Where the Truth Lies (7 page)

My garment bag swept the terminal floor clean as I dragged it over to the long lines at the American Airlines ticket counter. I saw with elation that there was a separate checkin for first-class passengers, and thanks to the good graces of Neuman and Newberry (and my agent, who’d negotiated my deal with them), that meant me.

Although there were only two classes of travel at that time, economy was definitely third class. First class meant a wider seat with a much better view, that view on most flights consisting of the economy passengers trudging by on their way to the rear of the plane, looking at us with a searing envy, wondering who we might be, wishing they were us, noticing the glasses of champagne in our hands. All alcoholic beverages would be premium brands poured from full-size bottles into full-fisted glassware. The caviar cart would be ushered down the aisle by the stewardesses (all blond) named Kim or the lone steward (blond, all gay) named Karl. With caviar (“Would you like diced hard-boiled egg? Capers? Chopped raw onion? A squeeze of lemon? Toast?”) would be served tall ampules of Stolichnaya nested in crushed ice. With the fish entrée (possibly seafood Newburg or Irish smoked salmon) we’d be asked to indulge apremier cru Chablis. While we were yielding to the tiresome filet mignonau poivre vert (I know, I know!), a serviceable Gevrey-Chambertin would be tolerated. At the end of the meal would come the sweet trolley (as the English called it) orle chariot (as the affected English called it). Swing low, sweet chariot. On American Airlines, this usually resulted in a made-to-order ice-cream sundae oozing hot caramel and bittersweet chocolate. Next would materialize the liqueur cart, a score of bottles clanking away against one another like a steel-drum band, and then coffee would be served, but even so, a spike of Irish whiskey or a snifter of cognac or Armagnac was always advised. Frankly, it’s a wonder the planes didn’t simply fly on booze. There was enough fuel in the first-class cabin to keep a Boeing (and oneself) in a holding pattern over the Great Lakes for a fortnight.

For this level of extraordinary (although, I felt, totally appropriate) service, my publishers were being charged an additional seven hundred dollars. Against that, however, you must remember that my headphones were free.

I stepped up to the woman behind the ticket counter. “O’Connor?” I beamed. “Flight 570 to JFK.”

“First class?” she asked, looking up at the sign that saidFIRST CLASS CHECK -IN. Insulted, I murmured, “Of course,” and wanting to show her that I had not just wandered in by accident, I asked, “The planeis a jumbo jet, correct? I only fly jumbos.” She told me it certainly was and printed out a boarding pass for me.

I wasn’t kidding about preferring jumbo jets to all others. What I loved most about flying a 747 first-class to and from New York was its upstairs lounge. Ascending a spiral staircase from your seat, you found yourself in a parlor car lined on three sides with orange-and-red banquettes. There was a slim, well-stocked bar and, in its earliest rendition, a Fender Rhodes electric piano. Once dinner or lunch was out of the way, I tended to antigravitate to the lounge, skipping the in-flight movie (which by FAA regulations was required to star Michael Caine), opting instead for a glance at some book, with a longer glance out the lounge windows at the continent of clouds directly below us.

As it happens, I’m not a great flier. Beejay, my roommate in college, had told me before my first flight that I was in more danger of having a fatal accident in our bathroom than on an airplane … from which I reasoned that one should never,ever use the bathroom on a plane, as this is clearly the most dangerous place in the world. One of the reasons I most liked the upstairs lounge was that I’d convinced myself that, were the plane to crash, I’d have all the passengers below me to break my fall.

Perhaps Kim and Karl would let me sit up there for takeoff. I stepped down the telescoping gangway that all the airlines were now employing, and crossing the threshold into the jumbo jet, I decided to head straightaway up the spiral staircase for a glass or two of predeparture champagne—

But there was no spiral staircase. It had clearly been stolen. I asked a stewardess, named Kim, about this with some urgency. Her answers were unsatisfactory. Yes, the plane was a wide-body. Yes, it was a jumbo jet. No, it had no spiral staircase. Yes, like a 747, its first class compartment was to the left of the boarding door. No, it was not a 747. Not all jumbo jets are 747s.

Ohmigod. It was a DC-10.

Kim handed me a glass of champagne to steady my shaken nerves and I almost forgot to thank her, so disoriented was I trying to find my seat. The seating configuration up front on a DC-10 was unusual: two-two-two. I was in the middle pair in the last row of first class. Miles away from a window. I did have a well-centered view of the movie screen where Michael Caine would shortly appear. But gone for the journey would be any view of that cumulusian continent of which I was so fond.

“How booked up are you?” I asked Kim. “Any chance of switching to a window seat?”

Kim turned to an older stewardess who was helping a gentleman off with his sports jacket. “Helen, do we have a window seat available?”

Helen shook her head unhappily. “No, doggone it, I’m afraid first is all full—I was just checking that for Marge at the gate.” She looked down at me apologetically. “They’re almost as jammed up in economy as we are, so I can’t even offer you a window back there.” She stepped away.

“Would you like a little more champagne?” asked Kim. I sat down and accepted her offer as she tried to sell me on the virtues of the DC-10.

“These center seats are really wonderful. See, if you push here—can I show you … ?” She used her foot to depress a button at the base of my seat. “The seat swivels to the left and right, something the side seats can’t do.” She moved me forty-five degrees one way and forty-five the other. Whee. This was even better than the mechanical pony outside of Woolworth’s, and only seven hundred dollars a ride.

Kim then indicated a low circular table to my right. “And this converts into a full-sized circular dining table during our American Admiral service, with damask linen and silverware by Fornari, so you don’t have to eat off a tray. Again, that’sonly for these center seats. And today we’ll be serving you prime rib carved as you like it at tableside from our American Admiral serving trolley.” She was on autopilot now. I shrugged and leaned back, resigned to my fate.

By now first class had pretty much filled up. In the seat to my left was a youngish British executive in a pinch-waisted Cardin blazer and dove-gray trousers that were narrower than the knot in his tie. He was accompanied by a stunning skeletal Nordic model in a white sleeveless top whose pinstripes coordinated nicely with the track marks on her left arm. In the seats in front of them were two Hindus, both in double-knits, one a pale blue LEEsure suit from Lee Jeans, the other a rich brown Trevira polyester with a jaunty yellow acetate scarf at his throat. The two seats in front of me had not yet been filled. The single seat directly to my right was also vacant (maybe I wouldn’t have a neighbor on this flight, which would almost compensate for the lack of an upstairs lounge). In the pair of seats on my far right was a couple whose matching convex bellies probably removed the missionary position from any list of their erotic options. In the seats in front of them were two businessmen who did not seem to know each other, one absorbed inThe Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, the other absorbed in paperwork.

Although the plane was still moored to the gate, a sleepy stupor had settled over first class, as if the staff had done everything it was supposed to do and now we were all waiting for … what?

Helen was speaking on the aircraft’s wall phone in a suppressed tone. As she was situated by the still-open boarding door, just behind where I was seated in the last row of first class, I could hear bits of what she was saying. “Well, we’ve been set for ten minutes, Marge, the captain’s waiting on you now… . Definitely just the three, right? Because I have nothing else other than my own seat… . Okay.” She spotted me looking at her and flashed me a professional smile, hung up the phone, and called to Kim: “Kim, we’re doing an LMA, if you could help.” Suddenly all the stewardesses seemed to gracefully converge on the doorway. Entering the plane was a sharp-faced employee in short sleeves. “Fine, we’re boarding now,” he told someone on a walkie-talkie. “This way, gentlemen,” he added to three men who followed him into the plane.

Soft murmurs of greeting went up from Helen and all of the Kims. The three men entered wearing the sober expressions people adopt when they’re being allowed to bypass a queue. Two of them moved toward the two empty seats directly in front of mine. The third appeared on my immediate right, taking the seat next to mine with an apologetic smile. He had dark golden skin like an autumnal wax pear, with a gentle face and eyes the color of his skin. Eurasian, perhaps a little Spanish, in his late fifties or robust sixties. He wore a spotless but dated black suit. There were droplets of rain beaded on his hair, which would have gleamed with or without the condensation. He folded his hands, looked straight forward, and smiled at the air.

Fidgeting in front of him was a short man, his little shoulders lost somewhere in a navy blazer. He must have been married to a woman he feared, for he was wearing a flowered shirt that he would never have purchased for himself. He summoned Helen with a crook of his finger. “A Smirnoff vodka on the rocks? And a pillow?”

Helen only half-smiled. “I’ll bring that to you shortly but we’re running a bit late, as you may well understand, and we have certain procedures required by federal law.”

The older man nodded his understanding but added, “The Smirnoff is for him,” indicating the man on his left, who looked far too sober to ever want a vodka on the rocks. This other man was tall, trim, and dressed in colors that might have been too bright were they not muted by the fine quality of their fabric and design. He gave me a quick glance of such focus and strength that my eyes were caught completely off guard, allowing him to penetrate the first veil of defense I normally wear in public. The smile he tossed me brought a silly, reflexive smirk to my lips, which I quickly tried to convert into a demure expression. But by then he’d slid smoothly into his seat.

I was to learn shortly that the Eurasian man on my right was named Reuben and that the older man in front of him was a powerful Hollywood agent named Irv Fleischmann.

I did not have to wait a moment more than the very first instant I saw him to know that the man seated directly in front of me was Lanny Morris.

NINE

In point of fact, it wasn’t as remarkable as it might at first seem that I now found myself seated one row behind the gentleman whose intimate memoirs I’d been perusing only two days earlier. The almost unjustifiable expense of a first-class ticket (there being no discounts or deals to be had for such a luxury) and the limited number of wide-bodies in service made those twelve to twenty seats on a jumbo jet quite the exclusive club, one where mere moneyed mortals frequently found themselves mingling with the Gods.

Whenever anyone flew first-class to the opposite coast, friends would ask upon their arrival, “Well, did you see anyone famous?” The answer would invariably be something along the lines of “As a matter of fact, both Ann Jillian and that nice Larry Blyden were on our flight and they couldn’t have been nicer. They chatted with us while we waited to get off the plane.” Since only American, TWA, and United flew nonstop between New York and L.A. (and not all of those flights were the preferred luxury liners), the mathematical odds that a celebrity would be in your midst if you flew first-class transcontinental on a jumbo jet were in fact quite good. Thus it was perhaps not quite so incredibly miraculous that Lanny, his manager Irv Fleischmann, and his valet Reuben were currently positioned at twelve, one, and three o’clock respectively to me.

I was now dimly recalling an interview in which much credit was given to Lanny for insisting that his Filipino butler travel in the same class and stay in the same hotels as he did. It had occurred to me even when I read the tidbit that this also kept Reuben on call and close at (Lanny’s) hand all hours of the day. No hiding out with some Mindinao Minnie back in row 23 of economy for good old Reuby Baby, nosiree. Lanny’s attendant’s attentiveness was quickly verified for me when the captain turned off theNO SMOKING sign some twenty seconds after the wheels left the ground, as was the general policy of most airlines. In almost the same instant, Reuben leaned forward and proffered a cigarette case and gun-metal Zippo lighter to Lanny, who reached behind him for the case without looking back. He simply knew the items would be there. I also recalled reading that the reason Lanny often had Reuben carry his cigarette case and lighter for him was that he couldn’t abide having any bulges in his pants that did not originate with him—joke. His pants had no pockets and were, like Reuben himself, made to order. To be fair, I must assert there was nothing haughty or imperious about Lanny’s manner. He didn’t snap his fingers. He said, “Thanks” in a nice voice as he handed the lighter and case back to Reuben. This was, I guess, simply how they operated, and I’d read that Reuben was extremely well paid for his dedication to the maintenance of Mr. Morris, who was now seated a tantalizing forty-one inches in front of me.

Could you tell a great deal about a man simply by staring at the back of his chair for forty-five minutes? No, not really. The seats had high backs, so not even the nape of Lanny’s neck or his ears offered themselves up for any Conan Doyle ratiocination. Icould see that he quickly received the requested Smirnoff on the rocks, because Helen (who’d bravely volunteered to become his personal stewardess) brought it immediately after takeoff, on a small tray along with a porcelain nut dish filled with almonds. I can visually verify that his left arm looked nice taking the tray from her. She leaned forward to hear something he was saying or requesting. Helen laughed a giddy laugh and stepped away, returning moments later with an American Airlines sleeping mask, even though it was only around four in the afternoon. His left arm took it from her, his seat reclined, and I assume he took a nap.