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“Yes!” Mary Worth twinkled. “We have it for three weeks. We’ve never actually met, but they are true chums. We’re all widows. We met in a chat room on the Internet. It’s so wonderful, the Internet. There was nothing like it when I was young.”
“Pedophiles think it’s wonderful, too,” said the businessman, and turned another page.
Ms. Worth’s smile faltered, then came on strong. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Dixon. Are you traveling for business or pleasure?”
“Business,” he said.
The speakers went ding-dong. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Stuart speaking. You’ll see that we are pulling away from the gate and beginning our taxi to Runway 3, where we’re third in line for takeoff. We estimate a two-hour-and-forty-minute flight down to SRQ, which should put you in the land of palms and sandy beaches just before eleven o’clock. Skies are clear, and we’re anticipating a smooth ride all the way. Now I’d like you to fasten your seatbelts, put away any tray tables you may have lowered—”
“Like we had anything to put on them,” the businessman grunted.
“—and secure any personal possessions you may have been using. Thank you for flying Allied tonight. We know you have many choices.”
“My ass,” the businessman grunted.
“Never mind your ass, just read your book,” Dixon said. The businessman shot him a startled look.
Dixon’s heart was already beating hard, his stomach was clenched, his throat dry with anticipation. He could tell himself it was going to be all right, it was always all right, but that didn’t help. He dreaded the depths that would soon open beneath him.
Allied 19 took off at 8:13 PM, just three minutes behind schedule.
3
Somewhere over Maryland, a flight attendant pushed a drinks-and-snacks cart down the aisle. The businessman put his book aside, waiting impatiently for her to reach him. When she did, he took a can of Schweppes tonic, two little bottles of gin, and a bag of Fritos. His Mastercard didn’t work when she ran it and he gave her his American Express card, glaring at her as if the failure of his first offering were her fault. Dixon wondered if the Mastercard was maxed out and Mr. Businessman saved the Amex for break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situations. It could be, his haircut was bad and he looked frayed around the edges. It didn’t matter one way or the other to Dixon, but it was something to think about besides the constant low terror. The anticipation. They were cruising at 34,000 feet, and that was a long way down.
Mary Worth asked for some wine, and poured it neatly into her little plastic glass.
“You’re not having anything, Mr. Dixon?”
“No. I don’t eat or drink on airplanes.”
Mr. Businessman grunted. He was already through his first gin and tonic, and starting on the second.
“You’re a white-knuckle flier, aren’t you?” Mary Worth asked sympathetically.
“Yes.” There was no reason not to admit it. “I’m afraid I am.”
“Needless,” Mr. Businessman said. Refreshed by his drink, he was speaking actual words instead of grunting them out. “Safest form of travel ever invented. Hasn’t been a commercial aircraft crash in donkey’s years. At least not in this country.”
“I don’t mind,” Mary Worth said. She had gotten halfway into her small bottle, and there were now roses in her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled. “I haven’t been on a plane since my husband died five years ago, but the two of us used to fly together three or four times a year. I feel close to God up here.”
As if on cue, a baby began to cry.
“If heaven is this crowded and noisy,” Mr. Businessman observed, surveying the 737’s crowded coach cabin, “I don’t want to go.”
“They say it’s fifty times safer than automobile travel,” Mary Worth said. “Perhaps even more. It might have been a hundred.”
“Try five hundred times safer.” Mr. Businessman leaned past Dixon and held out a hand to Mary Worth. Gin had worked its temporary miracle, turning him from surly to affable. “Frank Freeman.”
She shook with him, smiling. Craig Dixon sat between them, upright and miserable, but when Freeman offered his hand, he shook it.
“Wow,” Freeman said, and actually laughed. “You are scared. But you know what they say, cold hands, warm heart.” He tossed off the rest of his drink.
Dixon’s own credit cards always worked. He stayed in first class hotels and ate first class meals. Sometimes he spent the night with a good-looking woman, paying extra to indulge in quirks that were not, at least judging by certain Internet sites Mary Worth probably did not visit, very quirky. He had friends among the other turbulence experts. They were a close-knit crew, bound together not only by their occupation but by their fears. The pay was far better than good, there were all those fringe benefits… but at times like this, none of it seemed to matter. At times like this, there was only the fear.
It would be all right. It was always all right.
But as he waited for the shitstorm to happen, that thought had no power. Which was, of course, what made him good at the job.
