Chapter 12

Hairy

We landed safely in Denver, Stapleton airport. I found a free locker ... not that the locker was free ... it cost a quarter for the day ... but it was empty and there was enough room for the duffle.

The duffle wasn’t a modern duffle ... room enough for a towel, flip-flops, shorts and a tee shirt. No. This was a seaman’s duffle ... enough room for the world and three teenage girls. Two million in straps of 100’s weighs pretty close to 44 pounds. Oddly enough ... used bills weigh more than new ones. They pick up moisture and dirt in the handling.

Fifties would be twice that ... or 88 pounds ... IF they were all new bills. I didn’t want new and consecutive. I’d asked the bank for a mix and that’s what I got. I imagine I got what I asked for since I had a few more on deposit. Since I was carrying a mix of bundles ... Straps ... the duffle weighed as much as an 18 year old airhead ... about a hundred and five pounds.

Not something I wanted to tote around an airport like Stapleton.

Blonde on my arm? Walking alongside looking beautiful?

Oh yes.

Constantly rubbing a braless breast against my arm? Definitely!

A duffle full of money?

Hence ... the locker.

You can not possibly imagine how much trouble one can cause by enquiring where one could fly to ... today. People don’t fly like a road trip.

Pick up any phone and call an airport. Or better yet ... step up to a ticket counter.

“Do you have a reservation?”

“No.”

“What destination?”

“I don’t know. Suggest something.”

Perhaps you have found the one ticket person who is having a great day and is willing to play your game.

Not likely.

You will get the ticket person who has just spent the past 30 minutes with the vacationing couple with ten unruly children and the kids keep trying to sneak through the luggage hole.

I had a miracle. Not only was she passably pretty, she had a brain ... and was quite bored.

“Suggest something?”

“Yes. Price is no object.”

“Well, if you don’t mind flying to New York. You could connect to all manner of places; Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, London ... even Tokyo.”

“No passport.”

“Ah ... Canada, the United States and its possessions. Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa or the Northern Mariana Islands.”

“All that?”

“Oh yes,” she said, wistfully.

“You sound like you would like to go,” I said.

“Working for the airlines, I can,” she said. “But, it’s hard to arrange, and the off-season is pretty much it. Besides ... it’s not the going ... it’s the being there. If one has to count seconds, why bother.”

She handed me a route brochure, and suggested I find a seat and study a bit.

So ... I did.

I was deep into a funk when a shoe gently kicked my shin. I looked up.

“Buy me a drink, sailor?”

“What?” And then I recognized her ... the attendant from the ticket desk; in tight jeans and a silk blouse.

“I said, ‘Buy me a drink, sailor.’ I’m off until Saturday. Unless you’d rather your own company.”

<Do it, do it, do it.> said my brain ... or so I thought.

<You did NOT think that.> they said.