“I have to say that I do not like them very much either, but what it is to be old is adepted to dubious paths and sour provisions,” came the voice once more.
Foster sat with his knees splayed either side of the seatback, one leg intruding the aisle, the other balancing a folded magazine; the voice had summoned him from a place beneath the opalescent black interior of his eyelids. His head ached, the seat poorly suited his frame, and he blinked over his right shoulder toward the voice with lethargy and discomfort. The man seated beside him craned forward, peering through the window and out upon nothing but six thousand fathoms of night. Foster observed his head was almost perfectly round; his hair was a bright gray and fleeting brown, freshly trimmed to one brief length, and standing everywhere and emphatically on end. His eyes were deep-set, cold metal-blue, bearing a watery and heavy-lidded melancholy and framed with small steel spectacles perched above the knuckle of his nose. He wore a rumpled blue suit with epaulettes of sparse dandruff, and shone an untouched cream-white pallor presently flushed with drink.
A husky, thought Foster. “And turbulence,” he said.
“And bumpy and dubious paths,” said the man who turned from the window toward Foster.
“Not that old I think,” Foster said, adjusted the magazine on his knee and rubbed at his eyes with his palms.
“A Russian is born sad and middle-aged…and requires no calendar’s contradiction.”
Foster laughed.
“Do you fly often?” he asked.
“Commercially? Regularly,” said Foster.
“But occasionally by carpet or fighter plane?” the man said with a red-lipped smile. “Is there another type? What is the other type?” Foster began to respond, but the man continued: “Private of course; yes, I have cousin—an oligarch—he has a private plane: a jet, like this—quite extravagant.”
“Then why fly coach?” asked Foster.
“He has a vast mining and transport concern—coal principally. But when he refused a buyout from the president’s friends, they jailed him for whatever came to mind. His assets were sold by the state at favorable prices. Very favorable,” he repeated, nodding. “And now the minister of finance rides his plane about the oblasts—the provinces—and drinks from his Baccarat,” he said, gesturing with his plastic cup.
“Were you close?” asked Foster.
“No. I don’t know him. So you fly privately?”
“I’m certified.”
“You’re a pilot? Could you fly this . . .” he said, tapping on his tray table with the square point of his finger, “a plane like this?”
“A 767-300? No. I’m instrument rated, but not type rated for turbojet or large aircraft. They’re not like cars. There’s a little more to it than a steering wheel and pedals,” said Foster.
“Ah, but you could?”
“I don’t have a CPL,” said Foster.
“If you had to.”
“They wouldn’t let me.”
“Never mind,” the man said with a loose jerk of his hand. “This is a good plane?”
“Anything that’ll fly above the weather is a good plane. If you mean the airframe—as long as the engines don’t fall off—yeah, it’s fine.”
The man swirled the contents of his plastic cup, and looked at Foster.
“Really, that was just with the Rolls-Royce RB211. When they hung them, they cracked the engine pylon. I think they’ve fixed that.”
“The engine?”
“The pylon—they’re two-thousand pounds heavier than the alternatives. Good performance though.”
“It’s fixed?”
“Yeah, I think so. But, it could also be the G.E. CF6,” Foster said. He rubbed his eyes again and leaned his head back against the rest. “But that’s not as good.”
“No?”
“No. It’s not as . . . robust. There’ve been some incidents.”
“Incidents?”
“Failures. Well, if it comes apart at ten thousand r.p.m . . . four-hundred-seventy knots . . . thirty-five-thousand feet . . . ?”
“. . . what?”
Foster glanced at him, and thought he’d lost some of the blush from his cheek. “It’s a party,” he replied. “But it’s probably the PW 4000. That’s better.”
“The PW 4000 is better?”
“Pratt and Whitney. But being it’s El Al, statistically at least, the odds of a hijacking are higher than vehicle failure,” Foster said.
“You are a wealth of information,” said the Russian.
Foster had lain his head back against the rest when the stewardess came—ensconced comfortably as a melon on a plate—and had closed his eyes to the stutter-strobe of blinking light, common for him along the attenuated, descending arc of a healthy stimulant buzz. It was a sensation mirrored in the static shimmer in his chest and elbows and wrists, and in the clenched muscles of his jaw. He put it to the sparking of circuits pining for the surge—impatient for the certitude of maximum capacity.
The stewardess was a crafted blond with a gold chain at her wrist, and a dress with lapels, fitted navy-black with pinstripes and scarf, and was leaning across Foster to hear the Russian when he’d opened his eyes. She looked a chastened late-forties to Foster, and to have been an exquisite beauty at one time. But sleeplessness, he thought, and cigarettes, and the evasiveness of money, had worked their corrosive hand—weathered her once pristine features with a patina of concern.
“Nothing can be done about the Smirnoff? It is hateful—have you nothing better, lubov moya?” said the Russian. “You keep nothing special in your purse for such occasions—nothing you might care to share?”
“Yes, but I’m only allowed to share it with the pilot,” she said. Her eyes sparkled but she did not smile.
“Well, perhaps you might make it better by making it more,” he said. “And a cranberry juice perhaps.”
“Cran-apple?”
“My darling, again we are moving in entirely the wrong direction,” he said. “Tell the captain I’m aggrieved—deeply—sincerely—aggrieved.”
“I will tell him,” she said, “the very instant we set down. And you my dear?” she asked Foster.
“Orange juice, I think.”
“She’s a princess!” said the Russian when she’d gone. “Wouldn’t you say?” “I’m Pavel Kashkin of seat A, row twenty-five,” he said, offered his handshake to Foster—which was received—and returned to the dregs of his upturned cup, which he tapped for good measure.
“Howard Foster . . . of the seat beside you.”
“Mr. Howard Foster. What a substantial name you have—it could be pressed from an ingot.”
“Charles is fine.”
“Now tell me what you fly, Mr. Foster, and feel free to spare the details.”
Foster paused to look at him, to take in this abundance of retiring and bespirited energy which was called Pavel Kashkin. “I have a Beechcraft. A King Air 200; it was a gi . . . It’s in D.C. Hangared at an FBO in D.C.”
“Is it good? Does it fly above the weather?”
“Most of it.”
“Is that where you’re going from Tel Aviv?”
“No, I have a layover at J.F.K., and then on to Lambert in Saint Louis.”
“What’s for you in Saint Louis?”
“Home,” said Foster, and wondered if there was such a thing.
“And what gainful thing do you do in Saint Louis?”
“Assistant Professor of Computer Science . . . at Washington University,” added Foster, intending to preempt the question.
The stewardess returned with the trolley, asked about snacks—for which Kashkin took two foils of peanuts: Foster abstained—and poured his orange juice from a plastic bottle into a low cup, and prepared the drink for the Russian. “I found one that’s extra-full,” she said, breaking the cap from the small, cle
ar vial of Smirnoff, “so you won’t feel neglected.”
“Lubov moya,” said the Russian as he received the can of juice cocktail and exchanged cups with her—one entirely empty for one slightly full. “I will be sure to think of you in my old age, when I compose my will.”
“Don’t you mean just after?” she asked.
“I do,” he said quickly. “Be sure I have the correct spelling of your name for the occasion.”
When she’d gone the Russian added enough cocktail to his drink to impart color, and tasting it, made a sudden gesture with his hand as though he’d been struck with an idea.
“Is it better?” asked Foster.
“Entirely worse,” said the Russian, who now drew a worn brown wallet from his jacket from which he carefully extracted a business card. Pinched unnaturally between his thick fingers Foster reflected that they seemed better suited to grappling ax handles and ploughshares.
“It’s not precious but it’s nearly my last,” said the Russian when he offered it.
It was of a medium stock with a turning corner, and in embossed print read: Tower and Gradzik Attorneys at Law; Pavel Kashkin, Esq.; 7912 Bonhomme Ave. Suite 400, Clayton, MO 63105; Washington D.C., Maryland, Illinois, Missouri.
“They talk of practices in California and New York one day,” said the Russian, as Foster considered the card.
“Tower or Gradzik?” asked Foster.
“Gradzik is my uncle’s son—he has ambitions.”
“You mean, your cousin.”
“Yes, he is my cousin, too,” said the Russian. “Were it not for relatives all Russians would live like Dostoyevsky.”
“He didn’t live well?”
“I don’t know,” said the Russian, “but I don’t think so.”
“You’re a large firm,” said Foster, turning the card in his fingers, and offering it back to Kashkin.
“No, you keep it,” protested the Russian, with a flash of his thick palm. “We are not so much big as wide,” he said. “It’s really just the two offices in four markets—licenses in four markets. I’m actually licensed in six. I moved a bit in earlier times.”
“What’s your field of practice?”
“The firm is mostly real estate and business—I’m family law, which is why my peers sometimes refer to me as the ‘harbinger.’”
“And why’s that?”
“Bad tidings. In all other practices, an attorney works at least occasionally as a surgeon. The family lawyer works almost exclusively as a mortician.”
“The odds of that,” said Foster.
“. . . but with a good bedside manner,” continued the Russian with a broad grin.
Foster turned the card over once more, before slipping it into a pocket.
“If I’d merely said it, you couldn’t believe it. Some days it seems the world could be folded in the hand,” said the Russian.
A silent lapse arose between them, during which Kashkin tried again to mend his drink with the addition of juice, and Foster again attempted succumbing to the weight with which all his tissues seemed saturated.
“Now it is merely sweet and bad,” groaned the Russian. “Were you headed out of Beijing?” he asked through the strand of a tight-lipped grimace.
“Technology conference. For developers,” said Foster. “You?”
“Connecting flight from Vladivostok.”
Foster withdrew the back-folded magazine from his knee, closed the cover right-way over, set it beside his drink on the tray, and with his hot, dry eyes, settled on the brim of his cup.
“Are you a reader?” asked the Russian, glancing at Foster’s rumpled Economist. “I think I don’t read enough. But I encourage my daughter—happily, I think she is a reader.”
“That’s the home of the Russian Pacific Fleet,” interrupted Foster.
“It is,” responded the Russian without pause. “My father labored the whole of his years in the shipyards. Now he’s a withered oak: more tired than retired—his back, his knees—all his life his body was his currency. He gets about his apartment, but he cannot keep it up. My brother lives in Moscow, but he is an automobile mechanic: he does not visit.”
“Is he alone?” asked Foster.
“The cat, his tea kettle, and the color television I bought him a few years ago—yes. He is alone. What of you? Children?” asked the Russian.
Vladivostok had baited Foster’s imagination, and he considered the Russian’s soft and pallid features once more before resolving any suspicions as highly improbable.
“Any children?” repeated the Russian. “Do you have any children?”
“Hmm?” responded Foster, adrift in his thoughts, and pivoting slowly toward the question and its answer. “Oh, yes. Yes. Sorry,” he said.
“Little beggars,” said the Russian. “And which species have you?”
“A daughter,” said Foster.
“Does she fly?”
Foster had settled himself once more onto the magazine cover, the typeface, the plastic cup with the snare on the lip, the flecks of pulp dappling the surface of the juice, the smooth gray mold of the tray. “Only to the nanny,” he said, “. . . from her mother’s arms,” and the sepia bitterness of its saying lay on his tongue, thick and acrid as spoiled food.
2.
The water had been running some time and its slapping had grown sharp in his ears. On the breakfast table before him, lemon pips lolled in a cold-filmy water, in a tall, thin glass. Across the kitchen his father stood at the sink, his back to Foster, peeling lettuce leaves from the head and washing them individually with an extravagant and deliberating care. He wore crisp trousers and a sweater vest and his shirtsleeves rolled. And when he moved the leaves from the colander to the bowl Foster could see that his hands were wet to the leather of his watchstrap. At the end of the hall, in the living room, were Foster’s wife, his mother, brother, sister, sister’s husband, maternal uncle, and maternal grandfather, all seated near the fire which snapped in fits above the music; and the elaborately trimmed tree was staged with glittering lights and presents in potentia: ribboned and ornately-bound boxes entirely empty but for the spirit of Christmas. The voices of his uncle and grandfather had fallen silent and Foster imagined the company staring cautiously into their drinks until one of them would begin again.
The housemaid had spirited baby Pauline away to some distant corner of the house in order that Catherine, Foster’s wife, could bask unfettered in the familial glow; the kitchen was warm with the running ovens, and the cook had gone to busy herself in the butler’s pantry when the pair had encamped there. There had been nothing between them but the water slapping half-measure into the sink when Foster had tired of the sound. “Why are you doing that? You don’t need to do that,” he said.
His father grasped a Manhattan from the counter with his dripping hand. He took a drink, replaced the glass, and with a lazy flick of his finger, spun the holiday charm round the stem. “I’ve heard the Nutcracker before,” he said. “Your mother wanted me to wear a tie,” he offered a moment later.
“And why didn’t you?” asked Foster.
His father glanced over his shoulder in response, spun the charm once more on the glass, and returned to his careful work.
The sink continued to run until Foster’s brother-in-law entered, and his father had diminished the greens to a shapeless core. Foster’s father had made himself respectable by way of a real estate firm—mostly commercial; Foster’s grandfather was the hereditary gesture of a two-hundred year old French textile dynasty made fat on cheap labor—now mostly Asian; and his brother-in-law was named after an Irish poet, who’s name he could never remember; and for all Foster knew he might have been one too. But today his hair was trimmed, wet, and neatly combed; his sparse and wiry beard was cut smooth; and he was dressed almost within pantomime of Foster’s uncle: a fussy light brown hound’s to
oth, tan slacks—possibly they were his uncle’s—and looking every bit as dated and costly. He looked a boy playing dress up in old man’s clothes: only he wasn’t a boy; and perhaps he was missing an ascot, thought Foster. Clearly he’d got the talking to.
“And where do you think you’re going?” his father asked the beige apparition, as he drifted quietly into the kitchen clutching at his drink as though he’d stolen it from the other room. “Why aren’t you in there manning your station?” he asked, shutting off the water finally, betrayed in the end by the finite measure of an initially infinite promise, “like a good lad.”
They watched him for an answer, but what came was an evasive shrug, and only after an improbable interval. The answer of course, was that he’d fled the dangerous silence when it had come; escaped in the shade of the first passing diversion. And as if to underscore the hazard, Catherine’s laugh came to them just then from the other room, sharp and sudden and eager, and the three of them turned briefly to face it.
“You flew in?—well of course you flew,” said his brother-in-law, clearing his throat in hopes of landing the desired tone. “I mean your plane.”
“It’s parked,” said Foster.
“Where do you keep it?”
“It’s here . . . in D.C. The engines are houred up. They need to be taken down. I haven’t had it done.”
He lifted his glass again furtively, but his expression peered blankly into the tail of Foster’s sentence. Foster looked at it too.
“It’s hours not miles,” said Foster. “With planes—aircraft—wear is measured in time, not distance.”
Foster thought his brother-in-law had come to the kitchen perhaps to worry a keyhole in his discomfort. He wondered if he’d have been able to drink at all without it.
Manhattan was house drink of the season. There were other drinks for other occasions, but the Manhattan belonged to Christmas, and lay over it like a velvet tree skirt. The glasses were served and collected from everyone in turns—with their spent maraschino stems and lather of graduated rings—everyone but the cook and the housemaid, and Foster, who despite what was a strong urge for one, preferred to cultivate the air of a non-drinker among family, and other occasions of high-pretence: the non-drinker brims after all with righteous opinion, trusted virtue, and his views and behavior pass without a reflexive imputation. His father, however, held no interest in stemware, patience for mixing, or the dishwater-sweet result, and would prefer the untrammeled bourbon they were mixed on; but was growing frisky on them just the same.
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