“Me? Oh yes, why thank you, girls. Kind young women like you make my day.”
The duo blushed. “Oh, sir, anything to help.”
“You sweet, sweet girls. Thank you.”
The charge in the air was almost pornographic. I swear, if the three of them could have orgied right there on top of the McDonald’s litter and a squished Coke Zero can, they would have. A new chill came over me: Neal was one of nature’s born studs.
Didn’t see that one coming.
I evaluated this new piece of data: was it a plus or a minus for me? I decided to break the mood and yelled out the window, “Neal, load your bag into the boot, you crazed shitpig.”
He looked up and smiled.
Fiona said, “That’s your slave?”
“It is.”
“He is sitting next to me.”
Oh fuck.
I got out so Neal could slide into the middle beside my ex-wife, and we left for Heathrow.
LHR to LAX = 10 h, 55 m
06
So I’m standing at the business class check-in counter for the Los Angeles flight when I hear the words, “Mr. Gunt, I’m afraid there’s been a mix-up in ticketing.”
Reduce the temperature of my blood by twenty degrees.
“Oh?”
“I’m afraid your seat has been deleted.”
“Deleted?” Okay. I’m reasonable. Did I say that I like people? I like people who like people. “What do you mean by … deleted?”
“The physical seat itself, sir, has been removed from the plane for reconditioning.”
“So there is simply no seat there at all?”
“Oh, thank you, sir, I’m glad you understand.”
I dropped my eyes to her name tag. JENELLE. “Jenelle, is it?”
“Yes, sir.” I might add here that Jenelle is a gruesome creature, her sullen jaws most likely sore from chugging her wedding-averse boyfriend’s knob for ten long years. “What other seat shall I be seated in?”
“Let me check … you’re in 67E, Mr. Gunt.”
“67E?”
“Yes.”
“An E seat—is that an aisle?”
“No, sir. I believe an E seat on that aircraft is the second seat in a row of four.”
“Jenelle, you do understand that I am in business class.”
“Yes, Mr. Gunt.”
“Do you have a seat map here at the desk?”
“Yes, sir.” Jenelle handed me the map.
“Let me look here. Ah—67E.” I pointed to 67E, a centre seat sandwiched between two lavatories.
“It’s a full flight, sir. No other seats are available.”
Suddenly, from behind me in the coach class international check-in, there came a series of childish screams so horrifying and so loud that even the most sinister baby-hating citizen would worry about the health and sanity of the child, as well as its parents. Jenelle looked up with a smile. I stared at her. “How can you possibly be smiling?”
“Those children, sir. It’s heart-warming. They’re off to Los Angeles to undergo a new surgical procedure that could save their lives.”
I turned around and across the hall saw a telethon’s worth of … atypical-looking children. Okay, tards, actually. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them.
“Jenelle, can you tell me more about these, um, children?”
“They have Buñuel’s syndrome.”
“Oh?”
“Children with Buñuel’s syndrome have no ability to control their emotions. Unfortunately, almost everything they experience is perceived by their brain as a threat, yet the ensuing fear isn’t funnelled through the checks and barriers we normal—I’m sorry, statistically average—people use to keep a scrim between society and us. So they basically live in a state of perpetual agitation and their voices inform the world of this.”
“I see. Might they be on my flight?” I asked.
Jenelle tapped away at her keyboard. “What a coincidence, sir—the Buñuel Children for a New Start party is seated in rows 65, 66 and 67. I can only imagine how thrilled they’ll be to have someone as compassionate as you near them in what can only be a long and terrifying flight—possibly the most frightening event most of them have had to endure during their most likely short and sad little lives.”
“Yes.” Okay. “Jenelle, do you have some sort of supervisor or something?”
“That’d be Tracey, sir. Would you like me to page her?”
“Please, yes, let’s do that.”
A band of Buñuel syndromers and their minders shimmied into my business class check-in area like over-entitled cockroaches. Fucking hell, just drug the bastards and show them a Finding Nemo DVD for eleven hours or until their bug-eaten frontal cortices cause them to pass out from understimulation.