CHAPTER 4
“Everybody wants to go somewhere. More or less.”
                                 -Widgey Peters
                                                 Thor Heyerdahl’s driver

           
Eleni “Lennie” Dolmayan sat in her cheap Home Depot office chair in front of her IKEA clearance “Yurdkvistle” Executive Desk, with matching veneer file cabinet.  On her laptop facing her, her hands resting on the ergonomic plastic area beneath the keyboard, she stared at a map of The Grand Cayman Islands. Lately she found herself doing this more and more: just staring. One time she realized she had spent twenty-five minutes staring at the stainless steel toilet paper dispenser in the  bathroom at work. Time vanished into that dispenser. Lennie was sure of it.
     The office she spent time in a light coma was a travel agency located in a strip mall in Punta Gorda, a suburb of Southwest Florida near the Peace River. It’s also a sort of jumping off point to the Gulf of Mexico. Which meant almost nothing to Lennie who had never been outside the U.S.
     Right. A travel agent who never travels. Job’s a job.
     Lennie had a good reason. She was close to four hundred pounds. It made travel difficult. Going to Safeway for a few dozen boxes of Stouffers pizza bread was difficult. She walked with two canes. Hadn’t owned a belt or worn jeans since 1979. She slowly succumbed to a kind of self-imposed house or “town” arrest She had a mile long list of things she would do if only she lost weight. She could then be her true self and embark on a life of adventure. If only food wasn’t the beautiful reward and damning punishment that she dangled before her for nearly every occasion. It was also pretty basic: Lennie loved food, hated exercise. How shocking that at the age forty-six she was already beating the insurance actuary tables. Though for how long is anybody’s guess.
     But no matter how many boxes of Twinkies she consumed, in Lennie’s mind, she would one day circle the earth and then as an old woman, sit in a comfortable rocking recalling all of her experiences in the open air market in Istanbul or the midnight walk along the Nile.
     “I book adventure for thinner people,” Lennie announced at a Weight Watchers meeting once. “Maybe one day, I’ll book something for myself.” She knew that was not going to happen but figured it’s what you said at these kinds of meetings.
     What Lennie really craved, more than food or travel, was to be involved in a caper of sorts. She loved the notion of being the “Mother” in charge of some kind of operation. The one who sat in a dark room brimming with technology, wearing a wire thin headset, sitting before three laptops, a map of the operation glowing on a display to her left. Her team sending her information via voice, laptop and GPS. She would be dressed in black, her frizzy brown hair slicked back. Fat, thin, it didn’t matter. She was the one carrying the ball. She’d watched movies like “Sneakers,” “Ocean’s 11,” “The Sting,” all three “Mission Impossibles,” and  “The Great Escape,” to feel the camaraderie – the sense of purpose she so desired. None of those movies took place in a strip mall.
     Lennie considered redecorating the travel agency like her vision. After all, nobody really came in anymore. It’s all done over the phone and on the web. Currently she did business in what could best be described as a “faux environment.” All of the furniture; the desk, credenza, chairs, all of it pretending to be oak or granite or a textured plastic (imitation plastic?). The travel posters were at least fifteen years old and yellowing. Fake palm tree by the entrance. Fake tiffany desk lamp. She spent hours online searching out quality spy furniture, but it began to be cost prohibitive when it came to the plasma screen geothermal map, servers, laptops, and the Herman Miller Aeron chair. Lennie consoled herself that the current office design was created to give the look of a pedestrian travel agency in a strip mall in Florida as cover. Deep cover.
     So when the seven foot Caribe Indian dressed in Brooks Bros. came into Lennie’s travel agency and asked outright what her price was to become the sole travel agency representing his associates, Bahamian Holding & Marketing Partners, Lennie managed to close her gaping mouth and began entertaining visions of passports and glowing screens.
     “I think he’s gonna find out pretty quick,” Johnette Han said, stretching her legs out on the leather couch she laid on. “I mean, unless he’s blind. Is he blind?”
     “Yes,” Virgil said. “He’s a blind art director. I should’ve told you.”
     “Well then, how exactly are you planning to tell him?”
     “I’m not.”
     “You’re not gonna tell him? You’re just gonna what? Let him figure out on his own why his best friend looks…different. Y’know, like a wax figurine of his former self. And the almost sub zero climate condition in your condo?”
     “Keeps the sperm count high,” Virgil said looking out the window at the last traces of daylight. The sunsets were truly inspirational here.
     “Well, when he freaks out – and he will completely freak out – “
     “More than you did?” interrupted Virgil.
     “When he freaks out,” Johnette continued. “He’s gonna be hugely pissed off. I mean, ‘whaddya mean it’s contagious!’ kinda pissed.”
     “Something you wanna tell me Johnny?” Virgil said.
     Johnette ignored him.
     “And that’s the tricky period,” she said. “That’s the time where things can go South fucking quick. So I have to ask you…”
     “Yes Johnny?” Virgil said.
     “Stop calling me Johnny.”
     “Yes, Jonathan?”
     “Are you gonna be able to do what needs to be done?”
     Virgil turned away from the window and faced Johnette. Christ she was pretty. But not just pretty. Knowing. She seemed to just have a handle on everything and that made her worse than spank reel material. It made you wanna be near her. Bask in her Johnette-ness. That, and the perfect breasts that pointed true North.
     Virgil fought hard to ward her off. Almost eight seconds. Eight seconds and the spell was cast and he was willing to bring her the head of Fidel Castro. And for Johnette, sitting there at that bar on the beach aware of Virgil’s staring, nursing some godawful blue drink with fruit on the rim, she knew without a doubt that when the time came, she’d be able to do what needed to be done. Damn her.
     “I think whatever happens, it’ll be the right thing,” Virgil said.
     “Because.?” Johnette asked.
     “Because my best friend in the world, Kyle Whitman, keeps his shit together.”
     Imagine that last sentence in an echo chamber as we cut to a completely stoned Kyle Whitman sitting in the middle of the St. Agrippina airfield tarmac, shirtless, his face painted red, chanting “Yessir, Yessir, three bags full,” over and over.
     Seebee stood near the nose cone of the plane on a cell phone, telling the limo driver to get rid of the alcohol in the back seat of the limo. And bring a towel. Kyle had found a bottle of touch up paint underneath his seat on the plane. A few blunts later (found next to the touch up paint) he felt in touch with his aboriginal reptilian self and smeared the red paint over his face.
     Seebee put his cell back in his pocket and walked over to Kyle who was well into the fourtieth chorus of “Yessir, yessir, three bags full.”
     “Kyle,” Seebee said. “Enjoy the high. But you will need to stay sharp. Things on this island are not as they appear.”
     “I love porpoises,” Kyle said with a dreamy grin looking up at Seebee.
     “I’ve been flying this island for three years now,” Seebee said. “I’ve seen things that I don’t understand. Things my rational self can’t digest. Funny what you’ll accept so long as it serves your purpose. I’ll own this plane in another year. And when I do, I’ll never step foot on this island again.”
     The limo pulled up. Seebee got behind Kyle and lifted him by his armpits, drag-walking him to the darkened, air conditioned cocoon. Kyle collapsed in a red sweaty heap in the backseat. Seebee shut the door without another word. Just before Kyle passed out a question occurred to him: did Seebee speak without an accent?