Home: Part 10

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

July 1974

 
I awoke. For a moment I did not remember that I was inside the airplane. My forehead was wet with perspiration, and I caught vestiges of a dream in which I was lost in Subic City, trying to find my way back to the hotel before curfew as the traffic closed in around me. I settled in my seat. Through the window I could see little more than darkness and the lights on the wing. 

I thought about Narcie. I had told her that I would return soon, and that I would find her somehow. I suddenly was not convinced that I'd been lying to her. She had heard lies from many men before, so she probably knew better than I did about what about me was true. 

Unbuckling my seat-belt, I slid out of my row of seats and stood. Nearly everyone on the plane seemed to be sleeping. Inside the lavatory I wiped my forehead and face with a damp paper towel and stood with my eyes closed for a moment as my legs adjusted to the plane's motion. When I got back to my seat, I closed my eyes and tried unsuccessfully to relax into sleep. When I had changed planes in Honolulu, I had sat at the bar for nearly two hours after getting through Customs. From the table I had found a seat near a window, I could see planes landing and lifting off, and for a brief moment considered not boarding my flight to San Francisco but instead staying in Hawaii for a while. I have always been somewhat prone to loneliness, even among friends and family, and the fatigue of travel often exacerbated the feeling. There were, really, few reasons to head home, and the sequence of martinis I was enjoying at the bar made things that much worse.

Now, somewhere over the Pacific between Hawaii and California, I leaned my head against the plane's bulkhead and stared out the window. Someone a few rows ahead of me snored softly. A stewardess stopped in the aisle. "Do you need anything, Sir?" she asked. 

I liked her well-trained smile. "Perhaps some water, please," I said.

"I'll be right back." She headed toward the rear of the plane. When she returned, she handed me a cup of cool water.

"Thank-you," I said.

"My pleasure." Then she was gone, walking away from me.