Before the Fall(98)

Scott looks at him, thinking.

“I don’t know. The plane pitched. I hit my head. It’s—they’re not memories really.”

O’Brien studies him.

“There are six bullet holes in the cockpit door.”

“What?” says Eleanor, her face draining of blood.

The words push Scott back in his chair. Bullet holes? What are they saying?

“Did you ever see a gun?” O’Brien asks Scott.

“No.”

“Do you remember the Batemans’ body man? Gil Baruch?”

“The big guy by the door. He didn’t—I don’t—”

Scott loses his words, mind racing.

“You never saw him pull a gun?” O’Brien asks.

Scott racks his brain. Somebody shot up the cockpit door. He tries to make sense of that. The plane pitched. People screamed and somebody shot up the door. The plane was going down. The captain was outside the cockpit. Somebody shot up the door trying to get in.

Or was the gun pulled first and the pilot—no, the copilot—put the plane into a dive to—what? Throw him off balance? Either way, they’re saying this wasn’t mechanical error, or human error. It was something worse.

There is a visceral twist of nausea in Scott’s guts, as if it’s only hitting him now how close he came to death. And then a wave of light-headedness as the next thought strikes him. If this wasn’t an accident, then it means someone tried to kill him. That instead of an act of fate, he and the boy were victims of an attack.

“I got on the plane,” he says, “and took a seat. She brought me some wine. Emma. I don’t—I said, No, thank you, asked for some water. Sarah—the banker’s wife—was talking in my ear about taking her daughter to the Whitney Biennial. The game was on TV. Baseball. And the men—David and the banker—they were watching, cheering. My bag was in my lap. She wanted to take it—the flight attendant—but I held on to it, and as we taxied I started—I started going through it. I don’t know why. Something to do. Nerves.”

“What made you nervous?” asks O’Brien.

Scott thinks about it.

“It was a big trip for me. And the plane—having to run for the plane—I was discombobulated—a little. It all seems meaningless now, how much it mattered. Meetings with art reps, gallery visits. I had all the slides in my bag, and—after the run—I wanted to make sure I still had them. For no reason.”

He looks at his hands.

“I was in the window seat, looking out at the wing. Everything was foggy, and then suddenly the fog cleared. Or we rose above it, I guess is what happened. And it was just night. And I looked over at Maggie, and she smiled. Rachel was in the seat behind her, listening to music, and the boy was asleep with a blanket over him. And I don’t know why, but I thought she might like a drawing, Maggie, so I took out my pad and started sketching the girl. Nine years old, headphones on, looking out the window.”

He remembers the look on the girl’s face, a child lost in thought, but something in her eyes—a sadness—hinting at the woman she would one day become, and how she had come to the barn that day with her mother to look at Scott’s work, a growing girl all legs and hair.

“We hit a couple of bumps going up,” he says. “Enough to shake the glasses, but it was pretty smooth, otherwise, and nobody seemed worried. The security man sat in the front with the flight attendant for takeoff on the—what do you—jump seat, but he was up as soon as the seat belt sign was off.”

“Doing?”

“Nothing, standing.”

“No drama?”

“No drama.”

“And you were drawing.”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

Scott shakes his head. He remembers chasing his pencil across the floor, but not what happened before. The lie of an airplane is that the floor is always level, the straight angles of the plane tricking your mind into thinking you’re sitting or standing at a ninety-degree angle to the world, even when the plane is on its side. But then you look out the window, and find yourself staring at the ground.

The plane banked. The pencil fell. He unbuckled his seat belt to chase it, and it rolled across the floor, like a ball going downhill. And then he was sliding, and his head hit something.

Scott looks at Gus.

“I don’t know.”

Gus looks at O’Brien.

“I have a question,” Gus says. “Not about the crash. About your work.”

“Okay.”

“Who’s the woman?”

Scott looks at him.

“The woman?”

“In all the paintings—I noticed—there’s always a woman, and it’s always—from what I can see—the same woman. Who is she?”

Scott exhales. He looks at Eleanor. She is watching him. What must she think? Days ago her life was a straight line. Now all she has are burdens.

“I had a sister,” says Scott. “She drowned when I was—she was sixteen. Night swimming in Lake Michigan with some—kids. Just—dumb kids.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

Scott wishes there was something profound he could say about it, but there isn’t.

*