Someone told me once that flying to London during the day rather than overnight made jetlag easier to handle. Or maybe I only dreamed that; I was a zombie. I gave up trying to tell what time of day it was as I marched through Heathrow behind Suzette. If I'd been even slightly more awake, I might have asked if we were going the right way. It seemed to be the long way; one hallway would let out onto a concourse which would take us to another hallway and then another. Occasionally someone in a uniform carrying a radio would wave us on. When I tried to stop and ask a woman in a maroon blazer a question, she told me to keep going, everything would be taken care of at The Desk. I could hear the capitals when she said it.
"I don't think there is a flight to Berlin," I said to Suzette as I shuffled down another hallway behind her. "We're actually walking there."
The hallway let out onto a concourse, smaller than any of the others and deserted except for a woman stationed at a counter in front of something that might have been one of those exclusive airline clubs, except there was no company name or logo. She reminded me a little of Jinx Gottmunsdottir, only a few decades younger and nowhere nearly as generously proportioned. I followed Suzette over and she greeted us with the restrained, professional smile people wear when they're not sure whether they'll have to let you in or throw you out.
"Is this The Desk?" Suzette asked.
The woman nodded. "Tickets, passports, and landing cards, please." She sorted, shuffled, and stamped, and sent us through a turnstile to a waiting room where the flight to Berlin was already boarding.
In Berlin, we debarked outdoors in the middle of what looked like a parking lot for airplanes and boarded a shuttle bus. Instead of getting off at the first stop with most of the other passengers, however, an attendant told us to stay on and we were ferried to another plane, much smaller than the one we had arrived in.
The flight attendant who checked our tickets as we boarded seemed more like a security guard. She pointed each passenger to a specific seat with an air that suggested she wouldn't look kindly on anyone wanting to switch places. I fell asleep before takeoff and didn't wake up till after we landed in Rome, which made me grouchy with disappointment-I'd hoped to get at least a glimpse of the city from the air.
Another shuttle bus took us to the next small aircraft. There were fewer passengers and no assigned seats. I had intended to stay awake but there was a long delay before takeoff. When I woke up, we were in a holding pattern over Morocco.
The shuttle bus waiting here was all but hermetically sealed against the heat and the windows had such a dark tint, it was practically impossible to see out of them. Tired, I leaned over to Suzette and whispered, "I'm exhausted. You go on, I'm gonna stay here and see when I can get a flight home."
"You are not." Suzette said, grabbing my arm in that Death Grip of Doom again. "You can't."
"I'll pay you back the airfare." I tried prying her fingers off me and couldn't.
"Pearl, you can't just bail. This is a trip for two. You're locked in." Suzette looked significantly at the uniformed man standing by the exit.
"Are you kidding me?" I started to get up and she pulled me down.
"Don't. He's armed." She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. "I'd have quit after Berlin. But we're committed."
"You can't force people to travel. It's illegal."
"It's not a matter of legal or illegal," said a firm voice. I looked up to see the guard standing over us. "You are in transit. You cannot leave a plane in transit. You stop when it stops." The bus came to a halt and he pointed at the exit door. It slid open to reveal the steps up to the next aircraft. "You haven't stopped yet."
The flight to Johannesburg was the longest and the one where sleep deserted me. The flight attendants looked as tired as I felt. I considered slipping one of them a note: Help, I'm traveling against my will. Seeing those morose faces, however, made me decide against it. They'd probably just tell me to be glad I was sitting down.
Someone had left a thick paperback book in the seat pocket in front of me. It seemed to be a thriller involving spies who had sex a lot but I couldn't be sure. It was in French, a language I'd had little acquaintance with since high school. Eventually, I got bored enough to try reading it and discovered that I could make out slightly more of the text than I'd expected but not, unfortunately, in any of the parts where the spies had sex a lot.
Suzette by contrast did sleep most of the time, and so heavily that I wondered if she had taken something. I hadn't seen her do anything like that but then I hadn't seen her steal her aunt's mail, either. I'd have to ask her when she woke up. Girlfriend, if you've got some Ambien on you, is it too much to ask you to share?
By the time the seatbelt sign came on for the descent into Johannesburg, I felt as if I'd spent a year in that stupid, lumpy seat. Again we exited the plane outside on the tarmac, far from any buildings. But this time, there was no shuttle bus. The plane for the final leg of the journey was waiting for us just a little ways away. A guard wearing the same uniform as the one who had spoken to me in Morocco led us over to it and checked our tickets at the foot of the steps before allowing us to board.
Just as I reached the open door, I heard a commotion at the bottom of the steps. A tall man with thinning brown hair was arguing with the guard, who was pushing him back. A jeep with three other uniformed people, two men and one woman, appeared out of nowhere and screeched to a stop beside the steps. All four of the guards were carrying the struggling man by his arms and legs toward the jeep when the relentlessly smiling flight attendant at the door pulled me inside and asked me to sit down in a way that made it sound like an offer I couldn't pass up instead of an order I didn't dare refuse.
I've since tried to figure out that technique for my own use but I always end up just straining my vocal cords.
All the attendants for this flight had relentless smiles; it was a special charter. They moved around the cabin distributing snacks, drinks and folders thick with information about the city of Mombasa as well as Mombasa District and the area of Kenya where it was located.
"Did you know this was a charter?" I asked Suzette, paging through a booklet on Kenya 's flora and fauna.
"Does it matter?" She stuffed her folder in the seat pocket without looking at it.
"Hey, don't you want to keep that?"
"You can't keep it. It belongs to the charter company."
That was a non-answer if I'd ever heard one. "Then they'll have to catch me," I said, feeling contrary. "After seeing this, I kind of wish we really were going there instead of M-"
"Keep your voice down," Suzette snapped in a loud whisper.
I shrugged. "Fine. Sorry. But I don't know what all the big-" At that point, we hit the turbulence we'd been warned about and I lost my train of thought. Shortly after that, I also lost the drink I'd just finished along with the peanuts from the last flight and the pretzels from this one.
Nausea takes up all of my brain, leaving little room for anything other than wishing I were dead. But I did notice that the airsick bag was much larger and sturdier than average. It was made of untearable paper, printed with word games, riddles, and puzzles-Fun Facts About Mombasa!-and lined with heavy-duty plastic.
The turbulence lessened sometimes but never stopped. I kept the sick bag clamped to my face, wondering if anyone had ever died of nausea-not throwing up, just nausea. I couldn't remember ever feeling this bad. Was I just overtired or had those stupid snacks poisoned me? Suzette wasn't doing any better. Nor was anyone else on the plane, apparently. Even the flight attendants looked green.
Abruptly, there was a jolt so hard that if I hadn't been belted in, I'd have gone through the baggage compartment above me. Then the plane went into a nosedive.