"Ladies and Gentlemen, Japan Airlines International would like to thank you for choosing to fly with us on this happy occasion of your journey. Please remain in your seats with your seat-belts fashioned until the flight crew has turned off the 'Fasten Seatbelts' indicator."
The plane touched down on the runway L.A. Things were pretty quiet between us. They always were. We did our celebrating back in Tokyo, after we'd finished the job. Levannah smiled at me though, which was nice. We made our way to the baggage claim, after saying goodbye to the others - who had connecting flights.
Standing there, next to her, waiting for the luggage to tumble out of the little, dark chute, was just one long, drawn out unomfortable silence.
"Jawa," she said, finally, "Dave?"
"Yeah?"
"You, uh, you wanna' come to my place for dinner?" She was biting her lip again. "I make a really mean Herbed Nut Loaf ."
"Okay," I said, doing little cartwheels inside, trying like hell not to act the over-eager fool. We shared a Johnnycab back to her place. These things really worked out a lot better than in the movies. When they first started hooking up the GPS to an onboard vehicle control system, I had these horrible visions of that old Stephen King movie, "Trucks" or something like that. But these self-controlled electric taxis were actually quite nice. We talked about it during the ride.
At her place, I left my luggage by the door and activated my iPage. Levannah went right to work in the kitchen, after opening a bottle of Reisling. I sat on a bar stool keeping her company and catching up on all the missed emails and Tweets and Facebook updates. It can be a pain sometimes, not telling anyone where you're going.
While she worked, we discussed my reluctance to quit using Facebook and just switch to the iPage's built in social network, we talked about why she preferred the Gumdrop to Apple's Nano-Paper, we talked about our work in Japan. That was really nice, being able to talk about it. I folded up the iPage and linked it around my wrist, setting the wallpaper to silver.
From the fridge, I retrieved a small glass pitcher of water with a sliced lemon and some cuc**ber in the bottom of it.
"I get that from the roof, you know," she said, "it collects in a little funnel-thing that runs down here and I run it through the filter and stick it in the fridge."
"That's genius," I said, honestly. I poured us a couple gla**** as she made the finishing touches on our plates. It looked amazing.
The nut loaf she made with onions, garlic and lemon grown in her own back-yard, and nuts and the rest from the community garden over on Chestnut. She served it with the best "stuffing." I just can't describe how good it was. We also had a mixed-greens salad with an amazing oil and vinegar dressing that blew my mind.
"This," I said, "was amazing. I just can't express in words how delicious this meal was." I folded my napkin on the table and reached to refill my wine glass.
"You want a coffee," she asked, "or anything?"
"I am pretty content right here," I said. "I don't need anything else right now."
"Yeah."
We sat like that for a while, drinking a little too much of the Riesling talking about life, about our jobs, about Japan and the project. It was a great night.
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