Romantically Challenged (10 page)

“So we can send him a gift! Christ Julia, you’ve got a lot to learn about client relations. You’d better learn quick if you want to make partner here some day.”

Actually Bruce, you can take your fucking partnership and shove it up your ass! “Fine Bruce,” was what I really said. But I did stomp out of his office.

* * *

After spending Friday evening downing margaritas with Kaitlyn, I spent Saturday afternoon downing aspirin and Coke from my living room couch. The last thing I felt like doing on Saturday night was going to a bar, but I’d promised Emily. She, Scott, and their friends Christine and Ted, were going to listen to David’s band, and she’d invited me to join them. I was pretty sure David wasn’t interested (since he’d never even asked for my phone number) and this was just Emily playing matchmaker again. But she swore he’d asked about me after the birthday party and, more importantly, she wouldn’t let me off the phone until I said yes.

I arrived at the Love Lounge ten minutes before David’s band, the Scalpels, began their fifty-minute set. I was an hour to soon. They were awful. Truly awful. David and the other guitarist sang off-key, the keyboard player’s voice kept cracking, and the drummer had no rhythm. When the band finished its set, David came out front and sat with us. This time Emily kept her word and made an early exit with Scott, dragging Christine and Ted after them.

“I guess I should be going to,” I said when it was just the two of us.

“It’s still early,” David said. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“No offense, David, but the last thing I want is another drink.” I was barely able to drink the one I’d ordered.

He paused for a moment with a quizzical look, then asked, “How about some food? Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“What about dessert?” he offered. “I know a great dessert place on Beverly. There’s always room for dessert.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

* * *

I followed David in his Mercedes to the great dessert place, but it was closed. We ended up at Norms on La Cienaga--the L.A. version of a greasy spoon diner. David studied the menu until the waitress took our order.

“So how are you feeling?” he asked after she left.

Strange question, even if he was a doctor. Wasn’t this supposed to be a date? I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “Fine. And you?”

“Good,” he said. “But I’ve never had food poisoning.”

I was too startled to respond.

After a few seconds of silence he said, “That was you a few weeks ago, wasn’t it?”

There was no point in lying. He knew my name. All he’d have to do is look up my chart. I admitted it was and he admitted that he didn’t make the connection until tonight.

“It was something about the way you looked when you were sipping your drink.”

“Like I was about to throw up?”

“Yes,” he said and laughed.

I explained about my hang-over and he offered to track down our waitress to switch my order from coffee and apple pie a la mode to ginger-ale and toast. Then things got easier. David told me about his job and his ex-wife, and I told him about Rosenthal and my new case.

“No ex-husbands?” he asked.

“Just ex-boyfriends.”

“Anybody serious?”

“There was one. We broke up about a year ago.”

His mouth was filled with strawberry shortcake, but he motioned with his fork for me to continue.

“It’s that old Hollywood story. He was a screenwriter who was gonna make it big someday and I was young and stupid and completely in love.”

He gulped down his cake and said, “Should I get out my violin?”

Sarcasm. I liked that. “I’ll give you the short version. I met him when I was still in law school. After I graduated, we started living together. A year later he quit his job and I supported him so he could write full-time. Two years later he got his big break. His career took off and so did his ego. Then one day I flew back early from a business trip and found him in bed with someone else.”

“That hurts.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. I learned my lesson. No more wannabes.”

“Well you don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “My band is just a hobby. I seem to have a lot of them now that I’m single again.”

Maybe that’s what my life was missing—a hobby. Did shopping count?

David spent the next half hour telling me about his newest passion, flying planes. He’d only been taking lessons for six months, but he was just four flight hours away from being instrument-rated.

“Maybe you could come with me sometime,” he said. “You’re not afraid of small planes are you?”

“No.” I’d flown on commuter planes before.

“Good, I’ll set something up.”

Flying Lessons

David called two days later and asked if I wanted to go flying with him the following Saturday. He suggested we wing up the coast and have dinner somewhere, then fly back the same evening. How romantic! A flight to Santa Barbara just to have a meal at a fabulous restaurant on the water, followed by a moonlit walk on the beach. Of course I said yes.

* * *

After a half hour consultation with Kaitlyn Saturday morning, we decided I should wear my black linen sheath dress and black sandals with a pink cashmere wrap both for style (according to Kaitlyn, it looked chic) and practicality (in case I got cold).

Four hours later David arrived at my door wearing khaki shorts and a blue T-shirt. I told him to give me a minute to change. After switching to tan pants, a white tank top, and a denim shirt, I returned to the living room and found Elmo lying face down on the floor where David must’ve tossed him, and David sitting in Elmo’s spot on the couch. He was reading my old copy of
Modern Woman
.

“I didn’t know there were ten million more single women over thirty-five then men,” he said.

I’d have to remember to throw that magazine away.

* * *

When we arrived at the Santa Monica Airport, David went into the rental office to fill out paperwork and I walked around to the back of the building where the planes were parked. They were mostly four-, six- and eight-seaters. The largest of them was still considerably smaller than even the smallest commuter jet I’d flow on. Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all.

Ten minutes later David escorted me to the tiniest plane I’d ever seen—a two-seater Cessna. I didn’t even know they made planes that small. David opened the passenger door and helped me climb in. I must’ve looked as scared as I felt.

“Don’t worry, it’s completely safe.”

I just nodded. Be brave.

David sat in the pilot’s seat and started checking instruments. When we were taxiing down the runway and David still hadn’t mentioned where we were going, I finally asked.

“San Luis Obispo.”

The name sounded familiar, but I had no idea where it was. “Is that near Santa Barbara?”

“About 30 miles north.”

I’d never heard of any five star restaurants on the water in San Luis Obispo. Then I remembered why it sounded familiar. “Don’t they have a prison up there?”

“According to my guide,” David said, “the San Luis Obispo Airport is only a few blocks from the ocean. I figured we could fly up and watch the sunset, and then grab some dinner.”

This still might work. Wrong city, but otherwise we were on the same page.

David calculated that it would take us two and a half hours to reach San Luis Obispo. It took over three. By the time we landed, the sun had already set. We walked the few blocks to the beach, but with the sun down, the air had turned cold and the sky was completely dark. No moon, no stars, no romance.

We left the beach and walked around the neighborhood looking for a place to eat. The choice for dinner was easy. There was only one restaurant.

We had the best table available at Mama’s Fish & Chips – Formica with a view of the kitchen. The waitress set our places with plastic cups and utensils and I added napkins from the metal dispenser. This definitely was not the fine dining experience I’d imagined. I don’t even think it was the restaurant David had envisioned. But it was warm and open, and we were cold and hungry. At least until I saw the roach crawling on the wall above our table. After that, I just drank the iced tea.

* * *

The first hour of the flight back to L.A. was wonderful. The moon and stars were shining and we could see the coastline below. David even let me fly the plane for a few minutes.

The second hour I spent wishing for a bathroom.

We were just entering the third hour when David told me we were passing Malibu. I looked out the window and searched for the lights from the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier. All I saw was black. Then the moon came out from behind the clouds and all I saw was white. David picked up the radio and contacted the Santa Monica Airport control tower. The air traffic controller confirmed that the airport was completely fogged in.

I looked over at David. “So what does that mean?”

He looked at me with his killer smile. “That means if we want to land, then we have to find another airport.”

“Are you serious?” He couldn’t be.

“Oh, yes.”

He was still smiling. Why was he still smiling? I had two choices. I could either completely lose it, which would probably increase our chances of crashing. Or I could remain calm, or at least pretend to remain calm, which might increase our chances of landing safely. I chose calm.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“You can find us a new airport.”

I decided he wasn’t being sarcastic. “How do I do that?”

“Reach behind you and pull out the loose-leaf binder.”

I pulled a three-inch notebook out from behind my seat. “What is this?”

“It’s the airplane version of the Thomas Guide.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Just flip through it and see if you can find us another airport.”

I started turning loose-leaf pages looking for names I recognized. “How about Ontario?” An inland airport was probably less likely to be fogged in.

“Too far,” he said. “We only have an hour’s worth of fuel.”

A chill rippled through my body. Calm, calm, calm, I intoned and flipped more pages. “How about Burbank Airport?”

David contacted the control tower and asked for the weather conditions at Burbank Airport. Silence. More silence. Damn you, radio, say something! When it finally spoke, it told us that Burbank was also fogged in.

I felt my denim shirt sticking to my underarms. Calm, calm, calm, I whispered to myself as I flipped more pages. “Van Nuys Airport?” I asked without confidence.

David contacted the control tower again. More silence. When the air traffic controller finally came back on he said, “Van Nuys has partly cloudy skies. You might be able to make it. What are your coordinates?” David told the controller our location and they plotted our course. The last thing the controller said to David before signing off was, “Watch out for those mountains on your left.”

I looked at David. “Is he serious?”

“Oh, yes.”

I looked out the window to my left. I didn’t see any mountains. All I could see was black. I looked at David again. He was still smiling. Why the hell was he still smiling? Didn’t he know we could actually crash and die? Calm, calm, calm wasn’t working any more. Now it was pray, pray, pray.

I looked out into the darkness and wondered how long it would take them to find our bodies. It was too bad no one I knew still spoke to Scumbag. He was the only one I’d told that I wanted to be buried in a mausoleum. Less bugs. 

Why wasn’t my life passing before my eyes like it was supposed to? All I could think about was what everyone else would think when they find out how I’d died. I was sure Scumbag would think it served me right for going out with someone else—even though he was the one who left me. Emily would probably feel guilty since she set David and I up. My parents, or at least my mother, would probably be happy that at least I died while on a date, and with a Jewish doctor no less. Everyone else would just think I was a complete idiot for going up in a two-seater plane with a guy I hardly knew who wasn’t even instrument rated.

As we crested over the hill, we flew out of the fog and I saw the mountains off to our left. That controller wasn’t kidding. Those mountains really were close. But that could be a good thing. This way, when we crashed, we wouldn’t have far to drop and we might actually survive the impact. Then it would be just like that old TV movie I saw where the couple survived the plane crash and lived for seventy-eight days in the wilderness by eating snow and toothpaste.

As we flew past the mountains, I noticed all the trees and shrubs covering the landscape. That was even better. They would really cushion our fall. Then all the foliage disappeared and we were following the path of red and white lights from the traffic on the freeway below.

“Is that the airport?” I asked, pointing to a long row of white lights off to our right.

“It looks like it,” David said and veered off in that direction.

The plane had started to descend when the controller’s voice boomed from the radio, “Alpha charlie four nine three zero, come in alpha charlie four nine three zero.”

David picked up the handset and acknowledged.

“It looks like you’re headed towards Whiteman Airport. You’re not cleared to land at Whiteman Airport. Repeat, you are not cleared to land at Whiteman Airport.”

There was an incredibly loud roar above us and a few seconds later a jet five times bigger than our prop plane dropped down in front of us. My heart nearly stopped. I looked over at David. He had finally stopped smiling.

He picked up the radio and told the controller he acknowledged, but that we were low on fuel. The controller told him he would check with the airport to see if we could be cleared for an emergency landing. While we were waiting, the runway lights disappeared.

“David, what happened to the runway?”

We both looked down at the blanket of white below us. “Fog,” he said. David picked up the radio again and told the controller we had no choice but to try to make it to Van Nuys Airport. The controller gave David the coordinates and wished us good luck.