Fiction

A Story He May Someday Tell Someone Else

A minute later, they are sitting together, one empty seat between them, and an eight-hour flight ahead of them.

The shuttle arrives at New York JFK airport way too early. She knew it would happen. Better safe than sorry, she says to herself while getting off and waiting for the driver to get her baggage.

It’s busy there and all seats seem to be occupied. She finally finds a free one at the very back of the lounge and reluctantly takes it. She is not comfortable, as the gate is to her back and she will have to be turning around a lot to make sure she does not miss the call for passengers to board.

She draws out her iPad and starts working, but at the same time, she can’t avoid observing the people that sit in front of her, right across the aisle. One of them is an old man with long white hair and a mustache, who seems to be drawing something on a pad he holds on his lap. The next time she looks up, the man lowers his eyes and continues drawing, and she can’t get rid of a feeling that he might be drawing her.

Next to him, there’s a blonde guy in his forties with unsettling blue eyes that look really sad. He seems to be people watching as well, and at one moment she sees him laugh to himself at something he has seen behind her. At another moment he engages in a short conversation with an old woman and a kid next to him and she can hear him say “gracias” with an accent that must be American.

He gets up soon and she loses sight of him, but his unsettling sad eyes linger in her imagination, and she tries to guess who he might be — a burnt-out university professor, who has recently resigned from his job? Or maybe he has just lost someone to a long-lasting illness?

She keeps working for a while, but the next time she turns back to the gate she sees people being called by their names and decides to move closer, as she can’t hear it clearly from afar. There are no seats available closer to the gate, and she stands next to the boarding area, trying to hear if her name is being called out when she spots the same guy waiting right on the other side.

When the boarding starts, she heads to the queue that corresponds to her boarding group on the ticket. She is one of the first to arrive, and only seconds later, the same guy appears in the queue right behind her. She is aware of his presence, and she half turns, as if to watch people boarding, so that she can get another glimpse of him. She can see he is indeed holding a blue US passport in his hands. A few minutes later he makes a joke about the messy boarding situation. They laugh together.

“There’s always a show,” she says.

“Indeed,” he laughs, “maybe that’s what we are paying for.”

“True,” she says. “At least you know you will always get something new.”

They laugh again, commenting on the chaos around them, and then it’s time for them to board as well. They split to pass the control, but they are back together once again on their way to the plane.

“Do you live in Spain?” she asks.

“No, I’m from Virginia,” he says. “I’m traveling to Tenerife for vacation for a week. What about you?”

“I do live in Spain,” she says. “It’s been eleven years now. Time really flies. My vacation was New York — I joined my husband there, while he was working.”

“I’m Robert, by the way,” he says, and she repeats her Lithuanian name to him a few times before he can pronounce it correctly.

He asks her where she is from, and in the meantime, she gets a glimpse of his boarding card and can see that he’s on row 27, exactly the same row as her, just on the other aisle. She doesn’t mention it to him, and they split again when they enter the plane, and then meet again when they both reach the same row. They are laughing out loud now, greeting each other once again, as if they have just met after a very long time.

“They will all get tired of us speaking,” he says, showing at the two still empty seats next to him, at the center of the cabin.

“Maybe we should switch seats to save your neighbors,” she says, but they laugh it off and do not pursue it further.

When the boarding is over, it’s only him and another girl at the center of the cabin, no one has occupied the middle seat. He turns to her and gestures for her to switch seats with the other girl in the center. In the end, she does ask the girl to switch, and the girl agrees. A minute later, they are sitting together, one empty seat between them, and an eight-hour flight ahead of them.

Even though they are not alone on the plane, it somehow feels they are in the confined space of their seats. They start by talking about the movies, looking at the screens in front of them, commenting on the available options, avoiding each other’s eyes and the sudden intimacy of the situation. Then it’s their jobs, study years, living abroad, politics, travel, the weird-looking guy at the airport who he now confirms was sketching her all the time. When they talk about the Soviet Union and then Lithuania and Russia, he picks up on her story and starts telling her one of his own.

Alina was a young Russian jazz singer in a band that worked in a hotel in Qatar, where he traveled often for work. When he tells her about the last Friday they had seen each other, she can almost see the bar full of Saudi businessmen dressed in thobes, busy with their conversations, or working on their laptops, while the hired jazz band tries to entertain the public. She can see the setting of the bar, and the secluded lonely high table on the right, where Robert sits, watching Alina, when she gets on the stage, takes in a few deep breaths to get herself ready, turns to Robert, and starts singing. There is no one behind him in that part of the bar, and he knows Alina is singing the song to him. She can see her taking him out for a dance, her blue necklace so beautiful even in the dim light of the bar. She can hear them talk in bits and pieces of her broken English and his broken Russian.

She is watching his face, and she knows he is living that last meeting again, oblivious to her presence, his eyes seeing and not seeing her at the same time. And she knows from all the colors, all the details of the setting of the bar he has described to her, all the pieces of the conversation that he has told her about, that what is happening right now between them will also be inscribed in his memory in the same visual and explicit way, that he will be able to conjure her years later, sitting there watching him in her unkempt purple blouse with holes in it, her messy hair, her worn off socks that she is hiding underneath the blanket, suddenly aware of how unready she is for this situation.

The dinner has already been served, and it’s dark in the cabin now. Most of the passengers around them are sleeping. They too have turned off the lights of the screens in front of them, leaving only the one of the empty seat between them. They don’t intend to sleep though. They have both turned in their seats so they can see each other while they talk, and their faces are lit by the eerie light of the screen. They are aware of each other’s physical presence, they don’t avoid eye contact anymore, and their hands almost touch a few times during the conversation. She watches his hands that frequently reemerge from the dark when he speaks. There is a black spot on one of his nails and she wonders how he must have hurt himself to get that mark. She is aware that he is also watching her fingers, the absence of her wedding ring, the absence of the imaginary border she thought she had built when she had mentioned her marriage. She watches how his left hand touches his face every time he tries to remember something, how he averts his eyes as if to observe a scene somewhere right above her that is invisible to her, how his lips purse into a half-smile when he tells her another one of his stories.

She knows now why his eyes look sad and unsettling — he is still living those stories as if they are happening again and again, right in front of his eyes. He can see them perfectly, years later — how the girl he met while reading on the night train in Copenhagen was dressed, how she invited herself to his place, how she stood naked in front of him in the shower, how he kept meeting her at all the odd hours on the train or anywhere else in the city, the ingredients he used when he cooked that last dinner for her, the colors of the salad, the warmth of her body pressed to his at the dinner table. He fell for all the girls he is telling her about. He has never fallen out with any of them.

The lights are back on now, the breakfast has been served and the airplane will start its descent soon. Intimidated by the light, as if it has suddenly exposed how intimate they had become in those few hours of the flight, they turn back to the screen between them, looking for something to distract them from the proximity they have created. They play trivia a couple of times, and when they finally answer all the questions correctly and “win” the million, they high-five each other, and their hands take a fraction of a second longer to detach than they should have.

He has to catch an immediate connecting flight to Tenerife, and she has to get her baggage, so they know there is no way for them to extend their meeting. He jokes about her going with him to Tenerife, about a spare room in his flat, and they laugh, knowing that he is only half-joking about it.

Out of the plane, they walk together to passport control in the airport, where she waits with him in the immigration queue, although she doesn’t have to go through it. When his turn comes, she follows him to the booth.

“Are you traveling together?” asks the officer, taking his passport.

He looks back and sees her standing behind him. Their eyes meet for an instant, and he turns back to the officer.

“No,” he says.

“Then you have to wait behind the line,” the officer says, pointing at her.

“We got to know each other on the plane,” she hears him explain it, while she’s stepping back, embarrassed, their very first conversation replaying itself in her head. Someone else must be laughing now and saying “there’s always a show”, only it’s her this time who seems to have never traveled before.

He waits for her on the other side of the passport check, and they keep on walking hastily. They catch the satellite tram that takes them to the baggage area, and that’s where they know they have to part ways. She laughs it off, saying it’s not a goodbye, that they have missed the chance to have a glass of wine together on the plane, so they will have to make up for it someday. He agrees although they both know it’s not going to happen. They hug for a few seconds, and when they release each other, he embraces her again. They stand there, for what seems a long time, holding each other’s bodies, finally tangible, watching people pass by in haste, feeling their own blood rush with sudden desire. They pull apart. He holds her hand for a moment, and when they look at each other, she sees herself reflected in his eyes, and she knows she has now become permanently engraved in them, a story he may someday tell someone else.

She lets go of his hand and walks away. He is gone by the time she looks back.

Thank you for reading my story. If you enjoyed it, you may want to read the second part here: