Vanishing act

I retired early last night and slept late this morning. My room was on the lower level, below Angel and Simon. In a hotel with this much class, they should have better soundproofing between the floors. Things didn’t quiet down until early this morning. It didn’t disturb me that they were making love. It disturbed me to hear it. So of course, I didn’t listen.

To all of it.

Damn.

Too much contact with Simon could definitely warp your sense of reality. Someplace along the line I went to sleep.

For the second morning in a row, I was wakened by Angel. This time, however, she was no where near as gentle.

“Dag!” she yelled, bursting into my room. I sat up in bed fast enough to make my head swim and looked at her. It must have been something about my expression that alerted her to the fact that her robe was not tidily closed. For a moment it looked as if she didn’t care, but then she pulled it closed and tightened the belt. I could tell this was done reflexively, though as she blurted out, “Simon’s gone! I’ve looked everywhere. There is no note and he’s not here. I called the front desk and they said he left this morning after ordering breakfast to be delivered when we called.”

“He must have gone out for a walk,” I said. “It is getting a little stuffy in here after three days.”

“You don’t understand, Dag,” she sobbed. “They said he checked out and paid the bill for a late departure so we didn’t have to hurry.”

“He checked out?” I was having a hard time processing this. “And left us here?”

“Yes,” she sobbed as she sank down on the edge of my bed and buried her face in her hands. I patted her on the back, not knowing quite what the proper response should be. I was saved by the chime on the front door. “That’s breakfast,” she said. “How could he do this?”

“Well, look, you go out and let room service in while I get dressed. I’ll be out in a minute and we’ll start looking for him.” She started to protest, but it’s hard for me to get out of bed in the morning with a woman in the room. It’s not like I’m a pajamas kind of guy. “Maybe he sent a note with breakfast,” I said. Hope lit her eyes and I was truly sorry I’d said that, but she left the room to rush to the door.

I slid out of bed and cranked the shower on full and hot. After I’d shaved, I selected my traveling suit and my one clean shirt and tie. Life in a luxury penthouse was obviously drawing to a close. I went out to join Angel at the breakfast table.

She was still in her robe and sat at the table solemnly spreading butter on whole wheat toast. She hadn’t bothered with makeup yet and the creases around her eyes were deeper and sadder than I had observed yesterday. Her eyes were red and a little puffy. A tear still trickled down her cheek. I reached across with my napkin and gently dried her eye. She looked up at me directly then.

“He’s gone,” she said flatly.

“Did he leave a note?” I asked. She pointed at my plate. Under the dome covering my dish of oatmeal was a small envelope with my name on it. I somehow didn’t think it was a get well card. I opened it and read it over.

I don’t know what I was thinking, Dag. They’ll hunt me for as long as they think I can be found. I certainly can’t drag Angel through that. My only hope is to get out of town and never come back. I’ve got plenty of cash in lots of places in the world. I can buy a new identity and disappear for good. But they’d spot me again in no time if I had Angel with me. I can see the contract now: look for an ugly little man with a tall golden goddess.

When I bought the estate in Croatia, I put it in Angel’s name, so I hope she takes that boyfriend of hers and settles down there. I know she’s got plenty of money.

I called the airport and there was a guy there last night asking about me and my plane. I asked for a description and was told that he didn’t speak English too well and was the size of a pro-ball tackle. You can guess who that was. So now I’m out of here.

Good luck on getting a new heart, buddy. If anything happens to me, you know what to do. Bury the fuckers.

I handed it to Angel, but she refused.

“I already read it,” she said.

I made a quick call to the airport and discovered that Simon’s plane had taken off 40 minutes ago. They could not patch a call through no matter what I said. I’d no more than hung up when my cell phone rang and my dear ex-wife started bending my ear about finding her husband.

“I’m at the airport getting ready to fly to Atlanta,” Brenda said. “Make sure Simon is there and for her own safety, get rid of the bitch.”

“It’s too late, Brenda,” I said, almost relieved. “Simon left this morning. Did you happen to tell Bradley where he was?”

“Well, I might have mentioned it.”

“Well, there was a welcoming committee here already. Simon ran.”

“Ridiculous,” Brenda went on. “What would he have to run from? He’s much more powerful than Bradley. Find him.”

“I’m not going to go hunting for Simon again,” I said. “I’m tired and I need to go home.”

“Just track him on his tracking thing,” Brenda said. She had come a long way. She wasn’t always so technical.

“What tracking thing?” I asked.

“The one on his airplane,” she said. “You have his computer, don’t you? I can’t imagine you didn’t do this from the start. He has a tracking program on the computer that connects to the plane to keep track of it when he has sent it someplace. What kind of a computer hacker are you anyway?”

I had seen the application, but I didn’t find a way to track anything on it. I’d tried entering the call numbers of the plane, Simon’s social security number, any number of things, but it never connected to anything. I let Brenda know that it was a waste of time.

“It’s fated to die,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“Simon’s morbidity got to him a few years ago and he named the plane Fated to Die. He has it tattooed on his butt.” Way too much information.

“Okay, I’ll try it. But if I can’t make contact with him I’m coming home. In fact, I’m getting a flight back regardless. I’m through.” I told Angel that for what it was worth, I might be able to track where Simon was flying to.

“I’ll take a look at the tracking system and see if I can locate the plane, but frankly, I don’t know what good that will do. Unless we see that he’s changed his mind and is coming back, I’d suggest we get a ticket back to Seattle. He checked us out of the hotel. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll see what we can find. I’d frankly rather not be here when Brenda lands.”

Angel was subdued. Simon had left her and she was not certain that she wanted him to come back now, but she went up to their shared room nonetheless, and said that she would make flight arrangements for us. I doubted that she would be going. I sat at my computer and connected in through the VPN to Simon’s computer. The flight tracker was there, but it remained unresponsive. I entered the name Simon had given the plane and tried several different capitalization combinations. If this was even the right name, it could take forever to find the right combination. And for all I knew he might have changed the name.

I became aware of Angel standing behind me. I looked up at her and she looked puzzled at the screen. She was dressed at her elegant best and had carefully applied her makeup and used eye drops. I explained to her what I was doing.

“Brenda said the name of the plane was Fated to Die. Simon had it tattooed on his butt,” I said.

“That’s not what his tattoo says,” Angel said. “We were all pretty drunk one night up at the condo. There were only Simon and his partner and me left when Simon had an idea that we’d all go out and get tattoos. He assigned code words to each of us and we got them tattooed at about 2:00 a.m. that morning by a guy who was about as stoned as we were.”

“So what is the tattoo?” I asked.

“F8ed2d1e,” she answered and typed it in on the keyboard.

I pressed Enter and the screen changed to a world map with a comment box that said “Acquiring Data…” Inside a couple of minutes the map repositioned, and an icon of a plane appeared. It took a minute to realize that I was looking at the Eastern Seaboard map upside down and that the plane was flying generally southward. It was passing over the Florida Keys.

We watched fascinated for fifteen minutes. As the plane approached Cuba, it suddenly disappeared. The comment box returned with its message “Acquiring data…” The message was on the screen for nearly five minutes before it was replaced with “Unable to locate device.” I entered the code again, with the same two messages.

“It appears that Simon does not wish to be tracked,” I said.

We left the hotel and Angel had arranged a limousine back to the airport. I noticed she had a suitcase this time instead of her packages from Bloomingdale’s.

“Simon didn’t take any clothes with him. He dressed and took his wallet. His cell phone is even here.” She was grieving. “He didn’t really think that Davy was more important to me the he was, did he?”

“I thought that is what Davy was for,” I answered. “To make sure your clients are a little afraid?” She looked at me sharply.

“That Debbie really is your girlfriend, isn’t she,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

“You called her Debbie and lived?” I asked, avoiding the question. I still didn’t want to reveal everything to Angel. Or maybe I just didn’t want to answer the question.

We got to the airplane and were boarded in the first class section. Angel helped me into my seat and put my bag up overhead for me when I had a sudden feeling of wooziness creep over me again. The flight attendant was immediately by our seats asking if there was anything she could do or if we needed anything. We both assured her that we would be fine. She spoke to Angel as she returned to her duties and said, “If you or your dad need anything, just let me know.”

Damn.

I suddenly felt very old. The “young woman effect” had abandoned me completely.

I don’t want to sleep with every woman I meet. Don't get me wrong: I think about it. In fact, it is hard not to imagine what it would feel like to make love to a beautiful woman I’ve just met—or what my right hand would feel like when I imagine it. I just don't actually want to do it.

Being around beautiful women does something to me. Something good. Sometimes I don't even have to see the woman. I pass a place where she has recently been and suddenly catch the scent that she was wearing in the air. My eyes begin to water a little, and I realize that it isn't really because of my allergies. It's because of all the scenes of my life that it brings back. It suddenly overwhelms my heart and I feel like it will burst right there on the spot because it is so full.

Maybe it is because of all the things that I've lost or all the things that I can't have or do anymore, but I think it is different. I want them to smile, or nod at me, or even to recognize that I am there and am not disgusting. I don't want to hold them, or take them home, or even talk to them much.

No. It's what it does to my heart. When I see a beautiful woman of any age (and these days there are a lot more beautiful women than I remember when I was young) my heart moves in my chest. It's not like it races, but it seems to climb up higher in my throat. It gives me a feeling of immortality. That fractional lifting of the heart raises my spirits with it.

Regardless, as I turned to look at Angel now, the effect abandoned me. I didn’t feel immortal. I couldn’t even imagine anymore being with Peg, just last Wednesday. I only felt old.

And suddenly a little curious.

She was wearing a blouse with a plunging neckline. I’d gotten used to Angel showing a lot of cleavage over the past few days. It even amused me to see Simon stop in mid-sentence when she walked by and pick up again where he’d left off after he recovered from her presence. But when my gaze fell to that valley between her breasts this time, I noticed something different.

She looked at me curiously, but unflinchingly as I reached toward her. I lifted the gold chain from her collar bone and gave a little tug. From out of the depths of that valley rose a small, state-of-the-art thumb drive. I held it in my hand and looked into her eyes.

“Simon gave it to me yesterday,” she said. “I forgot. He said you would know what to do with it.” She lifted her hair with both hands to expose the back of her neck and I reached around to unfasten the clasp. She smiled at me as she leaned her neck into my hand. Even when her lover left her, she automatically turned subtle charm and caresses toward a man who would pay attention to her. I realized that it really wouldn’t make a difference how much money she had, she would still need to be worshipped by a man.

Damn.

It wasn’t going to be me. I congratulated myself on what little good judgment I had left, pocketed the thumb-drive, and settled back into my seat to go to sleep. Five hours later, we were getting off the plane in Seattle.

SeaTac airport is one of those that have television monitors every few feet in the departure lounges, all playing the same version of news over and over again. You get used to ignoring it. I wouldn’t have even glanced at the monitors had Angel not suddenly gripped my arm and stopped me in my tracks. She was staring at a monitor that showed a screen not unlike the tracking screen we’d looked at in Atlanta.

“Authorities are still investigating the explosion of a private jet en route from Atlanta to Jamaica in Cuban airspace,” the reporter said. “Cuban authorities have denied firing on the craft, but security levels have been raised to orange. Flight records indicate that the craft carried only the pilot, who is presumed dead.”

Angel fainted.