“Wait,” she whimpers, a faint bleat that barely escapes her lips. “Mom, wait. I’m awake.”
It occurs to me that my blank slate is an outrageous luxury. My terror of losing it seems pathetic when I think of Julie’s dreams. I fight my past because it’s a wild animal creeping into my clean house, but Julie has spent her whole life sleeping next to hers, its hot breath on her neck, its bloody drool on her sheets.
I drape a second blanket over her shoulders, just in case. The air is cold. Icy upper atmosphere mixed with vintage oxygen from the plane’s tanks. A strange feeling, breathing the air of another era, imbued with the sounds and smells of a world long gone. I wander down the aisle, running my hand over the soft leather of the business-class seats. These seats once cradled the world’s rich and powerful. Not the richest or most powerful—those had private planes and private smirks and metal briefcases full of secrets—but the ones who could afford to pay double for a little extra distance from humanity. Wherever they are now, if any survived the world’s shift from plutocracy to kratocracy, their presence lingers in the indentations in these seats. The hairs and skin cells in the carpet. The echoes of their voices, call me anytime . . .
I shake my head and blink hard and focus on the window, on my feet, on—
“Archie?” M says in a quiet rumble. “You okay?”
He is slouched low in a reclined seat, apparently just waking from a pleasant nap. Nora is asleep against the window two seats away, curled into a fetal ball like Julie.
“Fine.” I start to walk past him, further into the plane, but he holds out a hand.
“Don’t fight it.”
I stop. “What?”
“You make it a fight, you’ll lose. Doesn’t have to be a fight.”
I give him a level stare. “Yes it does.”
“Just memories. How bad could it be?”
“Don’t know. Don’t want to.”
He smiles. “Archie. Always so dramatic.”
I glare at him. “My name’s not Archie.”
He upturns his palms, genuinely puzzled. “Why not? Good a name as any.”
“Made up for Grigio. So he’d think I was normal. It’s a lie.”
He shrugs. “It’s a name.”
I shake my head and look at the floor. “A name should have meaning. A story. A thread to people who love you.”
I glance up. His smile is trembling like he’s fighting laughter. “Lover boy,” he says. “So complicated.”
I walk away, wishing the first-class cabin had a door instead of a curtain so I’d have something to slam.
I roam to the rear of the plane. A delicate snore alerts me to Sprout stretched across a row of seats, her little head poking out through a pile of blankets. She’ll be like me someday. She’s already halfway there at six years old, the furrowed brow, the lofty goals and worldly worries. I don’t know whether to be proud of her or afraid for her.
There are times when I miss being mindless. Moments when I wonder if consciousness is a curse. Are blunt minds truly happier than sharp ones, or do they just travel smaller peaks and valleys? A flat line of lukewarm contentment, immune to despair but incapable of rapture? This is what I tell myself when I’m faced with untroubled folk. I tell myself over and over.
The sun finally crests the horizon and the windows restrict its light into fat golden beams that cut through the cabin, lighting up the dust. Another fine summer morning. We should be getting close.
I open the bathroom door to check on my kids and find them upright and alert, holding their Carbtein close to their faces like the cubes contain the mysteries of the universe. I am thrilled to notice they’ve been nibbled.
Joan looks up at me with clear focus in her gray-brown eyes, and I wonder what shape her line takes. It’s certainly not flat. These kids have known trouble. Their lines soar and plunge, from almost-life to pseudo-death and perhaps now back up again. But why this oscillation? Three months ago, when they peeked out of their grave, what didn’t they find? What disappointment sent them back to bed? What are they waiting for?
Their attention drifts away from me and settles on the bathroom wall. They stare at it like it’s a window, like they’re enjoying a first-class view of the sunrise instead of the gray fiberglass of their shit-stained jail.
“Our friend,” Joan says.
“Your friend?” I repeat, hoping to seize this thread and draw her further out. “Who’s your friend?”
“Goldshine,” she says, turning around to give me the first smile I’ve ever seen on her face. “Sunboy.”
“Far away,” Alex says. “Lonely.” There’s an eerily nuanced unhappiness in his voice, not just personal sadness but empathy. Compassion.
“Help us call?” Joan pleads with me. “Tell him to follow?”