Lattice Entertain You - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 279

This time he gave me a full shot…and a bit more. “Any ice?” I asked, going for broke.
“ Sí ,” he answered with a sigh.
Five minutes later I was feeling slightly less gloomy about our impending deaths. Soon
Michael joined me. For a mere $12 he managed to negotiate a shot of gin and a can of or-
ange juice.
“Got any food?” I asked our surly barkeep, who was listlessly scraping food particles
off the kitchen grill.
“ Sí .”
“Burgers?”
“Maybe.”
“We'd like two. And fries.”
He looked mortally offended.
“ Tu eres un hombre muy agradable ,” (You are a very nice man), I shamelessly flattered
him with my slowly-improving Spanish.
He almost-but-not-quite cracked a smile.
“With fries?” he asked.
It was almost like a party.
Or a last supper.
☼ ☼ ☼
I was just coming out of the airport restroom an hour later when Michael tore around the
corner.
“We're leaving!” he all but screamed.
Rushing into the waiting room (checking absentmindedly to make sure I'd zipped up
my shorts), I found Michael and a red-faced airline employee waiting for me by the door
leading to the tarmac. Both appeared to be on the brink of hyperventilation.
“So we waited four hours and now it's a national emergency?” I couldn't help mutter-
ing.
Michael took my arm and steered me outside.
“Let's just get on the plane,” he said. “They say there's a very small window of oppor-
tunity for getting us there.”
I didn't like the sound of this. Not one bit. And as we sprinted towards the plane I liked
it even less. A steady rain was still falling, and a heavy wind was blowing up from the bay.
The sky was the color of lead.
As in a lead balloon.
There were just two other passengers: the red-haired woman from the waiting area and
her teenage son. The mother treated us to a steady stream of lame wisecracks while the son,
in the time-honored tradition of adolescent males, looked catatonically bored.