I could tell from the way she glanced at me and moved her things, that the woman in the window seat had hoped that the row, or at least the seat next to her would remain vacant. Anyone, except those odd people who need company at all times, might. But in her glance and her moving of her things was a reluctance so pregnant and complete that I almost felt sorry for asking. It wasn’t snobbery or selfishness that afflicted her, I decided. It was pain.
We were on our way to a funeral, my husband and I, and in that fact we felt assured in our purpose and the ethics of it that shielded us from any criticism or complaint we might otherwise be susceptible to.
I was careful not to notice her at all after we took up the two seats to her right, partially as a defense for the feeling I could not completely shake, that I had caused her some inconvenience or discomfort. But halfway into the one hour flight, when I put my book down for a moment, I noticed a stillness about her that was unnatural. She was no longer playing on her phone as she had been when I asked if the seats next to her were free. She had kept on tapping after the announcement to turn off all electronic devices long enough that I began to admonish and judge her in my mind as I was busy ignoring her, and reading. She had finally relinquished her iphone, placing it carefully into her small orange purse that was made of leather and gathered along the hasp but modest in size so that sitting open on her lap I could see all that there was inside. The Chanel compact she used to check her hair, the Gucci wallet, a pretty little notebook with a gold pen attached.
When I looked at her again as I paused my reading, she was sitting up straight with her sunglasses on, staring ahead at nothing. They were the kind celebrities hind behind, large and dark with rounded edges and a golden tinge to the frames. She was somewhere in the decade between thirty and forty. Her light hair curled gently around her jaw, fell into resting on her shoulders in attractive layers of wavy curls that were nothing short of perfection. She was wearing brown pants and a soft tan sweater that said she was all business, but had no need for the awkward restriction of a suit. She was poised, stylish and elegant. There wasn’t anything about her that called for improvement.
But it was her stillness that was most striking. Unlike every other passenger, she wasn’t fidgeting or eating or reading or writing. In her stillness there was the invisible movement that was all inside her head. She was thinking so hard she couldn’t do anything else. She was going over and over and over the same scene, replaying it in her head, letting the feelings seep out of her skin. Envy, regret, jealousy. Maybe she was planning her revenge. Or her comeback.
It occurred to me she might be asleep and I tried to steal a glance behind her glasses, after all I was only inches from her face. But it was dark enough in the cabin I couldn’t be sure about her eyes. They may have been closed but she was not asleep. Her body was not that relaxed. She was upright, and pulled together. In her sitting she was as organized as her purse.
At the end of the flight, a familiar sounding conversation started invading my ears from two or three rows behind. We were landing and I was not reading any longer, the turbulence of descent making it too hard to concentrate and keep my eyes on the same line. As I tried relaxing my body the man’s voice caught my attention.
In it I could hear everything there was to know. He was retired. He was lonely. He had no hair but he had once been fairly handsome though not entirely so and not anymore. He was more than friendly and charming, he was lecherous. But he was skilled at the game he was playing with the young woman seated next to him. He was asking her questions and pretending to understand her as a way of seducing conversation out of her. She was pretty, though not incredibly and was eager to make her way in the world, and in her line of business (was it marketing?) she had to be outgoing and charming and was always practicing her skills. She had no idea what he was doing. She saw him as an opportunity. You never know, someone once told her, who you might be sitting next to on a plane. He could be your next boss. She was not trying to impress him as much as she was impressing herself with how easily she answered his questions and how much smarter she sounded than she was used to. This was his gift and she was oblivious to it.
The plane hit the tarmac and I relaxed my outer layers to compensate for the reflexive fear. With my closed eyes I imagined the plane’s outer layers ripping off from the force of the wind as we screamed down the runway. The cabin swayed to the left and right, fishtailing a bit on the wet surface of the earth and then settling into its high speed brake from the flight. For those few moments it felt as if we might explode from the force. As we slowed down and rolled up to the gate at a speed that made me feel sane again, the conversation behind me resumed. He was wrapping it up and still trying to get something. After I took off my seat belt and stood up, I looked back at them. I was right and the contrast between their ages was much more startling in its visual truth. He was even older and she even younger than I thought. When they got up her face was starting to reveal some discomfort. It was in the edges of her smile. A forcing of the muscles. Perhaps she realized her mistake. That he was not just being friendly. He wanted something and had already taken it from her.
