3. Wilson
— ? —
Wilson
Nineteen hours stuck at Haneda because of some typhoon that wouldn’t move, and now the jet is bouncing through turbulence over the Pacific and I barely even feel it.
I’ve been staring at my phone for six hours straight. There’s a crack in the corner of the screen from where I threw it at the cabin wall after her voicemail picked up again.
Not my proudest moment.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I’ve tried everything.
Gripping my knees. Pressing my palms flat against the seat. Squeezing my fingers together until my knuckles go white.
Nothing helps.
The shaking doesn’t stop, it just moves around.
She’s not picking up. I’ve called her maybe fifteen times now and every single one goes to voicemail.
The thing is, she always answers.
Even when she’s pissed at me. Even when it’s stupid o’clock in the morning and I’m calling from god knows where with another sorry excuse.
She always picks up. That’s just who she is.
Isaac is talking in my ear through the satellite phone. Stock prices, damage control, the Burnham deal. None of it lands.
“Wilson, are you even listening to me?” His voice sharpens. “This is serious. The whole thing is blowing up and I need to know what to tell people.”
“Then figure it out.” I pull up Izzy’s contact and hit dial. Her photo fills the cracked screen, a candid I took two years ago at some beach trip. She’s laughing in the picture, her hair all tangled from the wind, her eyes crinkled at the corners.
When did I last see her laugh like that? When did I last make her laugh?
“I can’t figure it out without knowing what actually happened.” Isaac exhales hard into the phone. “Everyone’s saying it was an affair, Wilson. That’s what’s out there right now.”
“It wasn’t an affair.” Izzy’s voicemail picks up, her recorded voice telling me she’s unavailable. I hang up before the beep. “Nothing happened with Sabrina. Nothing.”
“Okay, but what am I supposed to say to people who are asking?”
“Say nothing happened.” I hit dial again and watch the call connect to nothing. “Tell them Sabrina is full of it. Tell them she’s doing this because I wouldn’t give her what she wanted and now she’s trying to destroy my marriage out of spite. Say whatever you have to say, Isaac. I don’t care.”
“Nobody’s going to believe that.”
“It’s the truth, Isaac.” I press my thumb into the crack on the screen until it hurts. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Since when does the truth matter?” Isaac laughs, bitter and exhausted. “You’ve been in this game long enough to know how it works. Perception is reality. And right now the perception is that you’ve been screwing Richard Burnham’s daughter behind your wife’s back.”
My stomach lurches. I press my free hand against my mouth and breathe through my nose until the nausea passes.
“Look, I get that you’re dealing with personal stuff.” His voice softens a little. “But the company needs your focus. We need a plan to contain this before it destroys everything we’ve built.”
“I have a plan.” I dial Izzy again and listen to her recorded voice tell me she’s unavailable. “My plan is to fix my marriage. Everything else can wait.”
“Wilson, the stock is down eighteen percent…”
I hang up on him.
The cabin feels smaller now. I used to love this jet. I used to feel powerful sitting in it, knowing I could be anywhere in the world within hours, knowing I’d built a company big enough to justify the excess.
Now it’s just a room I can’t get out of for three more hours.
I pull up our text thread. My messages form a long blue column on the right side of the screen.
Nothing on the left.
Me: I’m on my way. Please talk to me.
Me: I know you’re angry and you have every right to be. I know I failed you again.
Me: Just tell me where you are. I’ll come to you. Wherever you are.
Me: Izzy, please.
The messages sit there. Delivered but not read. No typing dots. Nothing.
This isn’t like her.
I put the phone down and press my palms against my eyes until I see stars.
My chest feels tight and my heart keeps doing this thing where it beats too fast and then skips and then races again.
None of that matters right now.
Not the meetings, not the calls, not any of it. Just her. Just the woman who always picks up and isn’t picking up now.
The memory comes without warning, and I let it in, because right now it’s the only place where she’ll still talk to me.
Our first year of marriage.
My office was a rented room above a dry cleaner on the Lower East Side, two hundred square feet with a water-stained ceiling and a desk I found on the curb on trash day.
The chair was held together with duct tape.
The heat didn’t work at all, so I wore my coat inside from November to March and told myself it was temporary.
I was hunched over my laptop that day, running numbers for the hundredth time, trying to figure out how to stretch our last four hundred dollars into next month’s rent.
My eyes burned from the screen.
I hadn’t slept in two days.
Then the door opened.
Izzy stood in the doorway holding a paper bag from the deli on the corner. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and she was smiling at me, and for a second I forgot I was broke.
“Lunch delivery.” She held up the bag and shook it. “Turkey and swiss, extra pickles, that weird mustard you like that smells like feet.”
“Izzy.” I blinked at her. I hadn’t seen anyone but the landlord in three days. “What are you doing here?”
“Feeding my husband.” She crossed the tiny space in three steps and looked around at the mess of papers and empty coffee cups. “This place is a disaster, by the way.”
“I know.” I rubbed my face with both hands. “I was going to clean up this weekend, but…”
“I don’t care about the mess.” She pushed a stack of papers aside and lowered herself to the floor, her back against the wall. She patted the stained carpet next to her. “Come eat with me.”
“I can’t.” I pointed at my laptop. “I have to finish these projections before the investor meeting tomorrow or…”
“Wilson.” She patted the floor again, harder. “Sit down.”
I sat.
She handed me my sandwich and we ate in silence for a few minutes, our shoulders touching, our legs stretched out across the carpet. Someone honked on the street below. The smell of dry cleaning chemicals drifted up through the floorboards and mixed with the mustard.
“This chair is a crime against humanity.” She pointed at my desk chair with a pickle spear. “How do you sit in that thing without permanent spinal damage?”
“Very carefully.” I took a bite of my sandwich and smiled for the first time in days. “The left armrest falls off if you lean on it wrong.”
“You need a new one.” She nudged my knee with hers.
“I need a lot of things.” I looked around at the peeling paint and the single window that didn’t open. “A real space. Real furniture. A chair that doesn’t require a warning label.”
“It’ll come.” She leaned her head against my shoulder. “You’re going to build all of it. I know it.”
“Yeah?” I turned my head so my chin rested in her hair. “How do you know that?”
“Because you’re you.” She said it plainly, no doubt anywhere in her voice. “I know it the same way I know the sun’s coming up tomorrow.”
My chest cracked open. I set my sandwich down on the carpet and pulled her into my lap and held on.
“The second we can afford it,” I mumbled against her neck, “I’m going to buy you the most expensive couch in Manhattan. You’re never going to have to sit on a floor again.”
She laughed and pulled back to look at me, her hands framing my face. “I don’t want expensive.”
“What do you want?” I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“This.” She gestured at the tiny room, the terrible chair, the two of us eating sandwiches on a dirty carpet. “I just want this. You dropping everything to have lunch with me. You looking at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”
“I’ll always look at you this way.” I meant it. I meant it more than I’d ever meant anything.
“You promise?” She held my face still so I couldn’t look away.
“I promise. On everything.”
She kissed me then, tasting of turkey and mustard and the sugar from her coffee. I forgot about the projections. I forgot about the investor meeting. I forgot about everything except the weight of her in my lap and the way she made everything feel possible.
The turbulence hits again and the office is gone.
I’m back in the cabin with the leather seats and the satellite phone and a cracked screen that won’t connect me to my wife.
When did I stop dropping everything? When did meetings become more important than lunch? When did I stop looking at her that way?
I pick up the phone and dial. This time a mechanical voice tells me the mailbox is full.
She’s not even listening to the messages anymore.
I go back to the text thread and type one more, because it’s the only thing left I know how to do.
Me: I don’t know how to fix this but I’m going to try. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying if that’s what it takes. Just please don’t give up on us.
I hit send.
The message doesn’t say delivered.
I stare at it. I send a single period, just to test it. It hangs there, gray and dead.
She blocked me.
I double over in my seat, forehead against my knees, and try to remember how breathing works.
She’s never blocked me before, in seven years.
She didn’t when I flew to Singapore the day after her father died, or when I forgot our anniversary, or when she called me crying at 2 AM and I told her I’d call her back. She never gave up. Until now.
My arm cocks back to throw the phone again. I stop myself and set it down on the table instead, face-down, because breaking it means losing the last thread between us, even if the thread is cut on her end.
“Sir?” The flight attendant appears in the doorway, her face carefully blank. “Is there anything I can get you?”
“How long until we land?” The words scrape on the way out.
“Three hours, sir.” She glances at the untouched meal on the table, then back at me.
“That’s too long.” I stand up and pace the length of the cabin, my hands in my hair. “Can we go faster? Can the pilot push it?”