By Joshua Ryan
Chapter 3: Exceeding the Ideal
The flight was beautiful — the turquoise sea studded with emerald islands, then the purple thrust of St. Bevons, relic of an extinct volcano, with a city relaxing on its flank.
The Wellington International Airport is small but friendly. In an American airport, you have to fend for yourself. At Wellington, a gang of attendants in brown uniforms lines up in the luggage department, waiting to take your bags and carry them to Ground Transportation. The first one in line grabbed my belongings–one bag in the left hand, one in the right, the third tucked under his arm–and before I knew it he was stowing it all in the trunk of a cab.
The guy was young and fresh-faced and very cute, with a strand of yellow hair poking out from under his little brown cap. Too bad our encounter was so rushed! I reached in my pocket for an outsized tip when the cab driver, an elderly black man with a rum-thick accent, intervened. “No wurries, sirr. You doan tip thee slappie boys.”
Slappie boys! So this little corn-fed Midwesterner with the brown shorts and the brown short-sleeved shirt and the glint of a silver necklace underneath his collar—he was a slappie! Obviously, St. Bevons had several ranks of hierarchy, and they weren’t arranged in order of race. But fuck! How hot can this be!
