In Flight

“Why does it take three hours and 48 minutes to fly here, and four hours to fly back?” the preteen asks, absorbed by the simulated world of his iPhone. He sits in the waiting area along with his parents and sister, their carry-ons, including four rollaboards, bunched around them, cramping their knees as if rehearsing for the airplane’s constrained seating. Coping with a spontaneous spasm, the father stretches one leg across the tops of two cobalt blue bags, both aflame with neon orange duct tape. This answers the question, Why do people buy bright orange duct tape?

A side pocket of one is ripped and gaping. Shoe laces secure worn sneakers to the straps of two back packs. I hope I’m boarding before them, before they consume all the overhead space and I’m asked to check my hanging bag which is much smaller, not as beleaguered, and more deserving.

“That’s something you should look up,” the mother suggests, her words hovering in the family’s own Ethernet world, eyes refusing to make contact.

“I’ll do that,” the sister, younger by several years, offers. She gives her iPad a rubdown.

Rather than volunteer all the reasons for variables in flight times (the Van Allen Belts, the earth’s rotation, the human contribution of pre-defined flight paths to avoid midair collisions) and save her the effort, I wonder when, precisely, children first received better “things” than the general adult population. Hand-me-down bikes and later cars were my childhood tradition. Now kids get the latest mobile devices, gifts wrapped in parental guilt. I’m still hard pressed to justify the purchase of a tablet for myself, still building a case for the investment based on professional need. My employer Garrett/Edwards supplies all the equipment required for my home office and my narrowly defined professional requirements. Tablets are not part of my pay scale inventory.

*

With over three decades of flying, I possess a Primary’s knowledge of changes in modern commercial air travel, which is no longer glamorous or accommodating, the decline supported by customer surveys and travel advocacy groups that attempt to measure the Passenger Experience. Beginning with the security restrictions, travelers report they dislike most the waiting, the padding about in their bare feet, and the one baggie rule with its volume limitations that mean they can no longer strip the hotel bathrooms of shampoo and lotion samples. I miss those.

Flying has all the amenities of riding a bus, except the plane is farther from the ground, exiting options limited. A bus visual is helpful on several levels: I’m not disappointed by the haphazard dress code and surfeit of rubber flip flops, the tank tops that share too much, or the absence of pre-packaged hot meals that somehow seemed better than their cousins, Swanson’s TV Dinners. (Which inspired the other, I wonder, sorry that it’s too late for the kids to look that up.) Mostly I miss the loss of sublime awe that once set air travel apart. There’re no surveys to measure Passenger Disenchantment.

But it is the transcendent distance from earth that locks flying into its own category: the isolation, the rapid transformation from one world to another, the sudden intimacy of strangers pitted against forced and temporal liaisons. Passengers are left to their own resources, insulated and collectively self-contained. There’s tacit permission to beg off technology, which I do. No seeking answers from the Internet, no “friending” or “liking” or the demanding pulls from earthbound family and business associates. How many economic shifts and political choices are made, hurtful posts missed, tweets that go un-retweeted, what cataclysms and births and deaths occur, without a passenger’s acknowledgement much less immediate input? In flight our insignificance is obvious and reassuring and humbling and the common bond.

Save for the issue of fuel, how long could passengers live in this contained void, largely anonymous, conducting our own miniature lives? Less than years past, given the cutbacks in food and pillows and blankets. Except in First Class. Status still matters there, and in a cataclysmic scenario, class warfare is inevitable.

We should fly, I am convinced, to gain a better perspective on the world we leave behind. The interlude to be both oneself and someone else, a longed for but simple oasis from daily existence. Earthbound I am captive to my role of wife and my less encumbering responsibilities as employee and friend. On board, I curl up in my preferred window seat and no matter the flight time, yearn for a longer intermission. Yet often enough, I sleep the entire trip, or wish I could. I don’t seem to know what to do with myself.

Today I doze before the boarding is completed and awaken over the fields of Iowa. The flight is not full, the middle seat empty, a man, probably younger than me by five years occupies the aisle seat and is consumed by his tablet. Or rather, he wrestles with it, poking and scrolling, agitated by what he finds. Even from my amateur perspective, his behavior appears at counter purposes. He tosses it in the middle seat. The tablet glares back.

“It’s not mine,” he explains when he sees me eyeing it.

“You found it in the seat pocket?” I ask before catching myself. This is not my habit, initiating or engaging in conversation. I find airplane dialogue banal, the participants discovering a shared interest in bridge or kayaking or canning tomatoes, making all manner of post-flight plans that are not intended to be kept, or worse, self-satisfied that they have resolved a global problem. (Some blatantly ignore the implicit moratorium on global problems that flight affords.)

“No.” Impatience pricks his voice. This will be easy, avoiding further exchange, I think. But, he continues. “Nothing like that. Someone must’ve picked mine up at the office. I’ve been dueling in conference rooms for three days. These things,” he points to the tablet, “are like shields. There were more tablets than businessmen.”

“Or businesswomen,” I add. I let the word “dueling” slide around in my mouth, a delicious word I should use more often, though not so serviceable at Garrett/Edwards. Garrett/Edwards staff don’t duel, or at least not openly.

“Excuse me?” he says. My remark competes with the clatter of the drink cart.

In spite of the late afternoon hour, his dress shirt, blue and white striped with white collar and French cuffs, is crisp, his rep tie knotted, lapis cuff links, brighter than the forlorn tablet, catch the soft cabin light.

 “I was just saying, you might have picked up a female colleague’s tablet.”

He looks perplexed with my version before letting out a baritone laugh. “You’d have been a great addition to our contentious mix.”

The drink cart stops next to our row. He orders a bourbon and appears surprised when the flight attendant asks for a credit card. “Oh, right, I’m in coach.” He looks in the seat pocket before concluding his wallet is in his suit jacket in the overhead.

“I’ll catch you on my return trip,” she says.

He turns to me. “What do you bet she forgets? This could all be free. Can I get you something free?”

“Not necessary.”

“Please. I like giving people free things.” The flight attendant is amused, primed to comp him.

I surrender. “Red wine would be lovely.”

“Do we get more free stuff to go with our drinks?” he asks the flight attendant. She’s absorbed in a drawer, her hands sorting through diminutive bottles, the tinkling of glass like wind chimes. “Crackers and cheese? Mixed nuts?”

“Another cart brings food,” I suggest. “It’s tough getting used to the protocol of steerage.”

“If I told you my sorry story about schedule changes, my assistant not making the reservation in time, and there were no upgrades, would you have perspective on that?”

“Yes, I would. And not a sympathetic one.”

“You’re tough.” He looks at the crowded coach cabin and the service carts that appear not to move. “Since I’m in a learning curve, should we be ordering two rounds?”

“I’m good with one.”

He orders a second bourbon even though he frowns at the brand. By the time the food cart stops at our aisle I’ve nearly finished my wine. He insists I need another bottle and adds two Artisan Fruit and Cheese boxes to his tab. His smile convinces the flight attendant that the addition of wine needs immediate attention. She retreats to the galley, returning with the wine and an unrequested third bourbon. Our middle tray is transformed into a food station as he makes an effort to get into the rhythm of happy hour minus leg and elbow room.

There are studies on the cadence of conversations, lulls appearing every twenty minutes as participants exhaust one topic and search for the next. In party settings, the mobility and churn of guests, and the replenishing of drinks and hors d’ouerves, mask these lapses. A plane offers fewer options. I admit, I’m the first to fill this void when I ask him what he does.

“Political consultant and lobbyist. I’m a partner with three other men.”

Garrett/Edwards has a massive database harboring polling results, a Think Tank of sorts, but our focus is the private sector. I cannot balance his experience and knowledge with my own facts and figures, and sharing political opinion with strangers is as risky and often unsatisfying as the dreaded Global Problems. I am content when he manages the next twenty minutes with amusing anecdotes while never leveraging names that might otherwise impress or suggest party leaning. His eyes are flat, I mean physically, like those punched-out metal discs left by electricians, their flatness suggesting he is near sighted. The eye lids close like miniature garage doors.

Once again, a lull settles over the remnants of our happy hour, and I feel forced to share details of my life. I stick to the professional side.

“Garrett/Edwards,” he repeats. “I think my group uses them. For demographics, not for research projects. Tell me what you do.”

I don’t have career gravitas and am concerned that the next conversational lull will occur in ten rather than twenty minutes. But his comments maintain a pleasing and urging flow, and I wonder if his conversational skills are not only the byproduct of his profession but also a necessary talent as a single man. He’s not sporting a wedding band. I hope he misses my examination of his left hand.

The next lull is filled when a small dog several rows back lets out a few yaps. I jump at the chance to discuss dog ownership. I gloss over the details of Lilly, the perfect Royal Standard poodle, and focus on Molly, my very old Shih Tzu.

“I call her Monster Molly for good reason. Despite her size, she runs the place. She’s been blind for several years, but we’ve never told her.”

He laughs a beat or two quicker than most with whom I share this perspective. “Well, they say the same thing about bees.” I cannot seem to stop myself. “I mean, bees shouldn’t be able to fly, but they never got the memo.”

At least he does not deliver a look of confusion over my remark. My husband Scott has made the same bee analogy. I feel the pulls of the earth and my real world of husband and dogs, but ignore both.

The dog-passenger is not done yapping. Two grade school girls run back, eager to participate in this diversion.

“You’re married,” he says more than asks once we’ve passed the Continental Divide. When I tilt my head, he adds “You said ‘we.’ And the ring.”

“I guess I did. And you?”

“No. No dogs, cats, wife, children, or even turtles. Now or ever. That makes me a workaholic. And a golfer. I play golf when I can.”

“My husband golfs.”

“What’s his handicap?”

He is impressed with Scott’s twelve handicap. I consider leveraging Scott’s name, renowned sportscaster that he is, as a barometer of my seatmate’s sports acumen, but anonymity is an underappreciated and maybe last bastion of air travel perks.

He insists I take the remaining bunch of grapes; in turn, I offer up a cube of cheese and the almonds. Flight attendants pass back and forth collecting papers and plastic cups and flattened snack boxes, adhering to their sorting and recycling agenda.

“I should give them the tablet,” he says.

“What!” The thought of commandeering it flashes through my mind.

“I doubt it will ever reconnect with its rightful owner, whoever she is.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Well, sort of. Or maybe there’s info on it I can use. You know, Watergate. Irangate. Tabletgate. Our IT guy could hack into it.”

“You’re kidding,” I repeat.

He smiles, his upper lip stretched across capped teeth suitably imperfect to appear real, his garage-door eyelids closing against his eyes. “I’ve probably seen most of what’s in there. Anyway, all the email, files, and stats in the world tell you only so much. It’s what’s done with that info that matters.” I like his smugness.

We hit a rough air pocket just as the plane clears the last of the Sierra Madres.

“Does a little turbulence bother you?” he asks. He might have caught the small reflex of my hand on the arm rest.

“Frank Sinatra’s mother was lost in a plane crash over the Sierra Madres.” I stop just short of reciting the year. Garret/Edwards appreciates my ever-ready recall, others no so much. “I can manage a little turbulence.”

We buckle up to land, a silence hanging between us. There is the usual taxiing and waiting while cell phones, like scores of fireflies, brighten the interior before the overheads go on. I look out the window at the darkened tarmac and the fleet of lights like so many luminaries marking the paths to the gates, and am reminded Christmas is not far off. The conflicts and pull of husband and dogs and Garrett/Edwards that define my world bear down. I wonder a second time: how long can life be self-contained at 35,000 feet.  

The jetway bumps the side of our plane, the return complete. As the rows in front of us empty, he stands, retrieves his coat, and pats the breast pocket, confirming his wallet hadn’t slipped out. The flight attendant never asked for a credit card. He fumbles with an inside pocket for glasses, tortoise framed and round, meant to make a statement.

“Near-sighted,” he says when he catches me staring.

“I’d guessed hypermetropia.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Great glasses.” Maybe eye shape is an insignificant indicator for hypermetropia. Maybe I got my eye shapes and eye conditions switched.

He locates his business cards and hands me one. Drew Patrick Andrew, followed by Andrew-Baker Consulting and his relationship, Partner and CEO.

“Interesting name. A palindrome of sorts. Can be read forward and backward, sort of.”

“I go by Drew Patrick. And I know what a palindrome is.” He makes a production of folding his coat over his arm. “Perhaps we can meet sometime. You can share more of your brilliant insights. Fascinate me with more ‘hyper’ words. We can classify it as a business meeting. Pretend you are promoting Garrett/Edwards’s services.”

“I don’t have a card.” Until now, I’ve prided myself on speaking the truth. I want to think this falsehood is based on the fact that I never invested in a business cardholder (his is ostrich died the color of a good merlot), I doubt I have one in my wallet, and my job title (Research Statistician) cannot bear up to his. I chide myself for believing this matters.

“Then it’s up to you to contact me,” he says. “Of course, I won’t know who you are.”

“Sorry. Philippa Smith. Phi.”

“A name no doubt with a story I’d enjoy hearing.”

He slips the tablet in his briefcase, also ostrich, and steps into the aisle, allowing me to pass in front of him. I pull my hanging bag from the overhead, quickly, not giving him the opportunity to help, grateful that the leather-trimmed tapestry isn’t road-weary.

His card has already been secured in my pocket.