"Not 'we' anymore," he says good-naturedly. "Not for me, anyhow."
"Yes, yes, right. Sorry."
"There was no movement at the paper, so I figured it was time to leave."
He must not realize that she knows the truth. More important, he must not realize her role in his dismissal. "That sounds wise," she says, filling the silence. "What's that you're reading?"
He retrieves the paperback from under his behind and shows the cover.
"Oh wow," she says. "I'm a huge Jane Austen fan."
"Oh yeah?"
"I haven't read Persuasion," she says. "But Pride and Prejudice is probably-no, definitely-my favorite book of all time. I'm trying to get my girls to read it, but I think they're a bit young still."
"What age?"
"Ten and eleven."
"I hadn't read anything by her till a couple of months ago," he says. "But now I'm on, like, a kind of mission to read everything she ever did. Which is not all that much. This is the last on my list." He studies the cover. "This wasn't her title for it-she died before it came out. The publisher called it Persuasion."
"Great title, though."
"It is, isn't it."
"What's your favorite of hers?" she asks.
" Mansfield Park, maybe. Maybe Pride. The only one that didn't do it for me was Sense and Sensibility."
"I've actually only read Pride and Prejudice."
"I thought she was your favorite writer."
"I know, I know. But I'm a terrible reader. Three kids. The job."
"Three kids?" He makes a face.
"What's that mean?"
"No, I'm impressed. You seem young to have three."
"I guess. Though I'm not that young. Anyway. Sorry, I should let you get back to your book."
"No prob, seriously-it's good getting a chance to talk. Nobody talks at that office. You notice that? Weirdest thing when I started there-I was, like, is there some kind of clique out here or do I have a real bad odor or something? It's like a veil of silence in there."
"That's the paper all right."
"You practically feel like everybody hates you."
"That's how I feel all the time there." Her colleagues don't even have the respect to use her name, referring to her as "Accounts Payable." She hates the nickname. They can't accept that she's young and a woman and above them in the food chain. But she's the one keeping them employed. Those guys-glorified stenographers, pontificating about prerogatives of the press-as if the paper were anything more than a business. Not when we're losing this kind of money. And that champion of pontificators, the insufferable Herman Cohen, constantly forwarding her articles like "How Bean Counters Are Ruining the Media." As if she were running the place into the ground. It's he who blocked the paper from starting a website. In this day and age, we still have no Web presence! But those who call her Accounts Payable don't think about this stuff. They don't think about how much money the paper drops each time they're late in closing the edition (forty-three thousand euros so far this annum). Or how much she battled against layoffs. (She got the Ott board down from sixteen to nine, with just one coming from editorial.) Without her, the staff would be on the streets in a month. And they slag her off.
"That is so sad," she continues. "It takes an intercontinental flight to actually exchange words with someone in the office."
"Although we did talk once, when I started."
"Right, my welcome-aboard chat. Was I a total cow?"
"Not a total one."
"Oh no! Really?"
"I'm kidding. No, you just seemed real busy."
"I am. So, so busy. The board won't pay for an assistant. And why would they, quite frankly? They're getting three employees' work out of me. It's my own fault. Sorry, I shouldn't vent. And a retroactive sorry if I was a bit of a you-know-what back at work. Just a strange atmosphere at the paper sometimes, as you know." She angles herself toward him. "So you like to read?"
He ruffles the pages of his book. "When I can." He rests the paperback facedown on his thigh.
"You shouldn't spread it out like that."
"Like what?"
"Bending your book. You're gonna break the spine."
"I don't mind."
"Sorry. I'm being bossy. I should let you read."
"Don't worry about it."
"I should probably do some work myself." She opens the tray table but hesitates. Is there anything in her files that mentions Dave? Anything he shouldn't see? She opens her binder a crack and extracts a few innocuous pages but is furtively studying him. He turns a page of his book. He seems engrossed and not remotely curious to peek at her tedious charts. What page is he on? Eighty-three. She makes a fake shuffle of her papers, a meaningless check mark, but in fact she is reading Persuasion over his shoulder. He turns the page. He goes faster than she does. That's sort of annoying. But it's to be expected-he already knows what's going on in the story. She makes a few more spurious shifts of her papers. He turns another page and, after perceptibly holding his breath, spreads the book wider, for both of them to see. She has been caught again. Ears burning, she turns back to her work.
"Addictive, isn't it," he says graciously.
"That's a terrible habit of mine. Sorry."
"Don't be nuts. Here. Please." He opens the book between them on the armrest. "Want me to explain what's happening?"
"No, no-it's fine, really. I should do my work."
"See, that's why they fired me," he jokes. "Everybody else is working while I'm reading damn Jane Austen!"
Fired him? That's not how he characterized it before.
"Well, you certainly have a good sense of humor about it."
"Easier when you've got a new job."
"You do? Oh, that's so good to hear."
"Thanks. Yeah, the day after I got canned I was talking to this Italian buddy of mine and he told me about this position. Guess I'm lucky."
She wonders how old Dave Belling is. Roughly her age? Older by a bit?
"Hey, look," he says, "it's lunch number one coming down the aisle."
"Lunch number one?"
"Yeah, we get two lunches on this flight because of the time difference."
"Oh, hurrah."
"Seriously."
They eat their plastic chicken and rubber carrots and a pink confection, and make sardonic remarks about it all, as people will when faced with grim airplane food that they nonetheless consume to the crumbs.
"So why are you headed to Atlanta?" she asks.
"Just wanted to see my folks before I start the new job."
"You're from the area, then?"
"From Georgia, yeah. A little town called Ocilla."
"Nice place?"
"It's all right. Couldn't live there again. Grew up there, and that's enough for a lifetime. And you? Where you from?"
" Rochester, New York, originally."
"So you're an 'originally,' too. That means there's been a whole bunch of stops after originally."
"Not that many. I went to college in Binghamton, did a year abroad in Milan, which is where I met my husband. Not currently my husband. My ex. Though he wasn't that then. I never know how to say that."
"Allow my copydesk expertise to intervene: your then-pre-husband, later-to-be-post-husband in his prior-to-ex-husband status."
She laughs. "Is that how you'd phrase it in the paper?"
"Now you see why they fired me."
She smiles. "So anyway, yeah, I got involved with my whatever-he-is in Milan. He's from there. It was my first really significant romance, and I was-" She pauses.
"You were what?"
"I don't know. Stupid. Twenty-three."
"You can't complain-you got three kids out of the bargain."
"That's true. That's what I tell myself."
"I don't have any," he says. "Wanted them. But my wife-my then wife-didn't. No matter what I said, she wasn't having it. But listen to this: we get divorced in, like, '96, and she meets some guy and they go and have four kids! Guess it wasn't that she didn't want kids. She didn't want them with me!"
Abbey doesn't respond.