Read Online Some Things About Flying by Joan Barfoot - Free Book Online

and down the aisle. Susie is watching them, looking shy but willing. Lila hopes shy overcomes willing, because two youngsters playing some antagonistic game this close are already too many.
    Adults are also stirring, cramped muscles kicking up trouble. Some people stand and stretch, creating a cabin-wide rustling of cloth that sounds, over the rhythm of engines, like a great flurry of moths’ wings.
    Somewhere towards the front, a baby is starting to howl.
    Tom raises his eyebrows. “Still no movie?”
    Lila shrugs again. “Not yet.”
    â€œI could use another drink. How about you?”
    â€œSure. Whenever. She should be around again soon.”
    He twists to peer down the aisle, turns back, frowning. “There’s a bunch of them in the galley, just talking, it looks like. Four of them.”
    Kind, tender-hearted Tom, and this surprised Lila in their early days, balks at casual service in restaurants and stores. He has been known to toss items he intended to buy on a counter and stalk out if he hasn’t been able to get help fast enough, and he can be snappish in restaurants if he thinks the service is not properly attentive. By and large, when they’re together he saves Lila the trouble of saying similar crisp words, or making similar crisp gestures herself.
    And by and large, that’s something to be careful about. She can’t afford to start assuming, or depending; falling into roles, like husbands, like wives: men who automatically drive, women who automatically don’t drive. That kind of thing. It can get too easy; like letting him order her drink for her.
    â€œListen,” he says more urgently. “Hear that?”
    His face has the strangest expression. Unfamiliar, almost scary. What the hell is it?
    He is looking beyond her, over her shoulder. His eyes are huge, his mouth hangs open.
    â€œOh, Jesus,” he says softly, with something like awe. “Oh, sweet Jesus Christ.”

four
    Oh Jesus, indeed, oh sweet Jesus Christ.
    Lila doesn’t believe it. Then she almost laughs out loud—imagine even for an instant that her belief or disbelief makes any difference. Imagine a giggle bubbling up at a moment like this.
    She is staring, gape-mouthed, at Tom, who is still staring past her, past the empty seat, out the window. How can he?
    She has already turned and looked, and turned back to him, just as fast as she could.
    That’s fire out there. Fire and space; something terribly present and equally terribly empty.
    No.
    No, these things happen, but not really. On the news, yes, or in movies, but not to Lila. It’s only—what?—a scene. She thinks, No wonder they don’t show airplane disaster movies on airplanes, and another giggle bubbles up. They probably don’t sell airplane disaster books in airport bookstores, either.
    Tom’s gaze remains locked on the flame-licked wing. He must have a different way of disbelieving than she does. Although fire dances in front of her anyway, between her face and his. She is watching his eyes through a flaring red curtain.
    Lila prays for a suspension of event, right now. For anything but the heart-clamping terror against which she is instantly constructing this false, unsteady barricade. She is surprised to find herself praying. Or pleading, actually, the extent of her eloquence reduced to, “Oh please,” not even addressed anywhere in particular. Like a scared child: too few words, and too small ones, for very large events.
    But it was just a little bit of fire, wasn’t it? More hinting than real?
    Airplanes must be built with this sort of possibility in mind, there must be mechanisms and manoeuvres. Well, what? Do the people flying this thing, who understand its mechanisms and manoeuvres, even know they have a problem yet?
    She and Tom haven’t said a word except for his exclamation, although maybe he gasped at first sight, Lila doesn’t recall, but knowledge is spreading