Fistful of Rain

Chapter One The hangover was waiting for me when the plane from Sydney landed in Los Angeles. Which was as it should be, because I'd started drinking in the Red Carpet Club, and hadn't stopped until well after the International Dateline. The looks the flight crew and fellow passengers rifled at me when I got off the plane had me thinking I'd been a less-than-model passenger, that I'd perhaps done something mortifying, but no one said a word, and I wasn't about to ask. There was no vomit drying on my clothes that I could see, and I still had my pants on right way round, so whatever it was, it couldn't have been that bad. Certainly it couldn't be any worse than what I'd left behind in Australia. The vise really began tightening at each temple as I was waiting to pass through customs, and it was a bad one mostly because I was still tagging after the drunk pretty closely. The world was dull and dizzying, and maybe that was why I got pulled from the line, but then again, maybe it wasn't. I took it without protest, just the way our manager, Graham Havers, had taught each of us in our little band to take it. Celebrity status has perks, but it also means that there's always someone looking to take you down a peg or ten. It's not as if musiciansor more precisely, musicians who play "popular music"are known for living a Seventh-Day Adventist lifestyle. The search was thorough, and the agents were, too. They asked if I had any contraband, specifically drugs. They asked it repeatedly, trying to trip me up. They had me turn out my pockets. They shook out my jacket. They patted me down. They even tore open my packet of cigarettes, checking each tube of precious nicotine to make certain it was filled with tobacco, nothing more. When they'd finished with my bags I started to take off my shirt but the supervising agent stopped me, saying, "What are you doing?" "Isn't this what you want?" I asked. I impressed myself by not slurring. "I mean, isn't this what, you know, what you want?" His eyes went to flint. "No." "Oh," I said, and tucked back in. "Well, then, my mistake. Right? My mistake?" "I'd say so." I got my things together and he held the door for me out of the little examination room, letting me pass through. I impressed myself again by not wobbling. "I've made a few," I told him. "I'm sorry?" "Mistakes," I said. "I've made a few." I had to stop in a ladies' room before switching terminals, and I gave until it hurt. When I emerged, there was a photographer waiting outsidehe must have picked me up coming through customsand he shouted my name when I emerged. "Mim! Bracca! Hey! Gimme something I can sell!" I got my hands up before I heard the whirring of the speed-winder, one to shield my face, one to let him know just what I thought of him and his Minolta, and then I was shoving through clumps of fellow travelers, and that was the end of the encounter, such as it was. It made me feel a little better; if he ever bothered to develop the roll, he'd have some lovely close-ups of the calluses on the fingertips of my left hand, and of the middle finger on my right. The flight was delayed due to fog in San Francisco, which has happened to me more times than I can remember, and which never makes any sense each time it does. I'm flying Los Angeles to Portland, why the hell does fog in San Francisco factor into thaRucka, Greg is the author of 'Fistful of Rain' with ISBN 9780553801354 and ISBN 055380135X.