"I'm happily married," the blonde said disdainfully. Her name tag said Loma. Her eyes went to Remo's thick wrists. Recognition bloomed in them.
"I know you! I served you on a Detroit flight a few years ago." Then, memory clarifying, she blushed a beet red. "Oh."
"Don't tell me," said Remo. "You tried to sit on my lap while I was standing."
"I-I wasn't married then," she stammered. "Would you like a refreshment, sir?"
"No," said the Master of Sinanju, who was indifferent to stewardesses.
"And you?" she asked of Remo.
"Mineral water."
As she poured mineral water into a short plastic glass, the stewardess said, "I want to apologize for my behavior."
"Apology accepted."
"I don't know what possessed me. I never tried to sit in passengers' laps, married or not."
"No problem. I put it behind me a long time ago."
"Did you age or something?"
"No."
"Lose weight?"
"No," said Remo, taking the glass. "Why?"
"It's just ...I don't know what I saw in you." Her fingers flew to her mouth. "Oops. That just came out."
"Don't sweat it," Remo said sourly as the flight attendant bustled on to the next row.
In his seat, Remo's face darkened in cast.
"What troubles you?" asked Chiun.
"I don't know... I think I'm starting to miss stewardesses falling all over me."
"Stop eating malodorous carnivorous fish, and they will return to their former predatory ways."
"I wonder if I'm going through a midlife crisis."
"Not unless you are planning upon dying young, and if you are, I would consider advance warning a boon, for I must train your replacement."
Remo grinned. "No one could ever replace me, right?"
"No one could ever replace you," the Master of Sinanju agreed.
Remo's grin widened.
"Without my guidance and assistance," Chiun added. "And of course I would mourn. For a time. Not long. Enough to be seemly. Too much mourning would be unseemly. I will not mourn long. Only a prescribed interval."
"Can it, Little Father."
Chiun resumed his examination of the sleek aluminum wing, which he feared might fall off. It was a longtime phobia. It had never happened, but as Chiun was forever reminding Remo, aircraft fell out of the sky constantly. At least three per season-which was too many.
Remo remembered what the Master of Sinanju had said at the Manhattan morgue about the cause of death of the late medical examiner.
"Hey, Chiun. When is a bee not a bee?"
"When it is not," Chiun said flatly.
"Care to elaborate?"
"My wisdom would be wasted upon small minds."
"Bees are bees."
"Except when they are not."
"I saw a bee. A very tiny bee."
"And you do not question what your eyes see?"
"Hardly ever."
"Then you saw a bee."
"What did you see?"
"A not-bee."
"Is that anything like a knothole?"
"I will not answer your riddle because it has no answer," Chiun said elliptically.
"Suit yourself. I'm going to catnap. It's a long way to L.A."
"With you snoring at my side, an eternity," Chiun sniffed.
But Remo dropped off to sleep anyway.
He dreamed of stewardesses dressed in bumblebee uniforms. They kept trying to sting him with their fingernails.
Chapter 11