The Walls of Jericho

Two Kinds of People

There are two kinds of people in the world.

Those who plan and pack for their vacation a week in advance. And those who wake up the morning of their departure and realize they have to do a load of laundry because they don’t have any clean underwear to take with them otherwise.

Invariably, these two will wind up mated to one another.

Which is precisely what's happened with me and Channing.

As a person who’s spent the last seven years of my life living with a crazy old man, and the seven years before that living out of my backpack in various unpleasant foster homes interspersed with bouts of sleeping on a park bench named ‘Eric’, I consider myself pretty tolerant of other people’s idiosyncrasies, including Channing’s.

What I didn’t understand was that traveling together introduces an entire other level of crazy to your partner’s not-so-charming domestic quirks. A level of crazy that is exceedingly disruptive to mated bliss. This subsequently introduces a boss level of stress that I soon realize has the potential to escalate into what police investigators call ‘a motive’.

Quickly.

The first moment when Channing’s life should flash before his eyes is the alarm at five o’clock in the morning for our six o’clock departure from Tassler house for the airport. He should have already figured out I’m a slow riser with a zero tolerance policy for any form of early morning chitchat, and wisely booked a later morning flight.

Apparently, he has not.

Number one on my Rude Awakenings Fecal Roster was my mate physically hauling me out of bed and holding me down in a cold shower.

But a close second is my mate bounding out of bed three and a half seconds after the five o’clock alarm goes off. Then chattering incessantly like a hyperactive six year old who’s been fed three double espressos, two pounds of jellybeans and a hit of methamphetamine before going to Disneyland.

He's alert.

He's excited.

And he's oblivious to how close he is to becoming a werewolf lightning rod.

This is already adding up to recipe for disaster. One where Channing’s face winds up on the back of a milk carton, and I find myself facing a tribunal for crimes against the Geneva conventions.

With our baggage loaded in the back of the car, I lean my seat back a few extra inches intending to catch fifteen more minutes of sleep while he drives us to the airport. We’re still in the driveway when he verbally expresses his death wish.

“Babydoll, I need you to stay awake. You have to help me or I’ll miss our exit.”

My head against the seatback lolls his direction and I crack one eye open the bare minimum to see him. “You’ve been making this trip every Monday for the last five weeks straight. If you don’t know the exit by now, I don’t stand a chance in hell of getting us there. Use the GPS for pity’s sake.”

Channing reaches across the console and grips my knee, shaking me excitedly. “Oh, come on! We’re taking our first vacation together. Are you just going to sleep through all of it?”

“Did you or did you not drag me out of bed at five a.m. this morning then tell me this is going to be an eleven hour flight?”

“Yes. It’s going to be fun.”

 Oh. Fun. Right. Because who could sleep through the thrill of an eleven hour airline flight? “You’re not allowed to book our flights anymore.”

It’s only twenty minutes to the airport, but another twenty minutes circling around in the airport parking structure with a renewed appeal for vigilance because Channing can’t just park in the first available spot he finds. Oh no. Despite the fact that he’s as fit and healthy as a twenty-two year old triathlete, he refuses to walk more than three car lengths from where he’s parked to the entrance of the airport. Even though it’s covered parking.

I have some serious misgivings about my mate selection realizing this is only going to get worse when some day he's a retiree.

Once we’re through all the security checks, he’s dragging me along through the airport terminal at Mach fourteen to get to our gate before our flight that doesn’t leave for another hour and a half.

“Is that a coffee shop up ahead?” I grumble as Channing drags me along by one hand, towing our stacked, roller luggage in the other because I'm not moving fast enough.

“Airport food is too expensive,” he replies. “There’s free coffee on the plane.”

Jerking my wrist out of his grip, I stop in front of the coffee shop and the bored looking barista behind the counter gets to his feet, more to watch the show than for any interest in taking our order. “Their largest cup is five dollars. I don’t think either of us is going to have to sell a kidney to finance one.”

“We’ll be late getting to our gate.”

“I can see it right there!” I point to the overhead sign with our gate number in large digits about forty steps away. “It’s not going to take us an hour and a half to get there.”

“But boarding starts a half hour before the flight departs.”

I fix him with a withering glare. “You need to stop talking. I’m getting a cup of coffee before this degenerates to the point where I have to take a separate flight from you.”

“Okay, fine.” 

He then proceeds to order a full breakfast to-go for each of us, along with purchasing two of the shop’s nineteen dollar travel mugs because we can refill them for three dollars a piece at any airport location. Naturally, none of the rest of the airports we're flying through for this trip besides this one has one of these coffee shops in it where we might be able to capitalize on that great deal.

Despite the 'exorbitant' cost for two meals that each contain enough food to feed an army or one large male werewolf, and the nine minutes it takes to prepare them, we still make it to our gate on time. I make certain to point that out to Channing for the sake of posterity. We also arrive with enough time to spare to eat our massive breakfasts, including Channing finishing the other half of mine because it’s too much food for me to eat in one sitting.

When the gate attendants arrive fifteen minutes before the boarding process starts, he drags us to our feet again, this time to wait in the non-existent line so we can be the first ones to board in our section. It’s as the first boarding group is announced that Ferdi and Damien stroll up, five dollar airport coffee shop coffee in hand, and get in line with us.

“Hey, Jericho,” Ferdi says with a jerk of his chin as acknowledgement and Damien gives me a hug around the shoulders.

“What time did you guys leave to get here?” I demand. I can see Channing give a worried shake of his head in the reflection of Damien’s glasses.

“Hour ago,” Ferdi replies oblivious to what's going on, opening the airline’s application on his phone and bringing up his e-ticket for the gate attendant to scan.

I flick Channing an evil glare. “I’m sitting with Damien.”

I must admit he arranged nice seats. The four of us occupy a row of first class seats in pairs on either side of the plane’s center aisle, and each seat is arranged to provide a small table, a private movie screen and a generous chair that reclines to a bed.

He’s booked our seats together on the side where the beds are side by side, not that I think he intended to use them. Once take-off is complete and we’re in the air, I recline mine and pull the arm up between us, then pull the privacy curtain despite his protests.

The flight attendant was generous with the blankets and I curl up on my side, comfortably warm. Between the drone of the plane’s engines and my exhaustion, I’m asleep in minutes.

When I next wake, it’s to the smell of salt-sea-sand and I find myself cuddled and warm against Channing’s chest. He’s drawn the privacy curtain along the aisle and tucked one arm and a few of the dinky airplane pillows behind his neck so he can comfortably watch a movie.

Feeling me stir, he ducks his head and murmurs something in my ear about the mile-high club which I blatantly ignore, then I roll over on my other side and go back to sleep again. I don't have the time or the energy for his nonsense.

When I wake again, it’s for the in-flight meal service, after which, Channing and I watch a movie. The comedy is a good option for us, since we both get some laughs and it keeps the disruptions to our mated bliss to a minimum.

The flight lands less than an hour after we finish, and as soon as we step off the plane, I can feel the difference between here and home. It’s about twenty degrees colder than it was when we left, even as early in the morning as that was, and the damp sinks in quickly.

It’s after dark already here, and the six hour time difference between here and home means most places are closing up and people are going to bed.

There’s an argument between Ferdi and Damien on the way to the car park to pick up the rental car and while I generally think and therefore side with Damien typically, on this occasion, I have to admit Ferdi is right. Booking the smallest car available means we wind up arranging two separate cars—one for Channing and me, the other for Ferdi and Damien. Even though they’re both technically four-door cars, they’re so small we have to fold down the tiny backseats just to get our two reasonably sized pieces of luggage into them.

As the argument escalates, it becomes clear that if nothing else, the size of the cars isn’t Damien’s fault, and Channing winds up silencing it by pointing that out and with an exerted assist from his alpha control. By the time we're ready to get rolling, another hour’s been wasted, and that’s when I get my first taste of what my charming mate is like when he’s driving in unfamiliar country.

From the rental car desk, he picked up a copy of every map available—easily a ream of paper—then harangued the desk clerk to mark our route and one alternative route on each of them, just in case there’s a detour. Long after we reach the car and Ferdi and Damien have already departed for the hotel, my mate is still sitting behind the wheel, in the car park, organizing the maps.

Finally satisfied, he hands them to me. “Here you go, navigator.”

“Navigator?” I peer at him incredulously. “You do remember I don’t drive, right?”

“So? You can read a map, can’t you?”

I tip my head down and review the path the rental clerk marked on the first one.

“Wait wait wait wait! What do you think you’re doing!?” he demands as I tuck the first map to the back of the stack to look at the second one, then the third.

“What do you mean ‘what do you think you’re doing’? I’m looking at the next map.”

“You’re getting them out of order.” He snatches them out of my hand to put them back in his order.

I’m hoping when I peer at him again that this is another of those bonding moments where we laugh at the absurdity of our situation. Unfortunately, it’s not. Channing is actually coming unhinged over the reorder of his sacred cache of maps. If there’s a prize for rotten travel companions, everyone else should drop out of the running right now because I’m mated to the reigning champion and I refuse to believe anyone else on the planet could be so ridiculous.

No wonder Damien and Ferdi rent a separate car. Wish I’d thought of that even though I don’t drive.

Inhaling a deep breath, I blow it out through pursed lips and haul out my phone. It takes a couple of seconds to input the hotel’s address into the GPS, start the app mapping, then I depress the button to roll down the window on my side. Snatching the maps from him, I toss the whole fluttering mess out of the car.

“What the hell did you do that for!?” When he reaches for the door handle to get out and retrieve them, I lock the car’s doors.

“Channing, we’re done with this. If I’m the navigator, we’ll use GPS. Unless you want me to have to move our luggage to the passenger seat so I can get what remains of your body into the trunk space.” I arch my brows as if I’m offering any real choices here. “Either option works for me.”

“Jericho, your GPS isn’t going to show us what other things here we might want to visit.”

“I’m confident I can figure it out.”

With a sigh, Channing starts the micro-mini-car's engine. Following the GPS instructions through two left turns and four miles of stay on the same road, we find ourselves at the hotel. 

Clearly, accommodations are an area where Damien, Ferdi and even Channing all still think bachelor-style lodgings are satisfactory. It’s clear that these three guys are perfectly content to sleep on a piece of paper on the hard ground provided the hotel supplies free parking and a free breakfast of cold cereal and toast. So when we reach the charming little hotel and find our room is on the third floor with only stair access, my mate is self-designated as our baggage carrier.

When we arrive at the room, I’m pleased to find that while he chose the bare minimum of room amenities, at least we don’t require camping gear or bug spray and there’re lots of pillows, a big bed and in-room controlled air-conditioning. What I do come to understand too late to make it useful now is that with the time difference, I’m not tired even though it’s dark. By the time I get to sleep, it’s well on towards morning.

Channing kisses me good-bye a couple hours later and promises to be back at lunch to check on me, wisely leaving me to slowly adjust to the time change on my own.