The plane angled downward, signally the nearness of Denver. It was a slight and gentle angling but it was enough to bring mister Tinére out of his sleep. He flexed his toes inside his cognac wingtips and inhaled the stale cabin air deeply and unsatisfactorily. He looked out the small window at the floor of white. This view always excited him despite the myriad of flights he’d taken. If the weather was good, the clouds were bright and thick enough that you thought you could land the plane on them and step out onto the floor of Heaven itself. The weather was always good up here.
Flakes of frost had formed on the window and caught the sunlight like glitter. Mister Tinére’s gaze shifted down and left. The girl in the window seat was also admiring the skyscape, and wouldn’t notice his looking down her blouse. She was young and beautiful and he could see the top edge of the pale yellow brasserie she wore as his mind wandered in fantasy. Her chest rose with a breath as she turned to him, and he surreptitiously directed his eyes back to Heaven.
“Almost home” she said in a dry, tired voiced that matched her eyes. She had been sleeping too.
“You’re almost home,” Tinére said with a playful bitterness. “I still have my layover to get through.” She was returning to school as a senior. He had forgotten her degree from their introductions, but he remembered enough that it was unimpressive, and he didn’t respect her for it. Tinére was flying through, returning from business, following up with a comedian in Austin whom his employer back in LA wanted to book for his show.
He quite liked travelling for his work—not the travelling itself, but the escape it offered, using the opportunity to enjoy the company of other women, often contriving fictional identities when meeting them. It stoked his confidence to get a new woman to fall in love with him—or someone that resembled him—even if just for a night. To Vanessa back home he was no longer mysterious; she saw and knew all of him from their two years together. To her it was stability and trust, but to Tinére it was stagnancy and lacking.
A jolt of turbulence shook the plane violently and rows one through twenty-three took a nervous breath in. It calmed for a short time and then jerked again hard. A few hands reached for the safety placards in their seat back pockets—something to distract them and tell them how to act in the unexpectedness. A lapped infant awoke and started wailing. Tinére turned to make a joke to the girl, but they rattled again as though they were hitting speed bumps too fast. Out the window, they were in the midst of the clouds now, which had darkened menacingly from their sunny tops. The red lights on the wing tips bounced and flexed and seemed they would snap off. Surely they would.
Again the cabin shook. The defiant passengers that had ignored the prior announcement put up their tray tables and buckled their belts. Nervous eyes looked around. Everyone was awake now. A strong side wind from the east was playing with the aircraft—or so the captain had announced—and now the resting state was a constant rumble punctuated by jarring bumps and steep falls that played with everyone’s stomach. The intensity of the turbulence grew steadily as they descended into the thickness of the storm, and desperate eyes tried to grasp onto something reassuring. But out the windows was only tumult, and the flight attendants in the aft were tightening their own belts.
The captain came on the loudspeaker and recited an explanation in an ineffectively masked panic. Eyes returned to the windows. The white had turned to a dark grey that reflected the anxiety of the shaken flyers. At least there was some light. Perhaps it would be worse at night. At night when only the lights on the wings could be seen and you didn’t know how close to the ground you were as long as you were in the cloud, and you pitied the pilot for having to fly through it and prayed his instruments and the tower would make it easy for him. Tinére felt vulnerable flying at night, especially over water, and hated the pilots for having the only control of his life in those situations. Better them than me though, he supposed.
Boom. Again. Fear was yielding to anger. These damned pilots! Why would they let us fly in this weather? Boom! The captain spoke again, this time not recited, and louder over the noise of the cockpit. Beeps and the whirring of instruments carried on underneath the announcement, to which no one could pay attention. And fear returned.
“Folks, we’re just uh, trying to get out of this nasty side-wind here. Make sure your seatbelts are securely fastened and tr—”
The plane dropped. Not in the gentle angling that softly woke Tinére up earlier, but in a free-fall against the will of the engine. The jets on the wings hit a patch of low pressure and lost their traction. The cabin fell a quarter mile straight down and to the passengers it took an age to catch again.
This it is, Tinére thought as they plummeted. The plane is going to crash. How could it not in this damned wind? And with these damned pilots! There was a helpless certainty to it. He wondered if it would hurt when they hit. He wondered if he would die. He wondered if it would hurt when he did die, and then he became helplessly afraid. He heard praying throughout the cabin that evoked more fear in him. Don’t bring God to this; He can’t help, Tinére thought. He envied those people with religion because they must not fear death. Death was nothing to them. They were privileged and lucky and he was bitter and indignant, and he coveted what they had. Oh God, let me live. If you’re up there, let me live, oh, God! I know I’m not good but let me live. I’ll be better, I promise, oh God, just let me live! I’ll stop cheating on Vanessa, I’ll give to charity, I’ll do anything! Oh God just let me live!
The plane fell through the cloud, the wind kicking it this way and that as they sank. Swelling prayers that started as mumblings cut through the shrieks of infants, and the young girl next to him was sobbing hysterically, no longer beautiful but the paragon of desperation. Tinére felt the same way, but he didn’t know how he looked. He didn’t care. His body was frozen and his mind was racing with repentance. There was a lot he’d done in his life to regret and his time to apologize for it was waning fast. We had to be close to the ground now; we’ve been falling for ages.
The plane caught and the collect stomachs of the flyers dropped back down from their throats. They bounced off a cushion of air and returned to the rough rumble as before the free-fall. It was shaking them side-to-side and rattling the passengers’ heads in unison above the tops of the seats. Then another jolt, and they had landed.
Out the window the clouds that had threatened their lives were low and dark, but not nearly as malicious as they were from their interior. The relief of solid ground was palpable onboard. The infants continued their crying and their mothers began their own out of respite. The girl in the window seat was breathing fast and had stopped crying but was too shocked to wipe the tears from her cheeks. She was becoming beautiful again.
Prayers of gratitude filled the cabin, but for Tinére, his brief moment of faith had passed. It had completely left his mind. All he thought now was selfish gratitude for having more time in his life. He could now continue to make more money, buy more things, and continue philandering. The instant the wheels touched down, a switch had flipped within him and there was no thankfulness—only excitement for the future.
They taxied to the gate and disembarked, and Tinére left all his bargained, repentant promises onboard, along with his trash, in his seat back pocket.