Fear itself

4

“Here’s to the hair of the dog.” Pender raised his recently refilled glass.

“Ed, the fucking dog is bald by now.” Two o’clock in the afternoon, and by Sid’s count it was Pender’s fourth drink of the day-one Jim Beam on the rocks at the airport bar in Monterey, a Bloody Mary on the connecting flight to San Francisco, and now, after receiving the call from Linda about the disappearing PWSPD Association, another Jim Beam at the airport bar in SFO.

“Don’t nag me, man-I’m feeling very vulnerable.”

“I know.”

“I was being facetious.”

“The hell you were.” Sid reached across the too-high, too-small round pedestal table, the kind you find only in airport bars, to give Pender’s beret a sharp sideways tug. “There, much better.”

“What was that all about?”

“If you insist on wearing a brown beret with a plaid sport jacket, the least you can do is adjust it properly.”

“I was going for jaunty.” Pender glanced at his drink and seemed surprised to find it half empty. “You know what doesn’t make sense?”

“I can think of a few things. What did you have in mind?”

“Your whole life, they tell you clean up after your mistakes. You break it, you fix it. Then you reach a certain age, you screw up, and now it’s ‘Get the hell outta here, pops. Go home, grab a nap, we’ll take it from here.’”

“I believe that’s covered in the book of Ecclesiastes,” said Sid. “To everything there is a season. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. It’s the way of the world, Sparky-you might as well get used to it.”

Pender made a well-I’ll-be-damned face. “Since when did you start reading the Bible?”

“Since right after Esther died.”

“Did it help?”

“Turns out there’s a lot of good stuff in there-you ought to try it sometime.”

“You know, I just might,” mused Pender, looking down at his glass, which had somehow emptied itself again. “I just goddamn might.”

“Excuse me, sir?” It was the female flight attendant-all legs and smile.

Sid took off his reading glasses and looked up from the in flight magazine; there were still five minutes remaining before takeoff and he’d already read everything in it that wasn’t about shopping. “Yes, dear?”

“Your friend asked me to give you this.” A brown paper bag from the gift shop.

“My friend?” As far as Sid knew, Pender had excused himself to use the terminal rest room before boarding-the airplane toilet was yet another modern invention that hadn’t been designed for men his size. “Are you sure you have the right guy?”

The stewardess looked around the first-class compartment to see if there were any other little old men wearing blue blazers and gray toupees. Seeing none, she nodded. “He said he marked a passage for you. He also asked could you please pick up his clubs in baggage claim when we get to Dulles?”

Sid reached into the paper bag and pulled out a leather-covered, pocket-sized Holy Bible. It was black, with gilt-edged pages and a gold silk ribbon sewn into the binding. He opened it to the page marked by the ribbon and saw that Pender had circled a passage in Ecclesiastes; the print, however, was too small for Sid to make out, even with his glasses on.

“Would you mind reading that for me?” he asked, handing the Good Book back to the stewardess.

“Of course.” This was first class, after all. “It’s Ecclesiastes…chapter, lemme see, looks like chapter nine, verse ten:

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.”