Blues in the Night, Again
[All characters --Except the ones I make up-- belong to JW, ME, Fox, etc who have forced me to borrow them for purposes of Spike- and self-defense.)
Okay, now: The Game is afoot!]
What the HELL am I doing on this bloody flight? He thought. Always asking myself these bloody stupid rhetorical questions, aren't I?
Because he knew right well what he was doing on the flight, all right. What he'd been doing straight through every day and every night, and every moment of every day and every night, for the last two shagging years. If not in fact, then in fantasy at least. That, and nothing else, no matter what he seemed or pretended or tried to do at the same time, or instead of. He was looking. For Her. Always looking, for her, and everywhere.
The air-wench was walking down the wide, red-carpeted aisle, carrying a tray of very pale bubbly, pale like the harvest moon right before sunrise, 'cept with pins stuck in't, holding it aloft like the sodding Statue of Liberty with her torch, aiming it merrily straight toward the bullseye, which, it seemed to him, was his own mouth.
First class, now that was a kicker. Something to be said for being a celebrity, then, even a freakish one. And even more to be said for shacking up with a "well-heeled professional woman". One who indulged him, insisted on it, whether he wanted or no. Who told him it was about time "someone realized your worth." Worth, yeah right. How "worthy" would she think he were if she knew. If she only knew that he would trade it all, the magazine covers, and the triplex condo with its night view of the diamond-studded Hollywood Hills, and the respectable-but-funky "job", and even the languid, healing hours he had spent with her lovely, gentle-but-tough, madly but not obnoxiously quirky self, trade his soul, too, perhaps…well, he wasn't sure, he thought proudly, about that part…..just to know where She was, to catch a glimpse, to ask her if the lie was true….Okay. He had told his "partner" the score. HE hadn't lied to her. He'd been lied to too much, and about things that were too important to lie about, to lie himself to someone who'd been so real, so open, who'd been so kind. To him. But there was a difference between "not lying" and telling the whole truth, wasn't there? If anyone knew that, he bloody did.
And come to think of it, maybe his own, current lady friend wouldn't change her mind about that supposed "worth" of his, after all. Because she wasn't the sort of bird who tended to evaluate his value to her in how adoring, or compliant, or useful he was to HER. He felt like a subject, not an object with her. Funny thought, that. Why, he wondered, had it come up?
For a second, the perpetual dream that hung over him momentarily lifted, and he looked up and straight at the in-air barmaid for the first time; suddenly his breath caught. Something in the spill of the sun-colored hair, the pouty smirk, the brazen thrust of the narrow hip……this stew….no, no, what was he thinking, they didn't call them that anymore, that was what they were called in the 50s, the 60s, when flying in a plane was still a thrill, and meant you were both adventurous and in the dosh…yeah, in those days, "Coffee tea or me" had been a real laugh for high-flying undead types, and completely literal vis a vis the beverage list…
A right brilliant Chosen One-Of secret identity that would be, for sure, he mused with a sort of pride. Especially for a girl who was known to defiantly announce that she "sucked at undercover", a fact and a statement which he'd always secretly suspected was the result of impatience, vanity, or lack of concentration rather than any instinct for modesty or forthrightness. Well, no one was perfect, he least of all, and it was those sweet imperfections, in the nearly perfect, like HER, which made someone the most dear…all and sundry know that.
Talk about hiding in plain sight! No obvious disguises for His Girl, nothing like hair-dying or nose-shaving or donning a pair of misleadingly intellectual specs (a twinge of something that felt like ardor, or wistfulness, or at least homesickness, but must have been that relatively newly rediscovered thrill-a-minute sparkle called "guilt" winked at him at that second, which made him strangely relieved and discomforted at the same time). Anyone LOOKING for a Slayer-in-Disguise wouldn't have looked twice at this bird. Plus, a uniform always made someone invisible; even if it were a stewardess uniform--and this one was Summers-trademarked itty-bitty enough to do double duty if the local tux rental shop ran out of cummerbunds--invited stares from what the Feminists called "the male gaze" (given that, this one was engraved on premium paper stock, with, if you please, an RSVP--the stares were generic, specific, narrowly focused; it wasn't the kind of attention that suggested it was the character/metaphysics/individuality/superpowers of the wearer that the star-er in questions was pondering, now was it?) Clever: Miss B. Anne must have gotten over her years of incommunicado. That, or she was just as vain as ever and too pleased with the original persona that had, after all, caused several attempted, near and completed suicides amongst most of her suitors, to alter it one jot for the sake of prudence or subterfuge. Well, never mind that, the whole idea was pretty swift. And if you were always up in the air, never lighting down on a Hellmouth to call your own, it was pretty hard for anyone to track you--your scent kind of went up in smoke, a whisper through the clouds that even an olfactory superhero with a monomaniacal mission like himself was likely to miss. It was painful, though, to wonder just who she was eluding: Was it her past, the papparazzi (he knew all about that one, and his bet was she would be as ambivalent, in both directions, as he, if he were honest with himself, had been at the beginning of the circus) the Powers that Be that might draw her back into the Fray, was it self-hatred, the desire to protect those she loved--from the dangers associated with hanging out with The Slayer, or from the dangers inflicted by The Slayer herself?
Was it for her own safety? Or was she simply employing all this newly sophisticated and strategic incognition to evade, no, to avoid, not to mention to run away from…..himself? Or was that idea, that she would adopt such elaborate, in fact, tacky, measures just to get and stay away from his illustrious, ego-monstrous self, not pretty grandiose to begin with? Maybe she had some sweet deal going, after all, and with whom, he had a pretty solid idea, and just didn't want a dog in the manger to sour it. As it were.
"Sir, would you care to accept this little token of tribute, Kristal, excellent vintage? The Captain sent it with his compliments, several cuts above the usual Luxe-class offering, you should be aware….of course, if you are a non-drinker, several premium sparkling soft beverages or faux-champagnes are…..". She stopped all at once and stared at him. A blush erupted across the ivory skin, and her speech halted abruptly with that little moue of surprise he had noticed in women who liked to talk, a lot, and were taken aback by their own unaccustomed silence. She gazed at him, her nut-brown eyes, always somehow incongruous with the lemony-hair, widening as they fixed on him fully, and then downcast, as if she were feeling uncharacteristically shy, or abashed.
And: No. How could he have thought even for a second that this precise, official, efficient, pleasant Airline Employee was….her? The lady was slightly too tall, her hair was somewhat too natural, her posture was an awful lot too good, and, now that he looked closer, she had a wedding ring on her absolutely been around longer than 27 years finger. Hey, when did they start hiring Missuses for airmaid duty? Oh, yeah, a lawsuit, he remembered something about that….around the time he'd been waiting at the airport for the Beatles to land and grabbing a nip of Squealer Juice here and there. The guilt, yeah, that wasn't going to go away, but it didn't seem to totally ruin the giddy historical memories for him. He wondered how that worked for Angel…..suddenly, the panicky rage he had been trying very hard, with Winnie's help, not to say her FIRM encouragement (and Winnie could be very emphatic, with the proper motivation) to quell ever since Angel had given them the long slip began to bubble his blood again. Like the sodding cauldron of MacBeth's witches, I am, he thought. Just when I imagine I'm becoming the cool, suave, made-wise-by-life-and-unlife English chap I was born to be, I think a thought or hear a name or glimpse some bloody yellow hair, and I might as well be a sloppy whelp again. To be fair, it was only ONE name (and another, in association with that, of course) that caused the simmer, but it was one (or two) too many.