Memories of Hazey Jane – Part 2
Posted on November 14, 2008
Did I mention I hate flying? At least when you’re with me, there’s much less thinking to be done. There’s just something about walking into Boeing’s biggest, fastest aluminum sausage that begs the question of the inevitable. Probably because other than suicide bombing, transcontinental travel is an act of faith – an offering of six uninterrupted hours, in return for a smile and the promise of an unimpeded journey. Even if Superman showed up to cite statistics in airline safety, that didn’t mean shit to the people whose plane had just fallen out of the sky.
It seems to me that the basis of that confidence is in the military precision of that cabin – from the lifeless air to the carefully measured angles of the salutary nods. Despite the uneasy look from one of the stewardesses, I hovered over my bin to make sure nobody crushed Neil’s expensive fixed-aperture lenses. One of his divas smashed a Mamiya against the wall last week, and he vowed to take the next one out of our paychecks, slim as they were.
Outside the window, glowing halogen and sodium lamps punctuated the dark. As a procession of veteran trucks approached the belly of the beast, the engines began their expectant hum. And that’s when I saw her.
At this point, the only remarkable thing about her was the fact that her luggage was shacking up with mine. Just like you, she had the strange need to fit an entire wardrobe in the confines of a carry-on. But of course, you both are only outdone in this capacity by freelance photographers; I used my talents, shoving tilting her bag in a practiced manner which finally gave the lid some room to close.
Our eyes met in a brief moment of gratitude. She was about a head shorter than me, with careful eyes the color of the Hudson, and dirty brown hair in a ponytail of convenience. After that, I went back to my book. A missed opportunity, some might say, but as I caught a whiff of her strawberry perfume, I saw I really didn’t have a choice. To acknowledge her further would be to admit wanting under that lovely pink blouse. And that would just be rude.
A few rows behind me, a blue-eyed toddler gave a wail to raise Lazurus. It wasn’t cute the first five minutes, and only got worse from there. But maybe he was the first one to pick up on it – they were all pretty antsy before he decided to give the feeling a voice. Had I bothered to check my watch, I would have understood – it was a quarter to seven, and we hadn’t moved since I surrendered my freedom to a tattered nylon strap. Of course, you know what I did then. I’ve always told you that’s best to just grin and take it as its served, so I shoved the novel in the seat back pocket, threw my head back, and decided to sneak in another nap.
Or at least I tried. The kid had a really good pair of lungs, and I couldn’t figure out how much to tell you about the weekend. But everything I’ve told you here is the truth, or at least the first way I remember that evening. And you know you can usually trust me.
But getting back to the plane, it was a feverish sort of nap; the one where you wake up even more tired, with a terrible headache, and wondering why you bothered in the first place. I’ve never really gotten used to being in one place for so long – my muscles ached, and my joints were out to get me. And we were having “mechanical difficulties”, though I’ve never heard a healthier pair of engines.
The pretty girl reached across and pulled up our shade. Then she leaned towards the window, and her eyes darted back and forth between the trucks and the sweaty workers tossing bags into the aircraft belly. I tried to ignore the way she braced herself on my leg and brushed my nose with several strands of sweat-kissed ale-colored hair, but I did a very poor job of it.
“The conveyer belt!” she suddenly burst out, laughing.
“What?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! They don’t have a conveyer belt, so they’re loading the plane by hand. We’ve been taken back to the Stone Age.”
I thought about it. “A bag or so for every guy, maybe two for the girls-“
“We’ll be here forever. I suspected as much.” She drew herself up, and stretched thin, faintly toned arms, but she smiled in my direction. “I just might miss my surprise party.”
I barely restrained my smile. “Is it your birthday?”
“Not for another couple of weeks. My girlfriend invited me to her place for ‘pizza and a movie’, when I haven’t seen her for nearly a year. I can put two and two together.”
I nodded, and kept on reading. The captain thanked us for our patience, and said we would be airborne in a couple of hours. I would probably get home by 3. You usually get up at around 6, and I’m a light sleeper. Three restful hours. Isabel would be at the studio by 10, and we had a good thing going. I sometimes called her my inspiration. She said I had vision, and that’s not something you mess with lightly. Three hours to look alive for her in the studio. So it’s easy to see how small talk wasn’t among my priorities.
The poor kid – a boy, I could tell, just kept it up. My seatmate wondered if he was sick. Me and everyone else wondered when he’d shut up. There was no other place to look but heavenward, and an hour later, I was not disappointed. Salvation took the form of the seat-belt sign, coming into brilliance as the engines came to life. The captain confirmed we were third in line on the runway.
The girl got really quiet. It wasn’t like her at all. “Val. I’m really going to see her again.”
I didn’t ask for details. I was more concerned with the things I always felt as we shot down the blacktop, and they weren’t nice at all. My teeth felt as if someone was shorting a battery across them. The silent, steady rhythm of my chest surged into a prickly thumping that made it harder to breathe; Like all the worst bits of making love, without the exciting ending.
And that’s when things really got interesting. I stared out the window as the ground steadily fell away. Then the aircraft lurched, and Newton’s law smashed my head into the upright tray. Somewhere in first class I heard glass shatter, and a woman near the back screamed. The girl gasped. Before I could even wipe the trickle of blood off my forehead, the plane listed in the other direction, and back, and back again, in an almost epileptic fit.
It was pretty bad. So bad, in fact, that it suddenly occurred to me that I might never hear your voice again. Don’t ask me how I got it, but it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. There are worse ways of using your last moments other than finally listening to that voicemail.
I reached, but I never got to my BlackBerry. Instead, as I braced my left hand on the armrest to pull the device from my belt, I felt it suddenly seized in a passionate, ice-cold grip. I turned around to find the girl with her eyes shut, biting her trembling lower lip, and holding on to me as if nothing short of an amputation would make her let go. I wasn’t expecting that. But what really took me by surprise is that I didn’t feel like letting go either. It’s pretty much just as you said – good manners keep us apart, but spots like these, nobody much gives a damn.
She fell on my shoulder as the pilot jarred the plane back into position. The captain came back on, the swagger in his voice a distant memory. He said we got caught in the wake of another plane, and assured us that we’d gotten past the worst part of it. Some of us didn’t want to believe him. Shaken, but stirred to the comforts of duty, the flight attendants scurried down the aisles, looking to see if anyone had wounded more than his confidence. One of them, a wrinkled, motherly-looking blonde, came to our row, fumbling with the first-aid kit. My new friend impatiently pointed at me.
I tried to tell them I was fine. But I must have said something else instead, because the girl rolled her eyes, and the flight attendant looked like I had just given her the finger. Finally, the girl took a bandage, wet a cotton ball from a bottle of iodine, and waved her off. The kid started acting up again. A pair of hens a few rows back were talking about the class-action suit they’d fire off as soon as they hit the ground. A few women here and there snuffled, and I could hear the sound of people trying to breathe through their teeth. Other than that, and the obsequies of the crew, it was unnaturally silent.
“What happened back there…I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.” The girl said, dabbing my forehead, and unwrapping the bandage. “I wish I’d kept my head like you.”
At first I didn’t understand, and I told her this. She was talking about grabbing my hand. She blushed a little. So did I. And then I saw your face and felt a bit guilty.
“It’s nothing.” I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if we were going to die, but…yeah…that was pretty bad.”
“You know what the worst part of it was?” She whispered.
I didn’t.
“I’m in the middle of staring over. I’ve really fucked up some things in my time, but I’ve really been trying to do better. And here I was, on this plane, taking the first step, when…” She pushed back her hair, grinning in a way that oddly reminded me of the Redhead Girl. I looked around. I had assumed she would be on this flight, but she was nowhere to be found.
“If we had gone down back there, it would be pretty ironic.” She continued. “I guess some part of me thinks all the yesterdays will catch up with me sooner or later.”
She shook her head; several strands of her hair clung to her temples and underneath the frames of her glasses. You know how much I like strawberries. That, mixed with the light scent of her perspiration – I am only telling you this in the hope that you’ll understand one day. At least I tried not to dwell on it.
“There’s tomorrow, at least.” I offered. “You can find new ways to do better than your worst.”
“Pretty optimistic.” The seat-belt sign went off, and with the adrenaline wearing off, I could feel the long day tugging at me again. I tossed my head back, and closed my eyes.
“Right.” She did the same, putting on a pair of those ubiquitous white earphones. “Like I said, really sorry for bothering you.”
It wasn’t the best rest I’ve ever had. Sometimes it felt like I was sleeping right in the turbines, but remember it had been a really long day. I dropped off after a while, and that was it for the rest of the flight.
By some unspoken agreement, we stuck together for a while, at least all the way down to baggage claim. It’s good to have someone to share these things with. I even helped her pull two more bags – large suitcases probably a quarter of her body weight.
And there we stood – no longer strangers, but not sure if we’d call each other friends. It was almost funny, how we ran from the same playbook. Glancing around expectantly, pretending to take stock of our surroundings, as if waiting for something to happen. You might remember.
“My girlfriend called.” She finally said. “She’s 15 minutes out from the city – you need a ride?”
I shook my head, and told her I lived in Queens.
“No worries – it’s all on the way back, right?” The girl held out her hand, and it felt a lot warmer this time. I didn’t let it go as quickly as I should have. “I might have told you this earlier, but I’m Jane, by the way.”
I nodded, and said it was very nice to meet her.
“We might be doing something a bit later. If you’re feeling up to it, you-“
It was one of those occasions where the smart thing and the right thing just happened to be the same thing. I raised my hand, and pre-empted the coming dilemma. I told her I was married. For a moment, I thought she’d look disappointed, but she nodded almost as if she’d been expecting such an answer. She was kind enough to wish me a good evening, though. Dragging her bags behind her like a prisoner’s manacle, I saw her disappear into Ground Transportation.
Everyone in this city has a story. You can’t be a good photographer without being at least a little bit curious about it. And in that moment, right and wrong aside, I’ll admit to being a lousy photographer.
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