by Daniel Riley
Before they stood, Will turned in his seat and Whitney turned in hers. Then he grabbed her head with both palms and framed her face. He held her firmly, as though it were everything there was in the world. Then he moved his own face toward hers and, as she turned her mouth up to meet his, he plunged his tongue into her nostril. She shoved him away and punched his arm, hard enough to leave a mark, they both knew at once. Like the old days. It flooded them both with relief. He pinned her hands to her sides and attempted to restrain her with one arm. Her nails ripped into his flesh, drawing out two threads of under-skin. She grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back like the Pez dispenser that it could sometimes be, and licked his hairless forehead. She released him, and they were breathing heavily. Not smiling. Not laughing. Exhausted. Relieved.
Eyes traced in at them from several vantages. They were being watched. By passengers in the lineup, by the brittle young thing from McDonald’s, who was of course on their flight.
“Truce?” she said.
“Truce,” he said.
“Even?” she said.
He looked at her, conceding nothing, and then she nodded, understanding.
“We’re up,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
It was finally time for them to get out of there. It was finally time to go home.
They boarded slowly. They had a pair of seats on the left side of the plane. Will unlatched the overhead compartment and the door thumped open. He put their bags up. He sat in a clatter near the window, giving her the aisle to stretch out her knee and hip. The standard routine. She pulled a script from her bag and plunked the brass tacks with her nails. He crushed his knees into the seat in front of him. He plugged into the armrest and screwed in his earbuds. The masses came streaming up the pair of aisles for twenty minutes, the hundreds on their flight. Out the window the planes were lined up, ready to roll out all through the night, dozens upon dozens of previously unscheduled flights, the collective effort of their great escape.
They’d been trapped, Will and Whitney. It had been the most essential fact of their lives these past five days. But all the rest of them had been trapped, too. Each person on their flight and in the airport, and the millions well beyond the limits of the city—each individual, a life disrupted, broken, recast, redirected. The volcano effect. It had affected them, all of them here, more than they would ever fully comprehend. And yet somewhere far away, they knew in the logic parts of their brains, some lives had been truly destroyed, human beings burnt up like insects. The indifferent volcano. The volcano that didn’t give a shit about the billions walking its planet, and about Will and Whitney least of all. The indifferent volcano that didn’t care about 1-2-3 or a murder in Paris or the end of a basketball career or the lies twisted up amid them. Their lives were small. Smaller than small. All their lives, with all their adorable little inconsequential human concerns. The only thing Will and Whitney knew deep down was that in face of the volcano, in face of that geological scale, none of it, none of them, mattered one smidge.
Only they had to matter. They had to. Otherwise what was the point of getting on the plane? What was the point of leaving here and getting on with it at all? In the wells of their solipsism, they knew that they had to matter, that everyone did—but the two of them most of all. They mattered to each other, at the very least. Will and Whitney. What they were and what would become of them mattered to Will and mattered to Whitney. Him. Her. Now. Later. They were of consequence. They were of importance. They mattered they mattered they mattered. They had to. They mattered to each other. They mattered to Whitney and they mattered to Will.
Will listened to the classical music channel and felt like he might drop off to sleep right away. It had caught up to him—everything, the hours of the last few days, the math of it all. The betrayal. The bone exhaustion. The ways they’d wrung each other out. He drifted through the boarding announcements. He was dead to the safety demonstration. He startled at the blasts from the PA and got bopped in the head by a carry-on stuffing in behind him. He woke more widely at the first sudden lurch of the plane, ninth for take-off, and then sixth, and then third. It was three-thirty in the morning, blacker than black out, and it was finally time. Whitney was beside him. He could feel her heat and her weight, and he wanted to see her without letting her know that he was looking. He saw her flip from page 32 to 33. She had a red pen in her hand, a red pen he’d never seen before. She had a life of pens he knew nothing about, separate from him, out there in the world.
She felt his eyes out of the corner of her own. She felt him watching her read, watching her mark up the draft. She had nothing to prove to him, she was as good as anyone at what she did. She didn’t need to write something in the margin to show that she had notes to make, that she had thoughts. It was only Will, after all. It was Will, who she knew better than anyone in the world, who knew her better, too. And yet she felt only his scrutiny, felt him like a stranger. She hated the script, they’d never make the show, it was a waste of her time. But she’d been away so long, she needed to do all that was asked of her for at least the first week back. She’d go straight into the office this morning, even. She knew she’d be asleep by the time the cabin pressure settled, and so wanted to get as much done as she could before the full reality of her new situation flooded her. Before she realized that everything would be different from this point forward, that there was no turning back ever again, and that this—this here—was the very first moment of the rest of everything else. She turned another page, she’d skimmed it, she couldn’t track what she was reading anymore. They would figure things out tomorrow or the next day. They would go home to the apartment they shared, and after talking about anything else, they would sleep it off. And then, and only then, after really thinking it through, for a few days or maybe a week or two or three or four, they would try to figure out what the rest of their lives were going to look like.
They were up next. They could feel the airplane turn its big wide ninety. She’d forgotten her seatbelt and so buckled in. He heard hers and buckled his, too. Click. Click. They were next to each other but as distant as they’d ever been, operating on discrete frequencies all their own. It was over, wasn’t it? She knew it was probably the case and so did he—but only probably, not certainly. They would figure it out when they got to New York. The only thing to think about now was getting off the ground, getting turned back west, back in the direction home. Things would never be the same, she knew. They would never return to the way things were, yet they must. But that was a riddle for tomorrow, or some day next week. She would never stop loving him. She really did love him more than anyone in the world. She felt his breathing next to her, his face flanged open. She hated the shape of his head just then, but she knew that she would love him forever.
She crept her hand beneath the armrest and placed it in his lap. He was out. He probably hadn’t even noticed. But then she felt it. She felt his hand grab her hand. She felt his fingers thread her fingers. His palm below, hers above. His eyes were still closed, so she closed hers, too. They might not survive another day beyond this one, but this was okay for now, wasn’t it? They heard the surge of the engines, felt the thrust at their backs, were pressed into their seats as though commanded by hypnosis. They could decide to be happy, they both knew it was their choice. They knew that’s what they had to do, or at least that it was an option. They could be helpful still, they could be generous and gentle and kind. They could provide for one another the outcome that each desired most deep down. They could be happy—all they had to do was decide.
But the decision was for tomorrow, or some day next week. For now, it was simpler than that. It was as simple as two hands. Two hands, clasped. Him and her. Will and Whitney. They would be okay, after all. They would be okay they would be okay they would be okay. They felt the wheels separate from the runway. And then, on a silent shared count of 1-2-3, somebody squeezed.
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Acknowledgments
Utmost gratitude to the book people in my corner: Josh Kendall at Little, Brown and Kirby Kim at Janklow & Nesbit. And everyone else in their halls who had a hand in getting this novel into shape and out the door—in particular, Reagan Arthur, Ira Boudah, Nicky Guerreiro, Alexandra Hoopes, Sareena Kamath, Maggie Southard, Elora Weil, Ben Allen, Allan Fallow, and Eloy Bleifuss.
To the writers and editors in my life, especially in magazines. Magazines are more fragile than ever—read them, subscribe to them, indulge their paywalls, please.
To early readers on this project: Angelica Baker, Sarah Colombo, Sarah Goldstein, Alice Gregory, Alyssa Reichardt, Patti Riley, and Claire Stapleton.
To the many friends who tolerated the weekends of writing.
To Mom and Dad and Patons and Pattisons and Rileys and Glenns and Goulets, for basements and beaches and understanding the difference between fiction and non-.
To Icelandic volcanoes (c. 2010) and European Airbnbs (c. 2017–19), for inspiration and accommodation, respectively.
To Barcelona, for letting me drop in from time to time.
And to Sarah Goulet. I love you even more than visiting Europe.
About the Author
Daniel Riley is the author of Fly Me and a correspondent at GQ. He grew up in Manhattan Beach, California, attended Duke University, and lives in New York City with his wife.
Also by Daniel Riley
Fly Me