Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [1]
“Mayday, Mayday!”
That's me panicking, by the way, not the pilot. A trained professional, he's busy surveying the ground through a small triangular panel of Plexiglas to his left, no doubt trying to figure out how long it'll be before we hit something.
Immediately he sits up straight again.
Uh-oh! Not much farther now, then.
As I'm hanging on, mortified, five rods of brilliant sunlight burst through the starboard windows and sweep the tiny cabin from front to back like deep-sea divers searching a sunken wreck for bodies, something that could actually become a reality very shortly if we don't level our descent. Although, of course, you learn not to express such things out loud. For a start, it might annoy Eric, our field production coordinator. And you never want to do that. It was he who booked us on this bucking clockwork junk heap in the first place, following a minor altercation at check-in back in Australia over the staggering amount of equipment and other luggage we'd wanted to wheel aboard the aircraft, the combined weight of which was so preposterously excessive that, according to the waspish airline clerk, it would have “negated every one of the laws of aerodynamics.” (She probably had a good point. I have no idea how many laws there are, but let's say for the sake of argument fifteen. I mean, who in their right mind would choose to break all fifteen laws of aerodynamics? It's crazy.)
“Okay Here's an idea,” Eric argued, running a thin hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “What if we redistribute the equipment between the various cases? How about that?”
“Er … you could, I suppose. But… wouldn't…” Her brow corrugated into a frown. “… the total weight… be exactly the same?”
“In a way.”
“Then no! No, you can't.”
I saw his round shoulders quiver with suppressed rage.
Oh dear.
Sensing a small mutiny in the making, one of many this trip, I exchanged an “uh-oh” glance with Tasha, and distanced myself by flopping down on a suitcase, cracking open The Da Vinci Code,1 and letting the rest of them get on with it.
Letting other people get on with things is very much my way. I'm terribly hands-off as far as problems are concerned.
“Look, darlin’,” Eric growled, hooking himself over the desk, “here's the deal, okay? We're trying to make a television show …” Ooh, clever. Playing the glamour card. “… so what would it take to get us o—?”
But the poor woman had heard enough. “Sir, please stand to one side. You—everybody in this group—stand to one side and let the other passengers through. Next.”
With great relief, the young couple behind us shuffled forward in line, tickets at the ready …
“What if—”
… only to stop again with a groan. Eric wasn't budging.
“Next!”
“… we bought more seats for the bags?”
“Sir, the flight's full. If you like, we can put the excess on tomorrow's flight. That m—”
“Nope,” he cut her off, then sighed heavily. “No, don't worry, it's fine. We'll go elsewhere.” Turning his back: “You're not the only major airline that goes to Vanuatu, you know.”
This brought a smile to her face.
“Well, actually, sir …”
The phone call that started it all came out of the blue.
“Hi, is that Cash?” a male voice said. Cordial, controlled. “How's it going?”
“Great. Why … who are you?”
“I'm the new vice president of development at ______” and he named a certain TV network, one I was not entirely familiar with. But who cares? He was a TV executive! A TV executive calling me—that is to say a complete nobody, a non-TV person—at home. “… and I'm a big fan of your work. Big fan … love your radio stuff…” His words drifted in and out like AM static. “… I listen to you sometimes when I'm… great stuff.… Anyway, look, you might be interested in talking with us … maybe we could meet up, and …”
Meet up? Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!!!!
I leaped up onto my washing machine and sat there, legs crossed to prevent myself doing cartwheels across the kitchen, possibly tearing a ligament.
“Thanks,” I said, not really taking anything in. “Er … I mean,