Security was everywhere, of course.  We had to stand in line to stand in line…to stand in line.  From ticketing, to baggage check, to security, to customs, to the departure gate it was an endless spiral of slow shuffling travelers who all knew the drill but were tired of it any way.  And that was just to get out to the boarding area.  All the while being pursued by green clad flight attendants wearing both significant make-up and generous helpings of perfume.

            In looking around the plane once I got seated, it was hard to figure out who was heading home, who was heading out, and who was already on vacation.  What was not hard to identify were the ones who treated the flight as the beginning of a long drinking session which would be finalized at some distant hour a few days ahead of this one.  In particular, a group of young men in track suits sitting four across in the back row of coach were already well on their way to their next hangovers.

            "I’ll have a fookin drink if I want, it’s my liver, innit?" One rowdy youth shouted out, a line from some inside joke that made his mates laugh uproariously.

            "Too right, mate," said another, prompting more gales of laughter.  Maybe they were quoting some TV show I wasn’t familiar with.

            An officious looking bottle-blond in a Kelly green uniform at least a half-size too small around the waist, and easily a full size too small across the chest, bustled past me and halted in front of the group of drunken passengers.  "Now lads," she said, "We’ll have no trouble from you today, will we?"  Her tone would have set any group of rowdy Americans on a hell-bent course to cause as much trouble as possible, so I was naturally suspicious of the docile air that settled over the boys.  One of the lot looked like he was about to speak up, but the flight attendant took a half-step forward and the youth settled back into his seat.  He half muttered something that sounded like "Yes, Sister,"  and that was enough to appease the well-padded woman, who was content to glance back over her shoulder with a meaningful glare as she walked back toward the front of the plane.  Surprisingly, the boys stayed silent after she left.

            As she moved past me, a solid whiff of faux Chanel No. 5 followed in her wake, like the cloud that followed Pigpen around in the old Peanuts comic strip.  I was reminded of my days travelling in airplanes decades ago, when smoking was legal in the air.  After a long flight, especially a transatlantic one filled with Europeans, my clothes and hair would smell like smoke for days.  Would I land in Dublin smelling like a cheap knock off of an expensive perfume?  I mentioned this to G, my travelling companion, and was unsurprised by his response.

            "How do you know," he asked, leaning back in his seat in direct contravention of the just finished announcement that all seatbacks and tray tables should be upright and locked, "That you don’t already smell like cheap cologne?"

            It was shaping up to be a very long flight.

            I suppose I should explain the presence of my friend G with me on a flight to Dublin.  After all, he didn’t have any money, wasn’t going to be working there like I was, and had a self-professed hatred of damp and watery locales.  He was travelling on a free companion ticket, which I had reluctantly used up many frequent flyer miles to acquire, and he tended to rub a lot of people the wrong way, as evidenced by us being detained in security after he made several pointed attempts to conceal something in his hat.  Oddly, it had been my luggage that had been torn apart by irritable TSA agents, not his.  He was with me because I had learned the hard way that leaving him behind tended to be more of a hardship than taking him along on a trip he had set his heart on.  Urgent late night calls to foreign hotel rooms where time zone differences were conveniently forgotten about (yet, oddly, it was never 3am on his side of the call), strangers knocking the door because somehow he’d convinced a kind front-desk clerk that I might be dying in my room (should I have forgotten our past and tried to ignore the phone calls), or returning home to find my house had been used as a combination crash pad and biker gang party place in my absence because G had invited "just a few friends over to watch the game on your big screen plasma TV, what’s the big deal?"

            But why did he want to come to Ireland?  It rains, it’s always overcast, and frankly, it isn’t a cultural hub filled with urbane models with drug habits, one of his particular favorite types of dysfunctional relationship to involve himself in.

            These were the questions I pressed on him when he kept insisting that he planned/expected to be included in at least the first part of my rotation overseas, and asked him again as the plane left the ground.  All he did was shrug, and answer in a tone that was an eerie mix of the flight attendant’s and the boys she was correcting, "It’s none of your fookin business."

            I must have been napping, because the bonging of the seatbelt sign jerked me out of my dream, where I had been enjoying my first real Guinness and appreciatively contemplating a shepherd’s pie.  Even if the tone had not woken me, the steely voice of the flight attendant would have been enough to insert an element of terror into my dream.

            "The Captain," the terse tones came over the loudspeaker, and I could imagine the thin-lipped, clenched teeth expression on her face, "Has turned on the seatbelt sign.  That means you must return to your seats.  Right. Now."

            From a few rows back, it appeared that the boys had gotten over their momentary obedience, because I heard the response from that direction.  "Not a fookin chance, Sister."  I groaned.  The atrocious accent confirmed my reservations about my travelling companion.

            G was drinking in the aisles.

I slumped down in my seat as the over-stuffed flight attendant stormed toward the back row.  Perhaps, if I pretended I was still asleep, they wouldn’t try to get me involved in the whole thing.  Was I liable for trouble caused by somebody flying on a companion ticket?

            I kept my eyes tightly closed as I felt G climb back over me to his seat.  I always take an aisle seat when travelling with G, in the forlorn hope that the extra effort required to reach the aisle will prevent him from wreaking havoc.  He knew I was faking, but had the unusual good grace to leave me alone with my fantasies of strangling him at 50,000 feet.  The smell of fake Chanel told me that he had been actively escorted back to his seat by the bossy stewardess, and I could only hope that she had frog marched him down the aisle with one arm twisted painfully behind his back.  Doubtful, but a pleasant prospect nonetheless.  Peeking through slitted eyes, I was relieved to see G push the ridiculous hat he insisted on wearing forward over his eyes, and soon the sound of his snoring was annoying both me and the woman to his left, but it was better by far than having him up and about.

            He slept through the movie, but woke up just in time for the dinner service.  He grinned toothily at the flight attendant, who to my surprise gave him a smile back.  Ridiculous, but there it was.

            I had to hold my breath as the woman leaned past me to put a tray of food in front of the passenger in the window seat.  The amount of cologne I inhaled before realizing my mistake was like catching a full shot in the face from a spritzer girl at the mall.  Her body pressed me back into my seat as she maneuvered the tray across the row, and I could actually feel the ribs of some kind of support girdle digging into me through her uniform.  I realized with a bit of a panic that she was, for some reason, taking a little longer than strictly needed to situate the sleeping passenger’s tray, and I would have to take a breath soon.  I could already feel the pressure to inhale building up, even as the back of my throat was closing up in clear rebellion and direct refusal to take in another lungful of Fauxnel No. Cinque.

            With dawning horror, I realized that she was deliberately staying in place, and G was getting an eyeful of her oversized bust in undersized green blazer.  All I could see was a vast field of bright green polyester so close to my face that I could make out the thread count, but the angle meant that G was mere inches from twin mountains of over-powdered flesh.  I knew that he’d be taking full, and obvious, advantage of the view.  Plus, he’s short, so there were good odds that he was directly eye-level with those rather overly abundant charms.

            In spite of myself and my desperate need to keep as much air inside my lungs as possible to avoid more perfume-inhalation, I must have given a groan or squeak from either the pressure or the thought of G’s obnoxious observations.  In a mixed blessing, the flight attendant straightened herself up and the airspace between me and the seatback in front of me was clear, at least of bright green clad feminine shapes.

            Shockingly, she gave me a reproachful glance and she straightened up and adjusted her uniform.  I could physically feel G’s smirking next to me, and when I finally had to breathe or faint, waiting for the woman to get a few rows away and the Fauxnel cloud to abate, I had to explosively exhale and inhale in a gulp.  G poked me in the arm.

            "Was that really necessary?  You can be very rude."

            I stared at him in disbelief.  "Me?" I sputtered, "Me?  You were practically crawling down her shirt front, you boorish cad!"

            G looked at me, then primly said, "I never look at boobs I’m not being shown."

            The outrageous and outright bald-faced lie left me speechless.  As often happens when I verbally fence with G, I settled for a disgruntled "hmph" and turned my attention to the airline’s finest version of chicken piccatta, green salad, and garlic bread.  It looked, to paraphrase the prophets of the science fiction world, almost completely, but not absolutely entirely, unlike food.

            Food which, apparently, I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy without interruption.  G picked the exact moment I was about to first put fork to mouth to decide to get up again.  Helpless, I sighed, managed to make way for him to get out of the row and into the aisle.  As I sat back down I realized that he had started to head towards the first class cabin, not to the loo as I had expected.

            "G," I hissed, "What are you doing?"

            He straightened that ridiculous cap, and whispered, "I’m not eating that crap.  They’ve got filet mignon in first class.  See ya!" and he hustled forward before I could say anything else.

            I was consoled by the fact that no sooner had he vanished behind the stern green curtain that marked the line between nobility and steerage (a curtain, I couldn’t help but observe, made out of the exact same material that comprised the flight attendant uniforms), I caught sight of the bossy flight attendant bustling forward, clucking like a large green hen.  Fortunately, she was on the other side of the plane, so her cloud of scent stayed a few seats away and I didn’t have to battle my sinuses in order to eat my meal in relative peace.  I figured she’d set G straight, maybe even lock him a luggage compartment for the duration of the flight.  Do they have brigs on an airplane, I mused, for passengers who were irritating beyond the norm but didn’t warrant landing the plane for?

            The pleasant reverie I was engaged in, contemplating G finally getting the comeuppance he richly deserved, was interrupted by a furor from the back row, where the cramped conditions of the plane had finally gotten to the "lads", and they were breaking through the disapproval barrier that the flight attendant had penned them behind earlier.

            "Doan cha fookin touch them earpieces, loike!  Give ’em back, ya fookin culchie!"

            "Too right, mate!!" chimed in another, "too fooken right!"

            I craned my neck to see what was going on, my food now a forlorn congealment in its separate little containers.  I saw one of the young men reaching across another to grab at a dangling pair of headphones being held just out of reach by a third boy. 

            "I’ll culchie you, you jackeen little sod.  I’ll teach you to take airs with yer fancy noise cancelling la-di-da toys."

            The offended boy lurched across the apparently neutral middle passenger and flung himself at the one who had stolen his high tech audio equipment.  Practically crawling across the seats, he managed to get the thief into a headlock and they crashed into the aisle in a mess of plastic trays, biodegradable taterware sporks, and half-eaten food like substances.

            "Giffem back, ya shite!  Me mam give me dose!"

            Really, I thought, a pub brawl on an airplane?  Where are the stewardesses?

            A burst of feminine shrieking from the other side of the flimsy barricade gave me my answer, and with a sinking feeling I realized that G must be at it again.  He was probably about to get the whole plane grounded and we’d be escorted off in shame because he pinched an Irish bottom or "accidently" nudged the wrong girl in an inappropriate spot with that stupid hat.  It was probably taking the entire cabin crew to get him back to his seat, combined with dire threats of pilot or Homeland Security intervention.  Does Homeland Security have jurisdiction on a foreign airline?  I certainly hoped so.

            But no G, and no stewardesses appeared from beyond the green polyester curtain to corral the reckless youth, who mercifully had settled their differences and were settling back into their seats, having re-arranged themselves so that the two erstwhile combatants were seated next to each other now, each with one earbud stuck in an ear and battling over any remaining disagreements via some shared game on the plane’s back-of-the-seat video system.

            The sounds from the other side of the class divide had settled down as well, perhaps G was apologizing profusely and swearing to go back to his seat in peace.  A quick flash of that stupid hat as the curtain twitched a bit, and it looked like he was going to be in the first class loo for a while.  G tends to take long reading breaks in any restroom which other people might reasonably expect to get into at some point.  I sighed, and handed my tray to some random passing member of the flight crew, mercifully not one who smelled like a perfume counter, and then I closed my eyes and slept.

I don’t know how long I was out, but it seemed like just enough time to become completely disoriented while not enough to feel at all rested when I felt the insistent poking finger I long ago learned to associate with G wanting my attention.  I groaned, but didn’t open my eyes, because the pervasive cloud of perfume was also present, and I didn’t want to face the stern and overstuffed flight attendant lecturing me about letting my friend run amok on the plane and disturbing decent people.

            But the poking would not be denied, so I opened my eyes and gazed blearily at G, who motioned me to move so he could return to his seat.  There was no sign of the stewardess, and most of the plane seemed to be sleeping, so rather than give G the satisfaction of explaining his behavior, I let him get to his seat with a minimum of courtesy.  As he shifted past me, I realized something with a dawning horror.

            G himself was now the one who smelled like Fauxnel No. Cinque, and my suspicions about why that could be were confirmed when I noticed the satisfied smirk showing through his beard.  "G," I hissed, "What did you do?" Even though I never wanted to really know the answer to that question, the sick curiosity that was one of the pillars of our friendship always drove me to ask it anyway.

            "Oh, you’ll want to pay more attention to your interrogative phrases, my man.  For a writer, you sure are loose with language.  Gimme your blanket."

            I clutched the thin material protectively.  "I will not give you my blanket.  Get your own damn blanket."

            Grumbling, G pushed the stewardess call button and instantly my throat closed up in an instinctive self-defense action, while at the same time my sinuses attempted to contract to pinholes, none of which was enough to avoid being attacked by the scent cloud that heralded the arrival of my least favorite Kelly-clad woman in the world.

            "Ah, do you need a blanket, dear?

            Dear? Oh dear, indeed.  She smelled of freshly re-applied Fauxnel.  G smelled of Fauxnel.  I was contemplating the horror of the obvious inference when one of the lads in the back piped up.  "I’d like a blanket too, Sister, and maybe those two pillas ya got under yer coat!"  He shouted out, causing gales of laughter from among his companions.

            The flight attendant straightened up, and it was as if shadows actually detached themselves from various corners and nooks of the plane and coalesced around her as she strode over to the recalcitrant fellows.  There was a yelp as she grabbed one by the ear and another by the nose.

            "Now boys," she said, steel poking through her vocal cords, "What would your grannies say to hear you talking like that to a respectable lady like me?"  Her brogue, a light lilt when she had been speaking earlier, thickened into something that wouldn’t have been out of place in a "This is Ireland" documentary of the West Coast.  "And how would ye like me to tell yer priest yer needing extra masses this week?"

            I couldn’t credit that a religious threat would settle down the obnoxious boys, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t shrink back as if she had threatened them with a gun.  Or maybe it was concern that she might actually tell their grannies that quieted them down.

            "Sorry," one muttered.

            "Yeah, sorry," echoed the others, "It won’t happen again."

            "Too right, it won’t," said the stewardess, "Now play your videos and I’ll have not a peep out of ye until Dublin, aye?"

            The three nodded, and even as she turned her back to them they were absorbing themselves into some new game on the monitors in front of them.

            The woman, and her scent haze, came back to our row.  "Ah, sorry, pet," she said to G, "Here’s that blanket."  Leaning across me again (this time I had the foresight to take several deep breaths before she got to us), she actually tucked the blanket, which was obviously from the first class cabin as it was thick and long and was clearly a better class of sleep aid than my own thin sheet, around G.  To my increasing shock, she actually gave him a coy little tap on the nose!  "Now just you ring that bell if you need anything else," she said with a simpering smile.

            My gag reflex was nearly overwhelmed when I realized that even in the dim cabin I could tell that she was blushing!  G grinned back at her, and my throat lurched.  "Oh, you’re a doll; I’ll call if I need a couple of pillows."  He winked at her.  She giggled at him.  I threw up in my mouth a little.  Thankfully for my nose and my gorge, she moved off in response to another chimed summons, but not before giving G a final tuck and a tap on that stupid hat.

            Ignoring my attempt to feign death or at least sleep, G spoke right into my ear.  "Yep, I think I’ll like Dublin.  I wonder if they are all so friendly there.  Although perhaps," he added reflectively, "It’s just my own native charm?"

            I must have groaned, because he poked me in the far arm.  "Shut up, you’re just jealous that somebody who smells as good as she does like me better than you.  Better get ready for it lad, I don’t think you’re quite suave or sophisticated enough for hip European capital like Dublin."

            "G," I said, "If we ever fight over a woman like that, I’ll tell you right now, go ahead and take her."

            "Oh," said the little man, "I never go back for second helpings."

            I shuddered.  G is a short guy, and the image of what he and Faux Nellie got up to in the loo was more ballistic puzzle than cute image.  I pulled my thin, coach-class blanket over my head and successfully ignored him the rest of the flight.

            It wasn’t until we touched down in Ireland that he even moved from his seat.  But the minute the wheels hit the tarmac, he sat bolt upright (of course, his erstwhile loo companion had tenderly and noiselessly straightened out his seatback for him and put away his tray table, passing a sickening "poor dear, he’s worn himself out," comment to me as if trying to gain my sympathy for my pathetic friend.)  The applause that sometimes accompanies transatlantic flights was raucous this time, led primarily by the lads in the back, complete with wolf whistles, cat calls, and still-drunken cheers.  Where the hell had they gotten the booze?  I knew the cabin crew hadn’t served them a drop.

            G must have thought somehow they were applauding him, because after he sat up, he waved his hand and kept saying "Thank you, thank you; it was nothing, really, thank you…"

            Sickeningly, I saw Faux Nellie make eye contact with my diminutive friend, and she mimed applauding as well, and he winked and blew her a kiss from behind his beard.  As we gathered up our carry-on bags, he kept looking at her and winking, and when we passed the doors of the first class cabin WC, he patted the thin wall and horror of horrors, she blushed again.  On the jet way I couldn’t help but ask, "G, please tell me you didn’t…" but he interrupted with a sniff.

            "A gentleman never tells.  You, my friend, may trumpet your occasional romantic victories far and wide, but any lady lucky enough to entangle in romantic combat with me knows that her reputation is safe, cuddled in confidentiality even as we couple in convivial bliss.  For as long as I live, I’ll never tell."

            "So…you did, then?"

            "Stop with your jealous prying!  Monica and I shared something on the plane, it’s true, and we even made plans to meet for a drink.  Perhaps she’ll bring a friend who would stoop to your level.  Although," G stroked his beard pensively, "She says her best friend wears too much perfume, so perhaps your sensitive nose would be your undoing."

            I gave up, and spotted our numerous bags coming off the carousel.  I heaped them on to a luggage cart without G’s help ("They’re mostly yours," he had said, when I asked him to assist, "You need to learn how to take care of your own stuff.  I won’t be in Ireland forever to pander to your every need.")  But we parted after Customs.  He said he’d take a cab to our hotel after a drink with the lads from the back row.  Clearly, I wasn’t invited.

            "By the way," he said before turning away, "Give me fifty Euros" 

            I sighed and passed it over.

            Ireland awaited.

Next Chapter: Baile atha Cliath