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Lawrence Block
Ta
The fifth book in the Evan Ta
This one’s for
SPIDER ROBINSON,
and it’s about time
Chapter 1
Our flight left Ke
Not literally ru
The plane taxied to and fro, to and fro. The pilot put many miles on the aircraft without yet leaving the ground. Mi
“You promised we would fly,” she said.
“We will. Be patient.”
“Is this really an airplane?”
“Of course.”
“It does not behave like one.”
Mi
After another fifteen minutes of driving, the pilot introduced himself apologetically over the intercom. I thought he was going to tell us that there was a bomb on the plane or that Montreal had been closed for the season. He explained, anticlimactically, I thought, that there were still six planes ahead of us, that we would get assigned to a runway sooner or later, and that he thanked us for our patience.
Mi
“Watch it,” I said.
“But no one can understand me, Evan.”
“That’s the point.” I patted her little hand. “Don’t speak anything but English until we get into Canada. Remember, you’re an American citizen, you were born in New York, your name is Mi
“All right. The pilot is a-”
“Proper English.”
“-nice man.”
She is not an American citizen, she was not born in New York, her name is not Mi
When I first met her, she was living in a cheerless basement room in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, tended by a pair of addled old maids who awaited the day when she could be installed as Lithuania ’s queen. I took her away from all that, and now she plays queen in my somewhat less cheerless apartment on West 107th Street. From time to time I threaten to send her to school or to have her adopted by some happy little couple with a happy little house out in a happy little suburb. She and I both know that this will never happen – she’s too much fun to have around. Ever since Kitty Bazerian’s grandmother taught her how to make Armenian coffee, she has become utterly indispensable.
“How long will we be on this plane, Evan?”
“The flight takes an hour. If we ever get off the ground.”
“And then we will be in Montreal?”
“Yes. And our luggage will be in Buenos Aires.”
“ Buenos Aires?”
“I never trust airlines. I’m joking. We’ll be in Montreal when the plane lands, yes.”
“Can we go to Expo tonight?”
“It’ll be too late.”
“I’m not tired, Evan.”
“You’ll be tired by the time we get to the hotel.”
“I won’t. I’m hardly ever tired, Evan. Like you, I need very little sleep. Hardly any sleep at all.”
I looked at her. Mi
“If we went to Expo tonight,” Mi
“That’s very thoughtful of you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Last Saturday you were equally selfless. You volunteered to accompany Sonya to the children’s zoo.”
“She wanted to see it, Evan. And adults are not permitted unless they are accompanied by children. I thought to do her a favor.”
She has worked the children’s zoo con on every woman I’ve ever brought to the apartment. “If you want,” I said, “we’ll go to Expo tonight.”
“I only wish to be fair with you. Oh, I think it is an airplane after all!”
And so it was. We had clearance at last, and the big jet roared down the runway and took off. I sat back in my seat while Mi
Once it was off the ground, the plane behaved superbly. I had a drink and Mi
We followed the crowd into the airport and queued up for the luggage. The bags came spilling down a ramp onto a circular baggage rack that rotated. I missed our suitcase the first time around and waited until it made its way to us a second time. We got into another line that led past a desk where an attendant with a French accent sent Canadians to the left and Americans to the right. We went to the right. There were three lines, and we picked the shortest one.
I had our passports in my jacket pocket. You do not need a passport to get into Canada or back into the States, but the airlines clerk had recommended carrying proof of citizenship, and anyway I like to have my passport with me when I travel.
My passport was a forgery, but it had passed muster so many times I was no longer nervous about it. A gentle old Armenian man had made it for me some time ago in Athens, after the Czech Government had confiscated my real passport. The forgery had all the proper information on it, including the original passport number, so I wasn’t worried about it. Mi