David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Sarah’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen. “Shite, okay, I have to head out. Listen, Lola, when you get your computer back, or with any computer or smartphone you might use in the future, put a piece of black electrical tape over the webcam.”

Leila scrunched her face, like Are you serious?

Sarah’s phone buzzed again, and this time she stood up. “Okay. You know what, Lola? Don’t look directly at any nonhuman lens, okay? The Committee doesn’t have anything like the eye test; it’s not clear that any of them even understand what the Enumerator does. But we fear they’re trying to make something like it. So just never look directly at something that might have a camera in it. Ar eagla na heagla .”

“Air oggla na hoggla?”

“It’s Irish. ‘In the fear of the fear.’ It means ‘just to be on the safe side.’” She was backing out of the little Ikea home. “Let me know when your father’s safe, will you?”

“Yeah. How do I do that?”

Sarah waggled her phone. “You have my number.”

“I do?”

“Don’t you?”

Leila looked hard at Sarah. She did know Sarah’s number. And knowing it, she knew some things about Sarah. The little crush wasn’t for nothing. Sarah was a good woman, kind and fair and fun. Impatient, though, and ill at ease with children. All this Leila knew as if she’d known Sarah for years.

“If the phone won’t let you call, find me through the Dear Diary homepage,” said Sarah, walking away quickly.

“What homepage?” Leila called after her. But Sarah had her phone to her ear again and was talking urgently into it, moving swiftly through a sea of furniture.

How long is the flight to Hong Kong?” Mark asked the SineCo rep.

“Twelve hours,” said the man. “Patel will meet you in Hong Kong and handle you forward.”

Ooh, he was getting handled forward. Maybe Sine Wave was plying the South China Sea. He’d be putting his seat way back and sleeping off that lounge experience. What did she say her name was? Lola Montes, like the dancer. What a fantastic name.

The aircraft they pulled up beside didn’t look to Mark like it could be privately owned. White as dice, without a mark on it save the call letters on its tail. It was an Airbus, he saw as he climbed the stairs that came out of the cylinder of the plane like a lemon wedge. He paused midstairs and looked out at the airport, busy with little trucks.

When Mark was a boy, after his dad left and his world had been halved, his mom bought him a remote-controlled car. Not one of those shitty, plug-in RadioShack ones but a gas-powered racer from a hobby store, with inflatable rubber wheels and a roll cage. For a month of Sundays, she took him to the parking lot of the mall that had been made obsolete by the newer mall, and he ran the crap out of that racer. His mom had to mix the fuel, and she spilled a lot, which made her curse, which she hardly ever did. What fun he had with her on those days. How had she known just what joy the racer would bring? She brought hard-boiled eggs and fruit leather for him, lithium for herself. She set up obstacle courses for his racer with sodden, cast-off sweatshirts and derelict shopping carts. But when he came home one day and, through tears, told her that a ganglet of older boys at school had jacked that gorgeous racer, she just said:

“The world is not a fair place.”

She said it like that, she who always stuck up for him. He was shocked. “You make it fair!” he yelled at her, furious. And she to him: “No, Mark. I can’t. It just isn’t.” And that is how she’d raised him: she’d been doting and fierce, but never promised what she could not deliver. She stepped back from the voids that he saw other mothers race to fill.

Well, maybe it wasn’t fair, thought Mark, but it was sometimes retributive. Those monkey-bar thugs who’d taken his racer were lucky if they could even fly commercial these days. They were probably bent over rented desks or fryolators in parts of America with high cancer rates. Mark knew his mother relished his success, though she had made little comment on Bringing the Inside Out . She stuck his postcards on the door frame and bragged about him in the checkout line; she left magazines folded to his image in the break room at the tire store. And whenever he went home to see her, she’d always say the same thing to him when he left. “Make me proud,” she would say.

He wished she were boarding this plane with him now. Wouldn’t she be proud of him? Wouldn’t she be impressed?

He handed his jacket to the hostess at the top of the stairs and stepped into the cabin. There was room to stand unstooped, and there was a walnut conference table and there were brandy snifters arrayed and secured behind more walnut carpentry. All the seating was in smoky brown leather. And what’s this? He would not be needing to put his seat back, he saw when he walked ten steps aft; there was a bedroom on this airplane. Mark could have pumped a fist, but a hostess was already at his side with a glass of ice water.

“The captain asked me to tell you that we’re just waiting for one more passenger.”

“Very well. Thank you,” he said. Oh, farts . He would not have the place to himself. There might be awkward maneuvering about who got the aft cabin. If it was one of Straw’s main henchmen, Mark would have to be down dog.

He settled himself into one of the single seats, a swiveling leather behemoth; it was like sitting in a gorilla’s lap. He fussed with his satchel and pockets again, tried to hide the fact that he was totally psyched to be on this amazing plane. He wanted to perform a complete reconnaissance — what was the lavatory like? What about the galley? And he had gotten only a peek in that aft cabin. Could you lie down and look out the window?

A guy younger than Mark stepped into the cabin. He was dressed down, but expensive down. He nodded and grunted at Mark as he walked by and made straight for the back of the plane. Shit, thought Mark, but then the guy stopped short of the aft cabin and instead settled in another one of the singles. Mark swiveled in his chair, which allowed him to keep the guy not entirely behind his back. The guy did all the following things in quick succession: removed his shoes and put on fat socks; buckled his seat belt; squidged foam plugs into his ears; slipped a sleep mask over his eyes and noise-canceling headphones over his ears. Then, in seconds, his shoulders went slack and his lower jaw dropped a bit. One of the hostesses collected his shoes from beneath him. The other one was retracting the lemon-wedge stairs.

Mark committed himself to some conscious relaxation; he slowed his breathing and heavied his limbs. Tried to feel his muscles and his bones, the working machine of him. The jet rolled forward into the little dance line of Heathrow. He wondered whether driving a plane on the ground was like driving a car. It was probably not at all like driving a car. When the roar happened and the aircraft sprang forward as if to escape its own metal self, Mark was at the lip of sleep. He let himself be tucked in by the g-force, pushed firmly into the huge seat and into a dream.

He woke because someone had slipped a woolen sock in his mouth. No. No woolen sock. Terrible thirst. Dry mouth . He smacked his lips and reached for the ceiling nozzle dousing him with cold dry air. But someone was holding him down, pinning him in the seat. No, that’s a seat belt. And the seat is reclined . A hostess was quickly at his side. Wordlessly, she directed his hand to the controls hidden in the armrest beneath a flap of upholstered leather. With the buttons, she sphinctered down the cold-air nozzle and began to unrecline his seat.