The Fly

Last month I had to fly Singapore-Amsterdam-Curacao to attend to some business. Business in my case meaning "chasing Hindu gentlemen" who are unclear about the necessity of paying their rents. On the outward leg I had a four-hour layover in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. I was traveling alone, and being a bachelor, at least in regard to beverages, I decided to find a wheat beer - a lemon-garnished summertime favorite here. It was a grand idea, and I sat at an upper level cafe enjoying the throngs below and the citrus-spice of my pint. Sometime later, as I stood in front of a urinal, I noticed that housekeeping standards had fallen at Schiphol - there was a desiccated fly stuck low on the porcelain wall.

So, as one does, I diligently applied my stream to the fly. I thought I saw a couple dead legs wash away, but the body remained there firmly stuck, long after my efforts had effect. In spite of these many diversions I made my connecting flight to Curacao.

The Caribbean was vibrant and unchanged. The trades blew a refreshing twenty knots and the sea broke and pranced. I got my financial cats herded (for another year) and flew out again to Holland. I had a miserable nine-hour overnighter - kids behind me used my chair-back as a Jungle Gym, didn't sleep a wink, and this time I had to wait twelve hours for my Singapore flight. I camped out near a remote gate with two novels and a National Geographic.

I was so spaced out that by mid-morning I felt perfectly at home, like the rule-trapped man who lived in an airport for months. I`d read a bit, walk, get a meal, have a beer and eventually I went into a toilet, (far from the earlier one with the fly), and - there was the fly! It was in the same place within the receptacle, it looked translucent in a two dimensional way and had all its legs tauntingly intact. As I stood there peeing resolutely on it, as one does, my mind apparently tore through old files and eventually rummaged up an image of an old Kiwi friend who came flashing into conscience thought with the statement, "Did you put a cork in the toilet for your sons?" Hello! I get it.

Parents of young boys in New Zealand often float a cork in the toilet bowl to act as a point-of-aim. This deters wilder swoops of the imagination from causing over-spray. The cork stays buoyantly behind after the flush and the floor stays unsplattered. Well, every urinal in Schiphol has a fly - baked into the enamel glaze in fact. It has apparently cut down substantially on housekeeping costs. This new avenue of thought kept me busy for another jet-legged hour. Of course the girls wouldn't get a fly, but would it be inappropriate to have one in the urinals of the first class lounges, would these sure-handed captains of commerce perhaps resent it?

I drank my chardonnay as issued and slept for eight hours straight on the Singapore haul.