Nightlife Read Online Free

flight 435 from St. Louis to Tampa, nonstop, took just over two hours. They had made good time, caught a tailwind, while Justin had caught a good buzz on airline vodka. He wondered if the stewardesses had posted an alert on him. Watch out for the guy in 19A, could be trouble. A human sponge. And he hardly says a word.
    It’s always the quiet types that flake out.
    Couldn’t much fault their concern. Not since the April 1989 flight into St. Louis from Tennessee. Some anthropoid drinks six bottles of airline hootch, disembarks, steals an electric cart for a joyride past the gates, ducks into a mysteriously unlocked maintenance room, and tries to hide in a trash chute. End of story. Said anthropoid winds up crushed to death in the trash compactor.
    From obscurity to legend in less than an hour. All in all, there were worse ways to go out.
    With his A-seat, he managed to spend a lot of time staring out the window. Flight was a strange mix of illusions. While gazing out over nearby cirrocumulus clouds, it felt as if they were skimming low over vast polar regions and snow-drenched mountains.
    The sight kept him isolated from his seatmate. Late thirties, gray suit and yellow power tie, receding hairline. Hunched over the drop-down tabletop, scribbling into arcane reports while his fingers danced on a calculator’s keypad. What a horrible life it looked like from the outside. Justin would have preferred the trash compactor to ending up like that in ten years. He had come to learn its price. The hard way.
    Sometimes life felt like a bad movie, moments of reality that seemed like anything but. Wondering if other people looked on him with the same benign loathing he felt toward his seatmate. Wondering if his life were indeed a movie being lensed for the enjoyment of some cosmic film buff with a penchant for tragicomedy. Wondering how the script read . . .
    Fade in, interior, a TWA DC-10, economy class. In seat 19A sits Justin Gray, swilling his fifth screwdriver of this Monday morning. He stares out the window for answers and finds none, as he leaves behind the wreckage of his life in a desperate attempt to rebuild anew. Will he succeed? Only the Smirnoff distillery knows for sure.
    He looked aisleward as a woman threaded back to the bathrooms. She had apparently boarded after, of all things, a trip to donate blood. Her blouse’s collar still bore the little Red Cross sticker: Be nice to me. I gave blood today. Justin wondered what might be appropriate for his own sticker. Be nice to me. I fucked up my life this year.
    They touched down in Tampa shortly after noon, taxied to the gate. Halt. Everyone clogged the aisles to retrieve overhead carry-ons. Justin wavered a bit as he left the plane for the gangway and imagined a collective sigh of relief from the stewardesses.
    Freedom, then. Transplantation complete. Hopefully, salvation.
    He scanned unfamiliar faces inside the terminal until the sole familiar one broke into a big smile. Hugs were next, big back-slapping bear hugs just so no one got the mistaken impression that these two rather artistic-looking fellows were reunited lovers. Public image is everything in a land of sun and water and misspent passions.
    “Welcome to my con-tree,” said Erik, counterfeit south-of-the-border accent flashing briefly. Then back to white-bread American: “How was the flight?”
    “Crash free,” Justin said. “That’s all that counts, isn’t it?”
    The similarities between them were almost brotherly. Both tall, with similarly high cheekbones, the same purposeful stride. But Erik smiled more. He looked healthier; maybe the tan. And the eyes . . . Erik’s wide baby blues tagged him as one of life’s innocents, whereas Justin’s chocolate browns seemed warier, too many laps around the fast-track. Maybe Erik’s ambitions had not been quite as high, but he was happy. Without betraying the aesthetics and values truly important to him. Justin had traditionally been the better groomed, Erik the