Chapter 2

“Who said you’d need money?” Damn that smile. “I got this. I need someone to go and help me document all of this, so, don’t worry about money, that’s the one thing that I do have an abundance of for this trip. It’s just a question of whether your ‘Miss’ will let you go.” I could see he was poking at my manhood there. Nice try, I thought.

So after dinner we sat for a couple of hours, drinking, him some ale and me some schnapps, and talking about the good things to come. He did have this planned out, had his research done on how to maximize the days, the best companies for each of the excursions, what airlines to take ... everything. All he needed, he said, was for me to give him the go-ahead.

“Hey,” I said with a bit of a southern drawl, which came out when I had been drinking, “you had me at ‘Who said you’d need money’, pal.” I took another slug. I was a good drinker with plenty of practice.

“Good!” He picked up the phone and I swear to all that’s holy it was a rotary dial phone, and he started dialing it. As he finished and saw my astonished look, he pointed to a device on the wall near the phone jack. Ah, I thought, a pulse-to-tone converter. Cute.

He apparently had called a travel agent because he started rattling off flight numbers and connections and other stuff from a piece of paper he was holding. A couple of minutes later he was off the phone.

“I could have emailed her, but, I’d rather she have to write the stuff down, earn that commission. Besides that, she’s hot as balls and has a damn sexy voice.”

“So, when do we leave?”

“Tomorrow. Our flight, #444, leaves Harrisburg International at 9:30, so it’ll be an early day for us.”

I looked at him for a moment. “Hey Rich, if you want some fun, why don’t we go rafting in the Poconos? I did that several years ago and it was fun.”

He chuckled. “I see what you did there; that’s what I need you around for, pal. No, I’m not looking for fun. I’m looking for scare-the-living-shit-outta-ya type stuff.”

I downed the rest of my drink and poured another. Arizona, here we come, I thought to myself and also thought that I was gonna need a lot more liquor before this adventure was over.

I’d been to Sky Harbor International several times, so I was semi-familiar with where we needed to go. I definitely knew how to get out of the airport and not loop around a second time as I’d done before. Rich was a little loopy getting off the plane, but by the time we’d retrieved our luggage and got the rental, he was good to go.

In a couple of miles, we were on the 17, heading north. He’d rented a big Hummer for the trip. Not sure why we needed one major Earth-fucker but hey, his dime, I just drove. It was normally a four-hour drive with traffic, but he said he wanted to stop in Sedona, about halfway there.

“What’s in Sedona?” I inquired, keeping my eyes on the road as I got used to driving an 8,000-pound eco-terror.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him looking at me, a little smile forming.

“The Chapel of the Holy Cross.”

I let that one sit out there for a moment.

He wasn’t adding to it so I took the bait.

“You Roman Catholic?”

“Nope.”

“You meeting someone there?”

“Maybe, if we’re lucky, but I have no one lined up if that’s what you mean.”

He was toying with me.

“Okay, so why the interest in the Chapel?”

“How about you drive and once you get us there, you’ll see?” And with that, he laughed a bit at my expression and turned on a classic rock station on the satellite radio. I laughed too, good times, good times.

Arizona is pretty amazing to drive through when you spend all of your life living east of the Mississippi. Most impressive is the saguaro, a tree-like cactus that gets enormous, up to seventy feet tall.

“They are iconic of the desert southwest,” said Rich, giving me a history lesson as we cruised up the highway, “and ya’ never want to harm one because that’s a class four felony.”

“Appreciate the info there, Mr. Wikipedia. I’ll try and keep that in mind if I have to swerve off the road later on.” I could dish it out too. He chuckled.