“Are we going somewhere?” I ask.
“My apartment in Seattle,” he says, zipping his jeans. Each new outfit he wears is a revelation. His skinny jeans ride low on his scrumptious hips.
I pick up the quiz and we head for the elevators. I didn’t know we had elevators in Portland! Earl presses the button for the roof.
“Oh,” I say. “I don’t know if I’m up for a three-hour helicopter ride today . . .”
“We’re not taking my helicopter,” he says.
When we step out of the elevator and onto the rooftop, I see what Earl means. “A private jet!” I scream.
He smiles. “The helicopter is okay, but when I need to jet somewhere fast . . . well, I use a jet. Hop in, baby.”
He presses a button on his keychain remote and raises the jet’s glass cockpit. I climb a short ladder and settle into the rear seat. Earl takes the front seat where the controls are.
“You know what kind of jet this is?” he says, pressing a button to lower the glass shield. I have no idea, and he doesn’t give me a chance to answer anyway. “It’s an F-14 Tomcat. The same fighter jet that Tom Cruise flew in Top Gun.”
“Is he some kind of pilot? I thought you said he was a bartender?”
Earl fires up the engine. “No, baby, he’s an actor. Tom Cruise played Maverick in the 1986 film Top Gun. Man, I can’t believe you haven’t seen it. That just blows my mind.”
I shake my head. “Before my time, I guess.”
Earl ignores me and backs the jet up to give us the maximum amount of runway space on the Holiday Inn rooftop. “There were only seven hundred twelve of these bad boys built,” he says. “Most of them were scrapped by the US Navy; a few were sold to foreign governments. This is the only one in private use in the world. Put this on.” He hands me a helmet with GOOSE printed on it.
“Who’s Goose?”
“You are, today,” he says, strapping on his own helmet that reads MAVERICK.
“You really like this Tom Cruise guy,” I observe.
The jet has come to a halt on the rooftop. He turns and frowns at me. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing, geez.”
“Anyway,” he continues, “You’re in for a treat. We should be in Seattle in no time. This jet can go up to fifteen hundred miles per hour.”
Holy speed of sound! “We’re going to die,” I whisper.
“Not on my watch you won’t,” Earl says. “How many times have I saved your life so far?”
“Three. Or four,” I say meekly.
“Exactly. Buckle up. We’re about to take a ride into the Danger Zone.” He pauses. “Sorry, poor choice of words. It’s from a song on the Top Gun soundtrack.”
Earl pops a cassette out of the F-14’s tape deck and searches in the glove compartment for a different album. “No Danger Zone today. I think this song is more appropriate,” he says, popping in a new tape. Most people my age probably don’t know what “cassette tapes” are, but I know all about them thanks to Kathleen. When I get home, I’ll ask her about this Top Gun movie. She might have it on VHS or laserdisc.
The music that Earl has picked out starts off with lyrics comparing a woman to cherry pie. Earl hums along, flipping various controls and doohickeys. I don’t want to make him feel any more uncomfortable about our six-year age difference, so I keep my mouth shut and don’t ask who the band is. They sound embarrassingly bad, like Adam Lambert if he were straight. I don’t always pick up on double meanings, but even I can tell the song is about sex. “Mixing up the batter while she licks the beater”? I mean, c’mon, guys. That’s just crude.
“And one more thing,” Earl says, turning around. “Take your finger out of your nose.”
“Sorry,” I say, pulling it out. I’ve got to stop being such a disgusting idiot around him!
I feel the jet inch forward. The engine roars, drowning out the awful music. We speed up and before I know it we’re airborne! I look out the window and see the Holiday Inn below us getting smaller and smaller by the second. Soon, the entire quaint city of Portland shrinks from view. What was life like before I met Earl Grey and started going on these crazy adventures? I can hardly remember. It’s like I was born yesterday. That’s something Dad’s always telling me: “What were you, born yesterday?” I never understood his question, because of course he knows my birthday. Now I think I get what he was saying. It’s an amazing feeling.
“Watch this,” Earl says over the noise of the jet’s engine. He angles the plane directly toward a snow-capped mountain.
“Are you trying to kill us?” I scream.
“Hush, baby,” he says. “That’s Mount Rainier, one of the most dangerous active volcanoes in the world. But don’t worry—it hasn’t erupted in over a hundred and fifty years.”
“I’m not worried about it erupting,” I mutter, bracing myself for our imminent collision with the mountain.
When we’re less than a hundred yards away from impact, Earl presses a button and three missiles shoot out from each wing and explode into the side of Mount Rainier, making a hole large enough for us to fly through to the other side!
When we’re in the clear, I tell Earl just how amazing that was.
“I do this kind of stuff all the time,” he says. “I can guarantee you’ll never be bored around Earl Grey.”
No way, not in a million years, I think. Well, maybe in a million years, because who knows what the ramifications of extending one’s lifespan to such a length are?
