Seat 14A. The aircraft has not yet moved.
ME: We boarded. I’m in. Window seat like an idiot so I can watch the wing fall off in real time. 5:51 PM
DON: wings don’t fall off 5:53 PM
ME: That’s exactly what someone would text the wife of a man whose wing fell off. 5:53 PM
ME: The flight attendant tried to gate-check my carry-on, the little one, and I said no thank you, it goes under the seat with me. It’s fragile. 5:54 PM
DON: you ok? that’s a lot of feeling for a tote bag 5:55 PM
ME: I’m fine. I’m at a gas station of the soul, Donald. 5:55 PM
DON: I’m at an actual gas station. Indiana. 14 hrs to go. Try not to text me your will until at least Kansas 5:56 PM
ME: There’s a man next to me in 14B. Charcoal suit. Book the size of a cinder block. Hasn’t looked at the safety card ONCE. Flies all the time, you can tell. I hate him with my whole heart. 5:58 PM
DON: you’ve known him 4 minutes 5:59 PM
ME: Four minutes is plenty to build a rivalry, Donald. 5:59 PM
***
Pushback from the gate.
SkyConnect™ Welcome aboard! For just $19.00, stay connected with SkyConnect™ in-flight WiFi. “The sky’s no limit!” 6:04 PM
ME: I just paid nineteen dollars to text you my final thoughts. Dad would’ve loved that. He never met a fee he couldn’t be furious about for an hour. 6:05 PM
DON: ha. he really would 6:06 PM
ME: Engines just did the noise. THE noise. The one that sounds like a thing right before it stops being a thing. 6:07 PM
ME: 14B just said “that noise is normal.” Without looking up. Like a wizard. I want to be him and I want him to be quiet. 6:08 PM
ME: THERE WAS A SECOND NOISE. A thunk. From underneath. Like a vault closing. 6:11 PM
ME: 14B (eyes still on book): “that’s the landing gear retracting. you want to hear that one.” 6:11 PM
ME: He is infuriatingly correct and I would follow him into battle. 6:12 PM
***
Climb-out. The world tilts in the window.
ME: We banked and the entire state of Indiana stood up on its side and tried to pour itself into my lap. I made a kettle noise. I checked the bag was still under the seat. 6:14 PM
DON: you ok? 6:15 PM
DON: hello 6:21 PM
DON: Carol. 6:24 PM
ME: Sorry. 14B told me to “talk, it helps, tell me anything,” so I told a total stranger about Maddie’s graduation and how you’re driving 16 hours because you’d sooner be buried than boarded. He nodded. He turned a page. 6:25 PM
ME: I just realized he turns a page exactly every 90 seconds. Tick. Tick. Who reads like that. 6:31 PM
DON: maybe a fast reader 6:31 PM
ME: Don nobody reads a cinder block at a perfectly even pace through turbulence. That’s not reading. That’s a man pretending to read. 6:32 PM
***
The seatbelt sign chimes. The captain drawls something soothing. The plane begins to shudder.
SkyConnect™ ✨ How’s your flight going? Tap to rate your SkyConnect™ booking experience! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 6:38 PM
ME: Absolutely not the time. 6:38 PM
ME: Chop started. I told 14B it’s fine, chop is just air, the wings flex, they bend them almost in half in a factory in Washington, I saw a documentary. And then I put my hand on the bag under the seat and left it there. And Don. DON. 6:40 PM
ME: He stopped turning pages. 6:41 PM
ME: His knuckles are WHITE. There’s a muscle going in his jaw. The serene wizard of 14B is gripping his own thighs like the plane owes him money. 6:42 PM
DON: ask him how many times he’s flown 6:43 PM
ME: I asked. 6:47 PM
A four-minute gap.
ME: Don he said “including this time, once.” 6:51 PM
ME: ONCE. The briefcase. The cinder block. The landing-gear wizardry. HE READ ABOUT IT ON A FORUM LAST NIGHT. He has a SYSTEM. He’s been flying his system, not a plane. 6:52 PM
ME: He told me — and I am quoting a man in a $400 suit — “I would consider it a personal kindness if you would become frightened again, immediately, so that I have something to do.” 6:53 PM
DON: lol. LOL 6:53 PM
DON: the calm guy was you the whole time 6:54 PM
***
Here the record shows a voicemail, left for Don, transcribed by the phone’s automatic service. Punctuation is the machine’s. So are the errors.
— Voicemail, 6:58 PM, duration 1:34 —
“Okay I can’t type this fast enough so I’m — hi — I gave him my hand. The wizard. He’s holding my hand like a man at sea and I told him in for four, hold for four, and I told him about your fake bad back, the one you invented to skip the conference nine years running, every fake (laughter) every fake vertebra, and we’re both LAUGHING now in row fourteen like two people who’ve decided the plane’s going down and found the one other person who gets the joke. And Don. I went looking for the scared just now and it’s gone. I set it down somewhere over Illinois and walked off without it. I forgot to be afraid because the man next to me was more afraid. And Dad’s in the bag, Don. Under the seat. The one I wouldn’t let them take. It’s the good tin one Maddie picked, and he asked ME to do this, not Gary, not Linda, he asked me — he said, ‘take me out to Sutter’s Lake where I taught you to back the boat trailer down the ramp, and don’t you dare mail me, you get on the (unclear) plane, kid, you owe me a ride.’ Because he knew. He knew I’d have driven nine hundred miles to keep my feet on the ground and he wouldn’t let me, the old goat, he made being scared into a thing I had to do for HIM so I’d finally — (unclear). Anyway he’s here. We’re flying. Delete this, I sound deranged. Oh. It’s recording. Of course it is. The mountains are coming. Bye. Bye.”
***
Descent into Denver.
ME: We’re landing. Gold light coming in sideways, all over the seats, all over the bag in my lap — I took him out from under the seat for this part. The Rockies are pink and enormous and could not care less about any of us, which I find, for the first time in my life, comforting. 7:40 PM
ME: 14B let go of my hand and turned back into charcoal. Buttoned his cuffs. Said “you were never, at any point, fooling me into thinking you were calm.” I said “you turned the pages too evenly.” He said “my one flaw, in an otherwise perfect deception,” and walked off into his recovered dignity. 7:44 PM
DON: did you tell him? about your dad? 7:45 PM
ME: No. Some things you only tell the people you almost die with by accident. 7:46 PM
***
ME: Sutter’s Lake tomorrow, early, before the graduation. Just me and him and the cold water and the boat ramp he was so proud I finally learned. I’ll have driven nothing. I’ll have carried him the whole way myself, in the air, like he wanted. Turns out that was the gift. Not the lake. The carrying. 7:55 PM
DON: he’d be proud of you. you know that. 7:56 PM
ME: He’d say “nineteen dollars for WiFi” and be mad about it for an hour. 7:57 PM
DON: and THEN he’d be proud of you 7:57 PM
ME: Yeah. 7:58 PM
ME: Don, the wing was attached the whole time. 7:59 PM
DON: they usually are 7:59 PM
ME: Save the voicemail. 8:01 PM
DON: already did 8:01 PM