With some effort, Paul lifts himself into a sitting position and then stands. He looks around, surveying the area.
“Which way?” he says, still breathing heavily. “To the plane, I mean?”
No hello or “thank you for saving my life.” Just “which way?” I chalk it up to his nearly dying, the thin air, and general guy-ness.
I pull out a pair of gloves and a hat and hand them to him.
“Here.”
He nods and pulls back his hoodie to put the hat on, and then the gloves, but doesn’t say thanks for those either. Really?
I point at my footprints, which are fading quickly but still visible.
“It’s that way. Follow my tracks.”
“Right?” He looks at me for confirmation. “Come on.”
He turns and marches toward the cabin. The wind whips with a new ferocity, and the air is so cold it makes it hard to breathe. Paul walks in front, shielding me a bit from the wind with his large frame, but my teeth chatter. My throat is raw and parched and my head aches, and I realize for the first time how incredibly thirsty I am. I need water. I drop down to my knees and grab a handful of snow and start eating it. Paul turns around to see why I’ve stopped and reaches out to swat the snow out of my hand.
“Don’t eat the snow!” he shouts.
“Why?”
“Just don’t do it,” he says harshly. “It can kill you.”
I look directly at him for the first time. His blue eyes are bloodshot, watery, and distant. I realize I don’t know who Paul is. He could be a killer or a rapist or bonkers. I laugh a little at that last one. Maybe he’s crazier than me. I look down, trying not to get emotional or show any weakness. Never show any sign of weakness with a psycho; they get off on it.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Stay close behind me,” he commands.
He turns and trudges into the wind with his forearm covering his face. The snow has eased up a little, but the temperature has dropped and the wind is still fierce.
My nose hairs and snot freeze, and it is hard to keep my eyes open, even with a mask on. I don’t know how he does it, but Paul soldiers on at a strong clip as if he were walking through a puddle on a spring day. No matter the force of the wind, he keeps a steady pace, face forward.
As we approach the plane, he stops and stares at the captain’s head.
“It’s the captain,” I whisper, thinking he is in shock like I was when I first saw it, but then he turns to me with a weird grin on his face.
“Fuck,” he says, with a nervous laugh. “That’s some bad karma. Maybe if the dude had his head in the game, we wouldn’t have crashed.”
What a dick, I think.
I turn away and kneel down for a second, pretending to look for something while I try to catch my breath. When I look up, Paul’s already moved on toward the captain’s leg, which is sticking out of the snow. I want to run up and grab his shoulders, turn him around, and slap him across the face. Remind him that these are human beings, that life is sacred even if it’s mostly just a pile of shit.
But I know it’s a waste. He’ll laugh in my face. This is why great comedians end up on drugs or killing themselves, according to BS. If everything in life’s a joke, then nothing has any meaning. If there’s no meaning, why live? You get the logic.
I watch Paul from a safe distance. He’s digging the snow around the leg and the body. After a few minutes, he unearths the headless body. He opens the captain’s jacket and sticks his hands in the inside pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes, which he stuffs in his own jacket, and then he pulls out the captain’s aviator sunglasses and holds them up like he’s found buried treasure. He puts them on and turns to me, pointing to his new shades with a “what do ya think?” look on his face.
I’m disgusted, but I hold my tongue. I have to be with Paul until we get ourselves out of here. I need him. I can’t afford to piss him off.
“No lighter. We need a damn lighter.”
He pushes on toward the carcass of the plane and we enter from the far side. I stand and watch Paul as he grabs his yellow backpack. I was right: this is his bag. He opens the bag and digs into it, pulling out a little black notebook. He pauses and stares at it for a moment and then tucks it into the lining of his jacket and slings the backpack onto his back.
“I forgot about this,” he says, pointing to his backpack. “I’ve got wet matches in here. We’ll be good.”
He looks around and takes in what lies before him. The open-ended cabin, the swirling wind. There’s no protection here. He looks up to the sky.
“It’s getting dark-is this it?” he says. “We’ll fucking freeze to death here.”
“No,” I say. “The tail, it has the bathroom. There’s a door.”
“Which way?”
I point toward the direction of the tail. He walks past me without so much as thanks or an excuse me or good work. Despise doesn’t quite describe the deep, roiling hatred that I am developing for Paul Hart.
On his way out of the cabin, he spots Margaret and he holds up her hand, pointing to the ring. “That’s a whopper!”
A rage explodes inside of me and I’m unable to hold back.
“Shut up,” I shout. “They’re dead. She’s dead. People are waiting for her.”
Paul stops for a moment.
“What?”
“They’re human beings,” I shout. “Her name is Margaret!”
Paul stands there frozen in the snow, just staring at me and apparently bewildered by my rage.
“They’re not garbage to be picked over and laughed at.” I sound defensive, which is ridiculous.
Paul stands motionless for a moment and then looks down at Margaret and then, lifting his sunglasses, at me again. His gaze is blank.
“Dead is dead. She’s not here anymore.” I try again.
He looks up, like he’s acknowledging heaven, though I can’t imagine for a second that he gives any currency to that belief system. I just stare at him as tears well up in my eyes. I feel a sadness I can’t place. I can’t move or speak, and my bones feel like they are crumbling. I start to shake uncontrollably and my mouth opens but nothing comes. Warm tears flow and freeze on my face. I’m having trouble breathing and then my head starts to spin. The world turns upside down, and for a split second I feel like I’m falling.
Paul springs toward me and puts his arms around me, keeping me up. He holds me very tight, like my father did when I was a little girl.
“Hold on, Solis. Steady.”
I can’t believe this is same guy who joked about the captain’s head.
My body continues to shake uncontrollably. He squeezes me tighter and tighter, constantly whispering, “Breathe… breathe… breathe,” until I gain control.
And then something unexpected happens. I hear myself speak, and not sarcastically or vaguely, or with anger or rage, but with honesty.
“I should be the dead one, not Margaret,” I say, pointing to her body.
“Did you know her?” he asks.
“Not exactly,” I say. “I mean, a little. She had a whole life; she was a newlywed and she had Eddie at home who loved her more than life itself.”
“Sometimes luck makes you feel guilty,” Paul says softly. “You can’t beat yourself up for still being here.”
He doesn’t even know what I’m talking about, but he has said the right thing. All that life Margaret had to look forward to, all that life I was trying to wreck and throw away. None of it matters. I was the lucky one. She wasn’t. And now I feel guilty about it. The same way I felt guilty about living and my father dying. Why should we carry on when the people we love are dead?
“Doesn’t anything matter?” I say as a few tears roll down my cheek.
I look up and see his eyes and I swear I see tears building. He looks down at me curiously and then drops his sunglasses back down.
“Are you okay?” he says again, wanting to move on.
“I should be dead.”
“I understand.”
“No you don’t. I tried to kill myself last night, in the bathroom, before the plane crashed. That’s why I survived. It’s fucked up. I’m so fucked up.”
I don’t know why I chose to tell him at this moment, in a frozen graveyard of bodies, or why my normally impenetrable steel vault is suddenly wide open for him to see into, but there it is.
“What do you mean?” he says. I can’t see his eyes, but his mouth is twisted with anguish and his upper lip trembles. I think he’s trying to say something-anything-to be helpful, but he can’t find the words. I finally blurt out a river of thoughts.
“I started to take pills in the bathroom, then the plane crashed, and I woke up alive. I should be dead, but I’m not. She should be alive, but isn’t.”
Paul stands there like a statue, looking at me and through me, trying to process his thoughts as quickly as he can. I can imagine some of those thoughts: Holy shit, I’m on a mountain with a freakazoid; Hide the knife, she could kill us both; Don’t let her at the minibar, if I can find it.
But he only says, “If you weren’t lucky, I’d be dead. It’s not just about you.”
His mouth relaxes and a big smile crosses his face, like he’s proud that he just put together a little philosophical escape hatch for me.
“Thanks,” I mutter.
He wraps his arms around me one more time and rubs my back. His arms make me feel warm and remind me of how cold I am.
“I’m so cold,” I say, sniffling. “You must be frozen.”
“I am,” he says.
“This way,” I say. I grab his hand and pull. We walk silently together to the tail of the plane.