Julie doesn’t seem bothered. She’s in heaven, claiming every inch that she’s entitled to by gripping both armrests and kicking out her legs and tipping her head back like a sunbather. This trip is already doing wonders for her. She’s loosened her shoes, which hang from her bare toes, and spread her knees in acceptance of what’s coming: G-forces, liftoff, the future. Poor Keith is screwed. His fiancee has discovered her inner princess.
Me, I’m panicking. I shouldn’t be here. This is one flight too many. My hands are gloved in sweat. Until today my momentum was my own, but I’m at the top of the arc now, pitching over, and my seat belt feels thin and flimsy across my middle. I could use a quick blast from the oxygen mask. A beer.
“Unclench your jaw,” says Julie. “You’ll get a migraine.”
“I’m nervous. I’m meeting my publisher today. Assuming we ever take off.”
“We will.”
“We won’t. I’ve developed an instinct—they’re going to cancel us. We’ll sit here, they’ll string us along, and then they’ll cancel. Meanwhile, this man I’m seeing is like the wind. I’ll never catch him again. Eternal tag.”
Julie refuses to let me bring her down. Her eyes glide around the cabin the way they used to during long driving vacations when we were kids, passing the hours by playing games with license plates. My father was a rigid driver, maddeningly steady on the pedal and unwilling to stop, except for fuel. He’d announce a time of arrival when we set out and do whatever it took to hit his mark—starve us, dehydrate us, torture our bowels and bladders. Everything but speed up. Speed scared my father; delivering flammable liquids had made him timid. There was a bumper sticker on his propane truck: “Don’t drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.”
I turn on my HandStar and dial up Great West’s customer information site, according to which our flight is still on time. How do they keep their lies straight in this business? They must use deception software, some suite of programs that synchronizes their falsehoods system-wide. No wonder I’ve grown suspicious of them lately—they haven’t spoken the truth to me in years. How many times have I gazed up at blue skies and been told that my flight’s being held because of weather?
Julie opens
The pilot has an announcement. I was right. Our plane will be returning to the gate. “Please inquire inside for further information.”
Julie says, “What does that mean?”
“Nothing good.”
Morse is making this personal. He’ll pay.
“What do we do? Go back to Utah now?”
“That never works.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Going back.”
ten
i work quickly, rebooking us to Phoenix through Denver. The only available seats are in economy. The agent snickers delivering this news; I’ve dealt with him before, and he’s a pest. He’s sickly, always sniffling and coughing, and handing out infected boarding passes gives him a sadistic thrill, no doubt. If only Morse knew how poorly his employees, as grudging as nineteenth-century clerks, with no higher sense of process or brand goodwill, reflect on his credentials as a leader. Commissioner of baseball? Not a chance. Commissioner of youth league soccer, maybe.
The agent picks up his phone when I walk off—reporting to his masters? No way to know.
On our way to the gate we buy mochas and cinnamon rolls. Twelve dollars. Julie is outraged. She tastes her coffee and tells me it’s not even hot. Mine’s not hot either, but I had no expectations that it would be. That’s the secret to satisfaction nowadays. Julie asks me about my book and I say, “Later.” I was supposed to talk with her. I haven’t. A rowdy bunch of uniformed marines shoves past us on the moving walkway, running. A cart glides by with a blind man in the back, his cane sticking over the side and nearly swiping people.
The Denver plane is a 727 with haggard upholstery and discolored wings, black streaks of corrosion trailing from every bolt. It clatters into the air and through the clouds and breaks out into a sunlit turquoise plain riddled with nasty whirlpools of clear-air turbulence. Julie reaches over and grips my wrist while fingering with her free hand a silver cross hanging against her breastbone inside her shirt. When did this strike? She’s been born-again again? All around me lately God is claiming people. Am I still on his list, or has he skipped me? We jolt again and Julie bows her head and doesn’t look up until the ride is smooth. The fear improves her color.
“I can’t go back. I’m going to, of course, but I can’t. I’m all confused,” she says.
There’s a pressure behind her face; she wants to talk now. This isn’t the place. There’s no room to move, to gesture. Overpopulation has a ceiling: earth’s total surface area divided by the dimensions of one economy seat. One more baby is born and hello cannibalism.
“Keith cares too much. It makes me feel . . . responsible. He won’t drink the last of the milk. He says it’s mine. When we wake up in bed I’m hogging the whole middle and he’s falling over the edge.”
“A relationship is a closed dynamic system.”
“Can I tell you a story? We’re shopping for a car. Keith says I need something safe, with lots of airbags, but I’m thinking I’d like a truck, for hauling kennels. I ask the salesman, who’s been showing us station wagons, to show us some pickups. I fall in love with one. I ask about the pickup’s safety rating compared to the wagons. ‘Not good,’ the salesman says. I turn to Keith and say ‘It’s your decision, hon,’ but he doesn’t respond, he just stands there. It gets embarrassing. It’s like he’s gone catatonic, had a stroke. Finally, I say ‘I’ll get the wagon, okay?’ Nothing. A blank. I
