Deceit and Other Possibilities

by Vanessa Hua

He flushed and the mass disappeared with a violence that made him dizzy. Had he seen a flash of night sky, a glimmer from below, a light on the body of the airplane? He searched for something else to flush. Maxi pads, and also the socks he yanked off and tossed into the bowl. Grimacing as his bare feet touched the floor speckled with bodily fluids, he hit the button and the toilet clogged with the sound of a dinosaur choking on a bone.

  Exiting, he noticed the lavatory across the aisle was vacant, which seemed providential. If he caused two clogs, the flight attendant would stay busy, giving him time to figure out the control panel for the entertainment system. His socks were gone, but he could sacrifice his underwear. He dropped his jeans around his ankles, braced himself against the wall with one hand and wiggled out. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, naked from the waist down, above the sign: “As a courtesy to the next passenger we suggest you use a towel to wipe off the basin.” Courtesy? He’d screwed over his fellow passengers, putting the forward toilets out of commission two hours into a transpacific flight.

  After Prophet Alex told the blonde flight attendant about the mess in both—both!—lavatories, she rushed out of the galley. He checked if anyone was watching, unlatched the wall cabinet, and discovered a touch-screen listing two options for resetting the entertainment system: an individual seat or the entire plane. He swiped “all,” closed the cabinet, and returned to his seat. Those awake groaned as numbers and text tumbled down their seatback screens, or looked up from their tablets and e-readers at the commotion. They rubbed their eyes and checked their watches, struck by the unhappy realization they had many miles left before reaching their destination

  Kingsway had slipped off his ear-buds and was talking to the passenger by the window, a pretty Chinese girl—Heidi, she said—and judging from her ecstatic expression, she must have recognized him. Kingsway’s overhead light was on, but not Heidi’s, adding to the sensation that he was shedding his brilliance on her.

  “You fly often?” Prophet Alex asked. Neither replied, and he fought back his anger. If Kingsway gave him a chance, he’d see how much they had in common as fallen men. He glared at his tray-table, latched crookedly, that he wanted to punch until it lay flat. Everything squeezed him: the seat’s dark blue cloth patterned like a casino’s carpet, the institutional beige and grey of the plastic interior, the magazines jammed into the seatback pocket. The rising cabin temperature might have been pleasant in shorts and a t-shirt, but felt punishing now. His skin crawled, his bare feet in his sneakers and his swampy crotch. So thirsty he felt nauseous, he wanted an icy soda, but if he hit the call button, he couldn’t look at the flight attendant without confessing.

  Kingsway took off his hoodie, his shirt pulling up to expose his abs and the V-shaped cut in the muscles of his torso. He left the hoodie crumpled on the seat and waited for the lavatory, in a line that stretched halfway down the main cabin. As the purser made an announcement, warning passengers not to touch the seatback screen during the system reboot, Heidi leaned over. “What’s his name?” she asked. “I know he’s famous, but I can’t remember his name!”

  Carlson Chung, he said. The only other Hong Kong film star he knew of, whose good looks bordered on girlish—flawless skin, a prepubescent gymnast’s body, and the huge, surgically enhanced eyes of an anime character —who didn’t resemble Kingsway. Cruel, to mislead her, but he wanted Kingsway humbled when she called him the wrong name.

  “He’s filming a movie in California,” Prophet Alex said. A fake detail that would sting if she mentioned the project to Kingsway. “Somewhere by the beach.”

  “In Santa Monica? We haven’t been there since I was a kid.” Her family was wealthy enough to vacation in America. Pills snagged her cashmere sweater, the reddish-brown highlights in her hair had grown out, and her shaggy bob was overgrown and greasy. She resembled a lapdog gone missing from its designer tote, about to dash into the street. He understood at once that she—or her family—was struggling. She had a red sketchbook tucked into her seatback pocket, wedged beside her tablet computer. She might have been a student at that expensive art academy in San Francisco, the one with the bus ads and lax admissions standards, where foreign students paid a fortune for the privilege of a visa.

  “My mother loves the ocean,” she said wistfully, as if she doubted her family might go again. She toyed with her pendant, a pink crystal ribbon, the international symbol of breast cancer, a logo aiming for the brand recognition of Coke or McDonald’s.

  “How long has she been sick?” he said, softly, so she’d have to strain to hear, so she’d focus on his words and wouldn’t let doubt creep in.

  She stared at him. Even the most godless youth were hungry for miracles that might rescue them from a future that held melting ice caps, polluted air, school shootings, a sinking economy, and zombies and vampires bursting through their front doors. Hungry for the meaning and purpose that only God could provide.

  “It’s cancer, isn’t it?” He hadn’t planned on giving her a prophecy, but if God touched her, then she might speak on his behalf to Kingsway.

  Tears glistened in her lashes, lush and long, fakes applied a hair at a time. “How?” She didn’t seem to remember she wore an emblem of the disease.

  “God knows.” Jesus and his apostles performed miracles, revealed secrets, letting their audience experience the kingdom of God. Then, now, always.

  She sucked in her breath. She’d probably confided in no one, crushed under the burden of her family’s secret. “You’re an emotional person, with a lot of compassion.” A vision of herself she wanted to see. How helpless she must have felt, time zones apart, frustrated by the cryptic communications from her parents who didn’t want her to worry.

  When Prophet Alex opened himself to the Holy Spirit, a God-given certainty overcame him, delivering secrets that shocked his listeners. But not always. Sometimes—often—the transmission was garbled, incomplete, or failed to arrive, forcing him to improvise.

  His mother, Madame Chan, taught him how. In addition to repairing mobile phones, televisions, DVD players, and other electronics, she told fortunes in the back of their Oakland shop. She charted out lucky dates for marriages and read palms and faces. Thick lips signified honesty and reliability. Thin eyebrows, a cold heart. A wide and deep groove above the lips predicted a smooth life.

  As a kid, doing his homework at the shop counter, he’d watched her unraveling their secrets with the authority she lacked in her halting English. She stroked the lines in their palms with an intimacy he never saw pass between his parents, and the clients gasped, awed by this visitation from the gods. Madame Chan had a gift, they marveled, and for a time, he’d agreed. When she lit the incense, the smoke carried him into the heavens that could not be found in the shrine, draped in red vinyl and buried under plastic lotus-flowers and cheap porcelain gods with blurred faces. Many clients traded goods and services for their reading. A grateful stylist permed his mother’s hair into a helmet that could have shielded her in a motorcycle crash. Another sent over so many pork buns, to this day, he couldn’t stand them. Another dry-cleaned and pressed their clothes, though the sharp crease in his jeans ruined his gangsta style.

  If Madame Chan hit upon the truth, worry twisted her clients’ faces. If she misspoke, she corrected herself, so quickly the client forgot the error. But if she had a gift, why was her family stuck in the ghetto, working fifteen-hour days? Why didn’t she predict the thieves who ripped off their shop a dozen times? She couldn’t save her own family or anyone else, and for a short time, before his arrest, he sold weed to give their family the riches they deserved: a designer purse for his mother, a giant flat-screen for his father. In juvie, he’d found God, filled with a serenity and love, his heart a kaleidoscope brilliant with light. A first-time high he was forever chasing, that he wanted to share with as many people as he could.

  Heidi leaned over her armrest. He probed for conflict, wounds where he might offer solace. “Your father. Some men, when their wives get sick, ca
n’t deal.” Heidi frowned, and he backtracked. “Your father isn’t like that. Praise God, he’s been at her side from the beginning.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “Is she going to be okay?”

  She needed hope, in this life and in the eternal. Hope that she couldn’t find anywhere else. He nodded. Amazing, the relief that flooded over Heidi’s face, the light in her eyes and her wide smile. “God has a plan for her. For you.” Apostle Paul drew followers because he understood their motivations and desires, and adjusted his message accordingly. To the Jews, he became a Jew, to win the Jews. To the weak, he became weak. Becoming all things to all men. Manipulative, but for the highest cause of all: to save their souls.

  “You’re about to make a big decision,” he said. His mother often used this phrase—for why else would the client seek her out? Heidi dipped her head in affirmation. Most likely, she was choosing whether to leave school and stay in Hong Kong. With each prophecy, he was warming up, like a pitcher going through the windup before a game, preparing himself for visions from the Lord.

  The earthquake had seemed like the sacred message he’d been waiting for, but it turned out God hadn’t spoken to him. Heidi reminded him of the good he might do. Jolted awake, as if out of a coma, God’s grace circling them both. Most passengers were asleep now in awkward positions, as if they’d been hit by knock-out gas, and he wanted to tuck blankets under their chins and plump pillows behind their heads. Anyone could find glory in God’s mountain vistas, His might in crashing waves, but the spirit was moving in this drab airplane cabin. Pressing a hand to her shoulder, he asked her to pray. Tentatively, she clasped her hands together—“Like this?”—and closed her eyes.

  What he admitted to no one, and would have hid from God if he could, was that the prophecies diminished Creation. A world reduced to types: Good Girls, afraid of their mothers, of life yet seeking excitement. Mama’s Boys, aching for success. Wise Guys, whose defenses fell with enough flattery. But if man was created in God’s image, when people flattened and shrank in the eyes of Prophet Alex, so too did God.

  He prayed for Heidi’s mother, to transform her weakness into strength, but his thoughts returned to Kingsway. With a long line for the bathroom, by the time Kingsway returned, the entertainment system would finish rebooting and he’d plug himself back in, ignoring everyone—unless Prophet Alex swiped his finger across the seatback screen. It locked up, and he felt as Moses must have, parting the Red Sea with a sweep of his hands.

  Heidi opened her eyes. He’d trailed off in his prayers. “Let her be filled with patience and joy,” he said.

  What prophecy could he offer Kingsway? He heard nothing, not even static. Nothing, until he noticed Kingsway’s hoodie, cut from the microfiber of an astronaut’s spacesuit, left on the middle seat. He continued praying and Heidi closed her eyes. No one was coming down the aisle, but he hesitated. Going through Kingsway’s belongings broke the silent covenant everyone made with their neighbors on planes. People believed their fellow travelers would politely pass their drinks and wouldn’t stab them in the neck while they were sleeping. Yet hadn’t he already violated common decency when he clogged the toilet?

  “Restore your servant to full health.” He slid the phone from Kingsway’s hoodie and touched the screen. He needed a pass code. Lord, oh Lord. Prophet Alex sensed a string of numbers—“1234”—the most frequently used password, he knew, after working at his family’s electronics shop. When that didn’t work, he tried another combination—“1111”—Kingsway must consider himself No. 1. It worked. Heidi’s eyes squeezed shut, her hands clenched together, straining to feel Him. If she caught Prophet Alex snooping, she’d scream. His palms went slick. A few swipes and taps led to vicious texts between someone named Viann and Kingsway, each with avatars whose cuteness didn’t match the bitter exchange. She, standing on the Eiffel Tower; he, driving a red convertible.

  “Miss u,” Kingsway had written a day ago, and a few hours later, a pathetic “hey.”

  “Do me a favor. Delete this number,” Viann wrote. His girlfriend? The name sounded familiar, but dozens of women had been linked to Kingsway after the sex scandal.

  “im sorry.” If Kingsway was apologizing for the first time over text, he didn’t have a chance with this woman. Prophet Alex had never snooped like this, but if God had wanted to stop him, Heidi never would have closed her eyes. He peeked at the lavatories and didn’t see Kingsway in line. He might return any second, and Prophet Alex put the phone away. “Amen.”

  “Amen,” Heidi repeated after him. She looked refreshed, as if she’d woken up from a massage. She rubbed lotion onto her hands with the scent of vanilla, the chemical sweet of ready-made frosting.

  Prophet Alex stepped aside, Kingsway sat down, and Heidi pulled out her sketchbook. She was going to ask for his autograph, ask for the wrong name because Prophet Alex had misled her. Before he could warn her, she blurted, “Carlson, my mother’s a huge fan.”

  Without flinching, Kingsway signed his showbiz rival’s name, sparing her the embarrassment, with a kindness and grace that Prophet Alex didn’t expect. The entertainment system finished rebooting and every seatback screen began to work, except for Kingsway’s. He rang for the flight attendant.

  She pointed at the frozen screen. “You shouldn’t have touched it.” Another passenger approached, complaining about an overflowing toilet at the front of the plane. In the front? But Prophet Alex had plugged the toilets in the rear. The back of his neck prickled. If all the toilets were connected, then he’d caused an epic clog, his socks, his underwear in a logjam of shit and piss in the bowels of the plane.

  Heidi passed the sketchbook to Prophet Alex, asking if they could trade contact information. Kingsway studied him. Until then, he didn’t seem to think of Prophet Alex as much of a threat and didn’t think her much of a prize. Soon—Kingsway’s look said—he’d drape Heidi across his lap, neither the first nor the last of his conquests. Then he seemed to reconsider. Collapsing in on himself, like a rogue wave disappearing into foam, exhausted and trapped as everyone else on the flight.

  “He knows things,” Heidi said. “He knew all about my mother.”

  “Breast cancer?” Kingsway pointed at her pink ribbon pendant. “Your necklace.”

  Her eyes clouded, the light of her new faith flickering. “But he knew about my father, he knew things no one else knows. He prayed for us.”

  Kingsway touched her hand. “I wouldn’t count on this guy, or anything he promises. He knows what people want to hear. To get what he wants.”

  “He didn’t ask for anything,” Heidi said.

  Prophet Alex leveled his gaze at Kingsway. “You miss her.”

  Kingsway rubbed the back of his head and looked around the cabin. “Are you screwing with me? Are we being filmed?”

  A flight attendant burst through the first class curtain, swift and grim as a doctor responding to a code blue, and huddled with the cabin crew by the lavatories. Prophet Alex couldn’t hear what they were saying. If all the toilets were broken, the plane would have to land.

  “What’s her mom’s name?” Kingsway asked. “Did God tell you that?”

  “Viann misses you too.”

  “She does?” Kingsway had all but called him a con man, yet he still might believe because he wanted to believe. He shifted in his seat. After his phone slid out of his hoodie and clunked on the floor, he seemed to realize what Prophet Alex had done. “You went through my messages.”

  Heidi shook her head. “I was here. He didn’t.”

  “You want ten thousand followers of Christ praying for your mother? For you?” Prophet Alex asked. “A million? Come to Awaken this weekend. God will be moving there.”

  “I’ll come,” Heidi said. If not for her seatbelt, she might levitate through the roof and into the heavens. “My parents too.”

  “How many?” Kingsway asked.

  “Some nights, enough to fill the coliseum,” Prophet Alex said. The city’s biggest venue. A mira
cle of numbers, of loaves and fishes multiplied, and the tactic he should have taken with Kingsway from the beginning.

  “Who goes?” Kingsway asked.

  “High school and college students hungry for the word of God. Hungry to know they’re not alone, hungry for God’s forgiveness. For God’s love.”

  Kingsway’s face filled with longing and desperation, like that of a child reaching for the forbidden on an impossibly high shelf.

  A cattle yard smell drifted from the lavatories. The fasten-seat belt sign went on, and passengers groggily awoke and smacked their lips, dry-mouthed. Prophet Alex suspected the captain would soon announce a change in plans due to the backed-up toilets. He reached for Heidi’s hand, over Kingsway’s lap. He wanted to form a prayer circle, but Kingsway folded his arms across his chest.

  “You may feel strange, up in the air,” Prophet Alex said. “But you’ll know it, feel it, when you’re standing on solid ground.”

  “Folks, our apologies,” the captain said. “We’ll be making an unscheduled landing in Anchorage.”

  Landing. Just as Prophet Alex had predicted. Heidi gasped. The engine noise softened and it felt like the plane was suspended mid-air, seconds from plummeting.

  “The toilets are inoperable, and we have to clear them. Please stay seated for the remainder of the flight.” A few passengers laughed, others muttered in disgust or crossed their legs, regretting the second soda or cup of coffee, jittery and off-kilter from interrupted sleep.

  The plane hit turbulence—the straining that accompanied descent, or shaking from the hand of God? A baby wailed, a sound that pierced between the eyes, and the overhead bins rattled so loudly it sounded as if the doors might burst open. Kingsway’s breath turned shallow and panicked. His odor gamey and mildewed as a wrestling mat.

  If he calmed Kingsway, the star might begin to trust him. But if the panic attack first spiraled, turned into the worst Kingsway had ever suffered, he’d be grateful when Prophet Alex talked him out of it.