Chapter Five
“Something to drink?” the flight attendant asked, stalwart in her cheer despite the storm raging outside.
Landon gripped the armrest a little tighter.
In moments like these, when his panic threatened to get the best of him, Rose always knew what to do to soothe him.
She would tap her fingers on his palm in a predictable rhythm, the tap, tap, tap, just enough to keep the fear at bay.
Used to, he reminded himself. She used to.
That version of her felt as far away as the young woman with lipstick on her teeth he’d met fourteen years ago. Maybe farther.
“Whisky,” Landon said, his teeth so tight the headache was already coming on. “And Coke.” The plane tilted to the right and Landon flinched, heart racing.
“It’s okay,” the flight attendant said. “We wouldn’t be out here in the aisle serving drinks if it wasn’t.”
As if on cue, the intercom crinkled with a curt “Flight attendants, please be seated.”
The flight attendant made a face at him. “That’s just so drinks don’t go flying.” Landon found that he didn’t have the mental fortitude to respond.
“You might consider slipping him a second whisky, just in case we’re going down,” said the man in the middle seat next to Landon.
The flight attendant tsked at him, then slid two little bottles of Jack Daniel’s into Landon’s seat pocket.
The lights flickered, and she heaved the metal cart down the aisle and out of sight, cans of juice and soda clanking.
“You don’t fly much?” asked the man.
“More than you might think,” Landon forced through gritted teeth.
He turned his head slightly, enough to catch the man’s eye.
“I really hate to ask this, but do you mind—” He nodded toward the empty plastic cup the flight attendant had placed on his tray table.
Landon hoped it was implied that he would pour his own drink if he could, if only his traitorous hands would stop shaking.
“Jack and Coke, coming right up.” He poured in a shooter and a half and added what he could of the Coke.
Landon held it with both hands and sipped carefully.
“Name’s Dave,” the man said, raising his cup of red wine.
“Tell me to shove it at any point, but you seem like a man in need of a distraction.” He whistled a tune that did very little to put Landon at ease.
The plane tipped left and sticky Coke spilled onto Landon’s dark sweatpants. “Landon,” he said, choking down the last of his drink before he was forced to sit in the puddle for the remainder of the flight. “And yes. Yes, please.”
“You know, I think the pilot’s just trying to make up for that delay by flying straight through this storm. Could have added close to an hour to go around it. And I hear lightning never strikes the same plane twice.”
Landon gripped the armrest tighter. “Not helping.” Lightning flashed outside.
Dave chuckled. “This is the kind of thing the forgetting pill was made for.”
It wasn’t, really, but on a list of things Landon wanted to argue about, it was vying for last place with plane crashes due to thunderstorms. “Yeah,” he said, hoping his unenthusiastic agreement could do the heavy lifting of refocusing the conversation.
“Start a new life, free from the fear of flying.” Dave waved his hands like a man hawking goods on a late-night infomercial. “Unless you’ve already taken it, of course. If it hasn’t worked once, it probably won’t again. That would be terrible luck, to have an other who was also afraid of flying.”
“No,” Landon said.
“No, you haven’t taken it, or no, it hasn’t worked?”
“No, I haven’t taken it.”
“But have you thought about it?” Dave leaned in closer, conspiratorially. “My wife said she almost didn’t believe it when that Italian billionaire got on TV talking about it. What was her name? I remember it reminded me of an allergy pill.”
“Allegra Visconti,” said Landon, annoyed he never forgot a detail.
“Hah!” Dave clapped his leg. “Yes! First to come out publicly and say she felt hope again about the future, and boy, was she fucking on to something.” Landon shouldn’t have been surprised their conversation had taken this deliberate turn.
As soon as the forgetting pill had invaded public consciousness, it was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, the first thing anybody wanted to talk about once even basic contact between strangers had been established.
Doctors wouldn’t prescribe it, but if you could find a clinic, you could pay in cash.
That was just about all it took. “Have you thought about taking it?” Dave asked.
“Yes.” The plane lurched, but the whisky had started to do its job.
Landon felt calm enough that his stomach didn’t quite drop to the floor but lingered somewhere around his groin.
He closed his eyes. “What was it like?” Landon asked.
“When you took it?” He was making an assumption, but only in the loosest sense.
The man sitting next to him spoke like he was receiving commission on every pill swallowed.
Dave leaned back in his seat. “My wife told me I set myself up real good. Waited until it had been on the market long enough I’d have heard by then if it wasn’t safe.
Wrote a long letter to myself of all the things I didn’t want to forget, you know, kids, wife, that sort of thing.
And God, when I tell you it is even better than they all say.
I feel like nothing can touch me, like I’m invincible or something.
I feel like I could do anything.” Dave practically trilled the word anything.
“That is what they say.” The fasten seat belt sign flashed and Landon wondered whether, in addition to the biblical weather, the plane was malfunctioning mechanically.
“So I’m always a little curious,” Dave said, “when people say they’ve thought about it, but haven’t taken it yet. What’s stopping you?”
He didn’t owe this man anything, Landon knew that. But if he truly believed the plane was going down—and in that moment, he truly did—then what on earth did he have to lose? “A girl,” he said. The thought of her made him feel brave, until the plane lurched again.
The fasten seat belt sign flickered as the clouds swelled behind the thick plexiglass windows. Dave whistled, a habit Landon was beginning to find vexing. “Some girl,” he said.
“Yeah,” Landon agreed.
The intercom buzzed, and the captain’s muffled voice filled the cabin.
“Sorry about that, folks. That patch of weather was rougher than we’d been told by air traffic control.
Things should start to smooth out in the next few minutes, and we’ll resume our food and drink service.
Flight attendants, please remain seated. ”
Landon blew a sharp breath out through his teeth. It seemed he would live.
“You leave her at home, then?” Dave asked. “The girl?”
Landon stared down at the empty plastic cup in his right hand, clenched tight between fingers drained of blood, now painted a stark white. “She’s gone.”
Dave whistled, and Landon fought the urge to rotate his fist, already in fighting position, into Dave’s objectively pug-like face. “That takes guts, man. Not to even think about the pill, after something like that? That takes guts.”
Something like that, Landon thought. True to the pilot’s word, the plane leveled—bumps fewer until they were far between.
Landon used the still-pliable fingers on his left hand to click on the television screen above his tray table.
The plane had drawn much of its long, curved arc across the Atlantic, with roughly a quarter of the journey to go.
Landon pulled two fingers across the touchscreen until the plane was double its size, big enough that neither the northeastern coast of the US nor any of the British Isles were visible.
“Why’re you braving this trip, then?” Dave asked. “What’s so important you’d drag yourself through this hell?”
Finally, a question with an easy answer. “For her,” Landon said. “It’s all for her.”
Landon emerged from the tunnel connecting the plane to Edinburgh’s small airport and fought the urge to kiss the ground.
Thanksgiving had only just passed in the States, but there was enough Christmas decor wrapped around the steel beams that Landon could have been convinced the terminal had been designed to advertise the holiday.
In lieu of placing his lips on the worn green-blue carpet, he stared up and took long, grounding breaths until the twinkle lights no longer blurred.
Dave had grown bored of him by the time dessert had been served, and it was only belatedly—carry-on in hand, feet firmly planted—that he wished Dave had pried just a touch further.
He wished now, more than anything, that Dave had asked him what he meant by “for her.” Because then Landon would have had to be specific about why, despite his intense fear, he’d poured himself into a flying metal tube and what he was hoping to accomplish when he came out the other side.
And that would have required he say, out loud, that he’d successfully accomplished every step of the plan he’d come up with.
Step 1: Buy a plane ticket. Step 2: Fly to Scotland.
He would have had to say, out loud, that all he had was an address for a girl who didn’t know his face from Adam.
Dave might have said something profound, then—something that would have helped him mold loose fragments of ideas into concrete action.
He and Dave could have spitballed his next steps over coffee and biscuits.
Too late, now. It was unlikely he would ever see Dave and his bald head again.