In the passengers’ lounge, I open my computer and tap into the Internet, hoping for a sign, but... Just before Marc and I ended our trip, I fell apart. There’d been an older woman from Britain (she was all of thirty-five!) who cornered me on the roof of the hostel with a view of the boardwalk, the beach, the muddy brown Sheraton. Up on the roof from where we’d watched the pretty Dutch girl dive to her death, this woman came up behind me, slipped her hands around my stomach, down my inner thighs, and squeezed. “If we were stranded on a desert island together,” she whispered, “these are what I’d eat first,” and I fell hopelessly in love. We snuck away to the Sinai together, leaving Marc to put together the pieces, and when we returned several days later, she unceremoniously took up with a Palestinian dishwasher, dragging him up to our rooftop parties, kissing him flagrantly in bars haunted by travelers, as if she’d started eating from my heart. As the years move on, I remember less and less of her, can barely reconstruct her face, while Marc looms large: one of his graceful hands gripping my shoulder, he smiles, “Even the old bastard’s got better taste than that.”
My flight is called over the loudspeaker. I shut the laptop and walk with a group of religious women to the gate, feeling somber. I know Gila is my father’s girlfriend, know she’s probably betrayed me, yet I walk seamlessly through the gate comforted she’s part of the data snug inside me. It’s only when I’m in my seat, looking out the window at the green army planes, that I spot her standing on the tarmac in her miniskirt, sunglasses on top of her head, arguing with a soldier. She raises a fist in his face as if she’s about to pound, tears streaming down her cheeks, and I’m looking, then not lookin so hard it’s worse. A stake drives through my gut: My father is dead.
Due diligence
by Reed Farrel Coleman
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Trisha Tanglewood didn’t bother with the safety card in the seat pouch in front of her, nor did she bother listening to the flight attendant’s sonorous reading of the evacuation procedures. Her disdain was neither an expression of fatalism nor boredom, but of familiarity. Ms. Tanglewood knew more about commercial aircraft than most human beings who didn’t actually design them for a living. It was a safe bet she knew more about the 737–700 than the pilot at the controls of the updated Boeing, certainly more than the cabin crew.
“Excuse me... Kathy,” she read the flight attendant’s winged name tag, “can you tell me, are these engines GE CFM56-7B26s or 27s?”
A blank stare washed over Kathy’s face. Trisha might just as well have asked her for the gross national product of Burkina Faso.
“I’ll make sure to ask the pilot,” Kathy said, recovering nicely. “Enjoy the flight.”
It was silly, she knew, harassing flight attendants this way, but it comforted her.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Saunders on the flight deck. Just wanted to let you know we’ll be taking off in just a couple of minutes here. We’ll be cruising at an altitude of thirty-six thousand feet at a speed of approximately five hundred and fifty miles per hour. The weather’s pretty clear between here and Tegucigalpa, so we anticipate a fairly smooth flight. If there’s anything we can do to make your trip more enjoyable, please let one of the cabin staff know. Once we get to cruising altitude, I’ll be back on with you. Until then, enjoy the ride. Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for departure.”
“You seem to know a lot about planes,” said the man in the next seat.
Trisha started — usually on top of everything, she hadn’t even seen him there. She just hadn’t been herself lately. No, that wasn’t really true. In spite of the self-confidence and competence she wore like armor in the halls of Paisley Shutter, Trisha had, since her father’s death eleven months before, been functioning in a state of psychological vertigo. An executive at Sikorsky had once told her that flying a helicopter was like playing the piano while balancing one-legged on a basketball. She hadn’t quite gotten it the first time she heard it. These days, she understood it perfectly.
“I said, you seem to know an awful lot about planes,” he repeated.
She looked at the man. He was forty-ish, ruggedly handsome, with a square chin and lined face; a refugee from Marlboro Country. He had a mouthful of straight white teeth and shiny, silver-gray hair like her father’s. She noticed too that he had his armrest in a death grip, and that his speckled blue eyes darted nervously to and from the cabin window.
“I do indeed,” she said. “And there’s not a lot to worry about, so try and relax.”
“You a pilot or something?”
Trisha laughed. “Or something.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m an investment banker,” she said, as if that explained something.
The man nodded. “I’m Pete Dutton, by the way.” He removed his hand from the armrest and offered it to her.
“Trisha Tanglewood.” She briefly shook his hand. He had a firm grip and a surprisingly dry palm.
“Pleasure to meet you, Trisha.” He tipped an invisible hat.
“Yes, a pleasure.”
“How is it that a banker knows so much about planes?”
“I spent seven years analyzing the aircraft manufacturing industry — the last two years as chief analyst.”
“Really?”
“Really. If you’d like to discuss the relative merits of this aircraft as opposed to, let’s say, the Airbus A320, or why some airlines prefer Pratt & Whitney power plants over GE or Rolls Royce, just let me know.”
“No thanks. Too much knowledge makes me even more unsettled,” Pete said, trying to smile and failing. “I already have enough trouble thinking of jets as gas tanks with wings.”
“Well, that’s essentially correct; wings and seats.”
“Great. You’re a real comfort.”
As if on cue, the pilot wound up the turbofans and the jet began its urgent rumbling down the tarmac. Then they were off, gradually leaving Miami behind and beneath them. Trisha could see the near panic in Pete’s face as the servos repositioned the flaps and the bottom seemed to drop out of the starboard side of the aircraft, the captain turning west into the setting sun. In her own way, she was just as unsteady.
She had gotten what she thought she had wanted, a kick up the ladder. No longer could she hide herself in the shadow of tail fins or rotor blades. Trisha had been forced out of her cozy titanium, aluminum, and carbon fiber womb. The whole manufacturing sector was her gig now, all of it, everything from baby bottles to ball bearings, from farm equipment to pharmaceuticals. The days of simple, seamless trips to Seattle and Toulouse were no more. She was far less familiar with her new arena, an arena with a distinctly Third World flavor.
Trisha knew she was good at managing herself and her career. She was more than good, she was superior, and had handled her small team deftly. Problem was, the team had grown exponentially. And as much money as was at stake in aircraft manufacturing, it was penny-ante compared to the whole manufacturing shebang. Shebang, she thought, what a silly word, but her dad had used it all the time. He was full of quaint phrases and cowboy wisdom. Even now she had trouble accepting he was gone. Other than her job, he had been all she had. He would have been so proud of her. Remembering him, his crooked smile, his rough good looks, the day he gave her her first saddle, Trisha looked past Pete Dutton and out the window into the deepening night. And she found her eyes drifting back toward Pete’s face.
He seemed an interesting man, polite and unafraid to show vulnerability. She could count on one finger the number of male colleagues who would have dared display fear in front of her. On the Street, fear was weakness and weakness was death, and you never let it see the light of day. You battened it down, you plowed it under. You swallowed that bastard whole.