Before the Fall(94)
“We were supposed to have Gaston on the other stick,” said James. “You know Peter?”
“Yes, he’s lovely.”
“Too bad.”
She smiled, showing teeth, and it was enough. To make a beautiful woman smile, to feel the warmth of her attention. He went into the cockpit and ran through the systems again, checking maintenance’s work.
“Ten minutes,” he called out.
As he rechecked the systems he felt the plane shift. That will be my copilot coming back, he thought. According to the roster, his wingman today was Peter Gaston, an idiosyncratic Belgian who liked to talk philosophy on long flights. James always enjoyed their conversations, especially when they delved into areas between science and ideology. He waited for him to enter the cockpit. But instead of coming forward, James heard whispering from the main cabin, and then something that sounded like a slap. He stood at the sound, frowning, and was almost to the cockpit door when a different man came in holding his left cheek.
“Sorry,” he said, “I got held up in the office.”
Melody recognized him—a glassy-eyed kid perhaps in his twenties, his tie askew—Charlie something. He’d flown with him once before and though technically the kid performed well, James frowned.
“What happened to Gaston?” he said.
“You got me,” said Charlie. “Stomach thing, I think. All I know is I got a call.”
James was annoyed, but he wasn’t about to show it, so he shrugged. It was the front office’s problem.
“Well, you’re late. I called maintenance about some stickiness in the yoke.”
The kid shrugged, rubbed his cheek.
James could see Emma behind him. She’d retreated into the main cabin and was smoothing the linens on the headrests.
“Everything okay out here?” James asked, more to her than the kid.
She smiled at him in a far-off way, keeping her eyes down. He looked at Charlie.
“All good, Captain,” said Charlie. “Just singing a song I shouldn’t have been singing.”
“Well, I don’t know what that means, but I don’t tolerate funny business on my bird. Do I need to call the front office, get another man?”
“No, sir. No funny business. Just here to get the job done. Nothing else.”
James studied him. The kid held his eyes. A rogue of sorts, he decided. Not dangerous, just used to getting his way. He was handsome in a crooked sort of fashion, with a Texas twang. Loose. That’s how James would describe him. Not a planner. More of a go with the flow sort. And James was okay with that, in principle. He could be flexible when it came to staff. As long as they did what they were told. The kid needed discipline was all, and James would give it to him.
“Okay then, take your seat and get on with control. I want to be wheels-up in five. We’ve got a schedule to keep.”
“Yessir,” said Charlie with an unreadable grin, and got to work.
And then the first passengers came aboard, the client and his family—plane shifting as they climbed the gangway—and James made himself available for conversation. He always liked to meet the souls he flew, to shake hands and put faces to names. It made the work more meaningful, especially when there were children. He was captain of this ship, after all, responsible for all lives. It didn’t feel like servitude. It felt like a privilege. Only in the modern world did people believe that they should be the ones receiving. But James was a giver. He didn’t know what to do when people tried to pamper him. If he caught a seat on a commercial flight, he always found himself getting up to help the flight attendants stow baggage or grabbing blankets for pregnant passengers. Someone had once said to him, It’s hard to be sad when you’re being useful. And he liked that idea. That service to others brought happiness. It was self-involvement that led to depression, to spiraling questions about the meaning of things. This had always been his mother’s problem. She thought too much of herself, and not enough of others.
James had built himself to be the opposite. Often he considered what his mother would do in any situation—what the wrong decision was—and it clarified for him what he should do instead. In this way he used her as the North Star on a journey where you always want to go south. It was helpful, aligning himself in this way. It gave him something to tune to, like a violin to a piano.
They were in the air five minutes later, taking off to the west and banking back toward the coast. The yoke still felt a little sticky when he moved it starboard, but he put it down to an idiosyncrasy of the plane.
Chapter 36
The Blacks
The first night, Scott sleeps on a pullout sofa in the sewing room. He hadn’t planned on staying, but in the aftermath of the day’s news he felt Eleanor might need the support, especially since her husband seemed to have disappeared.
He turns off his phone when he’s working, said Eleanor, though the way she said it seemed to indicate that the word working really meant drinking.
Now, on the verge of a dream, Scott hears Doug come home around one, the sound of tires on the driveway waking him with a jolt of adrenaline. There is that animal surge of primitive nerves, eyes opening in an unfamiliar room, unsure for a long moment of where he is. A sewing table sits under the window, the machine a strange, looming predator in the shadows. Downstairs, the front door closes. Scott hears feet on the stairs. He listens as they approach, then stop outside his door. Silence again, like a breath held. Scott lies coiled, tense, an unwanted guest in another man’s house. Outside he becomes aware of Doug breathing, a bearded man in overalls, drunk on artisanal bourbon and microbrews. Outside the window the cicadas are cutting a bloody racket in the yard. Scott thinks of the ocean, filled with invisible predators. You hold your breath and dive into the closing darkness, like sliding down a giant’s throat, no longer even human in your mind. Prey.