The way she said it sounded more like, “What kind of a fool are you?”
“No. He wants to talk to you about his wife’s writing. She’s pretty upset about what you said.”
“Christ, what a baby.” Terry quickly glanced up at him and then looked at me and began extricating herself form her paperwork. “All I said was that it needs work,” she scowled. “I could have said much worse.”
As she finally stood up she looked back at me. “You two haven’t met yet, have you?” she asked, as if it were the most boring thing in the world.
“Owen this is Cordi O’Callaghan. Cordi — Owen Ballantyne, my right-hand man.”
I reached over and gripped his hand, then wished I hadn’t. It was like getting flattened by a rolling machine, my rings mashed into my skin. He smiled at me and what should have been his chin bunched up into seven folds of skin, his smile sliding into them.
Terry stuffed her sheaf of unruly handwritten papers into Owen’s hand, and in a soft, barely audible voice said “Put them in your briefcase.” Then she moved forward and took Owen’s seat. Owen disappeared down the aisle and returned with his briefcase. He tidied the papers but didn’t put them away.
As the plane took off and reached cruising altitude I kept to myself, reading a magazine about woodworking.
But it was hard to concentrate because there was a fair amount of whispering going on in the row ahead of me.
Suddenly, the seat in front of me bucked and a woman with the most amazing curly red hair stood up, forcing her seatmate to get up to let her out. He was a heavyset man in his early forties with a tremen–dous shock of pure white hair. I didn’t catch what he looked like because he sat down immediately. I pre–tended to tie my shoes and peered through the crack and watched as he took the woman’s purse, a red suede eye catcher, and opened it. He looked around furtively and I backed off, but my curiosity was too much for me. I stood up and as I did so I saw him take something from the bag and slip it in his pocket. He looked up and our eyes glanced off each other as I stepped past Owen and went to the washroom. I could feel his eyes on me all the way down the aisle.
There was a lineup, of course, and I lounged against the side of one of the aisle seats. There was a man sitting in it who seemed to be nothing but a mass of hair. He was reading a paper that was about the illegal trade of wild animals. I wondered if he was a fellow lecturer. His seat–mate, a diminutive blond, was reading a comic book. I had scanned back to the paper the man was reading when suddenly he looked up at me. I quickly looked away, but not before I saw the annoyance in his face. Who could blame him? All these people hovering over him as they waited impatiently in line.
When I came back the shock of white hair was gone and both seats sat empty.
I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew was hearing Terry’s voice cutting through the plane “It’s just a piece of writing for god’s sake.”
And then a male voice saying, “Lady, you have no right….”
I couldn’t hear what happened next, just a lot of muffled voices, but it was enough to catapult Owen out of his chair. He dumped the papers he’d been reading on the seat with the briefcase and they spilled onto the floor along with the case. Two of the sheets fluttered after him as he disappeared down the aisle. I picked up a manual on hot air balloons and then had to get out of my seat to retrieve all of the stuff that had fallen out of the briefcase, as well as the briefcase itself. I picked up the two sheets and put them back with the rest. They were in no partic–ular order and as I straightened them out a handwritten phrase caught my eye; the scrawl tight and legible.
“Drenched in oil and blinded by blood she held her breath and jumped.” It was about a woman fleeing a black market organ attempt, or at least I thought it was, but I didn’t get to read any more because someone above me cleared their throat in a way that demanded attention. I looked up and found Owen staring at me, his face so blank that there was nothing at all I could read from it.
“I’m sorry. They fell when you left …” I stumbled along into silence. He still stood in the aisle staring at me. I felt myself start to get hot.
“Do you always read people’s private papers?”
“I didn’t really read them, just glanced at them.”
He reached out his hand and I gave him the papers. He sat down and replaced them in the briefcase.
“Some of the students’ work,” he said. “They wouldn’t be keen to know some stranger was rifling through it.” I couldn’t tell by the closed look on his face whether he was angry or indifferent.
“Your briefcase fell.”
“Nothing we can do about it. But thank you.” His face was inscrutable and then he smiled this weird, tight little smile and took out his earphones.
After that little rap on the knuckles I made him get up to let me out again. Most people were watching the movie and the legs of the men in the outer seats were encroaching on the aisle as they tried to get comfort–able while jammed into seats meant for their children. I manoeuvred around them and caught sight of Duncan and Martha, but they were engrossed in the movie.
When I got back to my seat Owen was gone and Terry was back, poring over her work with an air that unmistakably said, “Don’t you dare interrupt me.” But I had to, of course, and she grumbled about people who can’t sit still but she left me alone.
I felt really fidgety and shuffled around for some papers until Terry gave me the evil eye. I was about to check out the movie when I noticed a strikingly tall woman coming down the aisle towards us, her face dwarfed by the mass of curly red hair that scattered its way all across it — the woman from the seat in front of me. She wasn’t just tall, she had muscle to go along with the height. And apparently she’d been crying, because her eyes matched the colour of her hair. She stopped at her row and cleared her throat. I wondered why she didn’t sit down. Her white haired seatmate had moved to the window seat. She just stood there looking forlorn until I heard a hissing voice practically throttle her with its venomous intent. “For god’s sake Sally, sit down or get out of everybody’s way.” And she sat down beside him.
I watched the movie for a while but it didn’t really grab me and the earphones weren’t working very well; I had to keep hitting them to get them to work, which did not sit well with Terry. It was one of those movies strung together with very little substance and lots of gratuitous violence. The four-letter words were beeped out for the kids.
I took out my earphones and stashed them in the pocket of the seat in front of me. Then I rifled though it looking for a magazine. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Terry was watching the movie, so I was able to wrestle some papers out of my briefcase and started thinking about my upcoming lectures. It was quiet on the plane. That charged, ethereal kind of quiet that comes with being in excess of twenty thousand feet above ground and defying gravity. That is, it was quiet until I gradually became aware of people whispering.
“No, please Arthur.” The voice seemed deflated, stripped of any resolve, totally needy and therefore totally desperate.
A male voice, bitter and sarcastic replied, “I’ve had enough. I don’t want you Sally.” He strung out the words as if she couldn’t speak English very well. “What part of that do you not understand? It’s over.”
The seat
