Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(20)

I’d gone through immigration and carried my own bags. Security was non-existent. It was my own plane after all, and everyone at the airport knew me. I told them not to hassle my two passengers, and they joked about my habit of bringing women on planes and sending them back without me. I looked forward to the jokes changing. The prospect of keeping Monica was more exciting than bedding a hundred women. I rejected the offer of a ride to the plane. My legs worked, and I didn’t want to announce myself so loudly.

Monica and Darren had gotten through immigration in record time, apparently, and they were already stepping up into the cabin. They were inside and out of sight before I reached the stairs. My pilots, Jacques and Petra, had been married seven years and still held hands as they waited for me.

“Jacques,” I said.

“Jon. We’re scheduled to wait for you. Two days,” Jacques said.

Petra chimed in. “We might have to bounce back for a doctor’s appointment.”

“Well, I think you’re going to have to come back and do a pickup anyway. I’ll text you the names for the manifest when I have them.” I looked them both over. They seemed nervous. “Something you want to tell me?”

Petra smirked.

“No,” Jacques said. “Come on. We have a schedule to keep.”

I stepped onto the plane behind the pilots.

CHAPTER 17.

MONICA

The plane was probably the nicest thing I’d ever seen. The pilots had pointed us up the little stairs embedded in the dropped-down door and into a cabin with ten cushy leather seats. Two seat banks faced each other around a gleaming lacquer table. The wood matched the liquor cabinet and the galley, which was cleaner than my kitchen had ever been.

Darren threw himself into a seat, and I sat next to him. We had work to do. We’d detected a flaw in the sound for the show. It wasn’t much, but the music was meant to be loud, and the little click in one of the forty-some tracks would seriously ruin the experience. I freed my phone and headphones to start.

I smelled Jonathan. Then I saw him standing over the table. I felt like a kid caught eating her lunch before the bell.

“I had a feeling you’d show up,” Darren said.

Jonathan slipped in across from us. “And you didn’t bring me flowers or chocolates or anything?”

I slid toward the window, watching Darren as he said, “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Or Monica to get the wrong idea,” Jonathan looked at me with that irrepressible smile. It was nice that he was smiling and nice that Darren was remembering that part of him liked the guy, but I had a mixed bag of feelings.

“This is the second time you’ve shown up where you weren’t supposed to be,” I said.

“It’s my plane.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. I am going to the opening and the viewing the night before because I love art and because I’m on the finance committee at the B.C. Modern. Now. I have work to do.” He put his laptop on the table and glanced at each of us expectantly. Despite the six other seats, that table was the only laptop-convenient surface. Bastard.

Darren followed suit, his Mac out in a flash. He glanced between Jonathan and me as if one of us would suddenly go into heat.

“I need to check the loops,” Darren said to me, all business. “There was a weird clicking. Then I’m mixing down again.” He handed me the clunky pro headphones he’d brought and looked at Jonathan. “She has a perfect ear.”

“Indeed.”

I put on headphones and watched Darren’s computer screen, listening for a flaw that might be part of the hardware or a tiny blip on track thirty-two of forty.

The plane took off. The tiny thing felt shaky, unsure, too fast. My stomach fell between my feet, but I tried to keep a straight face, even when I gripped Darren’s forearm. We had to start the loop again when the laptop slid across the table. There was no one there to tell us to put our stuff away, and it didn’t seem to be a requirement anyway. Jonathan pretended to work, but I knew he was watching me.

I glued my eyes to Darren’s screen when the plane evened out and I could swallow again. I’d heard the music for the B.C. Mod piece a hundred times, but in only a few minutes, I was listening with my whole brain for a click that may or may not have been there. I watched the wavy lines flow across the screen like heartbeats until my phone buzzed and lit up. A text. From the guy sitting across from me.

—Is it hot in here? Or are you just gorgeous?—

He was looking at me over his computer screen, lips curled in a smile.

—That’s so unpoetic. Even for you—

—Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?—

—In Los Angeles? Yuck. Is there a shower in this tin can?—

He leaned back, a smile creeping across his face. He ignored his computer in favor of the phone. The cold, electronic blue lit his face while the soft light from above warmed his brow and hair.

“Mon?” I barely heard Darren through my headphones. “Did you hear the click?”

“Uh, no. Can you run the loop again?”

—I feel your hands on the phone—

My heart skipped a beat. Or stopped. Or did the thing where I felt its presence in my chest.

—How, exactly?—

—As if they were on my body—