Five minutes later, as I perused an article on “Bomb Basics—What You Need to Know” in the September issue of Counterterrorism News, the blond officer came out and handed me the phone. “Your card was declined, so the lawyer hung up. Sorry.”
I slumped back in my seat feeling helpless and alone. I checked my watch. Thirty minutes had passed since I’d deplaned. I’d better go back, I thought. If the plane takes off with those costumes, I’m screwed. But what about Pops? What if they drag him to Guantánamo Bay? Gowns? My father? My job? My father? I’ll stay for five more minutes, ten at the most. I went back to my magazine and tried to concentrate on what I needed to know about bomb-making basics, but I won’t lie. My heart wasn’t in it.
Fifteen minutes later, Pops and Beth came out the “No Admittance” door, shaking hands with their interrogators, apologizing for causing such a to-do.
“Are you okay?” I asked, glancing nervously at my watch.
“Yes, fine,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Beth Blair said. “Apparently this happens about once a week. They should really announce it’s against the FAA regulations to fornicate in the bathroom. I don’t understand why they don’t say something during the safety demonstration.”
I rolled my eyes. What a pair these two made. “C’mon, we have to hurry and make the plane.” I was desperate to get back to the gate.
“We missed it,” Pops said. “They’re rebooking us now.”
“Good thing,” Beth Blair said. “Those passengers would have lynched us if we’d reboarded.”
I slumped back into my folding chair and moaned.
Ten hours later, we boarded the same flight as yesterday (only now it was today) to Athens by way of Frankfurt. If there were no further delays, we would arrive two hours before the ship sailed. It would be tight, but we would make it.
We’d spent all day trying to reach the Lufthansa baggage office to be sure they took our suitcases off the earlier plane and locked them up until we arrived. They promised they had retrieved our bags, and that they were safe and secure just awaiting our arrival.
This turned out to be half true. When we finally got to Athens, exhausted, bedraggled, hungry (I could go on and on with adjectives, but I won’t), Pops’ suitcase was under lock and key. My luggage and its eighty-thousand-dollar contents were nowhere to be found.
Call Me Irresponsible
WHEN IT BECAME PAINFULLY obvious that the search for my bags was destined to end badly, I sent my bleary-eyed father on to the Hotel Grande Bretagne on Constitution Square. He promised to behave. Had we arrived twenty-four hours earlier, we would have checked into the hotel and slept a few hours, then gone to the dinner at the Olive Garden. No, not the chain, the real Olive Garden. It’s a quaint little restaurant located on top of the Titania Hotel with postcard views of the Acropolis, lit up in all its golden glory. The place is known far and wide for its fresh Mediterranean cuisine, at least according to Nigel, who insisted we dine there and made the reservation himself. Sadly, we would neither enjoy their fine fresh fish nor the spectacular views, as we were arriving a day late, thanks to Pops’ inability to keep his pecker in his pants, not that I was angry about it.
The Grande Bretagne is an elegant hotel, one of Athens’ finest, brimming with marble, chandeliers, and antiques at every turn. This was where the Tiffany Cruises Line sets up the exclusive holding pen for its newly embarking guests who have nothing to do until the ship opens for boarding at one P.M. At the hotel, passengers are treated to live folk music by a Greek violinist and served stuffed grapevine leaves, boiled octopus, cheese pastries, baked halva, and unlimited champagne until the ship has been thoroughly cleaned and readied for its new lucky load.
After one, the passengers are taken by bus (but only the finest buses) to the Port of Piraeus, where they are checked in and personally accompanied to their cabins to be reunited with their luggage. Guests don’t even have to unpack, as they have butlers for that sort of thing. They can settle into their new digs and enjoy the wine and caviar snack that has been thoughtfully laid out on their veranda tables. Of course, I would not be reunited with my luggage, nor would I watch my butler unpack, as everything I had checked was now lost due to my father’s midflight misbehavior, not that I was bitter about it.
Oh, who’s fooling whom? I was bitter. How bitter? Let me count the ways. If the trunk containing the borrowed costumes wasn’t found, I was in serious trouble. Tanya would probably fire me, and who could blame her? Those dresses were worth two years of my salary.
It isn’t that I didn’t consider carrying the clothes on board. I did. But eleven costumes would not squeeze into one suitcase that fit into the overhead compartment. The airlines are so strict these days about what size bags you can carry on board. So I went through the special courier check-in and literally witnessed the baggage handlers loading the trunk into the cargo hold. Had we transferred in Frankfurt and landed in Athens as planned, I would have watched them remove the trunk from the plane and taken custody of it right at the gate at both stops. But thanks to Pops, I had violated the cardinal rule of being a museum courier: Never separate yourself from the precious load you are carrying.
If Alexander Soros, the baggage complaint department manager, was to
