by Camilla Monk
Before I’m even through examining the colorful soccer patches on his leather jacket, Andrea drags himself to the cockpit too. The Viking welcomes him with a pat on the head and flings his hand at the free seat. “Make yourself at home.”
His accent is much stronger than that of his teammates—must be South African too. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize that he’s talking to me, not the dog, who’s settled behind his master’s seat and is now struggling to lick his own butthole.
I plop myself in the copilot seat, taking in the endless sea of clouds beneath us. “So you’re a pilot?” I ask the Facebook friend I don’t recognize and who doesn’t give any sign that he remembers me either.
“Not really.” He grunts.
I fasten my seat belt nervously. “You just took the plane?”
“Yeah.”
“Dries says you stole it.”
His lips tighten under that thick beard. “It’s Russia. You can’t steal anything here. They’re communists; they share everything.”
In that moment, I curse the devastation in my brain: I have this intuition that his story doesn’t add up, but I can’t provide any precise fact to back my point. I’m absolutely certain that Russia isn’t communist, I know that Vladimir Putin is the president, and this guy named Dmitry Medvedev acts as his right nut, but there’s a stupid hole in my memory, and I’d be incapable of explaining how I know that or precisely when communism ended in Russia. Here’s something else I’ll need to read about ASAP. Shaking my head in frustration, I resort to what I deem a shitty comeback. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to share the plane with you.”
A hoarse chuckle shakes Dikkenek’s frame. “I made them change their mind.”
His right hand moves to the throttle lever as he says this, and I register a whirring sound. Looking down, I discover that his hand is . . . fake, a sleek prosthetic whose fingers move with ease to flip a couple of switches on the dashboard.
When he notices the direction of my gaze, he shrugs. “Carbon fiber. All the way up to my shoulder.”
“What happened?”
He looks away from the controls to study me. I make a note that he has clear eyes—gray, or maybe blue—and that he’d better watch where we’re going. He eventually asks, “You ever been in a bare-hand fight with a capybara?”
My face bunches in confusion. “Um . . . obviously I wouldn’t remember, but I don’t think so.”
He leans back in his seat and shakes his head. “Some things you’d best forget anyway.”
I cringe. “That’s what happened? A capybara ripped your arm off? I thought they were, like, big rabbits. Super cute and debonair.”
“Nah. The arm, that’s a different story—nothing I care to remember. But capybaras, they’re vicious, you know. The males, they’re territorial. You turn your back on them, and raaaaww!” He growls, mimicking some sort of alien attack with his hands. “It’s over.”
My mouth falls open. “Over? Like they eat you? But they’re herbivores, right?”
“Herbivores, huh? Try hiking around with a ham sandwich in your backpack, and you’ll see their true colors.”
“Okay. You got attacked by an angry male capybara over a ham sandwich. Color me intrigued.”
Again he lets go of the yoke and crosses his arms over his chest, his expression somber. “It was in Peru . . .”
“Shouldn’t you be holding that?” I ask, pointing at the empty yoke now bobbling slowly in front of him.
He waves a dismissive hand. “It’s a Beriev; it flies itself. So he sees me. He’s twenty yards away, and his nose quivers. He’s picked up on the sandwich’s smell.” He points at his eyes, forming a V with his index and middle finger. “Wrinkles his nose, clicks his teeth to challenge me. That’s how I know it’s on. When they attack you, you need to get them into a headlock before they can bite.”
“So it charged at you or something?”
Dikkenek grazes the yoke with his palm, possibly preventing a future crash. “No. I was faster.”
My hand flies to clasp over my mouth in consternation.
“Preemptive strike,” he concludes soberly.
He goes on with the details of his fight, and I lose track of time, listening to his crazy tales. I decide I like Dikkenek—or rather Jan—who’s actually from Brussels, launches preemptive strikes on capybaras and alligators alike, enters his dog in polenta-eating contests in Venice—where he lives—and claims to possess an autograph of a guy named Augusto Pinochet, who was apparently a huge deal in Chile in the eighties.
When he’s finished telling me about his adventures in a Saudi prison, Jan goes silent for a while, his gaze lost in the night sky. Behind his seat, Andrea has fallen asleep.
“It’s pretty bad, right?” he says.
I’m afraid I know what he means. I slump in my seat. “March says we were Facebook friends . . . before.”
He grunts in confirmation and fishes a smartphone from his inner pocket. He swipes across the screen with his thumb and hands it to me. “I like those videos you sent me. I’m following the page now.”
I look down at the screen and nearly drop the phone. In a nondescript living room, an orange tabby wearing a duck costume is riding a Roomba. Stiles’s tabby. I swallow with difficulty. “I-I gave you that link?”
He nods. “In Venice . . . before all that shit went down at the Poseidon.”
I return the phone to Jan and bury my face in my hands, gasping for breath. I knew Stiles, before Anies took me. Was it just a coincidence, because so many people shared his videos? No. I know it’s more than that; I feel it in my bones. Jan has apparently no idea who Stiles is, but did the others tell me the entire truth? I have this intuition that Dries will dodge if I bring it up—I can’t say I trust this newly found father of mine much . . . That leaves me with the option to ask March. It’s not like he and I aren’t gonna need to talk at some point, but the very idea makes me feel like I’m holding on to a lone branch dangling above a miles-deep pit.
Jan flashes me a worried look. “You okay?”
“Yeah . . . I just . . . maybe we can talk again later,” I mumble before scrambling out of the cockpit.
In the cabin, four strangers await. Not really, but they all changed into civilian clothes, and it feels odd to see Isiporho and Dries in those impeccably cut three-piece suits. The latter is busy lecturing Dominik about his sneakers, cargo pants, and leather jacket—the sneakers appear especially problematic, since Dries keeps waving his forefinger at them and bitching in a low hiss. “Ons is nie gangsters nie . . . ” We’re not gangsters . . .
There’s a lot that could be said about that particular statement, but Dominik appears suitably penitent while, at the back of the plane, March got away with wearing a black turtleneck and dark jeans—that being said, he does wear an old-fashioned plaid blazer, and his clothes look like he spent hours ironing them. Jesus, I don’t think I’ve ever seen shoes shine so bright. I’m trying to figure what he’s doing, hunched over his tray table and scrubbing something with intense concentration. Cleaning a gun.
I’m reminded of the way he cleaned the floor back at the cabin, and again he strikes me as this incredibly meticulous guy, what with his tiny brushes and spray bottles, or how he wipes the same spot of the barrel over and over, oblivious to the world around him. Over and over . . . and over. I frown, wondering if that’s how he got his shoes so shiny.
Suddenly, he looks up from his handiwork with a start, and his gaze immediately settles on me, anxious, watchful. He quickly reassembles the gun and tucks it back in his holster. The cleaning tools and products are put away in a black suitcase just as fast and he walks up to me. “Is everything all right?” he asks.
“Yeah . . . there’s something I need to show you but maybe later.”
His brow wrinkles in suspicion. “It will be another fifteen minutes until we land; perhaps you can show me now.”
My eyes dart over to Dries, who gave up on Dominik and is now observing our interac
tion with undisguised interest. I’d rather have this conversation privately however, especially because I have no idea where it’ll lead us . . . I shake my head. “No. It can wait. It’s not like we can do anything about it in a plane.”
March nods, his gaze lingering on my wrinkled sweatshirt and camo pants. “We’ll find you clean clothes as soon as we arrive.”
“You don’t have to . . .” I say, almost like a reflex. It’s not that I don’t need to change—although wearing dirty clothes for another day won’t kill me. The thing is, with March, there’s strings attached. I’m pretty sure that money isn’t an issue, and I could ask for whatever I need, but anything he gives me will only make me more dependent, more vulnerable around him. Until I’ve mustered the courage to clarify our situation, I don’t want to give in to the temptation of letting him pamper me. It’d be . . . wrong.
Except he’s not the type to give up easily. All but ignoring my answer, he pulls out his phone and starts typing something on the screen, his fingers flying fast on the glass. “Don’t worry about anything. Just give me a list of what you need: I’ll have Phyllis arrange a delivery at the casino.”
The casino? Is that where we’re going? Also . . . “Who’s Phyllis?”
His eyebrows jump before he composes himself, but in his eyes, the sadness returns, ever close to the surface. “She’s my assistant. She was very happy to learn that we found you, and”—he inches closer, and there’s a twitch in his shoulder, but the intent doesn’t reach his hand; he doesn’t touch me. He lowers his voice—“I’m happy too. I’m . . . so happy.”
I look down and tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “Even if . . . it’s not . . . things are not like they used to be?”
If I only knew what “things” used to be between us. Was it casual? No, he wouldn’t have done all that crazy stuff to save a friend with benefits, would he? God, I didn’t want to have that conversation in the plane, not like this, with Dries and Isiporho watching, with nowhere to hide, no time to process any of this.
He does that thing again, where he looks at me in the eyes, and I can’t think, drowning in all that blue. “Nothing has changed for me, Island. But I know . . . I understand it’s too early for you.” His features are taut with barely concealed pain as he adds, “For you, everything probably feels . . . complicated.”
No. Complicated doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel at the moment. There’s someone else inside me, a girl listening to March, straining toward him, whose agony I feel yet can’t connect to. There’s someone else’s pain tearing me up from the inside, and I want it to stop. My vision gets a little blurry; I sniff back, and I raise my palms in a feeble attempt to put some distance between us.
March tries to pull me back to him. His voice is so soft . . . and it hurts so bad. “Island, please—”
I shake my head. “Don’t . . .”
When I try to back away, I end up bumping into Dries’s chest. “Calm down, little Island.”
I wiggle my way around him. I know he could catch me, but he doesn’t; he watches me run to the one place I seem to always end up these days.
I need to go to the bathroom.
SIXTEEN
A E I O U
Dries came knocking at the door because he wanted me back in my seat for landing. So I exited the tiny lavatory and its stench of old urine with all the dignity of a girl who runs to the bathroom every time her boyfriend tries to talk to her.
March isn’t the only man who wants something from me in this plane, by the way. For some unfathomable reason, Andrea has taken a keen interest in me. He waited in front of the door for me to come out, followed me on the way back to my seat, and sprawled himself in the aisle right next to me.
I grip the armrests, and my stomach heaves as we descend toward Constanta, aware of March’s gaze on me like a continuous breeze tickling my nape. He never gave up on me—still won’t—but does he realize he’s trying to rekindle a flame I remember nothing of? Even those dreams I had . . . intense, vivid as they might have been, now they’re just dry leaves on the ground. That doesn’t make a tree and certainly not a relationship either. What if I never remember, or I do, but I’ve changed? Isn’t love supposed to be something you can’t forget? If I loved him, wouldn’t I be sure instead of being terrified and feeling like he’s invading a part of me I have no control over?
The wheels touch the ground at last, and the Beriev bounces down a runway in the dark. Bathed in the glow of a row of lampposts, a few planes await—Turkish Airlines and some Romanian company that doesn’t ring any bells. Constanta—or rather MKA, as Jan calls it—seems like a small airport, with very little life on the tarmac save for a snowplow slowly clearing sludge from the apron under the eye of two employees leaning against the side of a luggage truck, cigarettes in hand.
After Jan is finished parking the plane in an isolated spot, we climb down that same rickety ladder and find ourselves on the frozen, silent tarmac, waiting while he goes to talk to the guys smoking near the luggage truck. I can’t see very well what they’re doing from where I stand, but I’m almost certain cash just changed hands. One of the men, wearing a bright-yellow vest, waves for the rest of us to follow.
Dries considers him with narrowed eyes, his hand inconspicuously reaching inside his coat . . . Next to me, March’s hand rises to hover between my shoulder blades. I shiver at the brush of his gloved fingers against my parka but resist the urge to squirm away. “Island, please wait. They’ll go first,” he says quietly, tilting his head at Dries and Dominik, who are now treading toward Jan and his contact.
“Why? Is something wrong?” I whisper.
Isiporho looks around the tarmac, lifting his long coat’s collar. “It’s a little too quiet out here.”
“It’s 9:30,” I counter. “Maybe there’re no night flights.”
“Maybe,” March admits with a somber gaze. “But a little caution can’t hurt, especially here . . .”
“Here? What’s special about this place?”
Isiporho chuckles. “You’re standing in the middle of a US air base.”
“What?” I whirl around and scan the planes frantically, only to be stopped by March’s arms around my shoulders.
“Don’t worry . . . technically we’re not inside the base. MKA houses a military base operated by the US and Romanian air forces. It’s a logistics hub, a gate to the Middle East,” he explains.
“The MiGs are over there,” Isiporho adds, grinning at a cluster of barely discernible buildings toward the end of the runway.
Meanwhile, Jan, Dries, and the guy with the yellow vest are through with their palavers. Having ascertained that no tank awaits in the dark to run us over, Dries flicks his wrist in a discreet invitation.
Jan returns to the Beriev to guard it with Andrea while the rest of us follow our new guide inside an aged concrete building. In the deserted hall too, there’s this strange silence, nothing but the clatter of our footsteps on the marble floor. Empty customs desks, only a few fluorescent lamps buzzing softly above our heads. March is tense. He might look his usual impassible self, but he hasn’t said a word since we left the tarmac. I find I’m oddly attuned to him, to the slightest tic in his jaw, the way he moves. I can tell he doesn’t like this bizarre atmosphere, and his unease gets to me too.
He stops, and I bump into his back, picking up the scent of mothballs. “Sorry,” I say, rubbing my nose.
In front of me, March has pulled out his phone. He unlocks it with a quick iris scan, and I glimpse a bald, glaring ostrich in guise of a wallpaper. There’s something familiar about it, but I can’t place it—maybe something I saw on Animal Planet? Our little group watches him check data on the screen with raised eyebrows. When he’s finished, he slips the phone back in his pocket and casually pulls out a silenced gun, aiming at the airport employee who led us here. Blood rushes to my temples, and my legs feel paralyzed as Dries, Dominik, and Isiporho react to the signal and draw out their own weapons like one man.
“
That plane outside is a Dreamliner,” March calls, his voice loud and clear in the silent lobby, as if he weren’t talking to any of us but to some invisible assembly. “Turkish Airlines doesn’t operate any of those, but I believe you own one. Please show yourself.”
A trap? My gaze cuts to the Romanian airport employee who led us here. He’s looking left and right, his cheeks deadly pale. He knows something . . . Dominik grabs the Romanian traitor by the collar, and at this point, he and I now have at least one thing in common: we’re going to need new pants soon if the tension amps up any higher.
I wait, perfectly still, aware of my own breathing while bright-red dots appear on our chests, our heads, one after another, dancing like fireflies. Dries mutters a curse when a new set of footsteps echoes at the other end of the hall. A figure emerges from the shadows—an old man, wearing a black coat over a dark suit. He must be at least sixty, with gray hair and deep lines on his face. Not very tall or brawny, but he doesn’t need that, right? I gulp softly when I see a red dot tremble in March’s hair.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs without turning back.
“Is he one of your . . . friends?” I reply through gritted teeth.
March’s arms move smoothly to set his aim on the newcomer. “No, but it’s going to be all right. He won’t hurt you.”
Somehow I doubt that, especially since Dries looks pretty pissed to see this particular acquaintance walking toward us. The guy pulls something from his lips—a cigarillo, whose characteristic scent wafts our way.
“What a pleasure to see you back among the living, Mr. November. How have you been? Our Finnish colleagues insist you spend your next vacation elsewhere. They’re still trying to explain to the Russians why a tank barreled through their border and destroyed a patrol vehicle.”
