Up in the Air

“Not at all. Bring her up. I’ll move my things.”

“She’s flying through to Reno.”

“Send her up.”

I form first impressions more quickly than other people. The woman’s sense of space is complicated; her every movement seems to be a choice between precisely two alternatives, one wholly right, the other completely wrong. She pauses, and in her pause she weighs decisions, rising halfway from her seat, then all the way, rotating her shoulders and then her neck, each action acute and separate, like an insect’s. It’s not unattractive, the way she stops and starts, but it speaks of a certain painful doubleness, as though she once suffered a paralyzing accident and had to retrain her muscles through therapy. I was in such an accident myself once, though the damage it caused is not for me to judge.

Instead of letting her past me to the window seat, I scoot over one space, my briefcase on my lap. After being trapped beside the drunk, the woman will want an open exit path.

“That jerk,” she says.

“They’re everywhere these days.”

“I’m afraid I attract them. I must send out some signal.”

“It’s the luck of the draw. We’re seated by computer.”

So here we are. It’s all decided now: in what tone of voice we’ll converse, how close we’ll sit, how far we’ll delve into each other’s stories. Such negotiations happen quickly—they’re over before you’re aware they’ve even begun, and everything that follows between two strangers just extends this instant contract. We’ve already faced a common foe, the drunk, and established our superior humanity, but that will be the sum of it, I’ll wager. Our vectors are fixed: ever onward, parallel, but fated not to touch or cross. Romance needs conflict, a collision course, but we’ve been doomed to agreement, to empathy.

She’s not the one. The list grows ever shorter. We’ll joke and kid, we’ll discover odd affinities, but it’s over between us, and I’m relieved.

“They shouldn’t have served him. He boarded stinking,” she says. “I thought the FAA had rules on that.”

“They’re only enforced in economy and coach. Welcome to the jungle.”

“I’m Alex.”

“Ryan.”

Alex, I’d guess, is an artist of some kind, though not the highbrow type that I dislike. She works on contract. She’s learned to sell herself. Her ugly glasses are the giveaway; their dark, chunky frames, which are just this side of dowdy, have an ironic, thrift-shop quality meant to convey independence and eclecticism. Before CTC, when I still did marketing, I worked with graphic designers from time to time; accessories meant everything to them. They’d wear a burlap sack for pants if they could find a cute belt to hold it up.

“Going to Reno for work or for the action?”

She frowns. “The action?”

“The gambling,” I say. I can see that Alex doesn’t bet, but I sense she regards herself as a free spirit. She’ll be flattered that I could mistake her for a player.

“No, but I’d love to learn. I like the craps tables. All the backchat, all the jabbering. I’m here on work—I coordinate events.”

“Weddings?”

“Also conventions and benefits. Instant ersatz ambience my specialty.”

I contemplate two responses to this comment, which, thanks to Verbal Edge, I understand. One: I’ll warn her against maligning her work. It seems adult and witty, yes, but go too far and the joke will be on you. Two: I’ll laugh. I’ll let her mock herself until she becomes depressed in earnest, and then I’ll weigh in with a pep talk and sage advice based on my work with redundant executives who minimized the value of their jobs until the day they lost them and broke down bawling or drove to the river and swallowed a hundred Advils. I’d guess her age as twenty-eight or so, the point when working women first taste success and realize they’ve been conned. A crucial moment—it’s when the ache sets in. Sometimes it leads to marriage and a family. Sometimes it spurs devotion to a cause. Men reach this point, too, of course, but it seldom results in major changes. That’s how it happened for me in my late twenties, when it dawned on me that CTC was not just a temporary assignment. I weighed my alternatives, convinced myself I had none, and here I am—subsisting on smoked almonds, chasing miles.

I laugh with her. Run yourself down, go on ahead.

“I’m doing a benefit for an interim senator. The wife of the guy who died water-skiing.”

“Nielsen.”

“Widowhood with a purpose, that’s my theme. Grays and golds for a color scheme. The food? Rare prime rib, I’m thinking. All that blood. Sacrifice and renewal. Martyrdom.”

“Complicated work.”

“It’s textbook, actually.”

This statement offends me; it’s subtly disrespectful. Alex doesn’t yet know my occupation, but I doubt that she takes me for a neurosurgeon or someone whose work is more challenging than hers. So if she’s just a hack, an uninspired grunt, then what does that make me—this man with a standard-issue side-part, wearing a lightweight navy travel suit and synthetic-blend odor-resistant stay-up socks.

“What’s textbook about it?”

“It’s just so middle-class.”