From behind he took her wrists. The rubber band snapped in place on her neck and he cupped her hands in his, leaned down and pressed her palms against the chair’s armrests. She fought, surprised, twisting her wrists.
The bag sucked in and blew out. She had no breath to scream.
Rivera leaned close and pressed more firmly. “Come on now, Mrs. F, it’s time… You said so yourself… No cold feet, not for you.”
Northwest Flight 1178
Detroit/Fort Myers
“One thing’s for sure—” Patrick Sweeney leaned close for emphasis. “All politicians love freebie flying,” he said. “I never met a state legislator who wouldn’t sell his grandmother to ride in a corporate jet.”
Brenda Contay laughed too hard at the joke, but she wasn’t faking. People sometimes laughed to show gratitude, and that’s what she was doing. Showing gratitude for being taken out of herself by small talk. Being kept from herself.
“Anyway, these lobbyists—my clan you could call them, my tribe—they actually schmoozed some Lee County commissioners into convincing voters—wait for it—to raise their property taxes. For the sole purpose of building roads for the developers.” Sweeney shook his head. “It was Oscar material. They had those commissioners in their pockets in spades, they flew six of them to Barbados—”
In spades. The phrase hit her like a slap. “Please hold that thought.”
Brenda undid her seatbelt, shoved up and started down the aisle. Curious passengers watched her lurching their way. “Sorry—” She kicked a foot, banged a shoulder with her hip, but kept going.
“Is there something—”
The flight attendant stepped back. UNOCCUPIED. Brenda shoved in and clapped shut the folding door. She slid the lock, turned and leaned back. Toilets on planes always made her nervous. The engine noise, the way blue disinfectant swilled around before being sucked down. Not today, she thought. Today it’s a refuge. A safe haven.
And everything had been going so well. For something like a hundred minutes, Patrick Sweeney had kept her occupied with stories about his life as a lobbyist. Brenda had held up her end by telling him about her recent interview with a famous, paranoid sculptor. To keep his work secret, the artist welded his sculptures in an abandoned copper mine, two hundred feet below ground in the Upper Peninsula.
But then Sweeney had said in spades.
She refused to look in the mirror at her red potscrubber hair and sleep-deprived, gray-green eyes. Her nose was running, something related to pressurized cabins on planes. She reached to the dispenser and snatched a paper towel.
“What’s the matter with you?” She wiped her upper lip. “Get a grip, grow up. You said goodbye to lots of men, you won a Pulitzer, you have friends—”
Jesus. She blew her nose with the towel. The crap people used to buck themselves up. Straightening her shoulders, Brenda breathed in, breathed out. True, she thought. Goodbye to lots of men. But just one Charlie Schmidt.
◆◆◆◆◆
In spades, in spades, in spades—she worked her way back up the aisle. A shrink had said repeating trigger words could weaken their power. When she reached her row, Sweeney was looking over from his window seat.
He was in his fifties, with a youthful, ruddy complexion that somehow fit with his full head of white hair. He said nothing as Brenda slipped in and reached around for her seatbelt. At first, she had expected him to come on to her—he seemed the type. But he hadn’t. His hand was resting on the fold-down tray, next to a glass of melting ice and a serving of Dewar’s Scotch. The Scotch was still unopened. Old School, Brenda thought and tightened the seatbelt. A gentleman like Charlie Schmidt.
“OK—” She made a little show of sitting up straight and turning his way. “Mission accomplished,” she said. “Please open your drink. ”
Sweeney nodded. As he twisted open his Dewar’s, the gesture made her want to open up and explain herself. “As you may have noticed, you pushed a button,” she said. “I know someone who says things like ‘in spades.’”
Sweeney smiled as he poured. “Is he your father?”
“No, someone about your age.”
“I take it this is your main squeeze.”
“Was,” she said. “We broke up.”
“Ah.” Sweeney sipped his drink.
Broke up. The expression all at once seemed bone-headed to her. And wrong. All she’d done was to see and to finally accept what had been there all along: there could be no future with Charlie Schmidt. She wondered what his term for it would be. Calling it quits? Throwing in the towel?
“One thing’s for sure,” Sweeney said. “‘In spades’ isn’t from your own age demographic.” No, it wasn’t. “But that means,” Sweeney added, leaning close again, “there’s hope for me. If this guy’s around my age, the golden years could be full of promise.”
Brenda smiled at the compliment. She drank from her ginger ale and lowered the glass. “He’s a very good man,” she said. “We had problems, that’s all. Neither of us could come up with a work-around.”
“How do you mean ‘work-around’?”
“I won’t bore you,” she said. “It’s complicated. But the short form is, it was just over. Plus I had this trip scheduled to write an article. It just seemed the right time to make a clean break.”
“It’s always complicated,” Sweeney said. He sipped again and set down his glass. “But it sounds to me like you’re running away.”
Brenda looked at him. “You’re wrong,” she told him. “I’m not ‘on the lam,’ and that’s not from my age demographic, either. You’re just wrong.”
Sweeney held up a hand. “My bad,” he said. “I just heard something different.”
She sipped her ginger ale. A stranger sitting next to her on a plane had easily heard the truth lying just below the career-girl snappy patter. Lying at the bottom of her own abandoned copper mine.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Sweeney said. “I see I spoke out of turn.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “What’s more boring than someone going on about ‘relationships?’” She
