I sank into seat 2A, Air France Flight 2945, Moscow to Paris. The wide first class seat seemed to wrap its arms around me and say, "There, there. It's going to be all right. You are safe in my arms." I immediately went into a deep sleep.

The last time I had slept was three days earlier at The Four Seasons Hotel at Beverly Hills. Could that be right? I had lost track of time and day. Yes, that's it, on Sunday night I was there in a suite with my daughter, sister, and mom.

Monday I flew to Houston. Tuesday I left for New York, then Paris and on to Moscow. Now it was Thursday morning, and I was on my way back to Paris, and the last time I had been in a bed was Sunday in that cloud of a heavenly bed at The Four Seasons.

"Monsieur Stubbs, Monsieur Stubbs!"

Oh, this was a good dream-the voice of a beautiful French woman calling my name.

"Monsieur Stubbs, Monsieur Stubbs!"

OK, it wasn't a dream. I was awakened from my deep sleep by the hand of the attractive flight attendant touching my shoulder.

"Monsieur Stubbs, you have business with zee pilot." I could not imagine what she was talking about. I thought I must still be asleep. In a heavy French accent, she gently persisted.

"Monsieur Stubbs, you have business with zee pilot. Please stay in your seat until all zee passengers have left zee plane."

What was she talking about? I was totally confused, totally tired, so I took the path of least resistance and simply followed her orders. I stayed in my seat and waited for all the passengers to de-plane. By the time everyone else had departed, I was a little more awake and sitting on the edge of my seat to see what on earth my business with pilot could be. I had just had a nightmare-ish experience in Moscow, but I thought all of that was behind me.

Next, to my surprise, two French policemen entered the plane and approached me. The pilot appeared behind them and handed them some kind of official-looking envelope, for which they signed. The envelope seemed to be related to me. It was.

I WAS BEING ARRESTED BY THE FRENCH POLICE!

By now, I was wide awake. In fact, it was as if someone had thrown a pitcher of ice water in my face.

As I silently walked between the two officers, my mind raced to find some explanation for these extreme events. I was, it seemed to me, an unlikely person to be in this predicament. If asked, I would define myself as a dad, a Sunday School teacher, and an interior designer-not much of a threat to the French Government.

What road had led me to this place? At which fork had I taken the wrong turn? Where did it all start?

Was it at the Cannes Film Festival a few months earlier when I met the muscle-bound Ukrainian restaurateur wearing a skimpy Speedo? Was it the time years before that when I had flown to the Ukraine and was escorted off the plane by KGB officers? Or was it even earlier than that when I had done a job in Switzerland? No, I think it was that guidance counselor at El Campo High School who said, "Bill, with your grades, you should consider going into air-conditioning repair."

I have been running from that suggestion for thirty years.

The interior design profession is so civilized, so glamorous, so safe...or so everyone thinks. Apparently, when most people consider the life of an interior designer, they envision elegant rooms filled with luxurious fabrics and exotic woods, silver candlesticks and fresh flowers in crystal vases, and happy clients sipping champagne and toasting their designer.

Or so some designers would have you believe.

But not me.

If you think joining the CIA or becoming a mountain climber promises adventure, let me introduce you to my entree to an exciting life-decorating. Being an interior designer has its ups and downs, but for me, in recent years, it's been mainly takeoffs and landings as I have jetted to fascinating, and often unpredictable, jobs in far-flung places-from Acapulco and Newport to Kiev and now Moscow.

As a kid in the little town of El Campo, Texas, I was always interested in design and the way things looked, so, despite my guidance counselor’s advice, I decided to enroll at the International Institute of Design in Washington, D.C. I have found myself dealing with a lot more than floor plans and faux finishes since graduating from design school and heading to Houston, ready to redecorate the world.

Although I have developed strong ideas about design over the years, I take a holistic approach to each project, considering every aspect, from the site and architecture of the building or space to the tastes and dreams of my clients. I like to personalize every space I decorate. My goal is always to have the client say, "This is me!"

But at times I've had to take some pretty big risks to reach these goals.

A pivotal point came in 1981, the first time I was fired by a client I still work with to this day, an oil trader originally from the Ukraine. He’s a technical kind of guy. He has to see a space entirely completed to decide whether or not he likes it. He can't envision it.

I was decorating his new penthouse condominium in an exclusive high rise in Houston called The Houstonian, and using a lot of red. My client's assistant was keeping an eye on me and reporting my every move back to her boss. While my client was on a trip to Brazil, he walked into a dining room he did not like. It was red, so he instantly decided he did not like red.

He called me from Brazil and said, "I saw a red room today. I hated it. I hate red. You're fired!"

At that moment, I was standing in his living room, with one hundred yards of red custom-dyed Brunschwig & Fils fabric, unrolled, and ready to go on the walls.

"Well, now you own a hundred yards of red fabric, I said to him." What would you like me to do with it?

We won’t say what he told me to do with that fabric.

So I made a decision-which turned out to be not only correct but a critical turning point in my career: I decided to go ahead and finish the room, fired or not. Everything was there, ready to go, so we finished it before he returned from Brazil.

You can probably predict how this all turned out. He loved it! He also fell in love with the color red, and now he wants it in every room, in every place we do together-and we have done many over the past 20 years. In fact, it’s a battle when I want to use another color.

But, back to those Parisian policemen escorting me off that plane. Don’t worry. I will finish that story. But first, let me take you on a few other flights to destinations filled with adventures that ultimately will bring us back to that one particular flight from Moscow to Paris.