We must stop doing this 1/20/25

“We must stop doing this,” Larry said quietly.

“Pshhh. Stop being so controlling. Don't underestimate me.”

Phuong and Larry have been at this for years. It started as a purely money-saving effort, but at some point, it just became their thing. Phuong was, in Larry’s opinion, pushing the envelope. Especially now that she is three months pregnant.

“I’m not fucking being controlling or underestimating you, babe, and you know it. You are pushing it. You are pushing the… pushing the fuckin’ envelope, babe.” said Larry, shaking his head.

Phuong always knew she could fit comfortably in a small suitcase. She just needed a big galoot like Larry to hoist her into the overhead bin, and for the six years they had been married, that base was covered.

Many people don’t realize this, but domestic flights that kip around New Zealand don’t have screening, X-rays, or carry-on bag weights. Larry and Phuong Fendalton saved a ton of money every time Larry had to fly to a far-flung location to pick up an RV. 

All he had to do was carry on his wife, Phuong, who weighed about eighty-two pounds and was unbelievably flexible, like luggage.

“Phuong, baby, I just don’t think… What if there is turbulence?” said Lar quietly.

Phuong pursed her lips and ignored him as she ensconced herself in the comfy confines of a pale blue Samsonite. 

Larry zipped her in and wheeled the suitcase through the terminal of the Christchurch airport. They were boarding a flight to Hokitika to pick up a new R.V. (or ‘caravan’ in the Kiwi parlance) and drive it back over the Southern Alps to a dealership in Dunedin. It wasn’t the longest drive in the world; it could be done in a day, easily, but after a few decades as a trucker, Lar’s sciatica would start acting up after a few hours behind the wheel. It was better that Phuong and Lar drove in shifts, and they loved each other’s company.

Lar noticed a muffled sound coming from his carry-on while waiting for boarding to start. Rolling his eyes, he unzipped the suitcase a few inches.

“Why ya always gotta make me look like a looney-tune who talks to his luggage?” he whispered.

Only her smiling mouth was visible through the gap in the blue zipper, and she made a kissy face and said, “I love you! See you on the other side of the hill!” That’s what the local Kiwis called the Southern Alps, The hill.

Oh, yeah… She was a happy girl now… Larry’s internal monologue was off and running. He was having a conversation with himself that he knew he would have to have with Phuong sooner than later.

“Baby, you know we must stop doing this. It’s not entirely safe with Wendle on the way, and pretty soon here, It’s not gonna be physically possible.” Their midwife had recently discerned the sex of the fetus, and after a ten-second glance at the ultrasonic image, Phuong had decided he looked like a Wendle.

“Wendle Fendalton?” Lar had asked, exasperated. “Where the fuck did you come up with that?”

“Just now,” Phuong said proudly.

“No, I mean, how? How did you come up with that name? It sounds kinda…” Lar trailed off.

“Kinda what? Phuong said, staring unblinking up at Lar, who was almost two feet taller than her. He knew his wife well, and this wasn’t the hill he wanted to die on, so he just kissed her on the forehead and chuckled, “Wendle Fendalton does have kind of a scholarly ring to it, now that I think about it.”

“I hope this caravan is comfy,” said the suitcase. That one we picked up from Invercargill smelled like ass.”

“Some folks would say that all of Invercargill smells like ass, honey, and other folks would agree with them,” he muttered, half to himself as he gently zipped the smiling lips back under the blue zipper.

Larry was fairly intellectual for a big galoot and internally grappled with the reality that Phuong’s penchant for stowing away in suitcases was no longer just a creative cost-cutting measure. They weren’t broke backpackers like they had been when they had met at a hostel in Brisbane over a decade earlier. Phuong had a good job working as an ophthalmic technician, and Lar had inherited his father’s property when he died, so the Fendaltons were more or less comfortable. Well situated to expand the family, one might say, but as Phuong herself physically expanded, it was becoming increasingly clear that she didn’t so much want to be stuffed into suitcases… she needed to do it. It was some kind of self-soothing, therapeutic thing, or something.

When Phuong and Lar started dating, she reveled in his size and strength, but not in the typical way many women like a big, cuddly guy. She liked to be squeezed, squished, and constricted. Especially when she was nervous, stressed, or upset, she told Lar that she used to have panic attacks as a kid, and the only way she could feel better was if her father or one of her brothers squeezed her tightly until it passed. Years later, after he had proposed and she accepted, they traveled together back to her village, where he met many members of her extended family, and discovered that she had been raised an only child by her mother and her aunt.

Lar thought long and hard about how to approach being lied to about something that seemed so important. His internal monologue had a field day with that subject just as it was having now, about Wendel and the wisdom of stuffing a pregnant wife into a suitcase for a few hours at a time several times per week. Fortunately, New Zealand isn’t that big geographically, and domestic flights have reasonably short durations, but dammit, no. When he'd discovered that Phuong had never actually had a father or older brothers, his internal monologue convinced him to drop it. Let it go. He was not the kind of man who needed to control absolutely all the knowledge in the world, and his instincts had been correct. Phuong and Lar were truly happy together, and now Lar’s internal monologue was once again done rambling. His mind was made up. He stared out the small oval window of the airplane at the spinning propeller with the massive snowcapped mountains in the background and made up his mind. He unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up out of seat 8B, and opened the overhead compartment.

This time, unzipping the blue zipper revealed an eye wide with disbelief. Phuong had never been unzipped midflight. The eye immediately squinted with annoyance and was replaced by an angry little mouth.

“Ummmm, Lar? What are we doing here?” she asked impatiently.

“We need to talk about things. About the immediate future. About Wendle being squished!” Lar loud-whispered, his cheeks reddening.

“Lemme suggest we have this discussion when I’m no longer in the overhead bin...”

“Not gonna cut it, Phuong,” Lar said loudly enough that if a flight attendant had been attending to him, she would have heard it.

“We must stop doing this,” Lar said.

The suitcase wiggled a bit, and the tiny face inside revealed myriad emotions. After an agonizing dozen seconds, a tear dripped out over the blue zipper, and Phuong said softly, “Fine.”