Fincher mumbles something like “mighty small world,” but he has become half-hearted at best. “I got the insurance,” Vicki says and flutters the papers up to me, ignoring Fincher completely. “You might see a name you know if you look. I changed religions, too.” Her sweet face is gone plain with seriousness. It is a face I did not even want to see two moments before, but that I welcome now as a friend of my heart. I unfold the thick onionskin sheaf from Mutual of Omaha, and see Vicki’s name here as Victory Wanda Arcenault — and mine partway down as beneficiary. The sum is $150,000.
“What about the Pope?” I say.
“He’s still a good ole bird. But I’ll never see him.” She blinks her eyes up at me as if a light had burst into view around my ears. “I’ll see you, though.”
I would like to hug her till she squeaked, but not in Fincher’s presence. It would give him something to think about, and I want to give him nothing. At the moment he is standing with his mouth formed into a small, perfect o. “Thanks,” I say.
“I liked the idea of you spending all that money and thinking about me. It’d make me happy then wherever I was. You could buy a Corvette — only you’d probably want a Cadillac.”
“I just want you,” I say. “Anyway we’ll be together if it crashes.”
She rolls her eyes up at the high crystal-lighted airport ceiling. “That’s true, isn’t it?” She takes the policy back and kneels down to put it in her Le Sac bag.
“I ’spec I’ll just steal on off,” Fincher says, eyes flashy-darty since something has taken place here outside his ken. He has bent himself slightly at the waist and is on the verge of embarrassment, an emotion he has not felt, in all likelihood, for twenty years.
The concourse has begun welling up around us with people wearing paper tags on their breasts that say “Get-Away.” They appear from nowhere and begin flowing in the direction of gates 36–51. The air suddenly smells sweet and peanutty. A plane has been held up for late-arrivers, and a feeling of relief circles us like a spring breeze.
“It’s good to see you, Fincher,” I say. Fincher, of course, is no more a lecher than the rest of us, and I am relieved to let him and his grave Ichabod’s features slip away.
“Uh-huh, you bet,” Vicki says and glances at Fincher with distaste, a look he seems to accept with gratitude.
“I guess they’re lettin us on a little early.” Fincher flashes a smile.
“You have a good trip,” I say.
“Yep, yep,” Fincher says and hoists his clubs onto his bony shoulder.
“Don’t do it in the lake,” Vicki says. But Fincher is already out of her range, and I watch him pick up his step with the other expectants, in from Buffalo, his clubs hitched high up, happy to be in with a new crowd, ready for some good earnest talk and arm-squeezing on their way south.
“You and Fincher have a falling out?” I say this in a chummy voice.
“I ’magine we did.” Vicki is kneeling, elbow-deep in her weekender bag, digging for something at the bottom. We are next up to have our tickets validated. “He’s some kinda joker. A real sneak-up-behind-you guy if you know what that means. A bad potato. We all watch out for him.”
“Did he sneak up behind you?”
“No sir.” She looks up at me in surpirse. “Nasty mind. I keep an eye on who’s back of me.”
“What do you think I think?”
“It’s on your face like eggs.”
“I’m just jealous,” I say. “Can’t you tell?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She finds a tiny perfume phial from her bag, uncaps it and takes it to her neck and arms while she kneels on the airport floor. She smiles up at me in a spicy way I know she knows I like. “You ain’t got nothin to worry about, lemme tell you, Mister. You’re numero uno and there’s no number two.”
“Tell me about Fincher, then.”
“One-a-these days. You won’t be surprised, though, I’ll tell you that.”
“You’d be surprised what surprises me.”
“And what don’t surprise me. Ever.” She stands to take my hand in the ticket line. Her hand’s moist, and the air smells of Chanel No. 5.
“You win.”
“Right. I’m a winner all the way,” she says airily. And if I could make the moment last — lost in the anticipation of a safe trip, a fatal crash, a howling success, a grinding bitter failure — I would, and never leave this airport, never gain on or rejoin myself, and never know what’s to come, the way you always have to know, though it’s only the same, the same you waiting.
4
On the plane we are in the midwest from the first moment we take our seats. The entire tourist cabin of our 727 virtually vibrates with its grave ying-yangy appeal. Hefty stewardesses with smiles that say “Hey, I could love you once we’re down and safe” stow away our carry-ons. Vicki folds her weekender strap inside and hands it up. “Gaish, now is that ever neat,” says a big blond one named Sue and puts her hands on her hips in horsey admiration. “I wanta show Barb that. We’ve got the pits with our luggage. Where’re you guys headed?” Sue’s smile shows a big canine that is vaguely tan-colored, but she is full of welcome and good spirits. Her father was in the Air Force and she has a lot of athletic younger brothers, I would stake my life on it. She’s seen plenty.
“Detroit,” Vicki announces proudly, taking a secret peek at me.
Sue cocks her blond head to the side with pride. “You gyz’ll love Detroit.”
“Well, I’m really lookin forward to it,” Vicki says with a grin.
“Greet, reelly greet,” Sue says and sways off to start the coffee around. All about me, almost immediately, people begin to converse in the soft nasalish voices and mildish sentiments familiar from my college days. Everyone seems to be a native Detroiter heading home for the holidays, and no one coming west just to visit but us. Someone nearby claims to have stayed up and watched an entire telethon and missed two days of work. Someone else headed up to “the thumb” on a fishing trip but had motor trouble and ended up marooned in Bad Axe for a weekend. Someone had started Wayne State and pledged Sigma Nu but by last Christmas was back to work at his dad’s sheet metal business. It might be said, of course, that the interiors of all up-to-date conveyances of travel put one in mind of the midwest. The snug-fitted overhead bins, the comfy pastel recliners, disappearing tray-tables and smorgasbord air of anything-you-want-within-sensible-limits. All products of mid western ingenuity, as surely as a waltz is Viennese.
In a little while Barb and Sue circulate back and conduct a serious Q&A with Vicki about her weekender bag, which neither of them has seen the exact likes of, they say, and Vicki is only too happy to discuss. Barb is a squat little strawberry blondie with too much powder makeup and slightly heavy hands. She is interested in something called “price points” and “mean value mark-up,” and whether or not an identical bag couldn’t be bought at Hudson’s boutique in a mall near her own condo in Royal Oak; it turns out she studied retailing in college. Vicki says hers came from Joske’s, but that’s all she knows, and the girls talk about Dallas for a while (Barb and Sue have both been based there at different times) and Vicki says she likes a store called Spivey’s and a rib place in Cockrell Hill called Atomic Ribs. They all three like each other a lot. Then all at once we’re in the air rising out over the cloud-shaded Watchungs and a bright blue-green industrial river, toward Pennsylvania, making for Lake Erie, and the girls slide off to other duties. Vicki picks up the arm rest and shoves close to me on our three-across seats, her shiny, encased thigh as hard as a saucepan, her breath drowsy with excitement. We are well above the morning’s storminess now.