To my relief, West Air actually has their shit together. They board us early and prepare us to lift off early if the controllers will allow it. My seat is three rows from the back and I have a window seat.
I make my way back without incident and without really making eye contact with anybody, including the attendant, whom I naturally don’t trust.
A couple of climbers with large bags come down the aisle, and I pray they don’t sit next to me. They stop in the row in front of me and start unloading their stuff. It’s a lot. And there’s a lot of loud and tedious discussion about a green duffle bag that won’t fit in the overhead compartment, which is finally resolved by stuffing it, with a lot of force, under a seat. Then the captain comes on and asks the flight attendants to prepare the cabin for takeoff.
I finally breathe a sigh of relief: to have a row to myself is simply too good to be true. Then, at the last moment before takeoff, there’s a commotion at the front of the plane. The seat next to me is still empty, though many others are as well. I start muttering to myself, “Please don’t sit next to me, please don’t sit next to me, please don’t sit next to me.” But God giveth and He taketh away.
I look up and find the snowboard punker looming over my row in the aisle. He folds himself into the seat next to mine. I see that he’s even younger than I thought, now that we are face-to-face.
“Sorry, I don’t fit very well,” he apologizes after stepping on my bag and elbowing me on his way down into his seat.
“No worries,” I say so quietly I don’t think he hears me.
I turn away, fingering the netting on the back of the seat in front of me.
The captain comes on shortly after and asks flight attendants to take their seats. I take a deep breath. My dream, my plan is coming true. Some minor bumps and a little anxiety, but I’m on the runway. I smile to myself and look sideways to make sure skate-punk guy didn’t see me.
The plane taxis to the runway, stops, and then does a one-eighty. It slowly picks up speed again, and then the engines roar to life. The g-force pulls me back into my seat and we zip down the runway. I turn to the window and mumble a prayer to God to watch over my flight. It’s instinct, and even as I say it, I know how ridiculous I am. I’m about to hit my own switch and I’m praying for a safe takeoff.
Whenever I fly, I say the same prayer. I call to the dead before me: my father, my grandfather and grandmother, a cousin I only knew one summer who has since died of an infection in his gallbladder, and my English teacher, Miss Lathrop, who had a seizure and choked on a ham sandwich. She died alone in her apartment. It is my private parade of dead angels, and I ask them to carry the wings of the plane, to take me home. I guess I’m asking them to carry me far enough along so I can take my life. Miss Lathrop would have said, “How ironic.” I always wonder what she was thinking just before she died.
The plane skips up and then bends steeply to the left. We hold the trajectory for about ten to fifteen minutes, and then we level off.
“Paul Hart, Cambridge, Mass.,” my neighbor says, extending his hand. He has a muted New England accent and is trim with strong, wiry muscles in his forearms. I accept his hand automatically, but frowning, and withdraw mine almost immediately. His hands are big and rough with calluses.
“They used to be softer.”
“What?”
“My hands. I hadn’t realized how calloused they got until right now.” He nods at my soft, pale hands. “I guess you weren’t here for the climbing.”
I glare at him. He stares back, and we just kind of gaze at each other in a very awkward way. There’s an insult or an assumption in what he just said. I have no idea whether he meant to be rude or if he’s sort of an idiot, but I feel my eyes welling up, so I look down.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I didn’t mean anything,” he assures me, “just an observation.”
I look up, having regained my composure. He has thick brown hair and his face is cherubic except for the dark stubble that sandpapers his chin. I can hear the relentless beating of some punk band that probably nobody but he and his snowboard buddies know tinning out from his unplugged earplugs. Annoyingly, he’s still wearing his sunglasses.
“I saw you say a prayer there,” he says, withdrawing a bit as he organizes himself in his seat. His voice sounds like gravel. He’s probably a smoker. “I hope you have wings; it looks like there’s a huge storm coming.”
He laughs a little at his own joke and removes his sunglasses. Baby blues, no surprise-all the jerks have them. I wonder if everything that comes out of his mouth is annoying or if I would find anything anyone did annoying at this moment. I decide it is probably just Paul Hart.
“Yes. God is dead and all that,” I say a little more abruptly than I intended.
“What?” he says. “I don’t understand.”
I realize I was having a conversation in my head that was about three responses ahead of Paul’s innocuous quip. I tend to do that-imagine conversations before they happen. That’s why people sometimes have a tough time understanding me and I them. But Paul’s a bright one and catches up quickly.
“I bet you’re a philosophy major,” he says, if not a tad smugly. “I get it.”
“Yes, how did you know?” I say. It is very difficult for me not to lie in a situation like this. It just feels safer. I open my mouth to lie more, but I am too tired, too anxious, and I will myself to stop.
He looks at me strangely. “I think they’re all full of shit. They don’t know anything more about life than you do.”
I take in his face for a moment. I can see where he will grow old, where the crinkles will carve a path from the corner of his eyes. I bet he’s a worrier. I bet he’s a fronter-all bravado up front and a squirming mass of anxiety underneath.
“Right,” I say, picking up the emergency information card and studying it.
He looks at me for a second and then a crooked smile opens his face. He thinks I’m a bitch. Or just not worth the trouble. He puts on his headphones, pushes his sunglasses back on, and leans back in his seat.
I put on my headphones too, close my eyes, and turn away. I hope he doesn’t try talking to me again. I listen to him rustling through his bag and adjusting his seat belt. There’s a lot of show in it, like he’s trying to get my attention, but I resist, which is not so much a part of the Plan but more my nature. Show-offs repulse me.
The captain comes on: “Folks, I’m sorry for the abrupt departure this evening, but Control wanted us out before the runway got snowed in. There’s a bit of a storm ahead of us, so I’m going to have the seat belt sign on for the duration while we try to stay a step ahead of it. We’ll be heading a bit farther north than we normally do, but we should right our course just past this front and land in Chicago as scheduled. So please cooperate and try to stay in your seat if possible. Thank you for making the choice to fly West Air, and enjoy your trip.”
“Dude, where would we be going?” Paul says loudly. He looks to me with that crooked smile I’ve now come to despise. Is he talking to me? Or is he responding to the captain? I do not look at him. I pull the blanket from the netting in the seat in front of me and wrap myself up in it. I close my eyes and wait. One more unexpected benefit of the Plan, I think. I’ll never hear this Masshole’s accent again.