Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

“Your head hurting?” Smith asked and knelt in front of him, staring into his eyes. “Did you get checked by anybody?”

“What time is it?” Max asked, wondering how many hours delinquent he was in telling his wife that she was not a widow.

“One o’clock,” Smith said and then added: “P.M.”

“One o’clock…?” Max was confused. The crash had happened at about twelve.

Smith understood. “One o’clock, Wednesday afternoon.”

He was a day delinquent. Max shut his eyes and the redesign of the Zuckerman patio flowed away from the boxy Cape, easing your eye toward a fantasized and improbable garden. In fact, everything Linda Zuckerman touched seemed to wither and die. He wished the things he drew were never built and never seen by his customers. What both his clients and his pencil imagined was always more satisfying than the compromise of their finished constructions.

“Mr. Klein,” Agent Smith tapped him on the knee. “Can I ask you something?” Max opened his eyes. Smith’s right eye was bloodshot and he sounded as if he had a head cold. Max nodded. “What the hell are you doing here, man? You walked away from that crash, rented a car and drove here? Why?”

Max’s eyes filled. He tried to hold the tears back, ashamed to cry in front of these very grown-up men. The image of the end had returned: twisted metal and lifeless bodies carried across the runway. Under the bright sun, the colorless concrete had pained his eyes. “They were starting to line them up,” Max mumbled. “They line up the corpses and tag them—” And they gather the scattered body parts, such as Jeff’s head, until all the broken pieces are put together again. He knew from watching CNN, he knew from the harsh magazine photos, he knew from years of accident voyeurism. “They didn’t need me anymore,” Max said.

“Mr. Klein,” Smith said softly. “Why don’t you come with us? We’ll get ahold of your people and get you home.”

“You’re not going to arrest me?”

“You haven’t done anything,” Agent Parsons said.

That’s what they think, Max answered silently.

He was taken to a hospital first. “I’m all here,” he told them, but they made sure anyway, X-raying and poking, evidently amazed by his wholeness.

“No concussion.” A woman doctor who looked as if she were only slightly older than his ten-year-old son. “But he’s definitely suffering from some sort of posttrauma reaction.”

“He’s in shock?” Agent Smith.

Max listened. While they discussed him his legs dangled on the examining table. His behind crinkled the light blue sanitary paper that covered it.

“No,” the child doctor said low, trying to whisper. “He’s having a stress reaction.”

I’m still high, you dummy, Max thought and giggled. The doctor raised her eyebrows to Agent Smith about the giggle with the air of a lawyer who had established the proof of his case.

The government men phoned the airline. Why the airline? Max wondered. It made the company seem very important, as if Transcontinental Corporation were the highest authority in the United States. Agent Smith asked him whether he wanted to call home.

“You do it,” he said. “Tell my wife I’m free.”

“What?” Agent Smith asked.

“I mean, fine. I’m fine and fancy-free.”

They put him in a darkened area, with a curtain drawn all around, something in between an examining room and a hospital bed. There was classical music playing through a speaker in the wall. He lay down and slept.

“Hello,” a freckled face said and smiled brightly, mouth wide, teeth showing white for a few seconds and then going out, like a camera’s flash. “Sorry to wake you. It’s about three-thirty now. You’re still at the hospital in Pittsburgh. I’m Cindy Dickens from Transcontinental Air. I’m here to help get you home. How do you want to go? We’ll arrange any flight or transportation you like. I’m sorry. You look tired. Can I get you some coffee?”

He felt much better for the nap. She got him coffee. Cindy watched him drink. When he was done he felt he had his brain back in residence. He asked Cindy if his family had been informed.

“Oh yes. We had someone from the New York office go personally to your home and give them the good news. We offered to fly them here but they said—”

“That it’s time for Max to come home,” he completed the statement for her.

For a moment Cindy’s performance of a human being was paused; she peered out into the audience like a puzzled actress wondering who had heckled her. She seemed about to ask a conversational question and then switched back to her efficient checklist: “Should I get you on the next flight to New York?”

Max waited for his terror of flying to appear in his head — but it didn’t come. His thoughts were merely practical. For the first time in his life he considered only how to get somewhere quickly, not safely. “Sure. Do I get to go first class?”

Cindy cocked her head to one side and a smile appeared briefly, but she answered in her role’s neutral tone: “All complimentary, sir, of course. May I book you on Transcontinental Air?”

“Definitely,” Max said. “And can I have some more coffee?” Caffeine increases the anxiety response of people who are fearful, a phobia specialist had once told Max. Before yesterday’s flight, Max had avoided any beverage with caffeine. He had drunk herbal tea instead of coffee at breakfast, ginger ale rather than Coke in the airport lounge.

That had helped a whole lot, hadn’t it?

Max laughed; Cindy skipped back a hop, startled. She had a very slight, almost nonexistent figure. She wore a gray suit, a pink shirt, and a partially tied yellow cravat. Max fantasized she would be wildly passionate if only you could unbutton her jacket and vest before she had a chance to call the police. Max was draped on a cot. Cindy had turned on the light. Max saw that he was in some sort of resting area, maybe for the residents, judging by the lockers and stuff right outside his curtained area. He was bare-chested, his jeans rumpled, his legs spread, vulnerable and emotionally disheveled. Cindy not only wore her suit for armor, she carried a fake leather folder stuffed with formal papers that she could take out and consult to avoid looking at Max’s sensual posture and emotional nudity. Max took the time to study Cindy’s legs, or what he could tell about them from the knee-length skirt and black stockings. They were thin and finely formed, her ankles as delicate as a bird’s. He didn’t think that sexy, although he admired its abstract beauty.

“They sent you here alone?” Max asked.

“Excuse me?” Cindy was writing on one of her papers.

“TransCon Air. They sent you alone?”

“Actually, someone else is supposed to be here,” Cindy finished writing. “I don’t know what’s happened to Mike,” she mumbled and then spoke up: “I’m going to make the arrangements. I’ll be right back.”

Cindy accompanied Max to the airport in a limousine. He found it all interesting and comfortable: the interior of the limo and the new sights en route. At the terminal Cindy told Max another airline employee would be seated next to him on the plane. “His name is William Perlman. He’s had a lot of experience with people who’ve been through what you’ve been through. You’ll like him, he’s a great guy.”

Max was impressed. He thought: They found a Jew in the baggage pile to keep me company.

Cindy asked Max once again if he wanted to phone his wife before boarding.

“Do you know my wife?” Max asked, trying to figure out why she was so insistent. They were heading toward the gate. The telltale, usually unsettling smell of burning kerosene fuel penetrated the glass windows. In the distance a big-bellied 747 stumbled upward into a curved blue sky.