A barrel-chested man with big pecs ambled his way toward the empty seat next to me on the flight to Albuquerque, dressed in a tight-fitting T-shirt and worn jeans—purposefully casual.
Oh, no. It’s finally happening. An air marshal was about to sit next to me.
Stay cool, don’t talk, just smile.
I have this self-diagnosed, inappropriate response disorder where I start spewing out things I know I shouldn’t be saying under awkward or trying circumstances, like the time I asked an amputee in the grocery store if I could offer him a hand, or told my friend at her father’s funeral that things could be worse. That sort of thing.
He took his seat and got settled.
“Hi. Alex.” He extended his hand. I could read my Miranda Rights in his eyes. I was screwed.
“Gayle.” I shook his hand.
“Business or pleasure?” he asked.
“I’m visiting a friend to go see the Rush concert. You?”
“You like Rush?” He seemed genuinely shocked.
“Yeah. Big fan. You?”
“I used to get high all the time to Rush,” he said.
I nodded. If this guy was an air marshal, he was divulging way too much information.
“I’m on my way back from a business trip to D.C. I own my own construction company.”
“So, you’re not an air marshal?”
He laughed. “No. But even if I was, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Good point. I checked out his hands: rough, calloused, with permanent dirt under the nails. I should have known.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“I’m a writer, or at least I string words along to form sentences,” I said.
“So, you can help me out then,” he said. “Where’s the best place to meet women?”
I had the feeling he would have asked me relationship advice even if I told him I stuffed dead animals for a living.
I thought for a second. “I would say Lowe’s or Home Depot.”
“Really?”
No. What the hell would I know about today’s dating scene? My husband proposed to me by letter penned with an ink-stained quill feather sent via carrier pigeon back in the days of wick lamps and bonnets.
“Well,” I said, “it’s better than the food store, and you’re probably at Home Depot a lot anyway, right?”
“That’s a great idea,” he said. “It’s just been so hard to find the right girl, you know?”
Nope. Picking up chicks in hardware just wasn’t my thing.
He went on for the next hour to tell me that he’d been divorced for four years now, had suffered a severe bout of depression after his wife left him, lost the house he built with his own hands to foreclosure, and didn’t get to see his two daughters much because they lived with his ex-wife in Austria. And that was the happy stuff.
Thank God I left that jagged piece of glass at home.
“I figured it would be easier now to find someone, with all those social networking and dating sites,” I said.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s more numbers, but less quality,” he said. “Plus, you never know who you’re really getting—fake profiles, pictures from like 10 years ago. I’ve met some crazy-ass chicks online, man.” He proceeded to list the name and neurosis of each woman he’d dated since his divorce: Linda (psycho); Lisa (crazy); Sara (hot as hell, but not worth the trouble); Jill (still in love with her, sort of, but not dating for reasons unclear).
Bob the Builder was coming fully unhinged, and all I wanted was some morphine and a sandwich.
He pointed to my ring finger. “Let me tell you—stay married as long as you can. It’s brutal out there. And whatever you do, don’t make babies with foreigners. I mean, you can have sex with them, but just don’t have kids.”
Foreign sex, OK. Procreation, bad. Maybe it was the thin air or a case of Stockholm syndrome, but he was starting to make sense. We had to land before he began a five-alarm crying jag or proposed to the cougar-granny flight attendant.
The lights below grew closer with each passing second, our descent into ABQ finally underway.
“Well, good luck dating,” I offered. “I hope you meet someone at Lowe’s.”
“Yeah, thanks. Have a good time with your friend at the concert,” he said. “And if you meet Geddy Lee backstage, tell him I say hi.”
I’ll make sure to leave out all the dating tips.
