Keep Going

(Note: There is mention of death here.)

Suddenly, I looked up. Was I asleep? Had I forgotten my flight? Everyone around me seemed nervous. Or so it seemed to me.

I immediately reached for my robotic purse. It’s always a good thing to carry on such a journey. Its fingerprint scanner still worked.

I looked across the way at the panini shop, at which point there was a thunderous roar in my belly. Suddenly, the sound of a plane landing.

“Attention customers. Flight bu, bu, bu to San Francisco, now boarding.”

Ah ha! I’ve caught you!

I immediately grabbed at anything I could. Things that I was pretty sure were mine, or that would be nice to own in any case. As we all stumbled toward the flight gate with our boarding pass, it became obvious that we weren’t all going to get the window seat in the cockpit.

Someone was going to have to fly the plane!

“You can handle this, young hopight,” I said to myself. “Remember your training, yon grasshopper.”

I walked up to the gate like a supermodel doing her taxes. It wasn’t easy being this funky. The airport attendant shot me a glance as I approached, then looked back down at his screens.

My eyes are up here, buddy!

“May I help you, miss?”

“Yes, well, I would like to get on the plane.”

“Which plane?”

“That one. The one at the end of the gate. There is no other plane.”

“Miss, you have to be specific. It’s my first day on the job.”

I looked at him with a deep sense of pity, not wanting to shake anything up. He had the look of an Ohio schoolteacher who had gotten lost after an all-night keggar. I gingerly handed him my ticket.

“Are you sure you’re in the right airport?”

“The right airport?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you’re sure, or yes you’re agreeing with me?”

“Yes, I’m sure that I am agreeing with you. Yes, this is the right airport. I’m sure of it. I majored in airports in college.”

“Okay. Take your boarding pass over here and get on that plane over there. If you need further instruction…”

“Okay, okay. I’m good. Let’s go!”

I subsequently made it to the boarding window.

“Miss Bakersfield,” said the boarding attendant with the gigantic glasses.

“Yes?”

“You’ve been bumped up to First Class!”

“Jesus couldn’t have thought of a better ending than that!”

I kissed my ticket and pressed it to the sky, my bags and body armor hanging off me like the tattered rags of a battered Superman.

“Where is First Class? In the back?” I asked in pure euphoria.

“On the plane…”

I got on the plane, and what did I see? First Class was amazing. The people here were so “jelly” of my success that I could barely contain myself. I sat next to a young, old gentleman reading a financial newspaper.

Soon enough, we went down the runway and then we all collectively hopped into the air at once, hurling the 100-ton behemoth into space.

As soon as we struck the atmosphere, I got chatty and looked to my left, only to find that the newspaper cemented to my compatriot’s face had now been surgically removed.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Miss Bakersfield.”

“So they say…”

“So who says?”

“I’ve got no time for questions. I’m a very busy man.”

“Busy doing what?”

“Busy reading newspapers. You know that every time a newspaper is printed, a priest starves to death in Bangladesh?”

“Is that in the Guiness book?”

“It should be.”

“Where are you going?”

“Who said I need to be going anywhere. You’re the one who’s going away.”

“Forgive my impetuosity. We are both hurtling through space at the speed of light. I figured you would be going somewhere.”

“It’s all in the mind.”

“Yes, sir. I agree. It truly is in the mind.”

“Do you buy timeshares?”

“Sorry. I don’t.”

“I was asking because I wanted to buy one for myself.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

“Yes, I made my first thousand dollars selling timeshares in old Italy. And then, Jesus was crucified!”

He let out an uproarious laugh that could not be mistaken for sarcasm traveling at this speed.

“So,” I said, not having understood my place in the scheme of life.

“Nurse!” he said.

“I’m not a nurse,” said the flight attendant as she walked by. “What can I get for you?”

“Could you bring me my hunting knife?”

“Yes, right away…”

“Hunting knife?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I like to flick my knife when I get nervous.”

The flight attendant went toward the cockpit and then knocked on the door, using a secret knock that only people with knives understood. Suddenly, the door opened and there stood the copilot. He spoke with her a while and then handed her what looked from a distance to be a small child wrapped in leather.

As she dragged it back to where we were, I almost expected it to start singing it’s “ABC’s” until she walked over to me lugged it over my lap, and handed it to the man who “never went anywhere.”

He sat there with the small, sharp, metallic toddler in his hand, flicking the edge of the blade. Each flicking was a bullet to my eardrum, but I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him. Thank God my purse was robotic. Or was it really?

The man who never went anywhere flicked his blade a few more times.

“Have you ever bought a hotel?”

“I’m allergic.”

“I didn’t say that. I said did you ever buy a hotel?”

“Well, I am in first class.”

“Now that’s a classy response. I like you. You seem to be so…comfortable.”

“Well, first class does that to a lady.”

We flew for hours. The man who went nowhere continually flicked his blade while I tried to figure out the lock on my robotic purse. As we flew, the sunlight of a thousand dances went through the cockpit, we were free.