some smokes. I wrote out a new receipt for $57.50, then added ”Tip—$5.00.” There— that looked better: despite crippling pangs of guilt I managed to drive all the way home without psychiatric help.
    Social Notes from the Studio City Star (published weekly, circulation two hundred supermarkets)—”V. Daniel and Evonne Louise Shirley were glimpsed by this reporter billing and cooing in Dave’s Corner Bar the other eve.... Surely this will put paid once and for all the catty rumor that Studio City ’s most arresting (!) PI had a new enamorata... why don’cha come up and take my fingerprints sometime, you hunk, you...”
    I took Evonne home early, as I had packing to do, and the following morning would have to allow myself enough time to rub crankcase grease all over my body against the cold. I kissed her good night outside her back door; her mouth tasted slightly of rum and slightly of sparerib sauce, with a pleasant aftertaste of Evonne Shirley. I didn’t know whether to kiss her, eat her, or drink her. I’d told her of course where I was going and when and more or less why, and that I was taking along Willing Boy and Curly out of the goodness of my heart. She said don’t forget to send your mom a card and me too and try the moose stew while I was up there. I said I wouldn’t miss it for the world but that I would miss her, like I always did. It’s nice to have someone specific to miss, especially someone as specific as Evonne; before I met her I tended to sort of vaguely miss some fantasy female I didn’t even know. Functioning brain cells is really what I was missing back then.
    I wound up packing that night, as anything is better than having to choose between almost identical pairs of socks at 6:30 a.m. I had an old parka, God knows why, I threw in, also a pair of hiking boots, also a heavy woolen sweater I hadn’t worn for decades. Ear muffs I figured I could get up there, likewise a balaclava, thermal underwear, and snow goggles. Then I rubbed a modest amount of vanishing cream Evonne had left behind onto my visage, without noticing anything doing much vanishing except the cream. Then I set the alarm and went to bed.
    The kids were already at LAX waiting for me when I arrived the following morning, sharing one of the chairs in a row against the wall facing the TWA counters. Sara’s mom had given them a lift out; I’d done what I always did—drive to a certain hotel not so far away, parked for nothing in their lot, then hopped on the hotel’s free minibus shuttle. On the way I remembered to make an entry in my memo pad under ”Expenses”—”Prkng, 3 dys, $27.00.”
    ”Did you pick up the duckets?” I asked Sara after we’d exchanged our greetings.
    ”Yep.”
    ”Lost them yet?”
    ”Nope.”
    Our flight was announced about then so off we trundled, Willing Boy in his second-best leathers, Sara in some sort of trouser suit, a ratty-looking fur coat of dubious origin, either left over from her highly unlamented punk period or made from what her mother ran over on the way to the airport that morning, slung over one arm. Ah, my merry band of brothers, I thought, we’re off to the wars again.
    We spent the next five-and-a-half hours doing what grown-ups do in the sophisticated flying machines of today— sit all hunched up in kiddie chairs, drink a lot, and wish we’d stopped at Fred’s Deli for a bag lunch. Talk about the Ku Klux Klan’s or the Freemasons’ oath of allegiance—the one the airline caterers take to adamantly refuse to ever serve once one thing edible must be a killer. However, I will say that in the two most important respects the plane did what it was supposed to—it took off and then it landed again, and in the dark, too. Can you believe a big boy like me used to be terrified of flying? Now I'm just scared stiff.
    Now, I was sitting a few (empty) rows behind the kids and we were all busily pretending we didn’t know each