"Incidentally," she went on, "I can't help noticing, you take notes with your left hand. You are, obviously, left-handed."
"Yes, so what?"
"Interesting."
"What's interesting about it?"
"Not to put too fine a point on it," she replied, "but I was just thinking — there is, you know, a higher incidence of left-handedness among twins. In fact, it may be only a matter of time until someone comes along and claims that every left-handed person is the mirror image of a vanished twin."
Jude stopped writing. He looked at her square in the eye and couldn't tell whether she was joking, but her mouth had a mischievous laugh wrinkle on one side.
Their drinks came. He took a deep sip of scotch and felt it hit him. She ran her fingers through her hair, which made it billow outward and fall gently on her shoulder.
There was a brief, uncomfortable moment of silence, and Jude decided to break it.
"You know, at the library I even read a few of your studies."
"Oh, you did," she said, pleased. "And what did you think?"
He struck a judgmental air. "Not bad."
"That's all? Not bad?"
"Shows promise. I like your style."
"I see," she said, lifting her glass and looking over the rim. "My writing style, I presume."
"Absolutely. Your use of metaphor, the color, the drama, all those linguistic flourishes. I had no idea The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology could be so gripping."
"How about my character development?"
"I think your character is developing just fine."
She ignored that. "Well, modesty compels me to point out that a good editor can do wonders."
"You don't say." He paused. "Personally, I've never met one."
"What — a good editor?"
"In fact, I've never heard those two particular words uttered in the same sentence."
"Ah-ha," she exclaimed. "What have we here — a little professional animosity?"
"Not really animosity. Hatred, maybe."
"I understand. That's always the way with unequal relationships. On the one side, there is the power, and on the other, there is only…"
"… charm."
She smiled.
"There's this joke…" he began, then said, "Christ, I can't believe I'm telling you a dumb joke."
He stopped.
"No, please, go ahead," she pleaded. She sounded as if she meant it.
"Well, you see, an editor and a reporter are crawling across the desert, dying of thirst. Suddenly, they come to an oasis. The reporter rushes ahead, he's drinking the water, swimming in it, having a grand old time. He looks back and what does he see? There's the editor, standing at the edge, pissing into it. 'Hey, what the hell are you doing?' he shouts. The editor draws himself up and replies: 'Improving it.'"
She laughed while he drained his glass.
"Would you like another drink?" she asked. "Maybe in honor of your vanishing twin, you should make it a double."
Chapter 9
It was the clanging of the large metal door that startled Skyler awake — that and a blast of light that came from the front of the shed. It took him only a second to remember where he was, and when he did, the events of the previous twenty-four hours came flooding back, like pieces of a nightmare assembling themselves into a horrific whole. Along with it came the by now familiar hollow in his stomach.
He pulled the tarpaulin over his head and tried to read the noises that reverberated inside the metal shed. Another door clanged, and he knew the hangar was now wide open and he envisioned the plane facing the end of the grass strip runway. He heard footsteps treading upon the ground, approaching the plane and moving away and again approaching. He heard a metallic pounding, then the sound of liquid being poured into a tank and he smelled gasoline fumes. Finally, he made out a dull thunk, followed by a skittering sound — the block under the tire being kicked away, he thought — and he knew he was right a moment later when the thunk came again, and the plane rocked almost imperceptibly. Suddenly, the tail lifted, he heard a stream of curse words surprisingly loud through the thin metal skin of the plane.
"Jesus Christ! Son of a bitch!"
The words came only a few inches away from his ear. He could not recognize the voice. It felt like he was being gently carried. He heard fingers slap against the metal for a better grip, and then a series of grunts. A final heave-ho and the plane's tires cleared the threshold of the shed, and as the craft moved onto the grass and into a slightly declining slope, it gained momentum and rolled by itself — so much so that the fingers grabbed it again, and with more cursing it was brought to a shuddering standstill.
Then Skyler heard the door open and a foot step onto the ladder. He held his breath and froze under the tarpaulin, tensing every muscle. He had to prepare himself — if the cover was lifted and he was discovered, he would jump up and attack whoever was there. Surprise was his only ally. His heart seemed to somersault: Where was the knife? Then he remembered: he'd lost it in killing the dog.
The door snapped shut, and he heard footsteps on the wing and another door open and close. More grunts, more curses, the snap of a seat belt. A long silence, one minute, maybe two — and then the sounds of toggle switches being flipped, a window sliding open, and finally the roar of the engine. The plane was vibrating crazily, and he smelled fumes of burning fuel.
In no time, the plane was bumping awkwardly down the runway and shaking from side to side. And then, just as the engine whined as if it was about to explode and the whole plane seemed about to give up the ghost, magically it lifted off and soared upward. Skyler felt his stomach swoon.
For a long time, he listened to the sound of the engine, echoing off the ground and then sounding suddenly quieter as the plane lifted. They droned on alone in space. Slowly, cautiously, he moved the tarpaulin from his head and, looking up, he saw a metal siding, painted cream color and chipped, revealing a green undercoat; it divided his tiny compartment from the interior of the plane. He blinked his eyes in the light, and looked down at two small leather bags. He was at the bottom of a baggage compartment, separated by the siding from the interior of the plane. He raised his head to peer over the edge into the cabin. Ahead were four empty red seats, lined up on either side of a narrow aisle. Above the seats were tiny knit hammocks, apparently for storing things, and little nearby nozzles pointed downward. In the front were the backs of two black seats; one was empty, one occupied. A red fire extinguisher lay underneath.
He could see the back of the pilot's head, a baseball cap held in place by thick black earphones. Before him was a panel of instruments with fluctuating needles and dials and knobs and blinking yellow numbers. The pilot held a U-shaped stick with both hands, and a similar stick extended above the empty seat, turning in synchronicity as if by a ghostly hand. Above was a long window, through which Skyler could see the sky and huge whitegray clouds billowing upward like frozen smoke.
A wing dipped, and suddenly the view shifted and Skyler saw a vista of deep blues and bright blues extending as far as he could see, with slashes of whitecaps — the ocean, he realized with astonishment, seen from above. Fear seized him, but it was ameliorated by a sense of wonder. Off to one side, he caught a glimpse of a green mass, and it took him more than a second to identify it as land — yes, there were the tops of trees rising and falling like the folds of a blanket, and rocks and marshes ringing the whole. It was an island — maybe even his own little island — and then the knowledge struck him almost with the force of a physical blow, that he had already left it behind, his world, the only place he had known. He was on his way to "the other side," to the land he knew only through the radio and through Kuta's stories, to Babylon, as Baptiste called it when he railed against America's obsession with religion and superstition.