The weather had worsened the following day, an icy sleet driven horizontal by the wind. The plane sat on the tarmac for longer than expected, and when it finally began to taxi there was an uncomfortable silence. JJ was uneasy with the whole thing but bemused too that no one was saying out loud what they were all thinking: that it was crazy to take off in these conditions, that the plane would crash.
The silence became breathable as the plane built speed, as the nose lifted, the stomach-tugging pull away from the ground. They were climbing steeply but it felt like they weren’t going fast enough, and then for a moment the wind seemed to buffet them, knocking the plane to one side with a judder, throwing the engines into a sickening whine. Still the other passengers remained quiet, but he could feel them clenching their armrests just as hard as he was.
Within a few minutes it was all over. The plane continued climbing but less steeply, its course smoothened, the cabin slowly returning to the business of flying. People began to speak, conversation and laughter spilling out as they let off steam. The middle-aged guy next to him was polishing his glasses frantically and said in JJ’s direction, “Makes you count your blessings, doesn’t it?”
He smiled but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure what his blessings were—that he was a twenty-eight-year-old history graduate who’d somehow managed to end up killing people for a living, that he was alive himself for the time being, that in some small intangible way he was beginning to fall through the cracks. Maybe it would have been a blessing if the plane had crashed.
The guy finally put his glasses back on and said, “My wife won’t fly at all; she was in a plane crash once.” JJ turned to look at him, showing interest. “Oh, not a serious one. The plane overshot the runway into a field. Not a crash really, an incident, but one of the passengers was killed. Something fell from a luggage locker and hit him.”
JJ nodded. “Some people die really easily.”
“That’s true. Yet some seem to survive almost anything.”
He nodded again and let it drop, but that was true as well; some people did take a lot of killing.
Farther up the plane one of the flight attendants was crouching talking to a passenger. He could hear her say, “The plane really wasn’t in any danger.” Her voice was familiar. When she stood and turned, smiling, he blanked for a second but then remembered where he knew her from. As she walked toward him he caught her eye. She smiled back, not recognizing him.
“Hello, Aurianne.” Her smile faltered, looking puzzled at the edges. He laughed, adding, “We met skiing one weekend last winter.”
She grinned at the explanation and said, “I don’t believe it! JJ. I didn’t recognize you.”
“No. Different environment.”
She looked, her eyes mischievous. “Why didn’t we swap numbers?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and she answered herself, “I thought we were bound to run into each other in Geneva. It’s strange how we haven’t, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. We both seem to travel a lot.”
Someone called her farther down the aisle. Aurianne looked away, saying, “I’ll be back.” After she’d gone he could sense the guy next to him itching to say something, but JJ didn’t turn, didn’t give him license.
He was thinking about the weekend they’d met, how they’d hit it off, how they’d kissed late on the Saturday night but only kissed, a sure sign they’d expected to see more of each other. He couldn’t remember why they hadn’t. Possibly he’d taken for granted too that they would bump into each other again, or perhaps nine months before the need hadn’t been strong enough.
It was a while before Aurianne got back to him, but she threw him knowing glances every time she passed. She was pretty. He liked her mouth and her eyes—dark laughing eyes, full of fun. He even liked the way she looked on duty, her hair pulled back, her uniform offering hints of what lay beneath.
When she eventually came back it was only to apologize for being so busy. Then she said, “Do you have plans for dinner tonight?”
“I feel I’m about to.”
She grinned again. “Good. Speak to you later.”
Still aware of the guy next to him, JJ leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, not wanting to speak inanities.
He thought about the trip which, when it all stacked up, hadn’t been that bad. There’d been a couple of inconveniences, the usual things around the periphery, but the job itself had gone smoothly, and now there was this, bumping into Aurianne. He’d still hassle Viner about the information though, partly for the hell of it but partly to keep him on his toes, because this time it had been a prostitute but the next it would be a bodyguard and then a whole militia.
2
Paris, September, two years later