Chapter Two
two
Lanie
Once Mr. Rude Businessman reclaimed his seat, it was like the bars of a very tiny jail cell closed behind Lanie, trapping her inside. His big body radiated hostility as it blocked out some of the light coming from the aisle. She shifted toward the window, fastening her seat belt. Only then did she remember her mother, still in her back pocket. She eased up, elbowing him accidentally as she retrieved her.
He winced but ignored her.
“Sorry...hello?” Lanie said into her cell.
There was a pronounced exhalation of air on the other end of the call. “Oh my God, I was going to call the airport police! I thought that man had done something to you.”
Lanie rolled her eyes, thankful her mother couldn’t see. She meant well but her mother’s intense aerophobia was possibly worse when it was Lanie flying. “I’m fine. I am on the plane, in my seat,” Lanie reassured.
“Next to that man?”
Lanie cut a glance in his direction, lowering her voice. “Yes.”
“Call me as soon as you land.”
Lanie took a page out of his book, leaning into the window, speaking softly. “If he killed me on the flight, Mom, how would he escape? By parachute? Over the ocean? You watch way too much true crime.”
Her mother chuckled.
“Welcome aboard.” The flight attendant walked by, closing all the overhead compartments. He paused, bending forward into Lanie’s row. “We’re going to have to ask you to turn off all your electronic devices in preparation for takeoff.” An identical message came over the PA system and he gave them a saccharine smile to go along with the unspoken warning.
“Mommy, I gotta go.”
“Fly safe, cupcake.”
“We’re in a very fragile spot now and have to pray this thing doesn’t blow up in our fucking faces!” the man beside her said as if the attendant hadn’t spoken. “Given everything, we’ll be lucky if they don’t launch an inquiry.”
He sighed so heavily Lanie felt a smidgen of sympathy.
“I was hoping to cut down on the number of times I had to come to this damn city.”
The sympathy was short-lived. Her city deserved better than this guy. Good thing he’s heading home. She just wished he wasn’t sitting next to her as he did it.
Lanie took out the emergency landing card from the seatback, following along with the attendant gesturing with fake drop-down masks in the front cabin.
Her seatmate’s shoulders sagged. “I promised Bea.” His voice softened. “I promised her I would be home for her birthday, but the study cannot fall apart because we picked the wrong coinvestigator in New York.” He paused, sounding pained. “And that’s precisely what will happen if David is unable to follow the simplest of instructions.”
Beside her, his voice rose and fell, morphing from enraged chuffing to more resigned sighs. Lanie tried to engross herself in the same illustrations on the laminated card that she’d looked at a million times before. But she caught the moment the flight attendant spied her neighbor, still on his call.
“He’s gonna come back.” Lanie leaned over, whispering the warning.
“Bea will absolutely murder me if I do,” he said to his caller, ignoring her.
The flight attendant wrapped up the safety briefing with his eyes fixed on Lanie’s seatmate. She didn’t know why she cared other than she had visions of him being escorted off the flight in handcuffs. Flight crews had zero tolerance nowadays. She’d seen it with her own eyes. She didn’t always blame them either. And those people didn’t just get arrested anymore. No, now you got put on “no-fly” lists. Despite everything, she couldn’t let a fellow Black person go out like that.
She nudged him as the flight attendant wound the long plastic tubing of the sample drop-down mask around his elbow and started down the aisle in their direction. She did it again, sharper this time.
“Ow!” He turned to regard her with annoyance just as the flight attendant arrived.
“Sir?”
“Yes?” He looked up in surprise, like he’d been called out.
“Federal Aviation Administration regulations state that all electronic devices must be powered down and stowed before we can depart. As I stated previously.” The flight attendant glanced at Lanie.
She flashed him the blank, black face of her phone before placing it back in her lap. He nodded.
“Is your phone off, sir?”
“It is.”
Lanie bit her lip at the lie.
“We were having a conversation,” she corroborated, thumbing between them.
Her seatmate plucked the earbuds out of his ears and made a show of putting them into their little white charging case as the attendant watched.
“Have a great flight. Sir.” The flight attendant smiled peaceably, tapping where his arm rested against the overhead bin, before walking away.
She and her seatmate exchanged the brief smirk of coconspirators. Lanie watched out her window as the plane pushed away from the jet bridge and began taxiing toward the runway. After a while, the plane began its jaunty acceleration down the runway and Lanie’s fingers dug into the armrest as it sped up. Adrenaline-fueled fear and excitement shot through her veins in equal measure, causing her heart to beat wildly as g-forces pushed her back into her seat.
She smiled a little to herself.
It was always like this. Ever since she was a kid. Ever since that very first flight she’d taken at ten years old, to see a grandmother she’d barely remembered and cousins she hadn’t known. Armed only with her Rand McNally atlas, little plastic airplane wings pinned to her chest like a member of the flight crew and the “unaccompanied minor” tag that hung around her neck, Lanie began a love affair with travel that had never ended. She held her breath as the nose rose first, looking out the window as the incline grew. Her smile grew as the back wheels left the ground. And then she whispered her goodbyes to her mother and her friends and, most importantly, her New York as the city spread out beneath her and the plane rose into the clouds.
“Thanks.”
It came very softly, a whisper over her shoulder. Lanie turned to see her seatmate looking directly into her eyes. She gave him a lopsided, closed-mouth smile, before averting her gaze.
“And...I guess, sorry?” he continued.
“For what?” She returned to his rather handsome face. “Running over my foot? Being rude? Or saying the f-word so frequently my ears might need a pregnancy test?”
A stunned silence unfurled between them. The man’s eyes widened, and the corners of his mouth lifted. Then a second later, a big barking laugh cut through the air, attracting the attention of their nearest neighbors. Was there anything that this man did that was small and quiet? Lanie kept up her crooked smile as he sobered.
“Was I really that bad?”
“I mean...” She shrugged. “I might have to go straight to Boots to get some Plan B just in case and, you know, bandages for my injured foot when we land, but...”
That got her another round of chuckles, which she enjoyed. Lanie was at a loss. This guy had been as mean as a mangy dog a minute ago but had now somehow morphed into an easily amused kitten.
He sighed ruefully, shaking his head at himself. “I am not at my best today. I got some very bad news. I’m sorry if you bore any of the brunt of that.” He sank against his seat, deflated.
“Thank you.” Lanie nodded, graciously. “But you probably owe that apology to your colleague on the phone.”
“Dashiell?” he scoffed, waving that idea off. “MacGeraghty’s my friend. He’s accustomed to it.”
Lanie frowned. “More’s the pity for him.”
That got her another smirk. “So, not your first time in the UK, I take it?” he asked after another extended silence that Lanie had used to look at the pillowy cumulus clouds out her window.
“Oh?” She spared him a brief glance.
He leaned in a little. “Since you know about Boots Pharmacy.”
“No, not my first time,” she conceded. “And I do love me some Boots.”
Lanie had spent most of the summers of her life to date in London. But she wasn’t ready to share that. An awkward silence grew between them again until she relented.
“My grandmother lives in Balham.”
She waited for talk of either rough neighborhoods or recent gentrification to commence. Lanie had learned those were two of the most foolproof conversation starters for city-dwellers the world over.
His eyebrows rose. “South London, is it?”
“Yup. You?”
“Oh, I’m from London too.”
Lanie smiled to herself, noting the small evasion. “East, West, North?”
“Uh, West,” he said, still oddly coy.
Lanie briefly nodded, poking out her bottom lip, impressed, she supposed.
“Notting Hill.”
Nice. Now her eyebrows rose. Talk about gentrified .
So, he was probably rich. But from the vibe of him, his muddled British-meets-American accent and all, she could have probably guessed that anyway. It was like saying you lived in the Village in New York—once upon a time it could have meant anything; now it definitely meant money.
“I love that movie.”
“ Everyone loves that movie,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “If I ever meet Hugh Grant, I’m going to sock him in the eye.”
Lanie laughed, longer and harder than the joke probably merited.
“It’s all the damn tourists,” he finished by way of explanation.
“Yeah, I think I got it. Since, you know, I’m from...”
“New York City,” they both said it at the same time as she nodded and he chuckled again, mildly.
“Well, if I had my way, Times Square would be erased from the map,” she admitted.
He pursed his lips and nodded before whispering, “And I think Leicester Square is an eyesore.”
“Don’t get me started on the Empire State Building, I mean 34th Street in general. Ugh.” She upped the ante.
“The Eye. I cannot stand it.”
“Now, hold up, I like the London Eye! Never been on it but it looks fun. Next thing you know, you’ll be marking the Tower of London for demolition.”
“Tourist.” He shook his head in disappointment.
“Watch it now,” Lanie warned, but a smile broke across her face.
“What? Let’s call it what it is—a giant Ferris wheel. What’s the appeal?”
“I like Ferris wheels?”
“That makes one of us.”
“So, you’ve never been on the Wonder Wheel?”
“In Coney Island? I rarely have a chance to leave Manhattan.”
“My God, who’s the tourist now?” Lanie teased.
“Listen...” He dragged the word out as if taking umbrage to that. “I go to New York to work. That’s it.”
“No wonder you think NYC is the pits.”
He grimaced. “You heard that, did you?”
She nodded. “So, are you afraid of the outer boroughs, the subway, taxicabs, heights, what?” Lanie giggled at the absurdity, but then paused when he stopped blinking. “Wait? Are you afraid of heights?”
He didn’t answer. Lanie closed her window shade abruptly and turned in time to see his shoulders drop a little with relief.
“I’m so sorry! You could have asked me to close it before we took off.”
“I don’t usually have to.” Her seatmate shrugged. “I usually request the window so I can control the shades, but this was a rushed ticket. I was only in town overnight. And now I’ve found out I have to be back in a week.” He sighed.
“That’s what the yelling was about?”
He blanched about as much as a cocoa brown man could then nodded. He reached over, very officiously, offering her the massive mitt he called a hand. “Ridley.”
Lanie eyed this hand with reluctance. “They made me check my hand sanitizer. The bottle was too big. Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.” He withdrew his arm swiftly. “You’d think after almost three years I’d be accustomed to that.” He shook his head.
“Honestly, that’s one of the things I’m glad hasn’t made a comeback.” Lanie let a visible shiver run through her. “Handshakes. All those germs, yuck.”
“I know.” He shook his head. “And as a doctor, you’d think I’d know better.”
“Doctor, huh? Well then, you probably should,” she teased as he again looked chagrined.
She nodded, twisting at the waist to offer him an elbow. “Lanie.”
He brought up his own to bump hers awkwardly.
“That’s not really better, is it?” he conceded.
“Hmm, no,” she agreed. “It’s really not.”
They both laughed.