back to Tal.
“See you in a couple of weeks.” He punched the old man on the shoulder.
The old man nodded. Which is how I learned how long we’d be in Vietnam. Tal turned to me and grinned. “Good to meet you, kid.”
I nodded. “Yeah, same. You’re the first good son of a bitch I ever met.”
He grinned but only for a couple of seconds, then he looked at me all serious. “You’re wrong about that, kid. You’re travelling with one.”
I shrugged and moved away to get in the taxi. I watched Tal and the old man talking to each other, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Handshake. Nods. The old man went around to the other side of the car and climbed in.
“Airport,” he said and looked out the side window. Away from me. And away from Tal. He didn’t see Tal wave to us as the taxi rolled out. I did and nodded in Tal’s direction.
If our time with Tal Ledbetter was an indication of what the summer was going to be like, I was looking forward to it even less. Nothing wrong with the guy really, just strange. The kind of guy you could spend a day with and at the end of it, you’d think, what was that all about?
I sat in the unpleasant silence of that taxi, hoping my summer would get better but without a whole lot of confidence about it.
9
My first big international flight experience wasn’t all that memorable. I’m trying not to say boring. First came the airport in Minneapolis, where we had to spend an extra hour and a half because the flight to Los Angeles was late. The old man was going nuts because he figured we’d miss our connection. I couldn’t really have cared less. After an hour of sitting and watching planes take off and land, I just wanted to be somewhere other than in that airport.
I bought a book of Sudoku puzzles. Part of the Asian theme. Yeah, right. I didn’t even think of that until the old man pointed it out. When he said it, I just shrugged. Didn’t have an answer.
I’d never worked a Sudoku puzzle in my life, but by the time we got out of Minneapolis, I was pretty good. Could knock off the easy ones pretty fast. I figured I’d try some of the tougher ones in the next airport. LAX. Los Angeles.
I watched Talladega Nights on the plane. Like, don’t they have any recent movies on here? Once he figured out we were still okay for our next flight, which was Los Angeles to Tokyo, the old man relaxed. In fact he slept pretty much the whole flight. If I’d known just how stupid Talladega Nights was, I would’ve done the same thing, although that would have meant missing out on the free beverage and “Cookies or Bits and Bites?” The old man was right about the food. The second time the flight attendant went through, I asked if it would like totally blow the budget if I had one of each. Apparently, the woman attendant somehow became deaf at that exact moment, because she dropped a Bits and Bites on my tray and moved on to the next row.
I’d never been to Los Angeles, and except for the inside of the airport, I still haven’t. We had to hurry to get from our gate to the one for the Tokyo flight, which was in a different terminal. No time for Sudoku. Oh, damn. I could see tall buildings through some of the windows, and it seemed like everywhere there were these big-screen videos of amazing looking hotels. I told myself this would be a good place to bring Jen Wertz on our honeymoon. That’s if she didn’t fall in love with someone else while I was blowing off the whole freaking summer going to places I never wanted to see.
The second leg of the flight was long. That’s all — long. Ten hours long. By the end of it, I had memorized every hair on the head of this chick who was in the aisle seat one row ahead of us. It wasn’t like she was amazingly hot. It was just that after another movie, a couple of thousand games of Sudoku, and part of one of the old man’s paperbacks, memorizing someone’s hair made sense to me.
Actually, the movie was pretty good — Body of Lies, which was directed by one of my favourite Hollywood directors, Ridley Scott. I guess I know a lot about movies. You have a mom who works a fair amount, you watch more than your share of movies. Anyway, this one was decent. A couple of years old, but at least it was from this decade. Leonardo DiCaprio, the middle east, spies, some pretty good action scenes.
The paperback wasn’t that bad either. The weird part was it was about this guy taking a train across America. Long trip. Like us — travellers. Except the book all happened around Christmas. The author was this guy named Baldacci..
So okay, good movie, good book, chick with okay hair just a few seats away … why wasn’t I having a blast? If that book, that movie, and the chick with the hair had come into my life anywhere but there, and anytime but then, and if I’d been with anybody but the old man, it would all have been good.
And that’s it — the highlights of my big journey. Enough said.
Except for Tokyo. I’ll tell you about that part. We got in there just after noon. The weird part was we left Los Angeles on a Thursday and it was now Saturday. An entire day of my life had disappeared.
The old man seemed to think that it was really important that we make up for the lost day. At least that’s what I figured he was thinking because suddenly he was in this big frenzy.
We had a four and a half hour layover, and he said if we hurried we could make it into downtown Tokyo and back in time for the next flight. All so I could “get a feel for the place.”
I wasn’t real nuts about getting into another mode of transportation even if it didn’t ever leave the ground. I was thinking more that a couple of burgers and fries, maybe some poutine, and about a pail of Dr Pepper might actually fix me up. But no, there I was running through the airport, dodging people with luggage carts packed higher than the people pushing them.
I didn’t bother to tell the old man I could probably live out the rest of my life without having a feel for Tokyo, but I wouldn’t have been able to say anything even if I’d wanted to, because I had to run hard to keep up with him as he dashed for the taxi place. I’ll say one thing for him — he could run pretty good for a guy his age. What pissed me off was when we’d finished a death-defying dive into the back seat of a taxi that for some reason was already moving, I was breathing hard and he wasn’t. Just sitting there grinning at me. I knew what he was thinking …
Now this is a buddy movie.
I was thinking there’s a pretty good chance I might hurl right here in this taxi. I hadn’t eaten any real food in about eight hours — just chocolate bars and pop and the always tasty Bits and Bites. After the sprint through the airport, my stomach seemed to think puking was a pretty good idea. I took some deep breaths through my nose and after a minute or so, I felt more or less okay.
I don’t remember a lot about Tokyo. What I do remember is that we spent most of the time driving. The old man decided we needed to see the Tokyo Tower, which is supposed to be patterned after the Eiffel Tower in Paris except the Tokyo one is a little taller. There are a couple of observation areas, and one is really high up, so you get this really awesome 360 degree view of Tokyo.
Good idea, right?
Well, it might have been if it wasn’t eighty-five minutes travel time in each direction. A guy directing people to the cabs told us that in perfect English. “Eighty-five minutes,” he said. “Less on Sunday, more during the week.”
We’d no sooner got into the taxi than the old man started to worry about whether we’d make it back in time for the flight to Saigon.
Sweet.
