I would wake up safely on the second floor of a hotel room in Georgia the next morning, and even that would seem too far from the ground. My first thought would leave me twitching, only to fade in to a reverie of Laura. But I wouldn’t remember what about her peeved me first.
I bumped and grinded my way up the aisle of Flight 89, stooping from the low ceiling and eyeing others suspiciously. This flight would not be a fun one and neither would the destination. I counted the seats to my reservation and sighed. The top of her glistening head. There would be no peace. From where I stood, she was utterly shell-shocked, trembling in her seat with her irksome red-devil claws digging into the airline’s upholstery. They arched in seismic waves and glittered like a fairy’s wing. Already my teeth set, chomping down on the inside of my cheek. I tasted copper.
She must’ve been a teen pop sensation.
No… There were holes in her clothes. Or were they carefully stitched there? First impressions were quickly void as her façade became as clear as the blotch of seepage on the side of her face. She must have recently picked at it. Cute.
I tried hard to kick the hysterical urge to slap her. That girl must’ve flipped her hair nine times as I trudged from row B to row D. Just one slap. Just to welcome her to the 21st century.
Or I would say something. Like, compliment her on her ridiculous way of dress. Paisley shirt and jean skort. Tights that looked soaked in blood and that reached from underneath her faux skirt down to just above the ankle. What the heck was that?
But no no no. Anything smart that came out of my mouth that fine, cloudy day with three feet visibility would not be the best to gain the trust of a seatmate. Trust is what counted now since the year 2001, so I crumpled my duffel bag underneath the seat (F11, I nearly cried at the assonance), stalling long enough to allow the man waiting behind me to begin groaning. I slumped into the seat next to the girl. Flicking my dark aviator glasses down off the top of my head, masking the work in nonreflecting smog, I hummed “Devil Went Down to Georgia” and the girl edged more toward the center of her own seat. But with a fair amount of space from the window.
“First time flying,” I grunted.
(crap)
“No,” she said, relief sputtering from her mauve lips. “Second time and I don’t think it gets any better.”
I grunted again. I had to agree.
“I’m Laura,” she said, tilting her head, pouting her lips. Did she realize how old I was?
“Ah,” I snatched a brochure to the Bahamas from the magazine sleeve and started flipping through it.
I caught the breeze as she nodded. Shakily, she reached for a magazine too.
Ah, one of those flights.
“Take off will be in fifteen minutes,” spoke the voice of God from the radio tattooed to our overhead compartment. He rattled off a few more announcements with the care of Nazi guard at a death camp.
I hailed the flight attendant.
“Rum and coke.”
As I watched the flight attendant sashay away moodily, Laura spoke up again.
“Y-You sound familiar.”
“Mhm,” I licked a finger and flicked it across a page. An enlarged, glossy photo of a happy-crappy couple with a terrier playing along a stretch of a bone-white beach. It was the most boring piece of literature I could have plunged into, but the thrumming waves exuding from Laura’s body were annoying. So, any distraction was a good distraction.
“Y-You sound just like my dad does,” she grumbled, lowering her head.
Oooh, it was one of those flights.
If that was an invitation into her world of woes I would not be the one to RSVP. How did this girl not understand proper airline etiquette?
I glanced over at Laura, head still hanging between sweeps of crushed velvet, waiting patiently for her curtain call. Something in the angle of her face told me she had to be sixteen, seventeen at most. All alone on a flight to Georgia.
“What’s your problem?”
She looked genuinely shocked.
“Problem? Who has the problem, mister?”
“I’m not looking to bemoan a history with you, kid. I want to know why you picked me. Why you want to annoy me. What kind of offhand comment was that?” I shriveled my face and whimpered, “’You sound like my father.’ I don’t need this, I really don’t.”
And with that the flight attendant waltzed up the aisle holding out my rum and coke like it was the Peace Prize. And none too soon. I downed it in three gulps.
The girl, the young woman, my seatmate on this journey to hell sat still. She wasn’t fidgeting, which was a nice change, so I splayed my legs a little bit. It was more cramped then it should’ve been with all the crap she was hauling. For someone who apparently was on the run, she sure didn’t pack light.
“I’m sorry.”
I raised a hand to her and up-ended the glass, making the ice clack unpleasantly against my teeth. Small price to pay for that last drop. I could tell it was prime stuff. Smooth.
The girl turned her face away, staring out the window though it was a reaching white nothingness above a great slab of grey nothingness with blinking lights that led to nothingness. Her face was taunt and white. Skipping across the pockmarks, I zoomed in on her eyes. Hollow, distant. There was a story there. But it wasn’t mine, so I clapped my glass down on the tray in front of me and I again pulled out that happy-crappy island brochure.
She shifted her legs, crossed, uncrossed them. I begged myself to be patient. Maybe she had some kind of syndrome.
“I’m sorry about the space,” Laura murmured. “I couldn’t afford to put it under.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s,” she paused. “What’s waiting for you in Georgia?”
I pulled myself away from the article on masking bikini lines and stared at her.
“Nothing, hun,” I said, beginning to crinkle the well laminated edges of the magazine. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Well, that’s just as stupid as what I’m doing,” she cooed. “There’s nothing for me there either.”
“Then why are you packing all this crap? You’re another hapless runaway, aren’tcha? And you can’t wait to tell me. Look, I don’t need this right now, but—whatever. I’ll be your pity pony. Bring it, Laura.”
I turned my head, rolling my eyes obliquely. If she absolutely had to get it off her chest and I had to be the outlet, sure. I could do that one small, small thing. I reminded myself to commit myself to Greyhound buses in the future. Something about airplanes makes people so talky. Too much air, probably. Clutching my knee painfully, my other hand twirled in the air.
(get a move on, kid)
“Cute, I get it. I don’t expect you to care. I was just trying to get something out of you.”
Now both hands were clutching my knees.
“Out of me? What the hell are you saying, kid?”
“There’s something wrong about you.”
“D****t, we’re not even in the air yet and you think you know me?”
Laura didn’t answer. She just stared, imploring with the eyes of a tigress. This game was in her bag now. Me, old twenty-something that I was, was losing my cool to jail bait’s poster child.
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Why do you need to know? This flight will be maybe three hours or something and you will never see me again. Why bother with propriety, kid?”
“Laura sounds so much better than kid, y’know. And you’re Rick. I saw it on your duffel bag.”
I was beginning to feel weight pressing in on all sides. Passengers were beginning to ogle the situation like a shank in New York City; no one bugging themselves enough to end it. Forgetting myself, I lilted quickly:
“In the spare three seconds that it took me to stow it? Good job, kid. Have a star.”
“See, that’s what I’m getting at.”
Why, why was I wasting time talking to her? She was probably pregnant or had some neurosis that forced her to annoy everyone within reach.
“Alright, this is where I get off.”
I thunked my head against the headrest and zippered my eyes shut. No more. No way. I wasn’t going to let this princess get to me or make her think she could diagnose my problems. She could only scrape the fat off the surface and that’s it. My problems were null.
“You sound so like my dad.”
I leaned out of my seat.
“Is anyone else hearing this?”
Laura sat rigid in her seat as if I had hit her.
Good. Then I could relax on this flight to hell. I could reflect on the time I was wasting by doing it. Leaning back again, rolling my eyes back inside my head, shutting the curtains. Sorry, we’re closed.
The first tremors of lift off began to break. I felt no movement next to me. The pilot poured some warning notes on to us like milk and honey and I felt the aircraft begin to race down the lane. I saw it plainly in my head. Blurring, rushing wind, bare tree tops poking at the sky like some dead thing you found on the side of the road. I felt the atmosphere tense to my left and it began and ended with Laura.
“Will you calm down? You’re ruining this for me,” I bleated, my hands already clutching my knees harder now.
“Oh, I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all—”
I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. I didn’t like it either. I didn’t want to stare at the back of a vague plush seat, hovering a mile high in the air, flash forwarding my self for the custody hearing waiting impatiently for me in hellish Georgia.
Laura’s acrylic nails scraped the top of my hand as hers landed on my knee. I clutched her back because there was nothing else I could possibly do.
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