My alarm went off and I called in our position.
"99 Alpha Bravo, by Panama City, Fourteen Minutes Past The Hour."
"99 Alpha Bravo. Copy."
"Every language has its own peculiar code," I said picking up the threads.
"And so does every ideology," she said.
"The missionary position notwithstanding."
"What does notwithstanding mean?"
"It's a lawyer word, designed to deceive."
"It must be a very useful word then," she said with a smile.
I nudged the port throttle forward and as I did so, Clarissa laid tiny tantalizing fingers on me for a moment too soon ended.
"The pitch linkage is okay and now the throttle linkage is acting up," I said.
"Oh by the way, what was that thing you said you'd tell me when we were up in the sky."
I thought for a moment. "When?"
"When we were walking back from getting the paper. Don't you remember?"
"I got it. There was this court jester who was always making puns. The king told him that if he made one more pun, he would be executed. The court jester couldn't resist a final witty remark. The king threw him in jail for a week. At the end of the week, he visited the jester and told him that if he would promise to refrain from making puns, his life would be spared. And do you know what the court jester said?"
"Not the exact words but it had to be a pun or there's no point to your story. And it wasn't a very wise thing to do."
"No noose is good news."
"I know what a moose is. At university we had a moose that was loose."
"Oh yeah, good old Moosehead ale. A noose my little Chinese dumpling, is a hangman's knot."
"That's kind of funny when you explain it to me but not really."
"I need to read the paper. You can drive."
"Pilot's airplane."
I finally found what I was looking for. It was on page twenty-three. If it is buried that deep, it can't be too incriminating, I thought. As I read the article, I became increasingly confronted and uneasy.