Ladies and Gentlemen (26 page)

Sara removed her earbuds. “Sorry?”

“I couldn’t help noticing.” He pointed to her laptop’s screen. “You interviewed Reese Witherspoon?”

“I did.” Normally she’d be in blow-off mode, but he was clearly so self-conscious about his height, sitting there so still and hunched, with his elbows tucked into his sides and his hands folded in his lap, that she felt she owed him her attention. And he’d been such a gentleman earlier, giving up his seat.

“She’s doing that movie in town,” he said.

“
Cell
. I read the script. It’s amazing.”

“I’m glad to hear you think so.”

“Why’s that?”

“I wrote it.”

He stated this matter-of-factly, with neither arrogance nor a hint of delusion, but Sara still couldn’t help puckering her lips.

“What’s your name?”

“Peter Handel.”

She held out her palm. “License, pal.”

He straightened a full two feet stuffing his hand down his pocket, then offered her his ID.

She promptly returned it. “Unbelievable.”

“That’s what I said when they picked the director.”

“Didn’t I read in
Variety
that it was a two-picture deal?”

“That’s correct.”

“The other’s in production too, isn’t it?”

“You’re looking at a lottery winner.”

“I’d have assumed a screenwriter with a couple green-lighted films wouldn’t be flying coach, much less Southwest.”

“After taxes and my agent’s commission, I decided to give up the private jet.”

“Still.”

“Who knows? Maybe both movies’ll tank and it’s back to the day job.”

“Which was?”

“Profesor de español.”

“Duh,” Sara said.

Peter’s features were angular, his cheeks indrawn: he was very blond, almost towheaded, and his bangs hung boyishly over his light eyes.

Sara gave him her card, promising to send him the article. “You must be crazy doing rewrites,” she added.

“I’ve flown more miles this year than in my entire life. But hey, who’s complaining? The kids’ college tuition is paid.”

“Amen. How many?”

“Three. One by my first wife, two by my second.”

“How is that?”

“The second marriage, or having three kids?”

“Both, I guess.”

“The second marriage is good, thanks, though our two daughters are only fourteen months apart.”

“How old?”

“Four and three.”

“Yikes.”

“When people saw Cynthia with a baby bump and an eight-month-old,
they’d ask me when we found out we were pregnant again. To which I’d answer, ‘When I came home and she started throwing shit at me.’ ”

Sara laughed. “I cannot imagine.”

“It’s like having one big baby, really. Except its right side is underdeveloped and sort of drag-foots along.”

The attendant handed Sara her orange juice, then Peter his Coke.

“As for my first daughter, Maxine—”

“Great name.”

“Thanks.”

“By the first marriage?”

He nodded. “The divorce hasn’t been easy on her. She’s eleven now—we were very young when she was born—and she misses me. Also blames me for the entire thing. She lives with her mom in St. Louis. Glenda wanted to be near her family after we split, so I’m between here and there pretty often.”

“That must be hard.”

“It is. But I’m flush with Southwest drink coupons, and introducing Max to George Clooney and Zac Efron has healed many wounds.”

“Efron’s in the other film?”

“Can I tell you a secret? I had
no
idea who he was until last year.”

“You
are
a lottery winner.”

“Yet I remain humble and hardworking.”

“Maybe I should be interviewing
you.
”

“I kind of thought you were.”

“So tell me about the movie.”

“It’s called
Fifty States
. It’s about a kid who in his freshman year of high school meets his true love, but they split up because his father’s a traveling salesman and he ends up going to school in all fifty states. To deal with his heartbreak, he takes on the identity of each place he lives, so in DC he runs for class president, in Montana he becomes a cowboy, in Hawaii a surfer. Anyway, his true love’s a military brat who travels all over too, and by a complete fluke they reunite in South Beach, where Efron’s gotten into the club scene and decided to assume his most daunting identity yet.”

“Which is?”

“Drag queen.”

Sara chuckled. “Complications ensue.”

“The last act’s like
Some Like It Hot
and
The Birdcage
rolled together.”

Smiling, she stared out the window at the green-brown quilt of farmland, not a single road in sight. She forgot for a moment where she was going and why. The thought of Rob, her second child, came to her, how he’d often appear at her desk, ask if she was still working, and then sit facing her after she’d lifted him onto her lap, slapping her cheeks with his palms. “All right,” she’d tell him. “I can take a break.” He’d lay on her chest, or she’d turn him around to watch the screen as she typed. She loved to smell his scalp, especially when it was hot and slightly sweaty, his scent revivifying her. She then considered Tanner, whom last week she’d watched play tennis with Dale, himself pretty accomplished, at the Central Park courts, chuckling when he aped Nadal’s mannerisms
before every serve, fastidiously tucking his hair behind his ears as he stood at the line. His strokes were still herky-jerky, but three years from now, she thought, he’d be trouncing Dale. She recalled one crosscourt blast so viciously angled it made his father drop his racquet and applaud, looking at her as if to share this harbinger of his doom, a gesture that also gave her a sense of her husband as a boy himself. The three of them walked back to the apartment together, and to her amazement Tanner held hands with them both, and Dale pressed a finger to his lips when she glanced up. She tried to pinpoint the last time they’d made love and was surprised she could. It was about two weeks ago, on a Saturday night, after the opening of the New York Film Festival. They often found each other like this, emerging from dreams, and there was something so purely efficient about their foreplay, the opposite of rote, that enclosed them and reminded her of why they’d fallen in love, the shape and stiffness of Dale’s cock as familiar to her as her own hand, the length of their lovemaking perfectly adapted to their middle age, their endurance, and their ever-so-slightly-waning need for this pleasure, its variation over time as subtle and unnoticeable as the changing shape of a spouse’s face.

“Is that why you’re going to St. Louis?” Sara asked. “To see your daughter?”

“Actually,” Peter said, “my ex-father-in-law’s getting remarried.”

“And you’re attending the wedding?”

“Yup.”

“You, sir, are one rare bird.”

“Hey, I love the guy. I was as sad to lose him as I was my wife.”

“It doesn’t sound to me like you did.”

“No, but it changed things.”

“Is your father alive?”

“Yes, but we aren’t close. We’re very different.”

“How so?”

“Too long a story to tell,” he said.

Here, she thought, was a nerve best left alone.

“Anyway, my father-in-law and I just connected, you know? We played a lot of golf together too. He has three daughters himself and was thrilled to have another guy around. But he’s had terrible luck with women until now.”

The captain asked everyone to check their seat belts; they’d be landing in St. Louis shortly.

“Is this his second marriage?”

“His fourth. His first wife, my ex’s mother, committed suicide. She was bipolar and shot herself—with his rifle, no less. He returned from a business trip to find her dead in their gazebo. She’d been up and down psychologically for years but lately seemed to have turned a corner, on a new medication, and then …” He snapped his fingers. “They found fifteen notes for friends and family in his study. She’d been planning her death for months.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It gets worse. Less than a year later he got remarried, to a true saint who taught at my wife’s elementary school, and she got killed in a car accident only months after the ceremony. Not surprisingly, he went into emotional lockdown afterward, which only made him a more desirable bachelor.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because women love a challenge.”

“Are you really going to hit me with the myth of the unattainable man?”

“It’s been my experience that only two kinds of men succeed with women: those who hate them, and those who love them.”

“Don’t forget those who happen to be
rich.
”

“Well, he’s also really successful. He began in the trucking business but then started a logistics company that coordinates the transportation of temperature-sensitive materials all over the world.”

“Maybe you should introduce him to me.”

“You’re both already taken. Anyway, where was I? Ah. Tragedy temporarily made him a hater, so—”

The plane touched down. The sky had gone gray and the flags along the runway were puffed conical with the breeze.

“Oh, well,” Peter said. “I’ll save it for another flight. Suffice it to say that after marrying a gold-digging harridan—and there’s a really Gothic story, mind you, with affairs and drug dealers and people getting wired by the FBI—he finally met a woman whom he loves and who loves him back.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me too. Wow.”

“What?”

“That went fast. I talked a lot.”

“I asked a lot of questions,” Sara said.

“This always happens to me on flights. It’s like therapy. The honesty. The openness.”

“It’s the anonymity. It lowers your defenses. Plus I’m a professional.”

“Clearly.”

They’d arrived at the gate, the signal gonged, and passengers immediately filled the aisles. It always tickled Sara, this hurry to
stand
.

“One more question,” she said.

“All right.”

“Why did your first marriage end?”

Peter seemed to have anticipated this, rubbing his upper lip while considering his answer.

“Actually,” Sara said, “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”

“Don’t apologize. The truth is, I wouldn’t have time to tell you the whole story even if I was going on to LA.”

She touched his forearm, and he glanced at her fingers resting there. He shook his head, shrugging, crossed his arms, and leaned toward her. “I had an affair,” he said, lowering his voice. “Which is cart before the horse, okay? It wasn’t the reason, I mean.” He cleared his throat. “The reason, the
reasons
. The fucking
lack
of reason. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but in spite of all the fights my ex and I had, all the problems and the history, I’ll tell you what: the moment I slept with this other woman, I knew my marriage was over.” There was bitter resignation in his voice. Then he stood up, towering above everyone around them. “Anyway,” he said, “good luck.”

Perhaps thirty passengers deplaned, and while the attendant took a head count and the cleaning crew made its pass, Sara turned on her BlackBerry. She had ten e-mails already and a text from Dale:
Where r u?

Complications ensue, she thought, though the blowback from her husband’s question was fiercer than she’d anticipated. Where
was
she headed? What if this meeting with Thom—this man, this stranger—became, instead of a permanent comfort, its opposite, an affliction, a widening fissure that sowed cynicism, supplying half-truths as answers to the most innocent questions before they were even asked? There would be many stories to tell, after all, starting
now
, followed immediately by a question: “Are you committed?” Was commitment the comfort, the balm? Because she could tell a good story, she was a demon with details, but first she had to
believe
in it.

Then, with uncanny synchronicity, a call came from Thom.
Unknown Number
, her screen said, with two choices given below:
Answer. Ignore
. She pressed the latter and remained seated. Group A was just boarding. She could get off here, in St. Louis, catch a flight to LaGuardia, and be home. She could forgive herself for Thom, for the kiss, for all of it. No harm, no foul. Yet it was the possible regrets that troubled her most, no matter what choice she made, the ones that would come to her later, in the night, and gnawed at her even now—starting with what you didn’t take versus what you did. Not to mention the stories she might tell a future stranger about this moment, and what she’d decided before she was airborne again.

Thanks, first, to Gary Fisketjon, for the best conversation there is. To Emily Milder, for her patience, humor, and incisive editorial comments. To Gabrielle Brooks, for keeping me on the radar. To Susanna Lea and Mark Kessler, for spreading the word. To Paul Russell and Benjamin Taylor for their enduring wisdom. My deep gratitude to several readers who generously offered their time and thoughts on these stories when they were in various stages of completion: Ben Abraham, Pamela Carver, Phoebe Carver, Dr. Dan Canale, Bill Ditenhafer, Bruce Dobie, George Erikson, Diana Fisketjon, Jon Glover, Rhonda Hart, Alex Hoblitzelle, Sally Mabry, Betsy Malone, Amanda McGowan, Kalen McNamara, Adam Michael, Nick Paumgarten, Alissa Reiner, Jim Ridley, David and Carden Simcox, Grace Tipps, Frank Tota, Kelly Williams, and Mike Witmore. To my parents, for countless reasons. Finally, to Beth, who made it all possible.