From her seat, Jenny could see the back of Roni’s head where she was talking up a storm with the passenger next to her. Oh good, another admirer. Male passenger in 9A. Roni liked being admired, liked it when people in general paid attention to her. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it got old sometimes. The trip with the girls had been fun, lots of laughs, lots of crazy, lots of drinking. She was ready for some drying-out time. She loved Roni, they all loved Roni, but there were two Ronis: the away Roni and the real-life Roni, and the two were not congruent. Jenny was glad Green Turtle had been therapeutic for her. God knows she had obsessed long enough about her job loss. None of the girls thought Mack was a real prize, but he knew how to handle Roni, and that was a good thing. When the announcement came over the speaker that they were about to land, Jenny stretched, and, as she did, she felt the stitches in her hand pull. Damn fall. Her shoulder actually hurt more from the tetanus shot the girls at the clinic had given her than her hand hurt now.
“Kin I take dat?” the flight attendant asked.
Jenny pulled her cup from the back of the seat where she had put it and handed it to the woman. She remembered when Roni had first picked her and Lacy up, and how hard it was to understand the Bahamians, almost like they were speaking in tongues. Now it was easy. She could hear it, and she wondered if the islanders thought their speech was hard to understand. Jenny was looking forward to getting home, seeing Scott, sharing all the escapades with him. He would listen and find them amusing. Devin crossed her mind. He’s a very special person. In a way she felt sorry for him though, maybe becoming friends with Roni had not been a good thing, sometimes ignorance really was bliss. Sometimes learning only opened up more room to question. The plane touched down with a thump, and Jenny was jolted forward as the pilot applied the brakes.
“Welcome ta Miami,” the attendant said over the speaker.
Jenny looked at her watch not sure about the layover. Her itinerary was in her carry-on under the seat. Either way it didn’t matter, they would regroup, get something to eat, laugh more about the trip, and question Roni about her intense conversation with the man soon to be nicknamed “9A”. Jenny glanced down the aisle behind her as she stood. Tara caught her eye, nodded her head toward Roni, and made a face. Jenny smiled. She understood they would all want to hear about Mr. 9A. Lacy was the last off the plane. Tara and Jenny stood in the terminal off to one side as Roni was wrapping up her conversation with 9A.
“He’s handsome,” Lacy said quietly. “How come Roni gets all the men?”
“Because she’s flirty. You wouldn’t give them the time of day,” Tara said.
“True.”
The three girls waited patiently as Roni said goodbye. She joined them with a big smile on her face, which faded when no one smiled back at her.
“What?” Roni asked as the girls stared blankly at her.
“We didn’t say a thing,” Jenny said.
“You didn’t have to,” Roni teased. “Let’s go get something to eat. I have quite the story for you.”
The four girls made their way down the terminal. With so many people going to and fro, it made their path together sometimes awkward.
“What kind of time do we have?” Tara asked from behind Roni.
“Let’s check,” Roni said.
She veered off to one side of the crowded walkway, stopping to pull out her paperwork, searching for their flight plan.
“About an hour and a half,” Roni said, folding the pages back up. “Let’s get a quick bite.”
They hit the first restaurant they came to and took a table just inside the railing, stashing their carry-ons under their legs as travelers hurried by on the way to their gates. Roni pulled out her phone and turned it on, it beeped telling her there were voicemails and texts. She scanned the texts quickly, nothing from Mack. *In Miami, see u soon* she texted.
“Good afternoon ladies,” the waitress said as she passed out menus. “I’ll be back in a moment to get your order.”
“Okay, let’s get the story on Mr. 9A,” Jenny said.
Roni laughed.
“He’s already got a name, huh?”
“Well, yeah,” Jenny teased. “You never talk to people on planes.”
“That’s not true,” Roni objected.
“Really? It’s so true, that’s why you immediately pull out your Kindle, so you can ignore them and not feel rude.”
“Shut up, Jen, you don’t like chatting up strangers either.”
“Unless they look like Mr. 9A, then I’d talk,” Jenny laughed.
“You won’t believe this, life is so weird,” Roni said. “Liquid Asset, the secret owner, the one Allen has to protect? In the flesh.”
“Shut up,” Tara said.
“I swear! Cody McGreevy headed back to his socialite wife in New York.”
“Interesting,” Lacy said.
“Oh, there’s more.”
The waitress appeared, interrupting her.
“What can I get you girls?”
“Sorry, we haven’t even looked,” Roni said as she flipped open her menu.
The other girls did the same as the waitress waited.
“Would you like me to come back?”
“No, no,” Roni said as she slipped on her reading glasses. “How about let’s share a pizza and a salad. Does that sound okay to everyone?”
Roni posed the question as she still looked at the menu. Lacy closed her menu handing it to the waitress.
“Fine by me.”
“I’m good with that,” Jenny said.
“Tara?”
“Yeah, I really don’t care.”
“Wine by the bottle?” Roni asked.
The waitress gave her three choices and Roni picked a Kendall Jackson chardonnay. The waitress wrote it down and left. Roni took off her reading glasses and put them on the table.
“So Cody and his wife own Liquid Asset as well as a house on GTC, that Devin just happens to manage,” Roni chuckled.
She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest to let the girls process what she’d said.
“Did you know there was any connection between the house and the yacht?” Jenny asked.
“No, Devin was always nice to Allen, but I didn’t know they worked for the same guy. Never would have thought to put the two together or even ask. Devin described the homeowner as ‘some guy from the States’, when he showed me the house, and Allen acted like the owner of the yacht was in some espionage spy ring.”
“So I take it he’s not,” Lacy joked.
“No, he’s retired. Retired from JP Morgan. An investment banker, Wall Street.”
Roni threw up her hands just as the waitress came back. As she set the glasses down and started opening the bottle, Roni went on.
“Can you believe what a small world?”
“Had you heard of him?” Tara asked. “On Wall Street, I mean.”
“No, but he must have done really well.”
“You did well in the day,” Jenny said.
“He was smarter. He saw the writing on the wall. While I was trying to get richer on derivatives, he was cashing out. Shit, I could have done it so differently.”
Roni got a pained expression on her face.
“Stop,” Jenny ordered. “That’s what this trip was about. To get over it, stop blaming yourself, and move on. Mack wants you to move on. He doesn’t care about the money. He wants you to be happy. For all the Codys who got out in time there are a million more, like you, who didn’t.”
“I know. Okay, over it,” Roni said, sitting straight up again. “Weird Allen, Mr. Conspiracy Captain, well he also used to be an investment banker. He was in the office next to Cody. He was one of many who told Cody he was crazy to bail. Well, when it crashed Allen lost everything like I did and, according to Cody, he went a little cuckoo. He believes the crash was all carefully engineered. A collusion between the banks, Wall Street, and the government for the ultra wealthy to get wealthier.”
“Sadly, it’s probably not that far from the truth,” Tara said.
Roni took a sip of her wine. Good wine and good friends could cure a lot of ills.
“That’s nice of Mr. 9A to give the kook a job,” Lacy chuckled.
The girls laughed just as a last call for a flight to New York came over the loudspeakers in the airport.
“Is that our flight?” Lacy asked, panicked.
“I don’t think so,” Roni said. “I think we still have an hour or so.”
“I think it’s our flight.”
Lacy jumped up, squeezed out the side of the railing, and walked across to view the departure monitor hanging from the ceiling.
“It can’t be,” Roni said, digging in her bag for her itinerary.
“Last call for Flight 1274 to New York,” came over the loudspeaker again.
Lacy rushed back to the table and started to gather her things.
“It is us,” Lacy said frantically.
“Shit, it is,” Roni said, confirming the information on her paperwork.
“We’ll never get the waitress back in time,” Tara said.
“Wine was thirty, I think, food about the same plus tip,” Roni said as she stood up. “Everyone throw a twenty down, let’s go.”
The girls pulled money from their wallets quickly, grabbed their carry-ons, and rushed out of the restaurant.
“What gate?” Jenny asked.
“Delta is on the other side, South Terminal,” Roni said. “We better run.”
Roni started to run and the other girls followed, but Tara was having a terrible time keeping up as she was wearing flip-flops.
“Come on,” Roni called.
“Roni, go, get to the gate. Try and hold the plane,” Jenny yelled as she too fell behind.
“Shit,” Tara yelled as she tripped.
She stopped and took her flip-flops off and then started to run again. Tara could no longer see Roni, but Lacy and Jenny were still running ahead of her. People walking in the airport stared at the girls as one by one they ran by. Tara could feel her lungs start to burn, and she slowed a bit, trying to keep the girls in sight. Her laptop strap dug into her shoulder, feeling like it weighed a hundred pounds. She saw Lacy run past an escalator going down, and then she turned around and headed back to it. Jenny caught up with her at the top. Tara started to laugh at the absurdity of four fifty-something women dashing through the airport. She knew if anyone could hold the plane, it would be Roni.
“Hurry, Tara,” Jenny encouraged, “we’re almost there.”
Tara picked up her pace as the two girls disappeared down the escalator. She hit the top and ran down the stairs as fast as she could, the metal ridges digging into her feet. Halfway down, she could see Roni waiting at the gate entrance.
“See, I told you she was coming,” Roni said to the attendant.
She stood with her hands on her hips, still breathing hard from the run. Lacy and Jenny had disappeared.
“Hurry, hurry,” the girl called while motioning rapidly with her hand. “I’m supposed to be shutting the gate.”
Tara hit the bottom of the escalator and kept on running until she was at the gate. She quickly pulled her boarding pass out of the side pocket of her laptop. The attendant took it, but didn’t even look at it as she shooed them into the breezeway and grabbed the microphone.
“Gate closed, two more boarding now,” she said into the mic.
Roni and Tara rushed down the boarding ramp into the plane. Tara felt like her lungs might burst. The attendant smiled at them and then looked down at Tara’s feet.
“Sorry, we had to run,” Tara said breathlessly.
She dropped her flip-flops onto the floor and slipped them on. They hurried down the aisle to their seats. Jenny and Lacy sat two rows behind them, still visibly breathing hard. They both fastened their seatbelts and pushed their carry-ons under the seat. Tara pulled out her ponytail tie and re-did it before she sat back.
“Fuck,” she said. “What a shit show.”
Roni laughed quietly. Tara looked over at her. She knew, if they weren’t on a plane, the two of them would laugh loudly, probably until they cried.
“Can you imagine the waitress? She pours the wine, leaves, then comes back to deliver the food and we’re gone. Full bottle sitting there, money on the table. I hope she at least gets to take the food and wine home. I think I had like two sips, and then it was marathon time. If it wasn’t for you, the door would have been shut, and we would have missed the plane.”
Tara sighed as Roni pushed her hair back. Her phone beeped and she opened it quickly. There it was…her heart beat faster, a text from Mack.
*I can’t wait to see you.* Roni texted. *Let’s forget the fight, I love you. Look forward to hearing all about your new idea, champagne chilling*
Roni could feel the tears push forth as she read it a second time and she took in another deep breath to fight them. Tara was still panting beside her.
“Who is it?” she asked as Roni powered off her phone.
“It was Mack, he can’t wait to see me,” Roni said.
“Well, I would hope so after a month.”
Roni didn’t want to explain any further. To tell Tara what the text had meant to her she would have to explain everything. Her heart lifted, for Mack to text what he had, he was saying that they would work it out. He’d missed her, wanted her home, wanted to celebrate whatever plan she had.
“Get this thing off the ground, so they can get the drink cart rolling,” Roni said. “Now I really need one.”
“Seriously,” Tara said assuming she was talking aout the run. “How did you get the time so messed up?”
“Guess I’m still on Bahamas time, ‘mon’. I don’t know, one more thing to add to our adventure story. And wash your feet before you get into bed,” Roni teased. “Don’t look, but I’m guessing they are pretty black.”
“Gross.”