As the plane soared up into the murky foggy clouds of the upper sky, Max Black let herself sink even further into the comfort of her seat and took her time knocking back the bottle of beer, making it last for at least a good eight seconds before it was bone dry. She let out a beer-scented sigh of satisfaction across the top of the bottle neck so the empty vessel moaned like a cheap whore with very low personal standards.

"Oh yeah, this is what I'm talking about," she said to Caroline. "I've never poisoned my liver at this altitude before - at least, not of my own free will. The last time I tried air travel, it was just like Snakes on a Plane. Except there were less reptiles, more gangbanging and slightly more convincing dialogue."

Caroline, as always, laughed at her friend's jokes but at the same time worried as to how much truth was contained within. "Well, there are no poisonous reptiles on this trip."

"Nope, they'll be all waiting at the airport with their bagets and neckscarves and onion necklaces and stripy shirts and berets and garlic bicycles..."

"Maaax," sighed Caroline. "Don't get bogged down in stereotypes."

"Hey, if the French didn't want to be stereotyped then they should have done something about it at the time!" Max rejoindered. "You know someone actually reprogrammed google so if you search for 'French military victories' it always asks you 'do you mean French military defeats'?"

"Which is completely inaccurate," Caroline argued. "France won more wars than most of Europe put together."

"Well, no one remembered those when Groundskeeper Willie called them a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys," Max retorted. "Defeated by a one liner in an nineties cartoon? Yeah, I totally call that a military defeat!"

Caroline gave her an appraising look. "You know, Max, I think you'll like France. It'll be your spiritual home."

Max arched an eyebrow. "Why? Because the locals are all alcoholic sex-obsessed pleasure seekers who spend all day complaining about things?" Her eyes widened. "Oh my god! This is the promised land! Caroline! I need a prayer mat! I know I thought I was Jewish before but these, these are my people!"

Max closed her eyes and started to warble the opening tune of All You Need Is Love by the Beatles, which was the closest to any French music she could think of at the moment. She made up for her lack of inspiration with sheer volume.

x-x-x

Gabby was startled slightly by the woman in the seat behind her suddenly belting out the French national anthem with the same articulation and enthusiasm as Babe the pig la-laaing Jingle Bells. So, naturally Gabby found it both sweet and needlessly loud. Still, she'd grown up next to a railway line and random bursts of wordless noise were borderline comforting.

She looked across at her boyfriend who was staring blindly ahead and gripping his armrests like the plane was plunging out of control. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Oh, apart from the noxious noise pollution bursting my eardrums? Nothing at all, Gabs," said Nigel. "I'm just sick of all this air travel. Tell you what, let's make like a comotose patient on life support and snooze through the whole thing."

So saying, he started fumbling through his pockets until he found a rather dull and nondescript looking foil packet of dull and nondescript pills. Gabby recognized them as experimental muscle relaxants that she'd been part of a trial; they were meant to deal with the physical side effects of severe anxiety. In practice, they were industrial-grade sleeping pills that could knock you out for days at a time.

"Taste the rainbow, Ponch!" he proclaimed for some reason and shoved a pill in his mouth. "Next stop: Paris airport!"

"Nigel, what's up?" asked Gabby, worried.

"Up? Nothing's up!" lied Nigel unconvincing. "I just feel a little tense."

"Oh. Coz you look a lot tense."

"Gabs, your perspicacity is an aphrodisiac in and of itself."

Gabby frowned. "You're saying me noticing stuff gets you horny?"

Nigel beamed at her. "You see! You're even able to understand what I'm saying half the time - I always said you were intelligent."

"The teachers didn't," Gabby sighed. "Everyone else at school thought I was stupid."

"Pah," Nigel said. "You were ignorant and uneducated, but you're not stupid and you never have been. Hey, Gabs, maybe we can get married in Paris?"

Gabby blinked. "Seriously?"

"Why not? It is the City of Love..."

"But you said marriage was a prehistoric social convention implemented solely to maintain tribal equilibrium in the face of the sheer pointlessness of existence."

"Oh yeah, I did," Nigel conceded, a wave of grogginess washing over him.

Gabby knew the symptoms of the drug kicking in. "C'mon," she said, unbuckling her belt. "We're swapping seats."

Nigel blinked, shuddered and snapped out of his daze. "What? Why?"

"I want the aisle seat."

"You love the window seat!"

"Yeah, but you're about to go comatose, and I don't want to have to climb over you every time I need the dunny, do I?"

Fastidiously, Nigel undid his belt and they shuffled awkwardly around until Gabby was in the aisle and Nigel was standing by the window. "Honestly, Gabs, you shouldn't overreact like this - it's just a muscle relaxant, it's not like I've-"

Suddenly Nigel fell face-first into the window seat, his limbs going so slack it looked like every bone in his body had turned into overcooked spaghetti. Nigel's face was buried in the gap between the seat and the wall, his bum in the air.

Gabby sighed, shook her head, and decided she could use the toilet before getting the hassle of dragging Nigel's unconscious body into an upright position.

x-x-x

"I mean, I suppose the idea that your biological father could have been some randy French guy on a sex holiday in America is actually pretty credible," Caroline was saying as she finished off her champagne.

Max rolled her eyes. "Oh, puh-lease. Knowing my mother, he didn't have a passport. Or teeth. Or maybe not even a pulse. Not everyone swoons over Frenchies like you, you know."

Caroline sighed. "You have to bring Nicholaus into it," she grumbled. "Seems like such a long time ago - Nicholas, pastry school, Deke, that crazy lady secretary who's name completely escapes me at the moment. Our whole lives were going somewhere totally different. And then before that, the cupcake shop and Candy Andy and the puppet law-suits..."

Max groaned. "Yay, I love to listen to an itemized list of all our failures and shattered dreams. It's like the twitter feed of the damned."

Caroline shook off her despondency. "You're right. The past is the past."

"Mind you, wasn't it wierd to bump into Big Mary again?" Max admitted. "Normally once they're out of sight they're out of mind. Unlike my boobs, which shall outlast any of your so-called human civilization." She frowned. "Don't tell me that Paris is going to be full of all your white-collar upper-class also-ran high society freaks because I'll have to itemize all the humiliating and shameful things Princess Channing has been up to for the last half-decade."

"Oh, Max, don't pretend you haven't already done that."

"I might have missed a few cinnamon buns, unlike you with your newest uncontrolled addictions," Max shrugged. "Nah, I'm kidding. I penciled those in a while back. Plus, I'm hoping that no one in France knows who we are - especially Interpol. It'll make smuggling stuff through customs way easier."

"Um... Max?"

"Trust me, I once shoplifted a Christmas turkey once wearing only a bikini. Would have been more impressive if I'd succeeded, or indeed actually wanted the turkey in the first place but the..."

"Max, there's a hand between your legs."

Max blinked and looked at her own hands. "Well, it's not me for once."

Caroline waved her own hands. "Not me, it's the guy in the chair ahead of you."

Max peered down between her knees and saw a chocolate-coloured forearm poking from between the seat and the wall, the limp hand proffered out as if for Max to shake politely. "Wow, I thought this sort of executive relief was for first class passengers," she commented.

Caroline leaned forward. "Hey, excuse me?" she called frostily. "Hey, Max, I think he might be unconscious?"

"Pfft. Amateur!" sneered Max. "You're not supposed to take the roofie yourself, that is page frickken one! Hey!" she yelled, kicking at the seat in front of you. "I'll give you points for effort in unusual situations instead of just trying to grope me in an elevator, but minus several for practical results!"

Caroline rose from her chair, realizing that despite their initial assumptions the passenger ahead of them wasn't trying to cop a feel. She leaned around the chair and saw a crumpled blond-haired figure crushed into the corner. Caroline tugged on the figure's shoulder and rolled him until his back was in the chair and she could see his face.

"Oh my god, Max!" Caroline gasped.

"Is it Samuel L Jackson?" asked Max hopefully.

"No! It's Nigel! That Australian jerkass with more product in his hair than Big Mary has grinder profiles!"

"No way!" Eyes as wide as saucers, Max leapt to her feet and looked over the chair to see the unconscious Aborigine sprawled in the chair. "Oh my god, he looks even more nauseating than I remember!"

"I don't believe it, Max!" Caroline breathed. "What are the odds that we would all just randomly get onto the same plane at the same time practically in the same seats?"

"Uh, let me think," said Max. "Given that it actually happened? One in one. Now, let's discuss the odds that we steal his wallet, dump his lifeless body in the toilet and make him miss his flight to Paris together!"

"Max, we can't do that! It's needlessly cruel and vindictive behavior that brings us entirely down to his level," Caroline argued.

"OK, those are pros, now what are the cons?" asked Max. "Come on, us finding him senseless and vulnerable like this just has to be sign!"

"No," said Caroline, sitting down beside Max. "We are not going to risk getting arrested by some air marshall just in the hope we can humiliate some guy we barely know for some disgusting behavior he displayed one night merely a year ago."

Max looked across to the air stewardesses. "I bet Bonnie and Ronnie would be up for it - they'd probably do it for us, free of charge and even know where to put him in cargo so he wouldn't get found for days."

Caroline flashed her pearly white grin. "OK then!"

- to be continued...