What do I do?
I look around, trying to see if anyone else is seeing (or hearing) this, but everyone is lying down, sound asleep. I crane my head around, hoping to spot a flight attendant, but I don’t see any. Besides, what am I going to do, rat on them?
I mean, I probably should…
“Lower, lower,” the girl says. “Yes!”
Oh hell no.
I put my headphones back on and sit back, trying to watch another movie on the seatback. But of course that keeps shaking and shaking. The turbulence has nothing on those two.
How long is this going to go on for?
I’m getting over a breakup, I’m heading across an ocean to go to a wedding all alone, can’t I catch a break?
But no, the seats continue to shake, and I swear I can hear the moans through my headphones, and they aren’t showing any signs of stopping.
This is hell.
There’s only one thing for me to do.
I undo my belt and raise the arm rests, slowly sidling out of my row.
I know I shouldn’t look at them, I know I need to just ignore them.
But either watching strangers do it on a plane is some new kink of mine, or curiosity killed the cat.
I stand at the end of their row and look down.
I can’t see anything, blankets are covering them as they go at it from the side.
And at it, and at it.
Way to rub it in.
Oh, he’s rubbing something alright.
I’m in the middle of turning around when suddenly the plane hits an air pocket, the turbulence causing the plane to drop some feet.
I lose my footing, thrown forward.
I fall right over on the couple, face down where you don’t want to be face down.
Oh. My. God.
“Hey!” the girl cries out.
“Sorry!” I say, placing my hands on their hips and other body parts, trying to push myself back up. “So sorry!”
I can’t even look at them.
“As you were,” I say.
I straighten up somehow and then, feeling panicked, head right to the galley at the back of the plane.
There are two flight attendants back there sitting down and chatting. They both look at me with weary smiles, the kind that says they’d rather not be dealing with passengers right now, especially not someone like me who must look all flushed and wild-eyed.
I’m tempted to tell them about the sexcapades in row 50, but decide they probably don’t need the extra stress.
So instead I ask for a glass of wine and if I can just hang out in the galley with them, because I am not going back to my seat.
I think they can tell I’m desperate for company or something, because they say yes.
I go through another glass of wine.
And then I start talking about my old job, and then Chris.
And they start feeling sorry for me.
The wine keeps coming.
Two
Daisy
When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things was to go on family trips to Portland, something we did just a handful of times a year. But it wasn’t the supposed glitz and glamor of the big city that made it so special (everything was glitzy and glamorous when you lived on a farm, in Oregon, in the middle of nowhere).
What I remember most fondly is the car ride back home.
We’d leave at dusk, the city lights twinkling behind us, and then we’d be on the I-5 for hours heading south. My sister and I would bicker in the backseat for a while but it wasn’t long before I’d fall asleep. I was such a sound sleeper those days, that I wouldn’t wake up until we were in the driveway. My parents thought I looked peaceful, so they let me sleep back there until my father either carried me to my bed, or when I was older, gently shook me awake.
I’d wake up with this sense of wonderment, how it was possible for me to fall asleep somewhere and wake up somewhere else, like I was time traveling.
Well, I’m having that exact same feeling again.
Except I really have time traveled (to the future), and instead of waking up all blissful, I’ve got a raging headache and queasy stomach, and instead of my father shaking me awake, it’s a flight attendant.
“Miss?” she says gently in her strong accent, her hand on my shoulder. “We’re landing soon.”
I open my mouth to try and say thank you, but it’s so parched my words come out in this creaky groan. I open my eyes, blinking hard at the bright light coming in through the windows.
Dear god, I feel awful.
Slowly, and rather awkwardly, I sit up on the Skycouch, the fleece airplane blanket sticking to me in an aura of static cling. The world seems to swirl and my stomach flips on itself.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this hungover.
Though I can’t say it’s undeserved.