Chapter 65: Off To The Bahamas

Tuesday, April 6, 1982

We spent the next day unpacking and repacking our bags for the coming vacation. We just tossed our dry cleaning from the weekend into a pile in the corner of the bedroom. That was just my suit and Marilyn’s dress from the baptism. We had several suitcases and a hanging bag. I teased Marilyn about cutting down on luggage by eliminating all her underwear.

Marilyn grinned at me. “I think you have ulterior motives!”

I gave her my most innocent look. “Marilyn, how can you think that of me? I just worry about taking all that luggage with us.”

“So, it has nothing to do with wanting to see me running around without my bra or panties on.”

I held my left hand up, with the middle three fingers extended and the thumb and pinky folded over. “Scout’s Honor!”

She gave me a double take at that. “I thought you did that with your right hand.”

“Oh, well I guess it doesn’t apply then.”

“Did you want to help me pick out my clothing?” she said teasingly.

“What an excellent idea!”

We spent the rest of the evening going through some of her outfits. She would try one on, I would comment on it, and then she would take it off and I would have my way with her! It took us a long time to sort through her closet and dresser, but it was sure worth it! I bet Victoria’s Secret could really boost sales if the models boffed the customers!

Monday, we packed and rested. Marilyn spent some time taking a bubble bath, and then afterwards invited me upstairs to help her shave. That kept us both occupied the rest of the afternoon. By God, that pussy was clean enough to eat off, which I did! By dinner time, the refrigerator was empty, and we ended up going out for Chinese.

We got up at 8:00 the next morning, ate breakfast (bagels and juice), cleaned up, and finished packing. We left the town house about an hour later, and drove to the airport in my car, and not Marilyn’s little clown car. One of these days Chrysler would invent the minivan and I could buy her a “Mom bomb” I could fit into. We were figuring that if we could get to the airport by 10:00, we’d be in good shape. According to the map, the Bahamas were about 1,000 miles away, and the Learjet was supposed to cruise at about 500 miles an hour or so, so we should get there around lunchtime.

I drove up to the terminal and around to the charter area, where we saw a small jet sitting on the tarmac near the building. “Is that it?” asked Marilyn, wide-eyed.

It looked tiny, at least compared to an airliner, but I could see the distinctive wing tanks of the first generation Learjets. “I told you, honey, stick with me.”

Marilyn turned to me and laughed. “You’ve told me a lot of things over the years!”

I smiled at her. “And the check was in the mail, wasn’t it?”

“What else?”

“I would love you in the morning, right? I did!”

“And what else?”

I gave my wife a big shit eating grin. “And I wouldn’t cum in your mouth!”

“That’s the one! Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

We both laughed at that, and then I parked the car. I popped the trunk. Marilyn grabbed her purse and climbed out. She was wearing a new sundress, halter topped and mid-thigh length, along with a pair of medium heeled sandals. It was warm enough that we didn’t need coats or jackets, at least if we stayed in the sunlight, and by the afternoon it would probably be very pleasant. I suspected it would be even more pleasant a thousand miles south. I grabbed our bags and pulled them from the trunk. We had three suitcases and a hanging bag, and Marilyn stood there smiling expectantly. At least I got her to carry my cane.

A pilot came out of the terminal and headed over to me. “Mister Buckman?”

I dropped the suitcases. “That’s me!”

“Okay, excellent! I’ll be your pilot. I’m Jim Johnson.” He was in his mid-thirties. Lloyd had said he was ex-Air Force. I suspected that he was a flyboy who had gotten to the point in his career where he was spending more time flying a desk and less time flying a fast jet, and it wasn’t fun anymore. It was time to get out and either fly 747s for Continental as a junior pilot or fly fast and nimble little private jets for a charter company. I bet Jim had chosen option two.

I stuck my hand out. “Carl Buckman, and this is my wife, Marilyn.”

He turned to her and shook Marilyn’s hand. “Pleased to meet you. Just checking, but you’re going to Eleuthera in the Bahamas, right?”

Marilyn looked confused and turned to me. “I thought you said this was in a place called Governors Harbor?”

“That’s the airport on Eleuthera,” I answered, and she looked relieved. To Johnson, I said, “Yes, that’s right.”

“Just checking. I’d hate to get there and find you wanted to go skiing in Canada or something,” he said with a smile.

I laughed. “Has that ever happened?”

He rolled his eyes. “Not to me, but it happened to a friend of mine.”

“Well, you got it right this time.”

“Then let me give you a hand with that. Do you have your passports handy?”

Marilyn immediately began pawing through her handbag, but I simply reached into my back pocket and pulled them out. We had Marilyn’s, from when she had changed her name after we got married, and my new blue one, from when I had surrendered my red military version to get my new civilian model. “How does that work, anyway?” I asked.

“A Bahamian customs officer will be at the airport. You have to stay on the plane until he clears you.”

Okay, that made sense. But later? “What happens when we fly home? Are there customs officers in Utica?” That just didn’t sound right. There couldn’t be customs people at every Podunk airport in America.

He shook his head. “No. For one thing, we’ll need to tank up on the way back. We can’t make it there in one hop. So, we’ll fly to someplace in between with customs officers, and then go through customs. Once we’re inside the US, we can refuel and fly where we want to go without problems. At that point it becomes an internal flight, and nobody cares.”

“So, we fly to Miami and go through customs there.”

“Probably north of there. I’m thinking Charlotte. “It’s big enough to have a customs office but not too big to get lost in the shuffle, and it’s about halfway to Utica. Why in the world do you want to fly to Utica, anyway?”

“Our baby is staying with Marilyn’s family. Otherwise, I’m with you!” Marilyn stuck her tongue out at both of us, which simply made me laugh.

Jim simply smiled and grabbed a couple of the suitcases. I followed him over to the jet and passed him the bags as he loaded them into the jet. Afterwards, we stepped back, and Johnson allowed us to climb up the stairs into the plane. As a gentleman, I allowed Marilyn to go first. The fact that I liked watching her legs as she climbed up the stairs ahead of me was simply coincidental!

And it got me to thinking.

I stood there hunched over (it had a surprisingly low ceiling, between four and five feet high) in the front of the cabin looking around as the pilot climbed on board. He was followed on board by a good-looking blonde who was wearing what looked like a stewardess outfit. I looked at her curiously. “These little babies need a stewardess?”

“Flight attendant!” she answered with a smile. “No, not really. I’m Jim’s wife. I occasionally fly with him.”

“Hi. Carl and Marilyn Buckman.”

“Samantha Johnson. Let’s get you buckled in and airborne. Once we’re at altitude, we have a bottle of champagne courtesy of your travel agent.”

“Well, that’s nice. I’m sure I’m paying for it somehow, but it’s still nice,” I replied with a smile. Then I glanced back to where Marilyn was sitting. There were six seats on the jet, three rows of two seats. Marilyn was sitting in the first row, with her legs crossed and showing a lot of very nice thigh. I turned back to Samantha and lowered my voice. “Let me ask you, where do you sit during the flight?”

Samantha looked past me towards Marilyn, and then gave me a small smile. “I think I can ride up front with Jim. We have a partition door between the cabin and the cockpit.”

I returned the smile. “That would be very nice.” I turned and moved into the cabin. Marilyn was sitting on the right side of the jet and looking out the window. I sat down in the seat across the aisle from her.

Marilyn turned to me and said, “I can’t believe this!”

“I have to admit, it definitely beats the last airline I flew routinely.”

“Hmm?”

“You know, me and a hundred of my closest friends, and we didn’t even have to worry about whether we were going to crash when we landed! We weren’t going to be on board then!”

“Yeah, but I bet you didn’t have seats this comfortable.”

“And we didn’t have a flight attendant serving champagne, either.”

“Champagne! It’s the middle of the morning!”

“It must be five o’clock somewhere. If you don’t want any...”

Marilyn interrupted me. “I didn’t say that!”

At that point Jim Johnson came out of the cockpit and headed to the door, and pulled the folding stairs up into the plane, and then pulled the top portion of the door down and closed us up. “Let’s buckle up, folks.”

He went back into the cockpit and Samantha came back to do the flight attendant bit. “Do I need to tell you how to buckle your seat belts?”

“I think we have it covered.”

Just then a whine started from outside as the engines began starting up. Samantha moved into a fold-down jump seat next to the cockpit door. I looked over at Marilyn. “In the event of an emergency, do you know the proper crash position?”

“What?”

“You bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass good-bye!”

“Shut up! You can’t say things like that on an airplane.”

I laughed at her. “What? I’m going to upset all the other passengers?” That simply got me a raspberry.

I faced forward and considered my seat. The seats on this bird were luxurious leather, big, wide, and soft. They must have been made from a very happy cow. The cabin wasn’t all that big, but it still beat the back end of a 727, with a screaming four-year-old on one side and a sweaty overweight Shriner on the other side, coming off a hangover and reaching for an airsick bag.

Of course, not all 727s are like that. In my first go-around I had flown private jets several times. Most of the times were with various trailer suppliers, but back before that, I had been with ITT for a time and had flown a few times on one of their corporate jets. This was back when ITT was one of the largest conglomerates and had a fleet of jets. Their pride and joy was a 727 rigged up as a corporate jet. Leaving aside the super-plush seats and ample legroom, it had meeting rooms and a bedroom. On entering the plane, we were greeted by a steward who told us that as soon as we got to altitude he would take our drink orders and ask how we wanted our steaks cooked. It was a bunch of us flying back from Seattle to New York on a red-eye, and they got into a high stakes poker game in the back. We had been scabbing in a pulp mill on strike, living in the mill, and making about three times our normal pay with nowhere to spend it. There were thousands riding on that table, which is way more than I felt comfortable with.

At the time I was working in a lab in New Jersey and got tapped to work on the West Coast for three months in an emergency. While out there, separated from family and friends, we all went native. I grew my hair out to my shoulders, and for the first time grew a full beard. Once a month they would fly us home to see our families after working eighty-four-hour weeks. When I went over to the lab to check my mail, people stared at me and moved away from the hairy mountain man moving down the hallway. Of course, the best moment was that first time I flew home and got into the apartment after Marilyn had left for work. I was beat and climbed into bed and went to sleep. That afternoon I woke up to my wife screaming in the bedroom. She didn’t know I was coming home and didn’t know who the hairy bearded guy sleeping in her bed was! Of course, about ten seconds after she figured out who I was, she was in the bed with me. It had been a long cycle on the West Coast.

Anyway, that 727 set the gold standard for corporate jets, that, and the Playboy DC-9 that Hugh Hefner owned briefly. This bird wasn’t that fancy, but she was pretty nice, and she apparently could haul ass. Once we taxied to the runway, Jim Johnson put the pedal to the metal, and I found myself pushed heavily back into the seat. It didn’t seem like very long before he rotated off the runway and started climbing like a raped ape at a crazy angle. I looked over at my wife and found her looking at me with a mixture of disbelief and awe. I just grinned back.

It was well under ten minutes before we were at cruising altitude and leveled off. At that time, Samantha unbuckled from her jump seat and got to her feet. She popped open a hidden cabinet and pulled out a pair of champagne flutes. These she handed to us, and then she opened a different cabinet to reveal a hidden wine cooler. Inside was a bottle of Dom Perignon. She pulled this out and popped the cork carefully, and then poured some into our flutes. Then Samantha set the bottle into a holder built into the wall of the cabin in front of me. “I’m going forward now. I’ll let you know when we’re about ten minutes out from Eleuthera.” Then she headed towards the cockpit, and a minute later a full partition slid shut closing off the cockpit.