Dash looked at his row mate. She was too old to
be ‘Cindy.’ Cynthia, maybe. The woman caught him staring and glared
back. He tried a smile.
“
Are you there?”
The massive plane had become an unwieldy glider
six miles above the Pacific Ocean. Dash kneaded both ears, worked
his jaw to pop the right. He’d been dozing when the captain had
first clicked on his mic to report in a silky, overnight disc
jockey voice that they should expect light headwinds and an early
arrival. Local temperature in Sydney would be a balmy thirty
degrees Celsius, perfect weather for a chilled mai tai or a little
sex on the beach, ha ha. A real hoot if they recover the black box.
Maybe not replay that sound bite at the press
conference.
“
Please come forward.”
No velvet edge to the voice. Maybe even a hint
of desperation.
“
Cindy?”
Dash watched heads turn, but there was no
Cindy, or she didn’t want any part of this. Nobody got up to
pretend to be Cindy.
The relative quiet following hours of
mechanical howling created its own dimension of noise. Dash shifted
in his seat, tilted his chin, and whispered the lullaby his
increasingly bat-shit crazy mother had been singing while she fed
cubed tofu and miniature pickles to her porcelain dolls during his
last visit. She cooed and sang, only knowing half the words,
filling in the blanks with whispered obscenities—proof nothing had
changed since he was a boy.
“
Papa’s gonna buy you a piece of
ass,” Dash sang.
His row mate pursed her lips, wrinkles
everywhere.
He’d been sent to the principal’s office in
second grade. He was seven, and it had been his mother’s word
against his.
And then Sarah’s icy breath took over. Scented
puffs of frozen moisture contained news that she couldn’t wait to
be married. We’ll live happily ever after, a fairy tale everyone
will envy. They’ll wish they were us. Imagine the gifts, the cash,
and all the new … the new stuff! Love will be easy. We’ll
honeymoon someplace exotic, warm.
Thirty degrees Celsius. Balmy enough for string
bikinis. Sarah should be on this doomed fucking plane. Mom and her
both.
There were grumbles from his dead father,
another visit in spirit only, but Dash wasn’t ready to listen to
the old man’s excuses. Prick. He tuned his father out and sat up,
allowed the buzz from five hundred passengers to smother whatever
his father wanted to report from the grave.
The voice:
“I can’t.”
Can’t find Cindy? Can’t live without her? Can’t
die without her?
Cloud tops attracted his attention, a calming
distraction. Puffy white things on the other side of the scratched
window formed an entire encyclopedia’s worth of farm and zoo
creatures in boundless quilted serenity.
Dash tapped the window with a middle knuckle.
“A one-armed zombie.” He looked at the lady in the aisle seat and
winked, hoping to cheer her up, work his way back on her good side
while there was still time. No more swearing. But her eyes were too
wide open and her mouth formed a lipstick-red circle. Seatbelt
lights were flashing bright yellow reminders all around. He looked
back out at the cloud. “It’s riding a unicycle.”
Someone close muffled a sneeze and another
asked what was happening. A gorgeous flight attendant jogged up the
aisle. Dash watched her long fingers brush each headrest, her nails
bright white flashes. Authoritative and compassionate, she provoked
a longing in him such as what he’d felt for his fourth grade
teacher and the trooper who last handed him a speeding ticket. No
nametag to solve the Cindy mystery, so he was left to imagine the
smell of her neck, and how her rounded spots trapped beneath the
slick material of her blouse might feel. Her crisp blue uniform
disappeared through the curtain separating coach from the rich
people. Only a single strand of blond hair was left behind, wafting
toward the carpeted floor.
Passengers half rose from their seats, thumbs
jamming overhead call buttons. Click, click, click. Dash looked up
at his own set of controls. There was a reading light, a tiny
stream of forced air that had tickled his palm, and the button that
summoned the flight attendant. He thought of calling back the
pretty woman, maybe tell her about the hair she’d left behind, how
it seemed utterly magical.
“
Are you Cindy?” he would ask. “Can
you tell me about her?”
One section of the cabin began crying and
another prayed, two rapidly spreading contagions competing for
bodies, gobbling the weak first. Dash, looking out his window at a
butterfly chasing a three-legged giraffe, settled back and tried to
shut them out.
“
I’ve never flown.” It was a small
voice that came from the woman too old to be Cindy. The middle seat
held a canvas tote overflowing with wads of bright yarn. A candy
color rainbow of fluff impaled by a set of knitting needles he
assumed had been missed by the screener who confiscated his four
dollar water bottle.
He nodded down to the seat occupied by her
supplies. “I’m on my honeymoon.”
There was a heavy bump underneath. A rabbit or
slow moving turtle. Would a cloud leave blood and guts? It forced
simultaneous hiccups from all around. Dash squeezed his armrest
with one hand, rubbed his face with the other. Perhaps they’d
boarded a plane driven by one of those boozed-up captains who made
the nightly news in gritty airport bar surveillance videos. It was
a high-pressure job, but why not cocaine or some other drug that
enhanced concentration and helped get these giant rubber tires back
on solid ground? He also knew from his recent run of bad luck that
the trouble could be terrorist related, maniacs in clever old lady
disguises, throwing off shawls to stab the flight crew with
knitting needles, screaming how Allah was great.
Dash pushed away thoughts of al Qaeda, let them
wander back to the clouds.
“
A giant skyscraper,” he said, “and
an airplane.”
The lady scowled.
The plane they were inside was the size of his
town’s elementary school, with twice the souls on board. He counted
both engines a half dozen times. There were probably two more
bolted onto the other wing. That made four. He’d heard plenty of
stories in which big jetliners landed under the power of a single
engine. And these couldn’t all be broken. Surely someone put in
charge of such an expensive piece of equipment could get one motor
to turn over?
Two minutes to live.
Another jolt tilted the nose down, making the
seatbelt dig into his hips, and new humps in the floor forced the
seats askew like rows of bad teeth. The disconcerting effect was
multiplied when oxygen masks dropped from above to hover like
dancing spiders.
Dash looked back to his row mate. “Do you need
help?”
The old woman shook her head and put it on
wrong. The band fitted properly around the back of her stiff
hairdo, but the yellow cup covered her throat like a diseased
Adam’s apple.
Another bump and pieces of the cabin interior
shifted, panels separating at their seams. An overhead compartment
unlatched and dumped carry-ons into the aisle, where they sat
unclaimed. Dash inspected faces near the mess, watched passengers
suspiciously eye the bags and then each other.
Someone should
fix this; it isn’t right. That one’s too big. People are selfish.
They’re not mine. Are they just going to be left
there?
The cries and prayers were muffled as brand new
noises commenced.
The seal around Dash’s window formed a hissing
gap. They were roaring across the heavens with a view only meant
for angels. Daredevil angels, with helmets and parachutes in case
their wings failed. The sea below was a soiled blue rug frozen in a
snapshot. Monstrous oil tankers were mere fly shit specks, nothing
more than granules of instant coffee left on the spoon.
Then the plane, rattling through the sky, began
its harrowing descent in earnest.
The fuselage against Dash’s right shoulder
billowed and crackled, making sounds that reminded him of stage
hands waving sheet metal to create thunder for dismal scenes. The
wall peeled away from one side of his window frame. It produced a
harsh sucking noise that drowned out the screams. He put his
fingers to the seam and it was as though his thumb found a powerful
vacuum nozzle, its suction intense but not painful. Was it eighth
grade when his buddies were goofing around after school, smoking
stolen butts and bullshitting about clever ways to whack off? Dash
secretly attempted the vacuum cleaner method but had gotten stuck,
pubic hair ripping out, eyes watering like crazy as he fumbled for
the off switch. It had been his only such attempt.
Dash glanced back at the old lady, whose head
rocked side to side in an arc, right cheek then the left touching
the seat. The mask was still attached to her throat, the cord a
hangman’s noose. He imagined her leaning forward and executing a
horror movie-style full rotation.
“
We’ll be okay, ma’am, I promise.”
He kept his voice calm, thumb stuck in the window seam, his own
mask dangling untouched. He wanted her to like him, to need him,
maybe even love him. “I’m sure this happens all the time. It’s
probably a drill.”
“
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your
captain.” It was the voice of a man maintaining aplomb while
hefting a thousand pound weight, a worthy hero. “Please tighten
your seatbelts. Put your knees together and feet flat on the floor.
I need you to lean forward and brace for impact. God bless us
all.”
“
Impact?” The woman’s voice accused
Dash. “You said this was a drill.”
He should have kept his mouth shut, left
sturdier hands in charge of comforting the weak. The silent engines
and falling elevator rush had been dead giveaways that things were
going all wrong. They were dropping out of the sky like a broken
kite.
“
I’m sorry.”
He reached a hand across, but it was blindly
swatted. The woman’s eyes were locked on the ceiling, head still
moving, lips signing off on a final prayer. Obeying the captain’s
orders, she lunged forward and grabbed at her bare ankles beneath
the hem of her flowered dress. Dash noticed the worn carpet. It was
the same blue as the attendant’s uniform, but faded where
passengers’ feet had rested. There were loose threads and rust
spots on screws that locked seats in place. The closer his
examination, the more tattered it all appeared and the stronger his
sense of doom.
The plane rolled and caused a chorus of
different notes. Dash was socked in the jaw by the laptop he’d
stowed with the magazines and vomit bag. He didn’t need the damn
computer. He had no work, and no emails to check. What he had was
photos on the hard drive to sulk over—thousands—all of him and his
fiancée, who was supposed to be in the middle seat. Strike that.
She’d have demanded the window, would still have her seat reclined
and tray table in the down position, jabbing at the overhead
service button for a fresh gin and tonic right that very goddamn
second.
The spiteful thoughts made him feel like crap
again. Sarah would have joined the harmony of anguish. She was just
as human as the lady grabbing her ankles, despite being a
treacherous, black-hearted whore.
The already dim cabin lights flickered, and
there was a reek of things on fire. Not wood or paper, or even the
smell of a flaming model airplane tethered to cotton string on a
humid July afternoon. This odor was sharper—hot wires and melting
glass—as though electronic things, maybe even his computer, had
begun to smolder.
The vibrations intensified, making the
screamers stutter. Some of the praying passengers remained upright,
maybe not wanting to point their asses at God just yet. A few
seemed to be trying to decide if they should scream or pray by
doing both. Dash opened his mouth wide, but his ears blessedly
popped before he could try screaming or repeating one of the
prayers. It was a wonderful release, like waking from a nightmare
with perfect clarity, the certainty of being safe.
The tight motion of his cushiony seat was more
calming than terrifying, and he turned his attention back to the
sucking window gap. It pulled at his hair, tugged at his
breath.
“
We’re going to die.” The voice came
from down by the floor. The lady’s face was turned to Dash, her
mask gone. Tears ran up into her tight gray hairdo. “We’ve sinned
and the Good Lord is calling us home.”
If it were true, it wasn’t the least bit fair.
It is Sarah who deserves to be falling into the ocean from above
the clouds, not you and me, lady. The Good Lord should take a peek
at the laptop that just whacked me. Flip through the snapshots of
everlasting love. We didn’t need a million dollars in the bank,
only a good hiking trail and a nice view for a picnic. Except, of
course, Sarah also needed Tommy Chambers riding on top of her in my
bed. In our bed. And we’re the ones being called home?
He hated himself again. It wasn’t that Sarah
had changed from the girl he’d met in college. The problem was that
he’d tried changing her. She was a free spirit and he was a
miserable anchor whose goal in life was to weigh her down. That’s
how she’d described it, and he’d believed every word. The irony of
her saying it while pinned under Tommy came to him much later, as
he stood in the airport check-in line next to his suitcase and
backpack.