Before the Fall

by Noah Hawley

  “Hey,” he said. “Where did you—I was looking for you.”

  She turned on him. “Why are you even—I don’t want you here. I don’t—”

  He reached out to hug her, hold her, to show her how love would fix everything. But she reared back, hate in her eyes, and slapped him hard across the face.

  Cheek stinging, he stared at her. It was as if the sun had—in the course of an otherwise normal day—suddenly exploded in the sky. She held his eye defiantly, then looked away, afraid suddenly.

  Charlie watched her walk off, then turned dully—his mind a perfect blank—and entered the cabin, where he almost ran into Melody, the captain on the flight. James. Older guy, not much fun, but competent. Extremely. British ponce, thought he was the boss of everything. But Charlie knew how to kowtow. It was part of passing.

  “Afternoon, Captain,” he said.

  Melody recognized him, frowned.

  “What happened to Gaston?” he asked.

  “You got me,” said Charlie. “Stomach thing, I think. All I know is I got a call.”

  The captain shrugged. It was the front office’s problem.

  They chatted some more, but Charlie wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking about Emma, what she’d said. What he could have done differently.

  Passion, that’s what they had, he told himself suddenly. Fire. The thought cheered him, the buzz in his cheek fading.

  Powering up the system and running diagnostics, Charlie told himself that he’d handled things well, maybe not perfectly, but…She was just playing hard to get. The next six hours would go like fucking clockwork. Textbook takeoff. Textbook landing. There and back in five hours and then he’d be the one changing his phone number, and when she came to her senses and realized what she’d lost, well, she’d be the one begging him for forgiveness.

  Cycling the engines, he heard the cockpit door open. Emma stormed into the main cabin.

  “Keep him away from me,” she told Melody, pointing at Charlie, then stalked back to the galley.

  The captain looked over at his copilot.

  “You got me,” said Charlie. “Must be her time of the month.”

  They finished their pre-flight run-through and closed the hatch. At six fifty-nine p.m. they taxied to the runway and lifted off without incident, moving away from the setting sun. A few minutes later, Captain Melody banked to starboard and pointed them toward the coast.

  For the rest of the flight to Martha’s Vineyard, Charlie stared out at the ocean, slumping visibly in his seat. As the rage left him, the serious lightning nerves that had been fueling him, he felt exhausted, deflated. The truth was, he hadn’t slept, really, in maybe thirty-six hours. A few minutes on the flight from London, but mostly he’d been too amped up. A lingering effect of the coke, possibly, or the vodka/Red Bulls he’d been drinking. Whatever it was, now that his mission had failed, had epically imploded, he felt destroyed.

  Fifteen minutes from the Vineyard, the captain stood, put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. Charlie jumped in his seat, startled.

  “She’s all yours,” said Melody. “I’m gonna grab a coffee.”

  Charlie nodded, straightening. The plane was on autopilot, gliding effortlessly over the open blue. As the captain exited the cockpit, he closed the door (which had been open) behind him. It took Charlie a few moments to register that. That the captain had closed the door. And why? Why would he do that? It had been open for takeoff. Why close it now?

  Except for privacy.

  Charlie felt a hot flush go through him. That was it. Melody wanted privacy so he could talk to Emma.

  About me.

  A new burst of adrenaline hit Charlie’s bloodstream. He needed to focus. He slapped himself in the face a couple of times.

  What should I do?

  He ran through his options. His first instinct was to storm out and confront them, to tell the pilot that this shit was none of his business. Go back to your seat, old man. But that was non-rational. He could be fired for that probably.

  No. He should do nothing. He was a professional. She was the drama queen, the one who brought their private business in to work. He would fly the plane (okay, watch the autopilot fly the plane) and be the grounded adult.

  And yet he had to admit that it was killing him. The closed door. Not knowing what was going on out there. What she was saying. Against his better judgment he stood, then sat, then stood again. Just as he was reaching for the door it opened, and the captain came back with his coffee.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, closing the door behind him.

  Charlie turned at the waist and did a kind of upper-body stretch.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Just…got a cramp in my side. Trying to stretch it out.”

  The sun was starting to set as they made their final approach into Martha’s Vineyard. On the ground, Melody taxied past ground control and parked. Charlie stood as soon as the engines were off.

  “Where are you going?” the captain asked.

  “Cigarette,” said Charlie.

  The captain stood.

  “Later,” he said. “I want you to run a full diagnostic on the flight controls. The stick felt tight on landing.”

  “Just a quick cigarette?” Charlie said. “We’ve got, like, an hour before takeoff.”

  The captain opened the cockpit door. Behind him Charlie could see Emma in the galley. Sensing the cockpit door open, she looked over, saw Charlie, and looked away fast. The captain shifted his hip to block Charlie’s view.

  “Run the diagnostic,” he said, and exited, closing the door behind him.

  Fucking petty bullshit, thought Charlie, turning to the computer. He sighed, once, twice. He stood. He sat. He rubbed his hands together until they felt hot, then pressed them against his eyes. He’d flown the plane for fifteen minutes before landing. The stick felt fine. But Charlie was a professional, Mr. Professional, so he did what he was asked. That had always been his strategy. When you spend your life playing a role you learn how to make it look good. File your paperwork on time. Be the first on the field for grass sprints. Keep the uniform pressed and clean, your hair trimmed, your face shaved. Stand up straight. Be the part.

  To calm himself he pulled out his headphones and put on some Jack Johnson. Melody wanted him to run diagnostics? Fine. He wouldn’t just do what he was asked. He would spit-polish this thing. He started in on the diagnostic, soft guitars strumming in his ears. Outside the last sliver of sun dipped behind the trees and the sky took on a midnight hue.

  The captain found Charlie in his seat thirty minutes later, fast asleep. He shook his head and dropped into his chair. Charlie shot up, heart jackhammering, disoriented.

  “What?” he said.

  “Did you run the diagnostic?” Melody asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Charlie, flicking switches. “It’s…everything looks good.”

  The captain looked at him for a beat, then nodded.

  “Okay. The first client is here. I want to be ready for wheels-up at twenty-two hundred hours.”

  “Sure,” said Charlie, gesturing. “Can I…I gotta piss.”

  The captain nodded.

  “Come right back.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, managing to keep all but a hint of sarcasm out of his voice.

  He stepped out of the cockpit. The crew bathroom was right next to the cockpit. He could see Emma standing in the open doorway, waiting to greet the first guests as they arrived. Charlie could see on the tarmac what looked like a family of five, illuminated in the headlights of a Range Rover. He studied the back of Emma’s neck. Her hair was up in a bun, and there was a loose wisp of auburn arced across her jaw. The sight of it made him dizzy, the overwhelming urge he had to fall to his knees and press his face into her lap, an act of penance and devotion, the gesture of a lover, but also that of a son to a mother, for what he wanted was not the sensual pleasure of her naked flesh, but the maternal feeling of her hands on his head, the unc
onditional acceptance, the feel of her fingers in his hair, the motherly stroking. It had been so long since anyone had just stroked his hair, had rubbed his back until he fell asleep. And he was so tired, so profoundly tired.

  In the bathroom he stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks dark with stubble. This was not who he wanted to be. A loser. How had he let himself fall this far? How did he ever let this girl break him down? When they were dating he found her affection stifling, the way she would hold his hand in public, the way she put her head on his shoulder. As if she were marking him. She was so into him he felt it had to be an act. As a lifelong role player, he was certain he could spot another bullshitter from a mile away. So he went cold on her. He pushed her away to see if she would come back. And she did. It made him mad. I’m on to you, he thought. I know you’re fucking faking. The con is up. So drop the act. But she just seemed hurt, confused. And finally, one night, when he was fucking her and she reached up and stroked his cheek and said I love you, something inside him snapped. He grabbed her by the throat, at first just to shut her up, but then, seeing the fear in her eyes, the way her face turned red, he found himself squeezing harder, and his orgasm was like a white bolt of lightning from his balls to his brain.

  Now, staring at himself in the mirror, he tells himself he was right all along. She was faking. She had been playing him, and now that she was done she’d just thrown him away.

  He washes his face, dries his hands on a towel. The plane is vibrating as passengers climb the stairs. He can hear voices, the sound of laughter. He runs his hands through his hair, straightens his tie.

  Professional, he thinks. And then, just before he opens the door and reenters the cockpit.

  Bitch.

  Chapter 44

  Flight

  Gus hears an automated voice on the tape.

  “Autopilot disengaged.”

  This is it, he thinks. The beginning of the end.

  He hears the sound of the engines, an increase in rpm that he knows from the data recorder was the copilot putting the plane into a turn and powering up.

  You like that? he hears Busch mutter. Is that what you want?

  It’s just a matter of time now. The plane will impact the water in less than two minutes.

  And now he hears pounding on the door, and hears Melody’s voice.

  Jesus, let me in. Let me in. What’s going on? Let me in.

  But now the copilot is silent. Whatever thoughts he has in the last moments of his life he keeps to himself. All that remains, under the sound of the pilot’s desperation, are the sounds of a plane spiraling to its death.

  Gus reaches over and turns up the volume, straining to hear something, anything, over the low mechanical noise and the thrum of the jets. And then—gunshots. He jumps, swerving the car into the left-hand lane. Around him, car horns blare. Swearing, he corrects back into his own lane, losing count of the number of shots in the process. At least six, each like a cannon on the otherwise silent tape. And under them the sound of a whispered mantra.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang.

  And now a surge in rpms as Busch leans on the throttle, the plane spinning like a leaf circling down a drain.

  And even though he knows the outcome, Gus finds himself praying that the captain and the Israeli security man will get the door open, that they’ll overcome Busch and the captain will take his seat and find some miracle solution to right the plane. And, as if in sympathy with his own held breath, the gunshots are replaced by the sound of a body slamming into the metal cockpit door. Later, technicians will re-create the sounds, determining which is a shoulder and which is a kick, but for now they are just the urgent sounds of survival.

  Please, please, please, thinks Gus, even as the rational part of his brain knows they’re doomed.

  And then, in the split second before the crash, a single syllable:

  Oh.

  Then—impact—a cacophony of such size and finality that Gus closes his eyes. It continues for four seconds, primary and secondary impacts, the sounds of the wing shearing off, the fuselage breaking up. Busch will have been killed immediately. The others may have lasted a second or two, killed not by the impact, but by flying debris. None, thankfully, lived long enough to drown as the plane sank to the bottom. This they know from the autopsies.

  And yet somewhere in the chaos, a man and a boy survived. Hearing the crash on tape turns the fact of this into a full-blown miracle.

  “Boss?” comes Mayberry’s voice.

  “Yeah. I’m—”

  “He did it. He just—it was about the girl. The flight attendant.”

  Gus doesn’t respond. He is trying to comprehend the tragedy, to kill all those people, a child, for what? A lunatic’s broken heart?

  “I want a full analysis of all the mechanics,” he says. “Every sound.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Gus hangs up. He wonders how many more years he can do this job, how many more tragedies he can stomach. He is an engineer who is beginning to believe that the world is fundamentally broken.

  He sees his exit approaching, moves to the right lane. Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you.

  And then it’s over.

  * * *

  The first voice Scott hears on the tape is his.

  What’s going on? he asks. In your mind. With us.

  The recording quality is distant, a layer of mechanical hiss over the top. It sounds like a phone call, which is what Scott realizes it is, in the instant he recognizes his own voice.

  Let’s go to Greece, he hears Layla say. There’s a little house on a cliff I own through, like, six shell companies. Nobody knows a thing. Complete mystery. We could lie in the sun and eat oysters. Dance after dark. Wait till the dust clears. I know I should be coy with you, but I’ve never met anyone whose attention is harder to get. Even when we’re together it’s like we’re in the same place, but different years.

  “Where did you—” Scott asks.

  Bill looks at him and raises his eyebrows with a kind of triumph.

  “You still think we should believe nothing happened?”

  Scott stares at him.

  “Did you—how did you—”

  Bill holds up a finger—Wait for it.

  The tape plays again.

  How’s the boy?

  It’s Gus’s voice. Scott doesn’t have to hear the next voice to know that it will be his.

  He’s not—talking, really, but he seems to like that I’m here. So maybe that’s therapeutic. Eleanor’s really—strong.

  And the husband?

  He left this morning with luggage.

  A long pause.

  I don’t have to tell you how that’s going to look, says Gus.

  Scott finds himself mouthing his next words along with the tape.

  Since when does how a thing looks matter more than what it is?

  Two thousand twelve, I think, says Gus. Especially after—your hideout in the city. How that made the news. The heiress, which—I said find someplace to hide, not shack up in a tabloid story.

  Nothing happened. I mean, yeah, she took off her clothes and climbed into bed with me, but I didn’t—

  We’re not talking about what did or didn’t happen, says Gus. We’re talking about what it looks like.

  The tape ends. Bill sits forward.

  “So you see,” he says. “Lies. From the very beginning you’ve been telling nothing but lies.”

  Scott nods, his mind putting the piece together.

  “You recorded us,” he says. “Eleanor’s phone. That’s how you knew—when I called her from Layla’s house—that’s how you knew where I was. You traced the call. And then—did you have Gus’s phone too? The FBI? Is that how—all those leaks—is that how you got the memo?”

  Scott can see Bill’s producer waving frantically from
off camera. She looks panicked. Scott leans forward.

  “You bugged their phones. A plane crashed. People died, and you bugged the phones of the victims, their relatives.”

  “People have a right to know,” says Bill. “This was a great man. David Bateman. A giant. We deserve the truth.”

  “Yeah, but—do you know how illegal it is? What you did? Not to mention—immoral. And we’re sitting here, and you’re worried about what—that I had a consensual relationship with a woman?”

  Scott leans forward.

  “And meanwhile, you have no idea what actually happened, how the copilot locked the captain out of the cockpit, how he switched off the autopilot and put the plane into a dive. How six shots were fired into the door—gunshots—probably by the Batemans’ security guard, trying to get it open, trying to regain control of the plane. But they couldn’t, so they all died.”

  He looks at Bill, who—for once in his life—is speechless.

  “People died. People with families, with children. They were murdered, and you’re sitting here asking me about my sex life. Shame on you.”

  Bill gets to his feet. He looms over Scott. Scott stands himself, facing off, unflinching.

  “Shame on you,” he repeats, this time quietly, just to Bill.

  For a minute it seems Bill will hit him. His fists are balled. And then two cameramen are grabbing him, and Krista is there.

  “Bill,” she yells. “Bill. Calm down.”

  “Get off me,” yells Bill, struggling, but they hold him firm.

  Scott stands. He turns to Krista.

  “Okay,” he says. “I’m done.”

  He walks away, allowing the anger and struggle behind him to fade. He finds a hallway and follows it to an elevator. Feeling like a man waking from a dream he presses the button, then waits for the doors to open. He thinks about the floating wing, and how it was on fire, thinks about the boy’s voice calling in the dark. He thinks about his sister, and how he waited on his bike in the growing darkness. He thinks about every drink he ever took, and what it feels like to hear the starting gun and dive into chlorinated blue.

  Somewhere the boy is waiting, playing trucks in the driveway, coloring outside the lines. There is a lazy river and the sound of the leaves blowing in the wind.