Marilyn Peake - The Other

Juggling suitcases and backpacks, we rushed into the airport terminal, printed out our tickets at the kiosk and checked a few bags. Then we walked as quickly as possible to the security line.

The first TSA person we passed reminded me of a strict librarian. No smile. Her hand covered in a blue glove shot out in front of us. “Tickets.”

I shifted my backpack from one shoulder to the other and fumbled in my pocket for the ticket I’d just shoved in there.

When I looked up, I noticed her staring at me with steely brown eyes. It was a bit unnerving. Gave me the feeling I was a suspected criminal. I tried to shake it off. Her job sucked , I told myself. Maybe she was at the end of her shift, tired and irritable. I smiled and said, “Here you go.”

She took it. She stared at me as though trying to make lasers shoot out of her eyes and snapped an order: “I.D.” She could have asked for that upfront. Pulling the backpack off my shoulder, I unzipped the front compartment and fished out my driver’s license.

Grabbing it, she looked back and forth between me and my picture. I started sweating under my armpits. Did I still look anything at all like that picture? The expressions I had on my face in all my DMV photos—because they took them with something like a half-second warning—were always a cross between deer caught in the headlights and scary grimacing lady. And, oh shit , was that the picture from when I had tried putting rainbow streaks in my hair?

Yup. It was.

Finally handing my papers back to me, she said, “You should get a new photo taken with your present hair color. Otherwise, you’re just asking for trouble.”

I had to bite my tongue to keep from rolling my eyes and saying, “Yes, ma’am, but my middle name is trouble,” in the most sarcastic tone possible. Instead, I just thanked her for her advice and apologized for not doing it sooner. The atmosphere wasn’t normal. The vibe of fear hung in the air as palpable as poison gas.

I waited for Nat to go through the same process.

Waving a blue glove in my direction, steely-eyed librarian said in a tone saturated with annoyance, “Go. Go on.”

There was no way I was going to get separated from Nat. I wanted to make sure we both got on our plane. I said, “We’re together.” That sounded awkward. We weren’t together together; we were just traveling together.

She smirked and turned to Nat. She gave him much less of a hard time.

We had three more sets of TSA inspectors to get through. One at the bottom of an elevator taking us up to the main security checkpoint, one at the actual checkpoint, and one at the place where bags are screened and bodies scanned.

Nat got pulled over for a random testing of his hands and full-body search. I looked away to give him some semblance of dignity. He didn’t seem too bothered by any of it, just seemed like he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

As soon as I stepped through the scanner, the alarm went off. Nine times out of ten, this happened to me. There was always something I hadn’t thought of. This time, it was my cargo pants. Too many metal rivets and zippers in what must have been an overly sensitive machine.

The body search was rougher than anything remotely acceptable. The burly woman patting me down didn’t warn me where she was going to put her hands. She patted me down hard, then grabbed me in the crotch. Bitch! I didn’t have any drugs in there, but I suddenly felt like I could use some.

When we finally got on the plane, I looked through the booze menu. As soon as we took off and were allowed to place orders, I got myself a couple larger bottles of wine. I knew I needed to pace myself. I didn’t want to get sloppy drunk on a business trip with Nat. I ordered some snacks and a movie to pass the time.

Before watching paid entertainment, I turned on cable news. More reports of UFOs. Lots of fear. The sightings this time were over a stretch of forest in Oregon. Most of the sightings were in isolated places. Very hard to verify them and certainly a place where one’s imagination could go wild.

We had a four-hour-and-a-half flight, including a one-hour-and-twelve-minute layover in Phoenix. As soon as the wine came, I poured myself a plastic cupful. It always seemed strange to pour wine into plastic, but they certainly weren’t going to provide wine glasses in steerage class.

Nat ordered coffee. As soon as the stewardess handed it to him, he proceeded to dump two packets of sugar and some fake cream into it.

More tired than I had thought, I slipped into a nap after two cups of wine.

I was awakened by something.

People were looking out the windows on the starboard side of the plane. A bunch of people were standing in the aisle, holding onto the backs of seats, leaning over the people seated there and pointing out the windows.

Every once in a while, a loud gasp erupted from the crowd.

A woman started screaming, “We’ve got to get out of here! Where’s the stewardess? Get the stewardess! Make her tell the pilot to fly in a different direction!”

A man yelled, “Stewardess! Stewardess!”

A steward came hurrying up the aisle from the back section. He said, “We’re talking to the pilot. There’s nothing to worry about. Everyone, please sit down! It’s not safe for you to be standing in the aisle.”

From the back of the plane, a little boy started crying. Between sobs, he shouted, “They’re going to shoot us down with lasers! All the UFOs have lasers, Mommy! Big lasers!”

Then a calming voice, obviously his mother: “Shhhh. It’s OK. These ones don’t have lasers. They’re friendly.”

Nat was standing, leaning into a space between people across the aisle from us, looking intently out the window.

A steward put his hand on Nat’s shoulder and said, “Please sit down, sir.” Then he moved on to the next person, delivering the same order.

Sitting back down, Nat dropped his tray table from its upright position. He grabbed his coffee off my tray where he must have placed it when he got up to take a look.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. I said, “What’s goin’ on? Did you see anything?”

Nat took a sip of coffee, then said, “Just a flash of silver. It could have been anything. Maybe a plane flying too close to us for a brief moment, I don’t know.”

Suddenly, screaming and gasping arose from the passengers again. This time, people stared out the windows on the port side of the plane, where we were seated. A bunch of people from across the aisle stood up and leaned into the open spaces between seats. A young guy in his early twenties wearing a T-shirt with the words The Truth is Out There! emblazoned on the front leaned over Nat and pointed to our window. I had closed the shade before going to sleep, so I could lean my head against it. He said, “Hurry! Open up your window!”

I started to wake up. The words on his T-shirt: an expression from the X-Files . Oh, right. This was a crowd headed for Roswell. Of course , they were going to believe that every metallic flash of light was a UFO.

It’s never good to defy a true believer when they’re revved up with fear. I sighed and opened the shade.

I leaned away from the guy leaning into our space. I peered out into the darkness as Nat moved his cup back over to my tray, so it wouldn’t get spilled.

At first, there was nothing out there except a fog of clouds lit up by the lights from our plane. My guess was that’s all the true believers on our plane saw. Light on the backdrop of the clouds served as a kind of Rorschach illuminating the viewer’s own mind. I saw plane lights and clouds. Others saw alien spaceships.

The longer I stared, the sleepier I felt. There just wasn’t enough out there to capture my interest.