The Optimist

by Sophie Kipner

  ‘Welcome to Virgin,’ she says, cookie wafting, although it may just be the tuna from my bag. ‘You’re in 23C. Enjoy your flight.’ She gestures in the direction of the back of the plane and I want to just turn around and say, ‘Who am I? Dick Gregory?’ But I don’t; I just keep walking. I look around first class and spot Jimmy in the last row of Premium Economy. It’s okay; it’s still classy. My eyes are fixed on him like a cop tracking a suspect until he looks up. He smiles and I can’t believe it but he’s looking at me with the best face I’ve ever seen and he’s moving his hair around, pushing man fragrance towards me. ‘Jimmy?’ I say, still unbelieving but confident that the omen is actually coming true. He just keeps smiling and now he’s lifting his hand up and starting to wave. I pick my hand up, too, and wave back. I knew we had something.

  Sometimes you just know you’re going to know someone for a while. Like when you are certain you’ll be with someone the first time you see him playing the keys. He’s there, sweating and tapping and banging and you could bet your life on the story you’ll have because you know a man with hands like that means a lifetime of rhythmic pleasure. Then you break up because he says he might be a bit more gay than straight. Someone gives you a handmade present that says, ‘I knew you once’ to hang on your wall, to remind you of the times you shared with people who are now strangers. You think it’s sweet at first but then it reminds you only of what you had so you throw it away. I’ve never dated a pianist but the point is that sometimes you just know, and with Jimmy, I can see our ­story’s shape before it’s even been drawn out, like a gift waiting to be opened.

  He’s looking at me still; he won’t take his sparkling eyes off me.

  He gets up.

  ‘I thought you were going to bail on me,’ he says.

  I drop my light baggage and run up and bear hug him, screaming with joy. I wrap my left leg around his and lock my feet behind his calf like a wrestler in an upright death match because I’m so happy I could squeeze all the life out of both of us – my nickname in high school was Python. When I pull back though, his once joyful expression drops to a slip of itself. I realize he’s not holding on to me, only I to him. I turn around because he’s looking behind me now and I see the horrifying sight of another woman.

  ‘He was talking to me,’ she says, close to laughing. There’s more condescension in her tone than the condensation I could lick off a warm beer bottle in Miami during the hottest summer of the past thirty years. I’m talking about global-warming heat. Hot. And it hits me hard, this heat, this hot, hot heat, as I process the miserable fact that I’ve jumped into the arms of a man thinking he was talking to me when he was celebrating the arrival of someone else. My heart freezes. I collapse inside, quietly. But it’s okay; I’m still breathing.

  I take a step back. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t realize you were talking to your older sister!’ I mean, she has to be. He is Jimmy and Jimmy is meant to be my soul mate, so the only possible conclusion is that she is a sibling. She moves around me and I watch them, like a train wreck, move towards each other in slow motion and delicately weave into their own sort of odd embrace. Way too close for siblings, but who am I to judge? Maybe they were from the South and that’s how brothers and sisters say hello.

  I nod at Jimmy, to say, I know, babe. I know. He doesn’t understand yet but he will once we have learned to speak each other’s body language. Looking at his stance right now, I cannot wait to be fluent in Jimmy. It’s tough to know what to do but I pull my shoulders back and exude lion-level confidence so his sister doesn’t think she’s the alpha female in our triangle.

  My seat is further back from Jimmy than I had hoped so I go up to the lady sitting in the first row in Economy, right behind Premium, right behind Jimmy, and I tap her on the shoulder. She looks like she’s flying solo.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I start. ‘My son is flying upper class and I need to be closer to him because he’s epileptic. If he starts having a fit I need to be as close as possible and the airline made a mistake with my ticket.’ I point back towards my seat. ‘They’ve put me so far away! Would you by any chance like to swap seats with me?’

  My eyes search in hope for sympathy as I stand, waiting, for a response. She looks back towards where I pointed, then back to me. Then back again to my seat.

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I guess, if you need to be close to your son, I could switch seats.’

  ‘You are so kind. Thank you so much!’ I say, joyously, gratefully. ‘You’re going to get a lot of good karma points for this. Believe me, I’ve racked up quite a few for good deeds done and I can say without hesitation that my life has changed for the better because of it.’

  She collects her bags and shuffles towards my empty 23C as I take her place. She’s warmed the seat up so much I wonder if she’s just eaten a packet of fruit cake and farted all over it. I sink in cozily as my heart’s temperature rises from my proximity to Jimmy.

  My neighbor looks nice. ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m KK.’ I once met a woman named KK and thought she sounded fun so I’m adopting it now, for short-term use, to try it out. See how it goes over. He’s older, the man next to me, probably early eighties. He holds out his hand.

  ‘Tony,’ he says. ‘I hate flying so don’t be startled if I faint on you or have to hold on.’ This guy sounds like me. Such a little old pervert! I love him.

  ‘Sure thing, Tony. Grab away.’

  About an hour into the flight, Tony’s grabbing my wrist like it’s his only lifeline – which, based on his age, is probably true – and then tells me he can’t see very well.

  ‘I have to take ten medications a day,’ he says. I’m starting to wonder if switching with the Fruitcake was a wise idea. He takes out a plastic container with slots filled with colored pills to take at different times during the day. He starts fumbling around and dropping them on his lap without realizing it. I grab the box, somewhat impatiently, and say, ‘What colors do you need now? I’ll get them for you.’

  ‘One blue and one pink,’ he says. ‘Thank you, KK.’

  ‘My boyfriend is in upper class,’ I tell him as I hand him a few pills along with a glass of water. ‘Well, Premium Economy.’

  ‘Is he sitting with your son?’

  ‘No, no. I was just lying to get this seat.’ I stop, worrying I’ve said too much, but then I realize he wouldn’t have anyone to help him with his pills if he told on me. Plus, they’d all think he was senile. I honestly can’t wait until I’m senile; no one will ever be able to blame me for anything. I get up and slide the curtain over a tad to check on Jimmy, who’s now asleep. He’s so coy! I inch over another foot and see his sister is asleep on his shoulder.

  ‘Psst!’ I say. ‘Jimmy.’ No answer, just a little snore. Well, that’s something I’ll have to talk to him about when we’re sleeping together because I cannot sleep with a man who snores. Before Brenda and her husband split up, she used to have to sleep in Mary’s room because he’d snore so loudly. Not my idea of an ideal marriage! Jimmy jumps and turns around, piercing my heart with his lagoon-colored eyes and says, ‘My name’s not Jimmy.’

  Hold on. What? It has to be Jimmy. All you have to do is look around the rest of the plane – over the shoulders of the moms and the hairy backs of the old dads and the food-spilt laps of their kids, around the general vicinity of gross people – and you will know why Jimmy has to be Jimmy. There are no other options. I start to panic and take a bite of my tuna salad when it hits me: He’s undercover.

  I lean in again. ‘Come on, baby,’ I say. ‘Let’s get wild.’

  Jimmy’s eyes widen then his face contorts into a pained look, as if he were going to the toilet in his seat. I hope he doesn’t have gas too! That can be really painful, believe me.

  Poor Jimmy turns around and whispers something to his sister but I can’t get in close enough to hear. A flight attendant pops her face around the corner and stares at me with violent intentions as I sit back, quietly growling.

  ‘Please don
’t bother the upper-class flyers, ma’am,’ she says, awfully loudly, making me so mad all I can do is look like an old woman with her dentures out eating an orange, top lip curled around my gums. Turn around, Jimmy. Turn around.

  He never does turn around so I wait patiently. I take the napkin from under my vodka tonic and write him a note. It says, ‘I want to fa-uh-uh-uk-uk you (I like the song), x’ and I fold it into a little paper airplane. I check to make sure the flight attendant isn’t looking and send it sailing through the stagnant air towards him. It’s flying, my ironic plane within a plane, gliding effortlessly towards his head, but then it hits the armrest in front of him and ricochets off to the left where it dips and slides under a seat to be found, surely, by a janitor.

  Tony is nudging me to help him find his next round of pills. I fish out a few and try to shove them into his mouth but, because I’m distracted by thoughts of Jimmy, I accidentally push them into his nostrils. He blows them out in a sneeze. As I realize what I’ve done, I quickly wipe them off and redirect them into the right hole.

  ‘Are you trying to get someone’s attention?’ he asks me. Tony has this way of not really looking at me but for some reason it feels like he sees more of me than anyone else. Why on earth is the old man with the bad eyes and pockets of ­medication getting me more than Jimmy?

  ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘My boyfriend is sleeping and keeps forgetting his name and it’s driving me crazy because I just want to talk.’

  Tony gives me a counseling look, somewhere between concern and intrigue.

  I hear Jimmy’s seatbelt unbuckle, cha-ching! He stands up and walks towards the bathroom in the front of the cabin, the one I can’t get to. But then, as if divine intervention were at hand, the occupied light flashes on just before he reaches the door. Yes! God really does exist. He circles around and heads back as the only vacant toilet is the one right in front of me. He’s avoiding eye contact with me, but only because he’s shy. We’ve gathered that by now so it doesn’t worry me.

  He enters the tiny stall at which point I turn to Tony and say, ‘Excuse me, sweet man. Got to go work my magic.’ I check to see if Jimmy’s sister is watching and, good thing, she’s asleep. Snoring with her mouth open like an old lady.

  Tony looks puzzled, again, but it doesn’t matter because I’m my own quarterback and my team is losing and if I don’t do something drastic I’m going to lose this game. I hate that I’m even referencing this whole love mission as a game, anyway. It’s not a game. I can’t play games anymore.

  I pop up from my seat effervescently and just before the green vacancy light turns to red, occupied, I open the door before he has a chance to lock it and slide in like a cockroach through a vent.

  Jimmy’s back is towards me, standing over the toilet with his hands engaged on his dick to direct the flow of piss as I stealthily approach him from behind. I lock the door – why do men always forget to lock doors? Maybe he knew I’d follow him in – and pounce on him like how I imagine a black widow approaches her mate in one swift, accurate move, securing him down with her overbearing weight before he has a chance to process what’s happening. And like its deep sting, I thrust my arms around him. He jumps, startled, as I say, ‘It’s way more cramped in here than I’d imagined!’ My hands are now making circles around his clothes to warm him up. Big, sweeping circles to penetrate deep into his heart. He spins around but hasn’t let go of his dick yet so his pee sprays all over me and the walls and the floor. I had no idea my Mile High Club experience would include a golden shower! I love surprises! He’s swearing now, but swearing quietly because he knows being in here with me puts him at risk. It makes him an accomplice. ‘What are you doing?’ he whisper-screams. ‘This is crazy, get out!’ But I can’t respond; all I can do is look at his penis.

  I smile in the sexiest way I can while also sucking my cheeks in to look more chiseled. He reaches for the door handle but I block it with my ass – thank God it’s big – and I shush him with one hand while the other pins him in the corner. His eyes are rolling around, searching, so I lessen my grip so he can breathe. He starts panting.

  ‘There we go,’ I say, motioning towards his short breath. ‘First step to the Mile High Club.’ Oh God, I know I’m going too far now. But what can I do at this point? I have to see where it takes me. Maybe I’m meant to be acting this all out. A part of me knows it’s wrong but at the same time the whole situation is so exciting and raw and real and the fact that I feel so alive means I’m doing something right.

  He grabs me by the shoulders and tries to move me to the side so he can get out but there’s nowhere for my body to go so it just lodges both of us into a more complicated pretzel-­like formation. I try to lean in more closely, to feel his warmth, but every time I do he pulls his head back and bangs it against the plastic wall. ‘Stop doing that,’ I say. ‘Are you nuts? You’re going to hurt yourself!’

  His arm moves to cover his balls for some reason, maybe he’s weird about their size, as his knee protrudes into my stomach. Both of us are trying to maneuver around the pee on the seat and the walls, which forces us to engage in a sort of awkward squat. Finally, I feel his thighs tremble with the emotion I was talking about earlier.

  ‘Charley Horse!’ he shouts, moving urgently to the left to free his locked calf. His other knee is still digging into me, but it’s gone from erotic to quite uncomfortable because it’s now pushing into my bladder. His eyebrows are twisting around, seeking answers, but I just keep smiling so he knows this is supposed to be fun. I’m leaning so far forward at this point that my weight is completely on his and on the wall. The tension in the room has created so much heat, the walls have become slippery and my right hand falls down and accidentally hits the flush button. The violent sound of its vacuum frightens us both so much we jump in panic and twist into each other more deeply. There’s a foot now close to my face, there’s grunting and pee and sometimes one of our legs hits the sink faucet, but between the strain on our faces and the sweat there’s this level of calm that’s beautiful and untouched. Now, instead of looking like two novices playing Twister, we look like Russian contortionists auditioning for a show.

  ‘Isn’t this nice?’ I whisper, examining his beard for pieces of life, picking at it with my free hand like a monkey cleans her children. ‘A final moment away from your sister and the chance to experience true love at an altitude disproportionate to ourselves.’

  A supercilious grin appears on his face, like a shining sun through a blanket of dreary sky, and I see him smile. I didn’t expect such a rash turnaround. He opens his mouth and he’s got a tongue ring. Oh no. He’s bad. Real bad. This couldn’t be more fun if I imagined it.

  ‘Have you just been eating a sandwich?’ he asks me, sniffing the air.

  I take his signal and rip his shirt open and see a tattoo of the band Nickelback on his chest. My heart sinks because now I know he loves terrible music and all of a sudden I can’t see our future together anymore. I tear more and more of his clothes off as he stands there, bewildered, and find a plethora of unbecoming tattoos including, but not limited to, a lucky charm (‘from when I was in Ireland’) and a tribal tattoo, probably inspired by hitting rock bottom in the nineties. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.

  He looks at me like he is going to hurt me and I start to panic. He lifts me up on the wall and bites my ear to escalate the romance but it’s all going much more quickly than I had hoped. I wanted time to talk and get to know each other.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

  ‘You want me to fuck you, don’t you?’ he says, crassly. Heartlessly.

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘I want you to be knocked sideways with affection and adoration and think it’s the most magical experience, us coming together in a plane bathroom. Love at first sight. Destiny. Fate. Whatever. You know, all the good stuff.’

  ‘You expect romance by following me into a toilet?’ he says.

  This doesn’t feel like my idea anymore. I feel gross now that he wants
it.

  ‘This isn’t romantic!’ I scream. ‘One minute ago you were cupping your balls and now you’re into it? I liked you more when you were shy and unaware of your charm.’

  This unfortunately turns him on. How unusual.

  ‘Stop!’ I say as his willy waits before my cookie, hard from adrenaline but lingering as if waiting for the signal to land.

  I fluff my hair and pull my skirt down.

  ‘I want you to woo me,’ I say. ‘I want to feel wanted, needed. What happened to courting a woman?’

  ‘You followed me in here!’ he whispers again, quite loudly. A shot of hot breath hits me hard on the face. ‘I was taking your cue.’

  ‘Cues? No one in their right mind follows cues.’

  ‘You’re very confusing,’ he says.

  We are staring at each other with lost yet focused attention, the cabin air pressurizing our hearts so we probably can’t tell what is real and what isn’t. It feels like we could be dying, but we aren’t sure.

  ‘You can’t have romance when there’s no spark,’ he says.

  ‘I thought we had a spark,’ I counter. ‘You’ve been eyeing me up all flight long.’ I stop. Think. ‘Wait . . . Your name is Jimmy, right?’

  ‘It’s Tim. I thought I cleared that up before when I told you my name wasn’t Jimmy.’

  Well, that makes sense. Any man with a Nickelback tattoo is certainly not a spy. Right then, someone knocks at the door.

  ‘The toilet is for single use only!’ the flight attendant yells. She bangs again, making us jump. ‘Out now or I’ll write you up for illegal and indecent behavior.’

  ‘I was just leaving!’ I say to the woman but the idea of some sort of certificate to show my friends and mom sounds fun. Just before I open the door I turn to Tim and ask, ‘Why ­Nickelback?’

  ‘I was their guitar tech when I was twenty-five,’ he says. The more I hear, the more I can’t take. The more I thank the Universe for interfering before I lost my heart to the wrong guy.