My Fair Lady

 

It was her first time in a single-engine General Aviation plane. Maura barely spoke the entire flight, except to point towards the horizon at the Grand Tetons, the Great Salt Lake, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean, then ask, “What’s that?”

She was uncharacteristically quiet through dinner, half the time staring at Griff like a teeny-bopper mooning over her idol of the moment, then avoiding direct eye contact.

Griff was at first amused, then annoyed, and finally bored.

Back at JR’s Fairway One cottage at Pebble Beach, she went straight to her room and did not come out.

Griff went out on the patio and listened to the Pacific Ocean pound the California shore in the darkness.

The next day he took her to the Stanford Shopping Center where they made the rounds of the Women’s departments at Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Neiman-Marcus and Nordstrom.

“Too long. Too baggy. Too…Amish,” Griff said when Maura came out. He slouched down wearily in the chair outside the fitting rooms. “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”

“I’m not some dress-up Barbie doll, you perv.”

“You do understand what we’re trying to do here, right?”

“I know. I know.” Maura pouted. “But you’re not getting me in CFMs.”

“CFMs?”

“Come Fuck Me shoes. You know, stiletto heels.”

“Whatever. Try that blue one on.”

“Perv.” Maura turned and went back into the fitting room

Griff closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and made a conscious effort to listen to himself breath in and out.

“You’ll probably like this one,” Maura said when she came back out in a tight-fitting, low-cut, navy blue cocktail dress.

Griff opened his eyes and smiled. He sat up straight in the chair. “Is that the right size?”

“Any tighter and I won’t be able to breath.”

“Yeah…yeah…” Griff nodded as he looked Maura up and down.

“Stop drooling like a horny old hound dog, for Christ sake. It’s embarrassing.”

“Let’s go look at those CFMs.”

After a reluctant purchase in the shoe department, a makeover in Cosmetics, and the acquisition of three hundred fifty dollars’ worth of chemical compounds for female enhancement, they drove to the Palo Alto Airport where the Cirrus was parked.

Griff paid his fuel bill and tie down fee while Maura changed into her new blue cocktail dress. He whistled when she came out of the woman’s lounge, squirming and pulling at her dress.

“Put a sock on it, Pablo.”

“Is he still there?”

She pulled her phone out of her tiny new purse and tapped on the screen. “Yeah. You know, Facebook sure makes the life of a bounty hunter easy.”

“Recovery agent.”

“Whatever.” She gave Griff a quick spin. “You really think this is going to work?”

“You’d make a bulldog bite his chain.”

“That’s cool. Can we get this thing over already?”

Griff handed her the keys to the rental car. “Text me when you get there. I’ll give you a half-hour, then land. Remember, South Bay Avionics.”

“I know. I know. This isn’t my first rodeo, cowboy.”

Maura drove to the Reid-Hillman Airport.

Griff departed to the south and loitered over Gilroy, awaiting her text. By the time he landed and taxied to parking, Maura and Andy Rousch were standing side-by-side, waiting on the ramp. Rousch pointed to the Cirrus. Maura waved enthusiastically, like the little sister she was pretending to be. As the prop wound down to a stop, Griff watched Andy gently shake Maura’s daintily extended hand with a huge smile on his face, then go back to work in the South Bay Avionics hangar.

“So, you got dinner plans for Tuesday?” Griff asked when he walked over from the Cirrus.

“Easy, peasy.” Maura looped her arm in Griff’s. “Melted his will to even live like butter on a hot skillet. I get to keep the dress, right?”

“Oh, you scamp, you.”

When they got back to the cottage at Pebble Beach, Lance was sitting out back on the patio. Seeing Maura, he grabbed his heart and hyperventilated, gasping, “You can take me now, Lord—I can die a happy man.”

She blushed and hurried into her room to change.

“She dresses up nice, huh?” Griff said. “And you can put your eyeballs back in your head.”

“You dog, you. You know, I'm going to need pics if you intend on charging those threads back to the client—let me see your phone. I know you got some.”

“You perv.”

“Your point being?”

 

***~~~***