Fletch, Too

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Kenya.”

  “London, Kenya?”

  “Nairobi, Kenya.”

  “Nairobi, Kenya!”

  “Africa.”

  “Africa!”

  “East Africa.”

  Barbara mouthed the words: “East Africa …”

  “Didn’t you say you’d follow me to the ends of the earth?”

  “Never! You can’t even find a pizza parlor in Malibu!”

  In the terminal’s main concourse, Barbara jumped ahead of Fletch, turned around, and stopped. Facing Fletch, she put her fists on her hips.

  “Fletch! What’s going on?”

  “London,” Fletch said. “Then we’re going on to Kenya.”

  Alston had kept walking.

  “Tell me what’s happening!”

  “We’ve got a wedding present,” Fletch said. “A trip to Nairobi, Kenya.”

  “Who from? Tell me another.” Barbara’s face flushed. “Fletch! You accepted an assignment from the newspaper on our honeymoon!”

  “No, no. Nothing like that.”

  Flapping boarding passes, airline tickets, baggage stubs, Alston was at the airline’s courtesy information booth clearly straining the attendant’s courtesy.

  “You did too!”

  “Would I do that to you?”

  “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit in some hotel room, or some, some grass shack while you run miles in circles trying to fill up one damned inch of that damned newspaper! Not on my honeymoon!”

  “I told you: the trip is a present. A wedding present. It will be fun.”

  “I’ll bet. A present from the newspaper!”

  “No. Not from the newspaper.”

  “Who else would give you a trip to Africa?”

  The courteous man at the information counter now had a phone to each ear while also, apparently, listening to Alston.

  “My father.”

  Barbara’s eyes popped. “Your father?”

  “I guess.”

  “You didn’t say, I do at the wedding, you said, I guess I do. Now you’re saying you guess you got a wedding present of a trip to Africa from father?”

  “It’s turned into a highly conjectural day.”

  At the counter, Alston’s lips were moving rapidly.

  “You’ve never had a father. Or you’ve had four of them, or something.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “What father?”

  “The one who died.”

  “You’ve inherited something?”

  “No. We really don’t have time to discuss this now, Barbara.”

  “You didn’t have time to discuss the wedding, either.”

  “And it happened, see? It came off with a hitch. All right. Things work out.”

  Barbara wagged her head. “This can’t work out.”

  “Sure it can.”

  “I can’t go to Kenya.”

  “We haven’t had any shots, have we?”

  “I don’t have a passport!”

  “Oh, that.” Fletch reached into the muddy envelope. “You have a passport.” He handed it to her.

  Alston was striding toward them, smiling.

  “Alston,” Fletch said, “we haven’t had any shots.”

  “You only need them for medical reasons,” Alston said. “Not legal reasons.”

  “I’m glad you became a lawyer.”

  “Yeah.” Alston glanced at Barbara. “Don’t forget: I do divorces.”

  “Where did this picture of me come from?” Barbara said into her passport.

  Fletch glanced at it over her shoulder. “It’s a nice one.”

  “Okay.” Alston was sorting various tickets and stubs in his hands. “Your tickets to Colorado are canceled. Not sure I’ll be able to get your money back.”

  “Can we get the luggage back?”

  “That’s my green sweater,” Barbara said at her passport picture.

  “What they’re going to try to do is get your luggage off that plane, then they’ll send it over to the International Terminal, British Air, and get it aboard your flight to London, checked straight through to Nairobi.”

  Fletch put Barbara’s passport back in the muddy envelope. “We won’t know if our luggage is with us until we get to Nairobi.”

  “The skis,” Barbara said.

  “Can’t separate the luggage now.” Alston shook his head. “No way. Things are too confusing as it is.”

  “Are you confused?” Barbara asked. “I’m not confused.”

  Alston glanced at his watch. “We’ve got to get over to the International Terminal quick-quick. Got to tell them what your connecting flight to Nairobi is.”

  “Quick-quick.” Fletch grabbed Barbara’s elbow.

  “We’re not going skiing,” Barbara said. “We packed ski clothes! Nothing but ski clothes!”

  “Barbara, we have to hurry.”

  “Where?”

  “International Terminal,” Fletch said.

  “British Air,” Alston said.

  They were dashing across the concourse.

  “London, England,” Fletch said.

  “Passport Control,” Alston said.

  “Nairobi, Kenya,” Fletch said.

  “Fletch! I told my mother I’d call her from Colorado!”

  “Can’t stop,” Fletch said.

  “Tonight!”

  Fletch steered her into the revolving door.

  “Ain’t married life fun?” After he went through the revolving door himself, he said, “So far?”

  “All my mother wanted to do was meet you.” Barbara fastened her seat belt.

  “I met her. At the wedding.”

  “Would you believe she really wanted to meet you before the wedding?”

  “I met her before the wedding. She was wearing jodhpurs. Right? She seemed real surprised to see me.”

  “Dismayed, more likely. She arranged dinner for us every night last week. You never made it. Not once.”

  “I was working. Did I tell you I have a job?”

  “And you’re dragging me halfway around the world to meet your father?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

  “He’s known to evade important occasions.” Buckled up, Fletch put the side of his face against the back of his seat.

  “You’re going to sleep, aren’t you?”

  “Barbara, I have to. I haven’t slept in days and nights, and days, and …”

  Barbara sighed. “How long before we get to Nairobi, Kenya?”

  “Two days.”

  “Two days!”

  “Two nights? Maybe three days.”

  “Fletch. Wake up. Get your head off my shoulder. Listen to what the steward’s saying about what to do when the airplane crashes.”

  “That’s okay,” Fletch mumbled. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Oh, my God! Seven-twenty on our wedding night, and he’s asleep!”

  “The thing is,” Fletch said, “I never knew there was a possibility my father is alive.”

  Many, many hours later on the flight from London to Nairobi, they were terribly scrunched up. The airplane was full. The seats were narrow and close to each other. There was hand luggage spilling out from under every seat.

  “Did your mother know? Did she know there was a possibility he was alive?”

  “I think she convinced herself he was dead. To keep her pride. To keep her sanity. In order to marry again, she had to legally assume him dead after seven years.”

  “I guess in order to go to court to declare your husband dead, you have to believe he’s dead.”

  “But she never really knew. When I’d ask questions about him, you know, growing up, her answers would always be so glib, so casual, you know? I’d get the idea the topic wasn’t worth discussing.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t.”

  “She says she loved him, though.”

  “What sort of things would she tell you?”

  “She’d say, ‘
Hey, I was only married to your father ten months, and I never understood him.’”

  “Then what would she say?”

  “‘How do you spell “license”?’”

  “Why would she say that?”

  “Well, you know, she writes these detective novels. And she never could spell. She’d ask me to look words up in the dictionary for her. It was her way of getting rid of me.”

  “What did you know about your father?”

  “I knew he was a pilot. I knew, or thought I knew, he died about when I was born. Therefore, I always assumed he died in a plane crash shortly after I was born. Or before. I knew my mother was alone when she gave birth to me. I didn’t realize she was awaiting a husband who never showed up. A child accepts what he’s told.”

  “Did you ever see a picture of your father?”

  Fletch scanned his memory. “Never. That’s odd, isn’t it? Naturally, there would be pictures of your father around, if he were dead.”

  “But not if there was a possibility he was alive, and had abandoned you both.”

  “So that possibility must have been very much in my mother’s mind.”

  “Very much, I’d say.”

  The areas under the seats in front of them were filled, too.

  Instead of waiting at Heathrow eight hours for their connecting flight to Nairobi or finding a place to sleep, Barbara and Fletch had bussed into London. Fletch had no clothes but the jeans and shirt he was wearing. Barbara insisted upon buying sweaters. They had lunch in a not-very-good place. They bought books. They got lost. They had to taxi back to the airport.

  “This little guy just came up to me after the wedding, while everyone but the groom was kissing the bride, and just handed me this envelope.”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “He was there, I swear it. He didn’t say a word. Just handed me the envelope and left.”

  Barbara asked, “Are you sure he wasn’t your father?”

  “I would think if he were, my mother would have recognized him.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Still … they knew each other all through school.”

  “Maybe your mother didn’t even see him. We were outdoors, somewhat of a crowd, bad weather …”

  “And you never know whether my mother is seeing real people or socializing with figments of her imagination.”

  “Right,” Barbara said. “She must have been deeply hurt by all this.”

  “And deeply puzzled.”

  Barbara smiled. “The mystery Josie Fletcher couldn’t solve. Better not let her fans in the libraries know.”

  “Her only fans are in the libraries, and are silent.”

  “What else was in the envelope?”

  “The tickets, the passports, ten one-hundred-dollar bills, and the letter.”

  “You haven’t shown me the letter.”

  “There’s nothing to see.” Fletch reached under the seat in front of him and picked up the envelope. “It all washed away in the rain.”

  He handed her the wrinkled piece of paper.

  “That’s sad.” She stared at it in her hand. “Maybe your mother could have recognized the handwriting. How do you know it was from your father?”

  “It was signed ‘Fletch.’”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “Walter.”

  “Walter. I wonder how I would have thought of you as a Walter junior.”

  “A fletcher by any other name is still an arrow maker.”

  “So what did the letter say?” She handed it back to him.

  “In fact, it said something about my name.” He leaned forward as much as he could to put the envelope back. “Something about not liking my names, Irwin Maurice, something about my mother’s giving me these names, not him, or not with his agreement, as if he’d had nothing to do with it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He sat back again. “The letter read almost as if my mother gave the baby, me, these names which he didn’t like, didn’t relate to, on her own, and this made the baby, me, more her baby than his: that he couldn’t relate to anyone named Irwin Maurice.”

  “Neither can you.”

  “But I’ve stuck around. I haven’t disappeared.”

  “You disappear all the time.”

  “He said he was ‘mildly curious’ in meeting me and asked if I was ‘mildly curious’ in meeting him.”

  “That’s the word he used? ‘Mildly’?”

  “Yes. ‘Mildly.’ But the airline tickets to Nairobi and back are expensive.”

  “Maybe he’s rich.”

  “Maybe he was giving us each an out. He wrote I certainly didn’t have to come if I didn’t want. He said I could cash the tickets in and buy you a set of china or something.”

  “A set of china,” Barbara said. “I might have liked that.”

  “You’ll never see your china, but you will see Kenya.”

  “Maybe this isn’t from your father at all.” Barbara wriggled uncomfortably in her seat. “Maybe somebody was trying to get you out of the country for a while. One of these stories you’ve been investigating.”

  “I suppose that’s possible.”

  “Keep you out of court, keep you from raising more trouble, or something.”

  “Maybe everyone on the newspaper took up a collection to get rid of me. Maybe the return tickets are no good.” Fletch smiled.

  “Maybe a wild-goose chase.”

  Fletch asked, “Aren’t you ‘mildly curious’?”

  “Only mildly.”

  Fletch continued looking at Barbara.

  “I’m trying to say something here,” she said.

  “I know. What?”

  “I don’t think it’s good for you to be more than ‘mildly curious.’ You know what I mean?”

  “So I won’t be more than mildly disappointed?”

  “Yeah,” Barbara said. “Something like that.”

  “Jambo,” the customs official in Nairobi airport said. He eyed the two pairs of covered skis Fletch held upright.

  Very carefully, Fletch said, “Jambo.”

  “Harbari?” He was a short, pudgy, balding man in well-pressed shirt and trousers.

  Fletch said, “Habari.”

  “So you have been to Kenya before,”

  “Never,” Fletch said. “Never been in Africa before.”

  “That’s the way it is.” The man chuckled softly. “Everyone in the world speaks Swahili.”

  Barbara said, “I’ve got to take off this sweater.”

  The two pairs of skis in their soft plastic covers had drawn the particular attention of the customs official to Barbara and Fletch. In fact, the two pairs of wrapped skis were drawing the attention of many people in Nairobi airport. These people stood in a loose circle around Fletch, Barbara, and the skis. Two of these people were in uniforms.

  Nightsticks and handguns dangled from their belts. One carried a machine gun.

  The customs official took his eyes off the wrapped skis long enough to look at the passports Fletch handed him. “Are you visiting Kenya for business or pleasure?”

  “Pleasure,” Barbara answered. “We were just married. Days ago. A million years ago.”

  Fletch then heard, for the first time, the sound he was to hear many times in Kenya, the little song exhaled on three notes: “Oh, I see.”

  The customs official made a note on his clipboard. “And what sort of shooting equipment is that, in the rifle covers, you are bringing into Kenya? Very long rifles, I think.” He pointed the back of his pen at them as if they really needed pointing out.

  “Oh, these.” Fletch looked up and down the skis he held beside him. “These are for shooting down mountains.”

  The official looked alarmed. “Shooting down mountains? Is that possible?”

  “Skis.”

  “Skis … Mombasa?”

  Very carefully, Fletch said: “Mombasa.”

  “I have skied off Mombasa. Behind a speedboat.�
� The official took the position of one skiing behind a speedboat, knees bent, hands forward to hold a towline. “The skis I used were short. Perhaps in proportion to the feet?” He looked down at Barbara’s and Fletch’s feet. “I don’t think so.”

  “Snow skis.”

  “Oh, I see. I have seen those in films. This large, are they? You are in Kenya en route to someplace else.”

  Fletch was hoping that soon he could get to a men’s room. “Not really.”

  “Where do you go after Kenya?”

  “Home. Back to the States.”

  “You return to the United States? With the skis?”

  Fletch craned his neck to look through the door of the controlled area to see if possibly anyone was waiting, looking for them. “Yes.”

  The official thought a long moment. “You always travel with snow skis, even to the equator?”

  “No.”

  “There was some confusion,” Barbara said.

  “Oh, I see.”

  “At the airport. We ended up bringing the skis with us.”

  “At the airport, did you not know you were coming to Africa? Did you get on the wrong plane?”

  “We knew,” Fletch said. “We got on the right plane.”

  “So you knew what you were doing when you brought your snow skis to Kenya, just to bring them home again?”

  “Well, that’s the fact.” Barbara looked at Fletch. “We did bring our skis to Africa.”

  “There is snow on Mount Kenya,” the official conceded, “but it’s at the top, you see. There are no skiing safaris. Perhaps you brought these snow skis to Africa to sell them. They are a curiosity.”

  “We can’t sell them,” Barbara said. “They’re borrowed.”

  “Oh, I see. You borrowed skis to bring to Africa and home again.”

  “Fletch,” Barbara said, “quite reasonably, this gentleman wants to know why we brought snow skis to equatorial Africa.”

  “Wait till I take off my sweater.” Fletch leaned the skis against Barbara and wriggled out of his London-bought sweater. “Hot.”

  “Perhaps someone here could use snow skis for a wall decoration,” mused the official. “Someone who has a very large wall.”

  “Originally we were going to Colorado,” Fletch said. “Skiing.”

  “And you failed to get off the plane when it stopped in Colorado?”

  “It didn’t stop in Colorado,” Barbara said. “If it had, I would have called my mother.”