by K B Jensen
“Have you ever traveled?” she asked.
“Not much,” he said. “You?”
“I studied abroad for a year, traveled all over the world, even went to India. I used up most of my college savings that way, went into debt… my parents were ecstatic. I never did get a decent paying job after undergrad. Now I live at home.”
“Let’s go to India,” he mumbled. “Let’s get on a plane together.”
“You’re crazy,” she laughed nervously.
“No, you are,” he mumbled. “I’m falling asleep again. I’m cold. Just hold me, and tell me a story. Just tell me something, my friend, anything.”
His chest shuddered involuntarily.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Hush now and don’t interrupt. I’ll lose my train of thought.”
He nodded, and she began in a soft, shaky voice.
American on the Plane
If she had known the heartache it would cause, she would not have taken the $200 voucher and the first class upgrade to switch from an overbooked flight. But at the time it had seemed like a good idea. So what if it meant waiting around for two more hours? It was almost midnight anyway, and she had a fourteen-hour flight from Chicago to Delhi to look forward to. Her fiancé and India could wait a few hours more.
While seated at the gate, she noticed a blond man staring at her. She looked away and gazed at the planes sitting outside the window in the dark and at the luggage being tossed into the plane’s hold under the yellow lights. Lately, she felt like a suitcase being thrown about, never sure where she’d end up. Her fiancé had an excellent job lined up in Delhi, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She didn’t. But it was a chance to go home for good, and he was worth the trip back. Though she always called it home, she hadn’t lived in India since she was eight years old.
She glanced up again at the slim, blond man with the blue eyes. She was raven haired with a dark, golden complexion and filled out her American blue jeans with an hourglass figure. The only hint of India on her was a thick, gold bangle dangling off her right wrist. It was something she could wear in both countries without sticking out. He had American written all over him with his beat-up Nikes and T-shirt.
She could sense him walking behind her as the flight attendant scanned her boarding pass. His eyes were on her as she walked down the long corridor onto the plane. She carried her bag in front of her awkwardly as she walked down the first-class aisle and then struggled to shove it into the overhead compartment. She pushed it up repeatedly, but it kept falling down.
“You need help?” he asked her.
“Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”
And he tossed it up easily. Life must be a lot easier when you are a man over six feet tall, instead of a woman just over five, she thought. The world seemed to be designed for men. Life just seemed easier for men in general.
She settled down into her seat by the window. She was surprised when he took the seat next to her. He didn’t look first class. Her fiancé on the other hand, he looked like he belonged in first class, she thought. He wore his dark hair short and neat, and liked to wear perfectly tailored suits to work. Tired-looking passengers streamed past them into economy, wielding bags in front of them like weapons.
“What brings you to Delhi?” she asked.
“I want to see some of India before I go to Mumbai,” he said. “I’m gonna be a Bollywood actor.”
“Seriously?” she said, eying his pale skin. “You don’t look like a Bollywood star.”
“I’m the bad guy,” he said. “You?”
“I’m getting married,” she said, looking out the window at the small, red lights on the ground. She wondered when the plane would take off.
“Love marriage?” he asked. “Or arranged?”
“Love marriage,” she said, raising her eyebrows in response to the question. “You’ve been to India before, haven’t you?” He sounded just like one of her relatives. It was a surprisingly common question in India, freely asked.
He nodded and she looked out the window. She felt the engine rev up and hum, then the plane began to taxi. She gripped the armrests. Her stomach still did a little somersault whenever a plane took off. She felt foolish. She had been traveling between the States and India her whole life.
She wrapped an extra blanket around her feet, pulled another one up to her neck, and shut the window. All she could see was blackness and the blinking lights on the airplane wing behind them, anyway. The windows on planes always reminded her of eyes, with heavy lids in various stages of slumber.
“Do you have cold feet, about getting married?” he asked, with a smirk and a glance down at her covered toes.
“No. My parents have been on my case for years. And he’s the right guy. I’m at that age when I kind of have to get married anyway.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” he said.
“The rules are different in India,” she said. “It’s all about family and honor.”
“You should make your own rules,” he said.
“I like those rules,” she said. She clutched her bangle and ran her thumb over the pattern etched into the metal. It was something she did when she was nervous. “They come with a beautiful history and tradition.”
The flight attendant walked by in her tight, navy blue skirt and leaned in. “Champagne?” she asked.
“Sure,” they both said simultaneously, and she handed them their plastic flutes.
“Here’s to your wedding.” He raised his glass in her direction.
“Cheers,” she said, taking a swig. The fizz from the bubbles tickled the tip of her nose.
She looked around and noticed there weren’t many other people in first class. An old auntie wearing a pretty purple sari, white socks and sandals had been escorted out of first class for improper footwear. It didn’t seem fair considering the muddy tennis shoes the American was wearing.
“You know, first class is pretty sparse. You could move to a different row, if you want more room,” she said.
“I like sitting by a beautiful woman. Don’t worry. I don’t mean anything weird by it. I won’t be a bother.” He pulled out a book from his worn-out backpack.
“You know, in India I’m not considered beautiful,” she said. “I’m too dark.”
“Maybe you’re moving to the wrong country,” he said.
“I love India!” she said defensively.
“I’m not trying to offend you,” he said. “I do, too. Just saying. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you,” she said. It made her sad. She shifted in her seat and pulled the entertainment console out from the armrest. She knew she should probably change seats herself, but she didn’t really want to.
She flipped through the movies and started to watch one she’d seen before. She put on the airplane headphones, the cheap black foam pressed against her ears. Nothing was appealing. The picture was grainy and kept flickering in and out. She shifted in her wide seat, and the leather creaked loudly. So much for first-class luxury, she thought. She had wanted to fly first class since she was a little girl. It was kind of a letdown on the other side of the mysterious closed curtain.
She tried not to look at the man sitting next to her, now sipping a glass of scotch. He did look like the movie star type. He definitely hit the gym. In fact he smelled like the gym mingled with too much aftershave. She wondered what it would be like to give him a bath, to wash his exotic, blond hair and touch his wet, pale skin. And then she regretted the thought. What would her fiancé think? Did he think of other women all the time anyway when she was gone?
As he was reading his book, his boarding pass slipped from the pages onto the ground. She picked it up and noticed he was in the wrong seat all together. He belonged in economy.
“Why are you sitting here?” she asked, waving his ticket. “Have you been plotting to pick me up the whole time? Were you hoping to join the mile-high club?” The moment the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them.
It was not the kind of thing you want to say to a stranger, she thought.
“Well, aren’t you a little freak,” he laughed. “Are you blushing?”
“Brown girls don’t blush,” she said and swatted him with his boarding pass. She did her best to glare at him, but she couldn’t help but laugh.
“Are you going to make me move?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a long, boring flight. You’re kind of interesting. Maybe I’ll let you stay. It depends. Can you get me Shah Rukh Khan’s autograph?”
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “But how will I give it to you?”
She handed him her business card. “The name’s gonna change soon, though. I’ll be Mrs. Malhotra.”
He handed her his card and she shoved it into her pocket without looking at it.
“What’s your book about?” she asked, peering at the cover.
“A photographer who has an affair with a woman while her husband’s off to war. Do you think you could love more than one person at the same time?” he asked. He held the open book against his chest.
“That’s such an American question to ask,” she said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I bet you could. I’ll bet you a hundred rupees.” He pulled out a squashed note from his jeans pocket and waved it in the air.
“You shouldn’t crumple these,” she said. “And anyway, it’s not much money, you know.”
“It doesn’t matter. You keep it for now, so you don’t forget.”
“No. I’m going to sleep now,” she said. “This is the silliest conversation I’ve ever had on a plane. You can’t belong to two people at the same time.”
“A woman doesn’t belong to anybody,” he said.
She sighed and pulled out her own headphones from her purse so she could listen to music on her phone, but the headphones were tied in knots. Her fingers struggled to untangle the white wires, and she gave up on the idea. “You like to shoot off your mouth, don’t you?” she said.
“What does it matter?” he asked. “I’ll probably never see you again. I can say anything I want. So can you…”
“So you’re saying the rules don’t apply on a plane?” she said.
“When it’s international, it’s duty-free,” he said, smiling.
“Men are so naïve,” she said. “That’s not how the world works.”
“Just think about it, though. You can love more than one country at a time, can’t you? I bet you can. Why couldn’t you love two people?”
“You can’t be in two places at once.” She looked him in the eye.
“Yes, you can,” he said. “Okay, what if your husband died and you fell in love with another man, wouldn’t you still love the memory of the first?”
“But he’d be dead.”
“You can love a dead man, can’t you?”
“Not literally,” she said with a smirk.
She turned in her seat, pulled out the Skymall catalog and pretended to leaf through the strange and useless inventions. She stared at the stone zombie hands coming out of a pile of dirt.
“Classy,” he laughed looking over her shoulder. “I don’t think you can choose who you love,” he said softly.
“Of course you can,” she said. “Millions of people do it everyday. They enter into an arranged marriage with open hearts and open minds and many of them love each other, become best friends.”
“But is that true love?” He was staring at her.
“You Americans like to chase fairy tales,” she said. “You shouldn’t chase happiness all your life. It’s selfish. Think about the divorce rate.”
“What’s wrong with being happy? I’m pretty sure I could make you happy.” He grinned.
“No one can make another person happy,” she said. “You have to make your own happiness in life.”
“And India is constantly ranked as one of the happiest places to live in the world,” he said with a sarcastic smile.
“That’s because of the poverty,” she said.
“What’s worse than an impoverished soul?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure we have you guys beat in the enlightenment department,” she laughed.
He threw up his hands and laughed. She liked the sound of it. Something about it was like music.
She finally put in her tangled headphones and reclined her seat. Closing her eyes, she let her breathing slow down with the soft music. When she woke up and tasted the stale, cottony air in her mouth, she was surprised. How had she had fallen asleep next to an unfamiliar man, she wondered. She never slept on planes.
He was still sleeping. She studied the B-movie star face some more, trying to decide whether she remembered it from somewhere. Had she seen him before, in a movie or somewhere else? She took out her digital camera and snapped a photo of him like that. He looked peaceful. As soon as the camera clicked, his eyes snapped open and he grabbed her wrist. It felt like an electric shock, like a memory.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Got your picture so when you’re famous, I can prove I met you,” she said.
“You need a better picture than that,” he said, leaning in and snapping one of the two of them, holding the camera out with his hand. His cheek brushed hers. The flash had lit up a small circle of light around them in the darkness.
“Now that I’m wide awake, what am I supposed to do?” he looked down at his cell phone in airplane mode and furrowed his eyebrows. “Is this in American time or the Indian time zone?”
“American time zone most likely,” she said.
“Fuck it,” he said, putting it back in his pocket. “I don’t even want to know how many hours we have left. However, shall we pass the time?” It was adorable the way he raised his eyebrows.
She felt her stomach give a little lurch. Was it turbulence? Had the plane dropped slightly beneath her or was it something about the stranger?
“What would you do if I leaned over and kissed you?” he asked in the dark.
She wondered where the flight attendant had gone off to, if she was sleeping in her bunk somewhere. It felt like they were the only two people on the plane just then.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a purely hypothetical question, right?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”
He leaned closer to her, so close she could feel his warm breath against her face.
“Maybe I’d slap you,” she whispered.
“Maybe I’d like that,” he said, raising his eyebrows and laughing.
“What would you do if I kissed you?” she asked, feeling strangely bold.
“What wouldn’t I do?” he said softly.
“We’ll never know,” she said. “Will we?” But before the words could come all the way out, before she could even finish the thought, he had pressed his lips against hers. Pressing a hand against the side of his face, she felt the stubble lining his jaw. For a moment she thought about pushing him away, but then her hand softened. She felt the warmth of his lips, tasted a trace of alcohol. She felt a fluttering in her belly, not like butterflies, no, it was more like the feeling of turbulence, too much turbulence. What was he going to do? But there was no turbulence. She had forgotten about her fiancé. It was like he didn’t exist in this kiss. But then she remembered him, thought of his face, thought of his voice, what he would say, and she slowly pulled away after an eternity of a moment.
It had felt natural. She should have felt guilty. Did she feel guilty?
“I live every day like it’s my last,” he said.
“Do you?” she asked.
“I do,” he said.
“Like a suicide bomber,” she mumbled. She had said it so quietly, but the words were jarring.
“That’s one thing you shouldn’t say on a plane, I guess,” he said, laughing.
The lights came back on.
“Upright position, please,” the flight attendant said, walking by the aisle. “We’re landing soon
.”
She moved away from him, pressed the button and her seat came back up. Something about the routine comment had embarrassed her. She swallowed uneasily as the pressure built in her ears and set off little popping noises.
When the plane’s wheels touched the ground with a thump, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Back to the earth. They walked through the airport together for a while. When they got to Customs and Immigration, their lines were different. He was stuck in a much longer queue. He gave a little nod as she walked past.
“It was nice meeting you,” she said.
“You too, Mrs. Malhotra,” he said. “Wish I could’ve seen more of you. Forgive me, but I did love you in a past life.”
She rolled her eyes and went to the baggage claim. Her fiancé waved from the carousel. She was relieved to see him and so tired after the long flight. He didn’t hug her. No public displays of affection in India. But he beamed a big, handsome smile. His intense, dark brown eyes twinkled. He took her backpack and the navy blue suitcase with scratches and a torn handle, and tossed them to the driver.
“How was your flight?” he asked.
“Tiring,” she said. She wasn’t sure what to tell him. Well, she knew what to tell him—nothing. There was no point. Nothing had really happened, had it? She closed her eyes on the drive home and tried to ignore the trucks and motorcycles swerving into their lane. That uneasy feeling in her stomach, the feeling of turbulence remained.
Back at their flat, she unpacked her bags and noticed the book and the 100-rupee note were in the front pocket of her carryon. The B-movie star must have put it in there when she was sleeping. Maybe it was an accident after a few too many drinks, she told herself. She sat on the bed next to her laid out gold-embroidered red wedding dress and stared at the thin, worn paper of the rupee note in her hands. Then she crumpled it some more between her fingers and her palm, just like an American.
She tried not to think of the American from the plane. He had made no promises. But his face flickered in her head for the next three days, while the henna was being applied to her hands, while she took the seven steps around the fire, and while the garland of marigolds was placed around her neck. She was in two places at once. The ground felt shaky, uneven underneath her.