Lupe

One Sunday evening in October of 1981 I wobbled up to the baggage claim at the international airport in São Paulo, Brazil, wondering whether the previous 26 hours had been a nightmare or a fantasy.

My adventure started when I’d missed a flight from Chicago to Miami on the prior Saturday.

Mistakes were made.

It was a big deal when the multinational company I worked for sent me to São Paulo for three weeks. The company had hired me the previous April as an internal auditor, and this was my first international assignment. They wanted me to investigate a suspected fraud at their Brazilian branch.

Normal audits are mundane affairs with a set of boring tests of even more boring accounting records. In Brazil, I had free range to follow my nose and figure out what was going on. I got to color outside the lines, where I loved to go.

The internal audit department had booked me a 3:00 p.m. flight out of O’Hare with a two-hour layover in Miami and a 9:00 p.m. flight to São Paulo. I left my apartment late, got caught in Saturday afternoon traffic, and pulled up to the terminal at 3:05 p.m.

I approached the American Airlines counter with a virtually worthless ticket.  My employer’s travel policy said that employees on long international flights got business-class tickets.  The cheap SOBs in the internal audit department gave me a cut-rate coach ticket.

American put my sorry butt on a flight to Miami with a brief layover in Atlanta.  If everything went well I had a slim chance of making the connection to Brazil, but the plane left late and stayed grounded an extra half-hour in Atlanta.  I was paying the price for failing to reserve a cab and leaving late.

These were tough lessons.  I was thinking about how I could get another job manning a shovel at an ostrich farm or as a backup dancer for a drag queen who performs as Gladys Knight.  I always wanted to be a Pip.

If the company didn’t fire me, they would send me only to their plants in Mountain Home or Pocahontas, Arkansas.  No more trips to Rio, Rome, Paris, or Sydney for me.  The best I could hope for was a Friday night in Branson.

I stepped off of the plane in Miami with that limp ticket, a crispy new passport, and a grim dose of hopelessness.

At the American counter, I met a magician.  She typed away on her terminal and told me to sprint to Gate 47 and beg for mercy.

God bless Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, Bolivia’s national airline.  LAB accepted that cow pie of a ticket and booked me on a trip that involved a brief stop in Panama City, Panama, then on to La Paz, Bolivia. After a 90-minute wait, I’d catch another plane that would bring me to São Paulo — five hours late.

Salvation.

I was supposed to travel with Paul, a supervisor, who had probably made the original flight and wondered where I was.  This all took place before cell phones.  I couldn’t call or text anyone.  The only option was to go forward and hope that Paul didn’t tell our managers what happened. I found my seat with stress coming out of my ears.

Then I met Lupe.

Ah, Lupe.

I had an aisle seat (19f) and she had the window (19g).  I will never forget those numbers.

She was a South American beauty with long black hair, sparkling dark eyes, and a smile that made one want to cry — the kind of smile that causes guys from New York to bite the knuckle of their right forefinger.

People are not usually thrilled when they have to sit next to some doofus on a long flight.  Not Lupe. She grinned and introduced herself.  If she had not spoken first, I would have stayed silent for the whole trip. That’s how I was around women.

Once we took off, I learned that Lupe was a 21-year-old student attending a California state school.  Her family owned a substantial concern — mining, I think — in Bolivia.  She was studying business.

Lupe asked why I was going to São Paulo, whether I had a girlfriend, where I lived, and a bunch of stuff I don’t remember.

The cabin crew served a quick snack and dimmed the cabin lights. I had planned to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson on the plane.  This was eight trillion times better.

After three and a half hours of quiet conversation, we landed in Panama City around 4:00 on Sunday morning. We were back on our way in twenty-five minutes.

Lupe fell asleep with her head on my shoulder.

Imagine that.

How could a such royal catastrophe turn out this well?

The flight from Panama City to La Paz took a hair over thirteen hours. We slept for a bit. Then the lights came on and the cabin crew served breakfast. For the remainder of the trip we talked, read a little, and napped.

When we flew through some bumpy air, Lupe grabbed my hand.  She didn’t let go after the turbulence ended.  Holding hands was pretty advanced for me. This was a budding romance with endless possibilities, but as we descended into La Paz, I looked out the window and realized that it was going to  end. 

I also realized that we were about to land on the only paved surface in the country. Bolivia was and remains one of the poorest countries in South America. The tallest building on the horizon was the cathedral. There was a horse cart on the dusty road that paralleled the runway. When we landed the passengers gave the pilot a round of applause like it was the first time he’d put it down right side up.

I helped Lupe carry her luggage off the plane.

In the terminal, I noticed extremely young soldiers holding decades-old rifles with frayed shoulder straps.  Some of their boots were untied, and their uniforms were torn and ragged.

Lupe ran to her parents and grandparents.  She waved me over and spoke to them at length in Spanish. They all looked at me with big smiles. Her mother thanked me in English for taking care of their daughter.  Her father and grandfather each shook my hand. I have no idea what Lupe told them, but I got the impression I was their hero.

Huh?

Lupe gave me a long hug and a peck on the check before she left with her family. I waited an hour in an open-air terminal with the boy soldiers, a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the sadness of a lost love.

The flight on to São Paulo lacked the thrill of sitting with Lupe.  My mind was a cesspool of job stress and profound regrets about not getting Lupe’s phone number.

When I got to the hotel that Sunday evening, Paul said that he had just called our manager and told him that I was MIA.

On Monday I patched it up with the people back home.  The boss, an old school Italian from the west side, yelled at me for a while.  He liked to yell.  It did him some good. Then I got on with the work.

There is more to tell about the trip. I exposed the slimy controller who was running the show down there.  Paul and I took a couple of side trips to Rio.  I almost drowned in the Atlantic. All of São Paulo smelled like an open sewer.  Driving in the Third World requires luck and hardened nerves.  And hyperinflation ruins peoples’ lives.

Thank God I missed that flight to Miami and met Lupe; she turned a nightmare into a fantasy.