49, Airport

“I don’t wannabe racist, but holy shit, these folks are so small.”  Agent Alexi Blacktide was groggy from a very long chemically induced nap.  She and her friend, Agent Death, had eaten slow release high powered cannabis infused edible chocolates twelve hours earlier.  Their friend, Dirt, had told them that it would help them pee.  He neglected to tell them they’d be high for the better part of  a day.  The effects had not worn off.  If anything, Blacktide was more stoned now than she was ten hours earlier.

“Jesus, Lex, you don’t wanna be racist, but you just referred to the Japanese as ‘these folks’?”  Agent Death whispered as she doubled over in laughter.  Her intoxication was also still in full effect, and she couldn’t turn off the laughter if she tried.  “That’s racist as shit, dude.”

Their eyes were blood shot, their bodies felt lethargic, and Blacktide was struggling to pull it together.  “I know you kill men for a living, but you’re a sensitive mother fucker.”  

“Hey,” Death protested, “I didn’t cry when Bambi got shot.”  She paused, then added, “But I admit I cried when old Yeller got shot.”  She sighed as her random stoner thoughts bounced in and out of her head.  “I love dogs.”

Blacktide couldn’t concentrate on what her friend had just said.  Even intoxicated, she didn’t want to insult anyone unintentionally.  “Racism is ugly, even when it’s subtle.  I’m just pointing out a biological observation about these folks working today.  Just because they’re different isn’t racist, bitch.”  The word “bitch” made Blacktide start giggling.  “I meant these folks working in customs!  They’re so tiny!”  

Death couldn’t help it.  Tears fell from her eyes.  “They’re Japanese!”

“Ha!  That’s racist, bitch!”  The word again made Blacktide laugh harder.

“It’s racist that they’re from Japan?  You’re saying these people working in customs are tiny, but none of them are white!”  Death could barely get the words out through her quiet laughter.

Blacktide was laughing uncontrollably now too.  “Yeah, dummy!  We are in Japan, after all!”  She hiccuped and her laughter stopped.  “Aren’t we?”

Death stopped laughing too.  She looked around.  “I don’t know.  I’ve never been to this airport.”

Blacktide pointed to a sign that had Japanese script and said, “Well that sure as fuck looks Japanese to me!”  Both agents started giggling again.

The two white women stood in a long line of passengers arriving in Tokyo from Hawaii.  They’d flown under the aliases of Chelsea Schultz and Trinity Addison.  Their cover was that they were businesswomen from Canada.  Currently, they were giggling worse than school girls talking about boys around a campfire.  Neither woman was a stoner, and the effects of this experimental variety of powerful edible cannabis in their systems was wreaking pure havoc with their ability to present themselves as sober.

Death’s phone buzzed in her pocket.  She froze.  She’d forgotten she even had a phone, so the vibration surprised her.  A sudden shot of paranoia shot through her body.  “Lex,” Death said with fear, “I think we’re being followed.”

Alexi Blacktide was finally catching her breath from a long giggle, but straightened up quickly.  “Who’s watching us?”

“I don’t know,” Death answered honestly, “but a phone vibrated in my pocket and I don’t remember having a phone.”  She felt the outside of her jeans and the outline of her smart phone vibrated one more time.  “I think someone planted it on me.”

After some quick stoner thinking, Blacktide said, “give it to me and I’ll throw it away.”

Death reached into her pocket and retrieved her iPhone.  It had a black case with a skull and crossbones on the back.  The ladies looked at it, then at each other, and their eyes got big.  “Shit,” Death said.  “Sorry about that.”

Both women had recognized the phone as belonging to Death all along, but the paranoia wouldn’t go away for either of them.  Blacktide knew her thoughts made sense.  “Maybe I should throw it away anyway.”

Death ignored her as she raised it to her face and read the texts that were coming in.  “Doniak says she and Doc are looking for us here in the airport.”  Death smiled at the thought of seeing her friends, then the paranoia took over again.  She made eye contact with Blacktide.  “Should I trust this text?  I think it’s fake.”

Blacktide didn’t know how to answer.  She surveyed the scene.  The people around them were annoyed by the two giggling white women, but the rest of their surroundings looked like a normal airport.  “When we get out of this airport, let’s call her.”

Death gasped and whispered, “What if they’ve kidnapped Mickey and stolen her phone?”  

“Who kidnapped her?  The Japanese?”

Death’s eyes got big as another useless stoner thought popped into her brain.  “What if they can emulate her voice and we end up talking with a Russian agent who sounds like her, but it’s not her?!”

The incoming line of people was moving slowly through a group of customs agents.  Passengers were being asked questions as inspectors looked through their personal belongings.  Blacktide made eye contact with some customs agents and they smiled and nodded in a friendly manner towards her.  She tried to act casual and return the smile but her nerves were falling apart.  The marijuana paranoia consumed her.  “Death,” Blacktide whispered, “they know.”

“Know what?”

“They know we’re stoned.”

Death forget her thought from ten seconds ago and tried to focus.  “Who does?”

Blacktide whispered in her sternest, most serious tone.  “All of them.  We’re fucked.”  She stood up straight and tried to take a deep breath.  “We’re going to jail.  I know it.  We’ve fucked this up.  There’s no way we’ll get to Moscow now.  Porter is gonna die in a hotel room and it’s all my fault for eating that god damned chocolate that Dirt gave us.”  Blacktide cursed under her breath.  “Fuck you, Dirt!”

“Fucking Dirt!”  Death smiled at a brand new thought.  “He’s gay, right?”

Blacktide crinkled her brow, and in an instant, she forgot all about her paranoia.  “Who?  Dirt?”  She took another deep breath through her nose.  “I don’t know.  I can’t tell!  I think so?”

Death shrugged.  “He’s hot.  I mean, for an old guy with a mustache.”

Blacktide licked her lips.  “Oh, the things I’d do to that man if I could…”

“Do you think he can get it up at his age?”

Blacktide shook her head as if she were trying to get something out of her hair.  “Why wouldn’t he?  I heard my grandparents having sex once.  Guys can get it up ’til they die, I think.”  Blacktide crinkled her brow.  “Oh, you mean, can he get it up because I’m not a man and he’s probably gay, right?”

Death look confused.  “Wait, what?  You heard your grandparents having sex?”

“Yeah, I was in high school.  They always said they were old and needed to take naps.  Turns out I think they banged a lot.  Maybe, I don’t know.”

Death had major respect for this information.  Due to her intoxication, she wouldn’t remember any of it.  “I hope I’m getting fucked all the time when I’m old too.”  Death looked at her shoes and her brain went empty again.  “What were we talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Blacktide admitted.  The ladies were almost in front of the customs agents.  They’d subconsciously been moving along with the line, but neither woman had any idea what was going on.  “Do you think we’ll be able to find a sandwich somewhere?  I’m starving.”

Before they knew it, a friendly voice spoke to them in fairly understandable English with a Japanese accent.  “Passports, please!”  The ladies absentmindedly presented their passports to the agent.  The woman looked through their papers and stamped a stamp inside each one, then returned them.  The process took a few minutes but it felt like no time had passed.  “Enjoy your stay in Japan!”  

Blacktide’s stoned brain thought it would be a good idea to do a head bow, but her chin bounced off of her chest.   Death saw this and internalized the horror of being arrested, so she smiled and nodded at the customs agent as she grabbed Blacktide’s arm to lead her to the exit.  Ten seconds later, she snapped at her friend.  “What in the fuck was that back there?  Were you trying to bow to that lady?”

“She was so friendly.  I like Japan.”  Blacktide looked around and saw several handsome Japanese men.  “Ooo, I like it here a lot!”

Death’s anger changed instantly as she smelled food.  “Holy shit, I could eat.  What is that?”

“Noodles!  Fuck me, I could use noodles.”

The two women located the source of the smell and walked to the food kiosk.  A very friendly looking woman greeted them in broken English and asked how she could help them.  Neither agent spoke a lick of Japanese, so Blacktide pointed at a picture and raised two fingers up while mouthing the word “two, please!”  The employee nodded and typed things into her cash register, then showed them the number.  It was thirteen thousand two hundred yen.  

Blacktide looked at Death and said, “I think that’s like twenty bucks worth of food, right?  Cuz I’m hungry as fuck.”  

Death shrugged.  “I have no clue what the exchange rate is, and I’ll be honest, I’m so hungry that I’d give my left nut for a bowl of noodles.”

“Wait, what?  You have testicles?”  Blacktide’s jaw dropped as the stoner words came out of her mouth before she could even think about them.  “I always wondered.”

“Hold on, huh?  You wondered if I had testicles?  What in the fuck does that mean?”

Blacktide wasn’t defensive, she was honest.  “You’re always doing the missions that guys do.  Notice how there’s not any female Seals or Rangers?  I mean, what woman would want that fucking job?  But you’ll jump out of high speed planes wearing crazy suits that keep you warm and alive at eighty thousand feet, just to drop into war zones and shit.”  Blacktide shrugged.  “That’s insane, and only guys are dumb enough to do fucked up shit like that.”

Death’s eyebrows went up like she was considering this information as valuable.  “Wow, I see your point.”  She nodded.  “I admit, I’m bat shit crazy, but I promise I don’t have testicles.”

“Do you ever want to be a mother someday?” Blacktide asked genuinely.

“Excuse me,” the cashier interrupted, “there are more customers behind you.  Please pay.”  She was calm and polite, but the two white women were now holding up the line.

“Oh yeah, sorry!”  Blacktide pulled out a roll of cash and counted off the appropriate amount of yen.  She got her receipt and the two women stepped aside to wait for their food.  

“Yeah, I think so,” Death answered.

“Hmmm?”  Blacktide was a terrible stoner.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Motherhood.  You asked a second ago.  I think I want to be a mom.”

“Oh.  Oh yeah!”  Blacktide considered the topic.  “I’ve got friends who are moms and they say when they laugh, they have to be careful not to pee themselves a little bit.  Having babies is tough as fuck.”

“Really?”  Agent Death shook her head in mild disgust but considered the information.  “Yeah, I guess having a baby would mess with the plumbing down there.”

“A gal I played volleyball with told me that her nipples still leak randomly sometimes.”  Blacktide nodded, as if this information was as common as the sunrise.  “Apparently breast feeding does a number on you too.”

“Jesus,” Death said.  “Well then, I’ll have to think about it.”

“Who would you want the father to be?”

“Not a military man.  Maybe a logger.  Or a musician.”  Death instinctively licked her lips in a sexual manner.  “Yeah, I think it’d be awesome to bang a drummer.”

Blacktide shook her head in disagreement.  “Drummers are disasters.  I’d bang a lead singer.”

Death protested instantly.  “You’d want a guy that wears skinny jeans, does his own make up and has a fragile ego?  Fuck that!”

“No, not that kind of lead singer, Jesus!  I’d want the kind who has a haggard voice but doesn’t smoke.”  Blacktide closed her eyes and smiled.  “And he’s gotta play guitar.  Not just be a lame strummer who sings to dumb girls who don’t know what musical talent really is just to fuck them.  I mean, he’s really gotta play the shit out of it, you know?”

Death looked her friend up and down, as if sizing her up for a fight.  “I never would’ve guessed that about you.”

“What?”

“That you’d wanna bang a lead singer.  That makes you a whore.”

A man’s voice called out in broken English to the ladies and brought them back to the moment.  “Excuse me!  Your food!”  Their order was ready to be picked up at the front the counter.  They walked over and saw six bags of To Go boxes.  The aroma was exhilarating.  

“I could kill a man for some noodles right now,” Blacktide muttered to herself.  She saw the big assortment of boxes and looked at her friend with big eyes, then she looked confusedly at the massive order.  

The man behind the counter nodded.  “Have a good day!”  He turned and went back to filling the next ticket.  

Stoned, hungry, confused, and a hundred and twenty bucks worth of yen poorer, Blacktide took half the bags while Death grabbed the other half.  Talking was over.  They saw an open table thirty feet away and took off like rockets to claim it.

As soon as they sat down, Death’s phone buzzed in her pocket again.  This time she didn’t feel paranoia.  Instead, she was angry.  “Who is trying to text me while I’m trying to eat, dammit!”  She pulled her phone out and saw it was a text from Dirt.  “Oh, our gay friend texted me!”

Blacktide had already opened a box of some sort of chicken and noodles meal.  She was eating it with her hands.  “I didn’t know we had a gay friend,” she said while slurping sauce off of her fingers.

“It’s Dirt, dummy.”  Death read the text.  “He says he got us a flight straight to Moscow that leaves from this airport in an hour.”  She shook her head in disbelief.  “He’s better than Mulroony.”

“Mulroony is dealing with a large bureaucracy that is more complex than a female orgasm.  Dirt has friends that are clearly loyal to him.”

Death laughed at a thought, then verbalized it.  “Probably cuz he bangs dudes.”

Blacktide shrugged.  “Probably.”  She slurped down another handful of meat and noodles.  As she swallowed the glorious Asian fast food, she muttered, “This is so good.  Holy shit, I’m hungry.”  

Death’s phone buzzed one more time.  It was Porter.  “Fuck,” she muttered.  “Porter hasn’t slept for two days and she says she’s going manic.”

“She should try these noodles,” Blacktide slovenly said.  “These things could cure cancer.”

“Or cause them.”  Death looked up to randomly see her friends Mikayla Doniak and Dale O’Connor standing in front of her.  “Wow, how’d you two get here?”

“We took a taxi.”  Doniak surveyed the shit show on full display for the world to see.  Her two friends had bloodshot eyes and were surrounded by food.  “Mind if we join you, or are you planning on eating all of this by yourselves?”  Doniak looked at her friends’ bloodshot eyes and gasped.  “Fuck, you two are stoned off of your asses!  Since when?”

Death shook her head.  “Fucking Dirt.  He gave us edibles and we didn’t know it.”

“I think he’s gay,” Blacktide said with a mouth full of food and noodles hanging from her hands.

Doniak giggled and said, “Well dirt got all four of us tickets on a flight for Moscow that departs in an hour.  Let’s hurry it the fuck up ladies and get your asses back through customs.”

O’Connor hiccuped and the smell of booze wafted from his face.  “I had a handful of beer nuts last Thursday.  I’m starving.  Don’t mind if I do!”  He sat down and helped himself to a random box of food.  “Why in the hell do you have all of this food?”

Blacktide hadn’t slowed down from eating and her hand was covered in teriyaki sauce.  “No clue.  I thought we ordered two bowls of noodles and chicken.”

“Clearly something was lost in translation.”  

Blacktide shrugged.  She pointed over to the food court menu and said, “I pointed to that picture and told the woman at the register I’d like to order two of them.” 

O’Connor had learned enough Japanese to realize that Blacktide had ordered two family meals that included several different dishes, not just two bowls of noodles with meat.  He explained this to his friend but she was too busy eating food with her hands to care.  “How much did they charge you?” he asked.  

“Like thirteen thousand yen.  I thought that was the equivalent of about twenty bucks or something.”

“Jesus, Lex!” Doniak exclaimed.  “More like a hundred and twenty bucks!  Unreal.”  She opened up a box of food and hunted for some silverware.  “Lemme guess, you didn’t ask for chop sticks, did you?”

Alexi Blacktide looked up and had a moment of clarity.  She saw the sauce on her fingers and realized she was eating like an animal.  She looked around and it sunk in, she was in Tokyo.  The food was helping her sober up from being stoned.  She yelled, “Fucking Dirt!!!”

In the distance, Japanese travelers all looked over at a table of four white people who were eating bowls of noodles with their hands and thinking to themselves racist thoughts about how uncivilized they were acting.