What Burns Page 6

  I meant, like, do you live in Boston?

  I faked a shudder.

  Although I have it on good faith that several million people reside in the Boston vicinity, I’m not sure anyone actually lives there.

  Oh. When I wasn’t forthcoming: Were you there on business? Or something? Vacation?

  Neither.

  Heather shrugged. So what brought you to Boston?

  I believe it was a McDonnell Douglas Super 80.

  Do what?

  A small twinjet whose engines are mounted to the rear fuselage. Passengers in the back of the cabin, besides being subjected to a nauseating combination of kitchen and bathroom aromas, have to endure a shockingly loud roar for the duration of their journey.

  If nothing else, alcohol made Heather sassy. Why, I bet you’ve never flown steerage in your life.

  Did you learn that word from Titanic? Heather blushed again. It might surprise you to find out I’ve spent a significant amount of time loitering in the back of airplanes, and in kitchens for that matter, and bathrooms—

  There was a bump then, a tiny one, but Heather yelped and grabbed my arm. Her fingernails cut into my wrist so deeply I almost yelled as well. It was a moment before she released me, and then she picked up her glass and sucked a piece of ice into her mouth.

  I don’t really like thinking about the engines and all that. She patted the textbook in her lap. I’m pre-med. I prefer internal mechanics. She stroked the textbook nervously.

  My dear, if that textbook were not exactly where it is, your fingers could be indicted for lewd behavior. Heather’s hand flew from her lap to her mouth, and her pale cheeks reddened yet again. But perhaps you can be the one to help me, I went on, taking the textbook from her lap and tucking its grisly image in the magazine pocket in front of her. Tell me: how, exactly, does one die of asphyxiation?

  For a moment Heather froze. Then she smiled uncertainly. You’re, um, serious?

  I nodded.

  You mean, like, how do you actually die?

  I nodded again.

  Heather’s nervous hands fluttered between her chest and her lap, then reached for her glass. Her fingers curled around the crystal cylinder as though she were choking it. I guess we’re, um, we’re talking about mechanical obstruction?

  Let’s say a tie. I looked down at my chest. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, an Hermès tie.

  Do what? She reached for her textbook, let a single finger sit on its edge as though she could absorb its contents through osmosis. Okay, she said, leaning back in her seat. So the, um, the tie squeezes the windpipe but it doesn’t actually close it. What usually happens is that the root of your tongue is pushed up and it blocks your air intake. She smiled slightly, went on in a more confident tone. At the same time the jugular and the other veins that drain the cranial cavity are blocked, even though the heart still manages to push a little arterial blood past the constriction. That’s why people who’ve been hung get those big puffy faces.

  Big puffy blue faces.

  Well, yeah, they go cyanotic. Oxygenated blood is red, well, it’s maroon really, but deoxygenated blood is bluish, and as carbon dioxide builds up it gets even darker. As she spoke I pretended to fiddle with the knot of my tie, and Heather stared at my fingers as they pushed it a little tighter around my neck. And so anyway, hypercarbia actually makes you nervous. I mean, I’m sure anyone would be nervous if they were choking to death—with an effort she tore her eyes from my throat—but a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood causes anxiety, and so the victim tends to flail around a lot. But at the same time the cerebral cortex, which controls speech and, like, what we would call thinking—thankin—the cerebral cortex begins to function at progressively deteriorating levels of performance, and a lot of people who’ve nearly choked to death say that after a minute or two they actually forget what’s wrong even as they’re completely freaking out. Her clutching fingers found the strap of her seatbelt then, pulled it tight around her waist. And then, you know, if the blocked passage isn’t opened critical mass is reached. Cells die, the heart rate becomes erratic, the victim loses consciousness. The heart stops beating and then, you know, that’s usually it.

  As a matter of fact, I do know, I said, unbuckling my own seatbelt. A bravura performance. As Laird Swope himself might have put it, you could have shit the shit yourself. Now, if you will excuse me, I must retch my eggs. Er, stretch my legs. I nodded towards the bulkhead. I’m sure you understand.

  Just outside the door to the lavatory I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Gavin. He wore the look of a gossip just dying to share his latest tidbit, but when I didn’t return his smile it faded from his pale, pretty cheeks. He took his hand from my shoulder and attempted, without much success, to inject an officious note into his voice.

  I’ve seen you before.

  The perils of fame.

  You’re about as famous as my—He took a breath. I’ve seen you on this flight before.

  Gavin. Were you about to make an improper reference to a part of your anatomy?

  Gavin’s reddening cheeks gave him away. In fact, I believe you were on this plane last Tuesday, Mr. Pelton.

  I see your ability to remember faces is matched only by your facility with a passenger manifest.

  I should inform you, Mr. Pelton—

  Please. Call me Francis.

  I should inform you, Mr. Francis Pelton, that in addition to getting you drunk I am also expected to be aware of any irregularities that might affect the integrity of this aircraft.

  Integrity isn’t the word I would have chosen, but if you’re so concerned perhaps you’d like to frisk me for weapons. I tapped the door to the lavatory.

  The authoritarian pose proved too much for him, and Gavin looked ready to go all black girl until I cut him off with a stern shake of my head.

  Now now, Gavin. To the best of my knowledge a predilection for certain sky lanes is indicative of little more than weakness of character on my part. So if you will excuse me, I have an urgent need to rid my body of some of the alcohol with which you have so professionally plied me. I opened the door. Oh, and Gavin? I think my seat companion could use another of her rum and cherry colas. And while you’re at it—

  Why don’t I just leave the cart, Gavin said, and spun on his heel before I could close the door in his face.

  A good girl, that Heather Beaumont. As soon as I returned to my seat she asked the question she had been primed to ask.

  Who’s Laird?

  Would you say that again, please.

  Who’s Laird?

  Just the second word, please.

  Laird?

  It’s been so long since I’ve heard anyone say it properly. Most people usually spit it out in a single syllable, Lard, either dropping the terminal d or else over-aspirating it, so the word comes out Lar-duh. But you, my dear Feather, have diphthonged it into the appropriate two fully twanged syllables. Lay-ered. Like a cake, or a narrative, or a bad eighties haircut. Thank you.

  You’re welcome? She indicated our full glasses. Gavin came by. I think he likes you.

  Why do you think that?

  Heather leaned close to me and held up her drink. He said to tell Francis that these were on him, she whispered, and then she sat back and picked a piece of ice out of her glass with her fingers and crunched it between her teeth. I am way too drunk to make heads or tails out of whatever it was you just said.

  Do you know, Feather Beaumont, when you crunch your ice like that you remind me of—

  Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Jesus, do all gays watch the same movies? And enough with the Feather business already. She looked at her watch then, and her lips moved as she ticked off her fingers to account for the time difference. Six hours till London? It feels like we should be there already.

  Only one thing can smooth our journey. I
held up my drink.

  Oh, what the hell. Heather touched her glass to mine, and we drank. When both our glasses had returned to their pull-out slots in the armrest between us, she said, Laird.

  I nodded. Laird Swope was, until nineteen months ago, my lover. Nineteen months and change, as he might have put it. I waited until she was looking, then adjusted the knot of my tie. Alas, he is no longer with us.

  Heather’s eyelids, so pale they seemed nearly translucent, dropped over the blue pools of her irises. When they were covered it was hard to believe her eyes had been as luminescent as one remembered, but when, a moment later, her lids lifted, they seemed if anything even more perfect.

  Heather Beaumont said, Oh.

  He was also my benefactor, and the reason why I am able to travel in such luxury.

  I knew somebody in high school had a cousin named Laird. But I never heard me of a name like Swope.

  Laird said it was quite common where he came from, although if you asked him where that was he would only wave his hand and say, Way out way-ust.

  Heather laughed. I’m a frayed knot, she said, and it took me a moment to realize she’d said I’m afraid not. What you did was more Appalachian hillbilly than cowboy. It sounds like the past tense.

  Way-ust?

  Swope. Swoop, swope, had swoped. She stretched her hands as wide as the cabin’s curved walls permitted and pantomimed a dive-bombing eagle. The bird swope out of the sky on its helpless prey.

  It was a bit like that, yes.

  Heather dropped her arms. Where is that cute little Gavin? I think we both need some more lubrication. She smacked her call button like the ass of a stubborn mule. Now then. Laird. Luh-hay-erd. What was he like?

  Her eyes were trained full on me. When she’d smacked the call button she’d also hit the reading lamp’s switch, and against its focused beam her pupils contracted until the blue of her eyes seemed nearly solid. Their color was that of the evening sky now, visible in the window beyond her shoulder.

  Hmmm, I pretended to ponder. How best to characterize my dead lover? Well, once, at a dinner with a group of publishing types—writers, editors, agents, real drunks and drips—Laird refused to engage with any of them. He simply drank whiskey after whiskey and flirted with one particularly attractive waiter all night long and then, just as dessert was being ordered, got up and left the table. He returned about fifteen minutes later—with, I might add, his shirt still untucked—and all he had to say was, Now that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase soup to nuts.

  When I’d finished Heather used her hand to push her jaw closed. It was hard to tell if she was genuinely shocked or simply giving in to drunken affectation. She seemed about to say something when, from a place that seemed very far away, a voice sang out, Dinner! and our tray tables clattered down atop our knees. Gavin practically dropped our plates on them, along with a half dozen miniature whiskeys and rums and a few cans of Cherry Coke. You’d better make these last, you two. I have six other people to serve, and I cannot be rushing back here every other minute.

  You two. In Heather’s mind I belonged to Gavin, in Gavin’s to Heather. Neither of them seemed to realize that I belonged to one person only. He’d spent a fortune on me, after all, and I had the bank account to prove it.

  Normally by the time dinner was served my seat companion would have asked to move. As first class was often full, there was always an interesting negotiation when he or she had to decide which was worse: six more hours with me, or six hours in steerage. But Heather opted out of this scenario by going to sleep just before Gavin came around with dessert. I asked her if she would like my pudding, and when she didn’t answer I turned and saw her pink profile smushed against the window’s glass.

  Looks like Miss Pretty Prairie had herself a bit too much moonshine.

  I waved Gavin away without looking at him. Heather’s mouth hung open; her right hand still held on to her fork. Precipitation at 39,000 feet beaded the window, and I considered moving her cheek off the cold glass but then decided not to wake her. Instead I pried the phone from its hermetic slot, swiped my credit card, dialed a number I knew by heart. After a relatively short journey through an electronic maze, Tilda came on the line and asked how she could service me. Once, on the red-eye transatlantic Virgin, I’d had the entire first class cabin to myself and I’d called a phone-sex line based in London; the man who took my call—Kirk or Kurt, between the staticky connection and his accent I could never quite make it out—had answered the phone in the same way.

  Now I told Tilda, I’d like to book a seat on the 10:30 Conk to JFK.

  Of course, sir. When would you like to travel?

  Ten-thirty.

  Tomorrow morning. Of course, sir. Let me just confirm availability and . . . There was a bit of line noise and I couldn’t make out what she said.

  Come again, Tilda? These airplane phones aren’t what they should be.

  You’re on a plane now, sir?

  I’m due in at Heathrow in just over five hours.

  And you’d like a seat on the 10:30 Conk to JFK? The Concorde, sir?

  I know, I know, a four-hour layover. But it is the earliest flight, isn’t it?

  That would be correct, sir.

  A moment later Tilda had ascertained that there was a seat on the 10:30 flight—as if BA could ever fill up that money pit, the poor bastards—and it could be mine for a mere thirty-five hundred pounds. When we’d concluded our business I swiped my card again and dialed another number. Shirley was the good lady who took my call, and she was only too pleased to put me on the 10 a.m. flight out of JFK to MBJ.

  As soon as I hung up the phone Heather spoke.

  Where’s MBJ? Her accent seemed even more thick in her sleepy voice: Wayers Em Bee Jay?

  She had a bright red stain on her right cheek that she was rubbing lightly, and the hair on that side of her head was slightly wrinkled, like fabric. Her beautiful bleary eyes looked all of ten years old.

  Montego Bay, I said. Jamaica.

  Going to the beach? Her tone suggested she didn’t expect an affirmative answer.

  The ten o’clock is the only nonstop between JFK and MBJ. Well, they put down at MIA, but you don’t have to get off the plane if you don’t want to. Miami, I added, before she had to ask.

  I thought your, um, Concorde flight doesn’t leave London till 10:30?

  Supersonic transport, my dear. Leave Heathrow at 10:30 a.m., arrive JFK at 9, before you even left.

  Heather reached for her glass then, then put it back down and rubbed the side of her face. I reached a hand towards her cheek, then thought better of it and pretended I was just pointing towards the window.

  Did the cold give you a headache?

  Do what? Oh. Heather grimaced. No, I’m pretty sure it was the rum. She nodded at the phone. So, uh, what’s up with that? You just decided you didn’t want to go to Johannesburg?

  Laird used to say that. Do what. It sounded different when he said it, dyew whut, like the plop-plop of two horse turds landing on asphalt. But coming from you it sounds positively graceful.

  Heather drawled her drawl out even further: Do whaaat?

  I was never going to Johannesburg.

  Do wha—She stopped herself, then just looked at me for a moment. I’m going to the Velt. She swallowed, attempted to spit out the d. The Vel-dut.

  I was en route to JNB, but I never I had any intention of going to Johannesburg, or even leaving the airport by any other route than the air. From JNB I was going to SYD and then I planned to hop up to SIN. Sydney, I explained. Singapore. At Singapore I was going to play a game I like to call the thousand-mile hurdles. I was going to jump from one capital to another, either Phnom Penh to Vientiane to Hanoi and on up the coast of Southeast Asia to Tokyo and across the Pacific to LAX, or else I would have taken the westbound route through Bangkok, Rangoon, Dhaka, Delhi, Islamaba
d, avoiding Kabul, Tehran, and Baghdad for practical reasons, and attempting to make it all the way to Amman or Beirut or possibly even Ankara, then hopscotching my way through the Balkans before heading on to Rome and back to JFK.

  Heather contemplated her various responses for a long time, and in the end chose the practical route. Why’d you change your mind?

  You mean, why am I deplaning at Heathrow and heading back to the States?

  Um, yeah?

  No offense to you, I said, and nodded at Gavin, who from the smell of things was baking chocolate chip cookies in the galley. Certain elements of this particular flight are a little too familiar, which means that it has already failed in its mission.

  Its mission?

  To be strange. To be new. To be singular. An airplane journey, I said, should be completely unconnected to past, present, and future. When Heather still looked at me blankly I said, Our friend Gavin? He reminds me too much of a certain waiter.

  Heather looked at Gavin as he flitted back and forth between the bays of the galley. He was wearing a starched white apron smartly knotted at the waist; though unadorned, on Gavin the apron still managed to project the idea of ruffles. Now Heather cleared her throat and sipped at her drink and cleared her throat again, and then she said, What did you do? While he was away, I mean. Laird, I mean. What did you do while Laird was with the waiter?

  Oh, you silly girl. I was the waiter.

  Heather started to rise, then fell back when her seatbelt caught her at the waist. She unfastened it, rose again, then just stood there, swaying gently with the plane’s slight bounce. Her face had paled again, and seemed to have acquired a greenish tint.

  I have to use the restroom, she announced, her voice so loud that everyone in first class turned and looked at her.

  I stood up to let her by. Good luck, I said. Hold on to the headrests to steady yourself, or you’ll never make it.

  Almost as soon as Heather had disappeared into the lavatory, Gavin came out of the galley and walked purposefully towards me. Without bothering to ask, he squeezed past me and sat down in Heather’s seat, practically rubbing his ass in my face in the process.