I was stuck in Detroit, of all places, to endure a four-hour layover in flights from New York to Key West. I assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that I'd be bored out of my gored for hours here. Who designed these flight routings anyway? At least I could stay at the airport and not have to go into Detroit. From here it was Miami and then another two-hour wait for the commuter plane into Key West. From there I could almost walk back to when I was staying.
I wouldn't get there until dark. Luckily, there was a whole lot of good stuff to get into in Key West after dark. Two weeks there in a rented house with more play time than on-the-job time. I hunkered down into the seat at the waiting area for my flight--and probably several flights before mine came up. I could use a drink and maybe some tacos, but I had plenty of time to work that in before my flight to Miami came up. Four hours of time.
No flight was up on the board at this gate, so it would be a while before the waiting area would fill up. I'd have privacy and quiet to work down my e-mail lists. The waiting area for the next gate over was deserted as well other than one guy working on his laptop, and there was no flight announcement up on the screen there either.
The other guy and I were facing each other across a half dozen deserted rows of black upholstered chairs and he looked up as I was scanning across him between e-mails and gave me a smile. He looked familiar. It would take a few minutes, but I'd place him. I was good with faces and his was a good one--ruggedly handsome. He was a tall guy and solidly built. He looked muscular, which caught my attention because he must be in his forties. You don't often see well-built men in that age bracket--except in my line of business. So, I passed his features through my mind against all of the men that age I'd worked with but came up with a blank. It was something in the entertainment industry, I was sure, though, now that I thought of it. I was zeroing in on him. Athletic bearing, self-confidence, well-dressed, great smile, buzz cut like a Marine or maybe to cover going bald.
I also must have been holding his gaze while I was thinking because his smile deepened and he was getting up and walking toward me.
Then it hit. It must have been the loose, almost dancing way he was walking--his assured gait. It was Ted Buckley, a former, if only briefly, quarterback with the Denver Broncos. He was a hunk and a half. Many had been the time that I'd sighed over seeing him in a post-game interview.
"Excuse me, do you mind?" he asked when he was standing in front of me. He was lifting his laptop and nodding toward the column rising beside the seat across from mine. "I need a charge," he added in the way of explanation.
You can charge me anytime you want, I thought, but then I looked and saw that there was an outlet in the column. The man was saying he needed to recharge his laptop.
"Sure, go ahead," I said, moving a couple of seats further away from the column.
"Thanks," he said, sat down, plugged in, and looked at me with that dazzling smile of his again. "You stuck in a long layover too?" he asked.
"Yep. Airline craziness," I answered. "New York this morning and Key West this evening, so why am I sitting for four hours between flights in the Detroit airport just after noon?"
"Right. Tell me about it. It's a three-and-a-half-hour wait for me between Baltimore and Denver."
"Excuse me, but you're a dead ringer for Ted Buckley, the football player. Are you--?"
"Yes, got it in one," he said, turning on his smile again. "But it's 'former football player.' I do TV commentating for the Baltimore Ravens now. They just lost their last chance at playoffs for the year, so I'm headed home for a break."
"Right. Denver. You settled down there after a couple of years on that team, I guess."
"Got it again. You look familiar too, Mr...."
"Ken Franklin," I said, extending my hand. His grip was firm but not bone crushing, and he held my hand a fraction longer than necessary. "I'm a commercial model in New York. Maybe you've seen me on a TV commercial."
"Maybe, but I doubt it. If it's not sports, I don't watch it on TV," he said.
"I do depict tennis players in a couple of commercials."
"Not my kind of sports. But it seems somewhere else I know you from."
"I'm sure there are a lot of guys who look like me."
"A lot of perfectly put together young men, yes, but few as good looking as you, I'm sure. But I suppose looking like you do is a problem that goes with being a commercial model. Bet you get hit on a lot too."
I probably blushed on that, although there wasn't much that made me blush anymore. If he'd seen me from anywhere else, it would be saying something about him--and that would be interesting right there. Since he brought it up, I had to wonder too if he was hitting on me here.
When I didn't respond, he went on himself. "I don't know about you, but I'm hungry and thirsty and it looks like we both have a long wait in front of us. What say you to finding a sports bar with me, checking in on some of the sports going, and getting something to eat and drink."
"Sounds like a plan to me," I said. "I think I passed a SlapShotz Bar and Grill not too far back on Concourse A. Would that do?"
"That sounds perfect. Let's go there," Buckley said, giving me another dazzling smile and pulling the plug for his laptop out of the column and coiling it up. His laptop must not have needed much of a charge to be all charged up in that short amount of time. But I wasn't going to think further on that. The man was a hunk and a half.
This long layover wasn't going to be as much of a chore as I had thought it would be.
* * * *
Initially while we ate and drank lunch at the SlapShotz bar, Buckley's eyes were darting all around, taking in the various sports action on the screens, but within a few minutes he gave me a startled look and settled down and was concentrating only on me.
"It must be rough on your family for you to be moving back and forth between Denver and Baltimore all the time for your job," I said.
"There's no special place to be for family," Buckley answered. "It's wherever I want to be at the moment."
"You're not married?"
"Twice divorced. Having a blonde bimbo in tow was pretty much a requirement for the job while I was playing. That wasn't my style, though. Kids? Yeah, a couple, but they're spread out and grown and I probably see them as much as if we lived in the same town full time. I have a ranchette I enjoy working up in the Rockies outside of Denver and a small apartment in Baltimore. The Ravens are on the road a lot, anyway, so I just do a lot of flying--and my share of long layovers in airports. The life suits me, though. And you? Do you have a family tucked away somewhere?"