The girl clearly didn't know how it was or maybe she just didn't like being made the center of attention.
A tall man wearing chin stubble, an Atlanta Braves t-shirt and a frown so intense that Ronnie thought you could maybe stand a mug of coffee on his brow got to his feet over by the opposite window and started shuffling his way towards the aisle. Ronnie now saw that the man had some kind of tattoo on his right bicep – there were two clawed feet and a spiked tale descending from the t-shirt sleeve.
"Bobby," the girl said. It was a cautionary statement.
"Can I help you, ma'am?" Bobby asked. His voice was altogether more refined that his appearance suggested it would be and Ronnie couldn't help but smile. The man's eyebrows met on the bridge of his nose and Ronnie wondered if this was ever a bone of contention between him and Thong Girl. He imagined her looking up into his face when they were in the midst of their undoubted intimate raptures and her attention being drawn to the black hedge running above his eyes.
"Ma'am?" the man repeated when Martha didn't respond. "You hear me talking here?"
"Forget it," was all Ronnie could think of to say though he was all too well aware that it was hardly throwing water onto a fire. So he added, "My wife," waving his thumb over his shoulder, "doesn't fly too well."
Martha muttered "asshole" from behind him and Ronnie saw the Neanderthal's eyes darken.
"She means me," Ronnie said, trying to lighten things with a chuckle.
Sensing something wasn't going exactly according to plan, one of the stewardesses edged her way past the trolley. Her face a mask of perfectly made-up bonhomie, she said, "Is there some kind of a problem here?"
"This guy called me an asshole," said the man. Jerking his thumb at Ronnie.
"It was my wife," Ronnie said, shrugging. Oh, right, your wife. Well, that's just right fine and dandy, sir. You have a nice flight now, you hear!
The stewardess's face clouded. "Sir?" Then she looked down at Martha. "Ma'am? Is there a problem here?"
Ronnie rested a hand on the stewardess's arm and immediately wished he hadn't. She looked down at his hand without withdrawing her arm and waited for Ronnie to remove it.
"I'm just trying to get my bag in here is all," the girl explained from the aisle. Her rather nasal whine dampened the fire that looked set to burn and Ronnie bent down to retrieve his magazine.
"This woman, she was bad-mouthing my sister," the neanderthal explained, waving a carelessly pointing finger in Martha's direction. Ronnie felt rather than saw Martha sink further back into her seat.
Bobby the caveman started to say something more, shifting his attention between the girl and the stewardess, and then Ronnie and Martha, before starting all over again.
"It's OK, Bobby," the girl said. She hoisted her pants and waved him into the aisle. "Maybe you could get it in there…"
"That's OK, sir," the stewardess said. "Miss, you really need to take your seat."
The girl nodded at the overhead signs. "I thought we were OK to leave our seats," she said. "The belts sign has gone out."
"Can you keep the noise down there?" a gruff voice sounded from behind Ronnie's seat. The man's southern accent made "there" into the two-syllable extravaganza, "thy-arr", and the question was immediately followed by a wave of pure garlic fumes. Squinting at the ferocity of the odor, Ronnie turned to face the stewardess fully expecting to see her hair blowing back and her uniform to be in tatters. But she wasn't looking.
"Yes, miss, but we're still only just airborne." The stewardess's smile was gentle but firm. She had seen it all before, and most of it more than once.
Ronnie's seat was pulled backwards and the bulk from Row T lumbered into peripheral vision.
"People are tryin' to slipe high-arr," the voice announced.
Ronnie turned to look at Martha and just hoped that the man would sit down.
"Take your seat, sir," said the stewardess.
"But the sign is out, ma'am," Bobby offered.
"Yes," the stewardess replied. She was turning away from the bulk in Row T but her arm and outstretched finger were still pointing at the guy behind Ronnie. "If you could just keep the aisle clear until we've handed out the refreshments, we'd be really grateful. Let me handle the locker. You can check it later. That OK?"
The girl sighed, nodded, slipped past Bobby and sat down.
The sumo wrestler in Row T rejoined his seat with a loud noise that Ronnie guessed was part springs throwing in the towel and part fart. Well, at least it might sweeten the goddam garlic. He smiled at the thought and glanced up at the stewardess. She wasn't smiling. Her nametag said "Vicky" but Ronnie didn't think she looked like a Victoria. There were a lot of kids these days who were christened by their nicknames.
After one final glare at the stewardess and then at Ronnie and Martha, Bobby resumed his seat across the aisle, presumably to continue his consideration of the secret of fire and nursing the scuff-marks he got on his knuckles from his hands trailing across the ground when he walked around. Ronnie looked up to see if there was any action from Vicky the stewardess's ass when she turned around to maneuver the girl's bag into the locker but it was a regulation tight blue skirt – nice, but no major points-winner – with a mauve blouse tucked into the waistband so tight it would have taken a quarterback to pull it free.
"Jesus, Ronnie," Martha said.
"What?" Ronnie said, slamming his magazine onto the tray jutting out from the seat in front. "I'm thinking here."
"Sir? Ma'am?" Another stewardess's face appeared over the seat.
"Heh," Martha laughed, "looks like we could have a second feature for that front page. Ronnie Mortenson thinks. That's like one of those–"
The stewardess gave a practiced smile. "Cold drinks?"
"I'll have a club soda," Martha said icily.
"Sir? Something for you?"
"That's like…" Martha was continuing. Once she got onto one of these rolls, Ronnie believed the only thing could get her back to earth was a swift clip with a piece of uncut timber.
"Jack on the rocks," Ronnie snapped. And then I'd like a parachute so I can bail out of this plane, this relationship, and this goddam life. He scanned this new stewardess's chest for a nametag and, without actually thinking about what he was doing, he lifted himself from his seat to get a better look.
The stewardess looked up just in time to see Ronnie scanning her breasts. "Nuts?" she asked.
Was that a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth? Ronnie thought that it was. He nodded and smiled, sinking back a little but not completely into his seat. Yeah, nuts, he thought. "Sure," he said. "Let's do the whole thing." He spotted the badge and made out three letters: J–A–S…
"Pardon me?"
Ronnie shook his head and let out a tiny smile. He shuffled further back into his seat.
"That's like…" said Martha again.
Ronnie turned to her and sighed. "Martha, will you just leave it? Will you just let it rest? OK?"
The stewardess placed two small packs of salted peanuts on Ronnie's tray, followed them with a coaster and, finally, a glass with ice cubes and a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels.
Ronnie unscrewed the Jack and poured it over the ice. "You see what you almost did there?"
"What did I almost do, dearest?"
"You almost started world war goddam three is what you did."
In the aisle, her backside bouncing against the arm of the empty seat next to Ronnie, Vicky the stewardess had finally managed to secure Thong Girl's bag in the locker and was now busy trying to make the locker cover close.
J – A – S. What was that? Jasmine? Ronnie couldn't think of anything else. Jasmine: nice name, he thought. Just as he was about to accept the proffered club soda – and was in the process of considering whether to tip it onto Martha's head – a girl screamed from somewhere down nearer the split between standard and business. He looked across and, almost immediately, the entire aircraft lit up with the brightest light Ronnie had ever seen.
The light was so bright that Ronnie pulled his hand back and clapped the palms of both of his hands to his eyes. As he rubbed, there were more clunks of things falling over. He felt something bounce on his right shin – the nuts – and instinctively reached to steady his drink.
"Jesus Christ," he said, removing his hands from his face, "what the hell was–"
But the stewardess whose name began with the letters J–A– S wasn't there. The trolley edge was in exactly the same spot as it had been just a couple of seconds earlier, but now the woman who had been handing out the drinks and the little packs of peanuts (and whose breasts Ronnie had been committing to memory by simple virtue of trying to find out her identity) was nowhere to be seen. And the plastic glass of club soda had apparently dropped onto the headrest of the seat in front of Ronnie – there was no sign of the glass but Ronnie's tray was pooled with liquid. He waited for the guy in front – was it a guy? He couldn't remember – to stand up and ask him what the hell he was doing. It looked fairly likely that someone was going to rearrange Ronnie's face: the least likely was Thong Girl, then her tree-swinging brother, then Vicky the stewardess, plus maybe her friend Jas-something-or-other, possibly the deep south lardass behind him with his death-breath weapon of mass destruction or, perhaps most likely now that he had somehow been involved in spilling her fucking club soda, his own wife.
Ronnie looked across the aisle with the intention of sharing an exasperated grimace with Bobby the Atlanta Braves fan and thereby removing just one of the problems stacking up against him, but even the caveman had disappeared. He leaned forward – no sign of his sister, Thong Girl, either.
And now it felt as though there was a problem with the engines or something. The plane seemed to be dipping forward.
Ronnie bent forward to see if he could see the top of the woman's head in the aisle seat of the row in front of Bobby and Thong Girl but the seat was empty. There had been someone there, hadn't there? Maybe not.
He turned to Martha. "Must have been some kind of–"
And then he stopped.
Martha wasn't there.
(1)
It was always the same.
Rick was sitting in the car, reaching into the glove compartment in the dash to pull out a pack of Juicy Fruit, feeling his fingers touch the paper, a long, torn-off strip of yellow – even though, in the dream he could not experience the feeling of touching things and the dim light inside the glove compartment of the old DeSoto didn't permit the luxury of color definition – taking his eyes off the road, just for a second, taking his eyes away from the snowstreaked slopes of the Bighorn Mountains straddling the horizon, with I-90 snaking its way right for them, Lovell somewhere up ahead, over west, and Ranchester sitting way behind him, hearing the little voice in the back of his head, the one he used to talk to himself, hearing himself have it tell him–
Hey, the road! Better keep your eyes on the road, dog-breath!
–he shouldn't let his attention drift, feeling a little tired (which was why he'd thought of the Juicy Fruit), thinking maybe he should roll down the window, let in a little air, seeing it all again, knowing that it was a dream and that he only ever thought all those thoughts the once, just the one time, and that this time was like he was playing a part, making the same moves all over again, even though he knew these were the wrong moves to make, then, calm somehow, calm inside of himself even though it was all going to happen again, seeing the guy being chased out of a wide parking area on the side of the road by a girl in cut-off blue denim shorts, the two of them laughing, then seeing them see him, watching their faces slide down on themselves like candle wax flash-fried, their smiling mouths first drooping at the corners and then their eyes widening, catching out of his eye corner the two bicycles propped against a pile of logs, Thermos beside them, and some kind of plastic carton, and all the time Rick bracing himself, his arms locked out holding the steering wheel, the yellow Juicy Fruit pack dropped to the floor beneath his feet, forgotten but–
So, just how much value d'you place on a stick of gum, huh, Rick?
–remembered in the dream, then slamming his feet on the pedals, nearly standing up on them, his backside off the DeSoto's seat, feeling the wheels lock, talking to himself–
Shitshitshitshitsh–
–and being distantly aware of the dust clouds billowing at the sides of the car, seeing the faces of the guy and the girl–
She had freckles, didn't she Rick? You remember that, don'tcha… you remember seeing her face in that much detail just before–
–before the car drove through them, the two of them first doubling over towards him, folding over the hood, the guy reaching out at the last minute to push the girl (it was his fiancée, Rick found out later… much later), and the girl disappearing somewhere – one minute there, the next minute gone – and the guy coming up over the hood, smacking down onto it and then up against the windshield and then rolling and tumbling up over the roof, hearing his body bouncing along its length while Rick felt the telltale judder of the DeSoto's tires going over something in the road, then looking in the rearview, even as the car was finally slowing down, and seeing the guy's body falling onto the road like a rag doll–
A very red rag doll, huh, Rick?
–with another shape lying behind it a few yards back, and then the car coming to a halt and the engine cutting out and there being no sound at all, just Rick staring at that rearview willing the two unmoving rag dolls to get to their feet, dust themselves down and give him the bird–
Hey, asshole, whyn't you come back and finish the job… think there's a couple of bones here seem to be still in one piece…
–but Rick knew the rag dolls would not move and he knew that the worst part of the dream was now waiting for him, crouched down like a feral cat behind a creaking cellar door, daring him to peer around and sneak a glance into the darkness: now was the part where he got out, hearing the soft clicks of the DeSoto's engine cooling down and the creak of the suspension as he swung his legs out onto the dusty road and pulled himself up to his full six-two, smelling the scorched smell of brake linings mixed with the cool fresh air blowing down from the mountains, glancing across to the pull-in and seeing the bicycles and the Thermos–
Hey, come on, quit fooling around now… coffee's getting cold…
–feeling the sudden need to pee but, instead, forcing his legs – those two wobbly tentacles that didn't seem to have a single bone between them – to carry him back along I-90 towards the two shapes lying in the still swirling dust, neither of them moving, knowing deep down that they wouldn't move just as they hadn't moved when it had first happened and they didn't move any of the other times, the reprise-times – like now – when they had to go through the whole thing again in Rick's dreams, knowing all this but, as each step brought them closer, straining to see a sign of movement, a sign of–
Someone shouted out and a light burned into his brain. Then it was gone.
• • • •
Rick opened his eyes, suddenly aware in that instant that he had been dreaming again – the same old dream – and that he had shouted out. He looked around the porch and listened: it was silent. He listened again. No, it wasn't just silent it was… empty – no insect noises, no distant hum of an occasional late-night traveler negotiating the twists and turns of the highway way below.
There was a dull crump noise from somewhere outside, somewhere way off, out on the road. Then the silence returned.
As though in response, a burst of applause exploded from behind and Rick suddenly remembered he'd left the TV on.
"What the hell time is it?" he asked the night. No answer. It had to be before 4 am which was when his show started – there
was no way Geoff would let him sleep through that.
He bent down and lifted the bourbon bottle and the glass from the wooden deck, set them on the table alongside the lounge chair he'd been stretched out in. As he considered one last swift shot before he went inside to bed he gave a mental vote of thanks to all-day and all-night TV. There was always something on and even though he had not been watching it, the sound was reassuring when he sat out on the deck staring over to the forest-clad hills in the distance, listening, as he did most nights, to the sound of the canned laughter on one of the sitcoms while he waited for the sun to drop down out of sight.
Darkness Falling Page 2
