Freddy began to fan his mug as soon as Zona filled it. “I’m sure Uncle Willy would rather hear about Walter.”

Blaine wiggled a little bag of NutraSweet, ripped off the top, and dumped the contents into his cup. “Zona filled me in about Walter late last night. You tell me about the flight from hell.”

Freddy sipped his coffee. “Am I talking too fast?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I am now and was then all whacked-out on Mefloquine. I was not really lucid, but still it dawned on me that whenever anybody had a request that was within this steward’s power to fulfill, he just said, ‘Yeah, just a minute,’ and didn’t do anything. We were just sitting dead on the ground like for about an hour and a half, and the steward took that rude L.A. tone, ‘Everybody on the plane is a revenue-paying customer. If you want another seat you’ll have to trade with somebody once we get into the air.’ I just lost it. ‘Who in the hell do you think you are, jacking everybody around? Motherfucker, I have been out in the damn jungle in Cameroon. I have been on an airplane or in a transient lounge for two and a half days, and you think you got it bad ’cause you’re working a double shift. Well, how do you think I feel?’

“He came right back. ‘Fuck you!’ he says, and then, bingo, we started wrestling in the aisle, and two cops grabbed me. ‘You’re under arrest!’ I’ve been three years in Central Africa and nothing happens to me until I get back to the imperialistic, fascist state!”

Blaine had thought he would come into the house and have words for whatever hit him, but the spectacle of Freddy left him speechless.

Freddy gulped down more coffee, lit another Kool, and, thus freshly armed, leaned forward and continued. “People were still trying to get on the plane, it was a big cluster fuck, and the police were dragging me away; I lost a shoe, and some little Greek lady got up and said, ‘Hold it right there! That man did nothing wrong! That man did nothing wrong. It was him, Mr. Sunny Jim there!’ and she’s pointing to the steward. ‘It was all his fault.’ So there is some justice in the universe. The cops stopped, like, ‘Oh, yeah?’ and the steward said, ‘Screw this job, who needs it?’ I mean, this is the kind of shit that happens on a cross-country Trailways bus ride when some maniac is stoked on fortified wine. And I never did find my shoe. Off to baggage claim wearing socks.” Freddy had a pencil-thin mustache and a short goatee, which he fingered nervously while he patted perspiration from his forehead with a folded linen tea napkin. Blaine stared at him.