Flying High

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  “Max Travis is on this flight?” The senior flight attendant’s smile curled softly, dreamily. I’d worked with Jason before and had thought he was straight, not that it really mattered.

  “Guess so.” It was a last-minute change, a copilot I’d never flown with. Max was late was all I knew.

  Jason swiveled on his tiptoes and peered into the boarding bridge hopefully.

  I took my seat and absorbed myself in preparations. I anticipated the familiar sensation, the mild rush of takeoff. Regardless of any problems in my life, the love of flying transported me. Despite my ten days off, or perhaps in spite of them, I needed that passion now.

  I’d be back in the States soon, where I could execute my elaborate plan to win Friederike back. Deep down I was realistic, but that didn’t stop my formulating my plot with the same precision as that with which I’d charted the flight plan.

  “Sorry I’m late.” The voice was smoky, feminine, with a hint of a soft English accent.

  Max Travis was a tall, athletic woman. Her skin was a warm, deep tan color, and her cheeks were dotted with large freckles. Her chestnut hair was gathered into a short ponytail. Her nose hooked downward to slender nostrils which she flared as I studied her. Full pink lips curled into a friendly smile. “I had to break every bloody speed limit.”

  “No problem.”

  Max peered over my shoulder, then circled around to the copilot’s seat. “I’m Max.” She reached across the pedestal and I gripped her hand. Heat emanated like a steam radiator in January.

  “Dane Leonard.”

  “Dane? Lovely name.” She joined in the preparations with a sense of authority—rapid economical movements to catch up with me. She nodded. “Sorry about the divorce.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry about the divorce.”

  “What makes you think—”

  “Tan line on your wedding finger. That was one thick band!”

  Her corneas were vibrant brown with sparkles like mica in a riverbed. There was not a trace of makeup on her face. “What makes you so sure I didn’t just recently lose weight and need it resized?”

  She lifted her brow.

  I turned back to the instrument panel and tapped one of the displays. “Or that I lost it yodeling through the Alps?”

  She smiled to reveal slightly uneven front teeth. She laughed softly.

  “Or that my wife passed away?”

  Her face fell serious. She angled her torso so her face was in my line of sight. “Are you telling me you didn’t recently divorce?”

  “Well, no.”

  She sat back in her seat. “It seems it was difficult for you.” “Mmm.” I continued preparations.

  After we lifted off from Munich, the sun lay low in the sky. We’d be chasing sunset all night.

  “I love flying east to west in the evening.” Max stared out over the nose of the jet.

  “Me, too.” I recalled how Friederike and I used to sit together to watch the sunset, and how I’d tell her that the sunset could open out below while I lingered at its edge, its descent suspended when I was traveling to the west. I recalled further how Friederike’s interest in my stories of flying faded as the years wore on.

  “So, how did you know I was divorced?”

  “I know that look.” Max tilted her head.

  The lazy sun glowed a gentle orange, casting needle strips on organized waves that prepared their assault on the continent as we penetrated the coastline.

  “She split with you.” Not a question: a declaration.

  “No.”

  Max leaned forward and forced her face into my line of sight. My jaw tightened. I couldn’t restrain a nervous smile.

  “You split with her?”

  I paused then shook my head softly. “Well, no. She split with me.”

  “As you were ‘never home?’”

  “What, are you a head shrink?”

  “Hardly.” Max scanned the instruments.

  I looked at her left hand. “Well, I don’t see a tan line on your finger.”

  Max turned her head just enough that her left eye could catch me in its periphery. “The wounds will heal nicely if you’ll let them. They don’t all turn to scar.”

  Max tried to engage me in conversation from time to time. I feigned interest and gave noncommittal grunts. I got some of what she was saying. She’d lived all over, but considered Manchester, England, to be the home of her youth. She was the daughter of a distinguished pilot in the RAF and had been flying since she was a teenager. She’d fallen for and married an American soldier—ironically, an Air Traffic Controller. She did not say how it ended, just that it had and she remained in the States, a naturalized citizen. Just like Friederike, whose face I now conjured on the windshield, leading me to a hard sigh.

  “So, you’re formulating the plan to win her back.” Max looked out over the nose of the 767. Again, not a question, but a statement. It was getting irritating.

  “Of course not. We signed the final papers.”

  She turned her body into my line of sight the way she had each time I fed her a line. “I hope you don’t fancy yourself a poker player.”

  I blurted a laugh and looked over my left shoulder, south over the Atlantic. She remained in position until I looked back in her eyes.

  “No, I know better.” My right hand was resting on the yoke, though we were on autopilot. It eased toward her. I tried to stop it, really I did, but the backs of my fingers brushed down her cheek. She was soft and smooth, and warm like a fever. My cock got heavy. I pulled my hand sharply away as if she were Sister Mary Margaret about to rap my offending knuckles.

  She tilted her head curiously, then leaned back in her seat. “You have nice hands.”

  Sunsets vary from place to place, time to time. They are a by-product of humidity, altitude and—well, to get clinical might take the mystery and magic out of sunsets. But there are those who say that man’s flying has taken the magic out of watching birds. Not true. It is the magic of flying that yields some of the most stunning sunsets. Through the malleable terrain seven miles above sea level, strips of clouds carpeted and danced with the pulsing glow of this lingering sunset.

  There wasn’t a trace of turbulence; it was as calm a flight as I’d ever taken—physically.

  After the long, pensive silence, she rested her hand on the pedestal between us, first pretending that there was a purpose to where she had placed it. We both knew there wasn’t. Still I hesitated, until she rolled her palm upward.

  I laced my fingers in hers.

  I hadn’t gotten turned on from holding hands since Leann Dormand in eighth grade. And as powerful as that was, it didn’t compare to what I felt with Max now. I had a hard-on that reverberated deep into my body. I’d never felt a need quite like it, even after long separations from Friederike in our best days when I was in the Air Force.

  Max gripped tight and swallowed hard as she took me in from her peripheral vision. She held her breath when I squeezed. Her breathing became audible over the din. She turned her torso quickly over the pedestal as if it were an ambush.

  It worked.

  I propelled toward her despite my better judgment, like reverse thrust, hard brakes on a short runway and our teeth clicked. Her breath, tinted with ginger and orange pekoe tea, breezed into my mouth and spiced my coffee. My tongue entered her, and hers retreated coyly. The sharp points dodged and parried like fencers’ foils. I grasped her strong neck with my left hand and pulled her tighter. Her clean soapy scent released with hints of her sweat. Our heads rotated in perfect time, side to side, as if we could somehow deepen the kiss like driving a screw into wood. We popped softly as my mouth left shiny prints around her lips.

  “I—uh—sorry.” I turned toward the instruments as if something needed attention. Something did need attention: if we were to continue and get caught, it would be an immediate dismissal.

  She wiped the beads of sweat from her brow with the back of her thumb and looked away.

&
nbsp; The autopilot controls seemed to wink at me. “Um—I was a good pilot in the Air Force.”

  “I believe that.” Again her eye turned just enough that her dark pupil formed a tight ellipse. I realized how exceptional her peripheral vision was. The way she looked at me was extraordinarily powerful. It felt like an eye-to-eye stare from a foot away.

  My hard-on had started to soften, but now it came back with a vengeance. I fumbled for words to explain. “I mean—not a great pilot. But the great ones sometimes said they’d want me on their wing in a pinch, because I was smart and reliable. They’d trust me to remain cool and make the right moves.”

  “Maybe you were great, and you underestimate yourself.” Max smiled softly.

  “No, I’m a realist. I know what I am. It’s what makes me a good airline pilot.”

  “I bet you’re a great airline pilot.”

  I wasn’t feeling like one. I understood risks and knew how to minimize them. I calculated approaches with geometric precision. Max turned her face toward me again. Again I rubbed my fingers along her cheek. I allowed my thumb to trace her lower lip. She closed her eyes. The quiver in her breath pulsed the tip of my thumb.

  I had decided long before what appealed to me in a woman: soft, feminine curves, blonde hair, blue eyes, perfume, impeccable makeup. To get that perfect woman I’d gone to the ends of the earth in a clichéd but literal sense. To keep that perfection, I’d suffered infidelity, and forced Friederike to divorce me. My German love’s passion was restrained, soft, ladylike, rationed. It was what I wanted.

  It was!

  The burrowing depth of Max’s eyes insisted. I tried to resist, but just as my hand had explored her face on its own, my body seemed to switch to autopilot. I rose urgently and stood behind my seat. Max nodded, then followed suit. We collided, and her hand went straight down the front of my pants and gripped my rod.

  I slid into her pants and split the front of her blouse, then descended into her soaked cotton panties. Our free arms, my left and her right, encircled each other like mating snakes and we shoved into each other like sumo wrestlers jockeying for control, neither yielding. We were both as silent as the reverent in an Orthodox church, the wet sound of our kisses lost in the din of the aircraft.

  “We shouldn’t do this, should we?” she whispered between kisses.

  “I can’t stop,” I whispered back and kissed her ear.

  “Thank god.” She opened her pants and shoved them down, releasing the delicious scent of her pussy. Immediately, my pants and boxers were on the floor and we both stepped free. She turned toward the pilot’s seat.

  I told myself over and over that I could control this, that I could back away from her spreading thighs as she hugged the back of the seat to brace herself. The Atlantic Ocean glimmered and danced, peeking through strips of clouds below the steady nose of the 767 as my hips eased in behind her. I bent my knees to perfect my entry like the eastern approach into Lindbergh Field, just atop the rooftops in San Diego. I pushed under the tail of her shirt, Instrument Flight Rules, without the aid of guiding hands or visual confirmation. I dipped inside her perfectly. She choked on a gasp, and we moved with the rhythm of a seasoned flight team.

  I gripped her shoulders like a harness. We kissed over her shoulder. Her tongue split my teeth and timed with my thrusts in her.

  Ice-cold water, threat or act of dismissal, Friederike begging me to stop with the words “Ich liebe dich” spoken tenderly could not have parted Max and me. Desperate though I was, both in need and in fear of discovery, I lingered and fought back my swelling orgasm, knowing I might never see Max again once we had touched down and gone our separate ways.

  The sun kissed the sea before us. Time seemed suspended as I released with powerful final thrusts into Max, and our silence was broken with orgasmic shouts that were both nasal and guttural.

  I wondered, if the 767 had suddenly gone down, and they fished out the black box, how they would have interpreted what they heard.

  I held tight to Max’s back as we draped over the back of the seat and gasped for breath, but only for a moment. We recovered quickly, dressed and got back into our seats. Max produced a handkerchief and wiped her glossy brow. Our only conversations after that were in familiar flight terms.

  We concluded our journey, she taking me in her peripheral vision, me fighting against fresh erections.

  The approach was perfect, the landing butter smooth.

  You can’t get much farther from the big, wet Atlantic Ocean than the contrastingly named Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. I listened to the fading echoes of forward thrust to lift off. The muffled screech of tires—first contact and then second—then reverse thrust of landing. The sun descended all too fast over the desert sky; it turned the turquoise of a tropical lagoon into a sharpening strip of orange, then was gone.

  The singular credentials, my enrollment in the Mile High Club, was something I’d never experience again. It was a wild ride, and an even wilder risk. But through it, I’d learned that there were risks worth taking in this life.

  I had let go of Friederike some time before; in this moment, I released myself. I stirred the ice in my glass. It rang like wind chimes.

  I took the last sip and let Max’s tilted-head smile fill my mind. Max and I flew together twice after that sunset lingered in suspended animation. Both flights were over dry land, in the middle of the day. Both west to east, compressing the day instead of elongating it. We talked, listened and laughed, but never said a word about what had happened between us. Shortly after that, she made captain; we’d never fly together again.

  The waitress looked at the scant strip of brown liquid at the bottom of my glass. “Ready for another, Cap’n?”

  I was going to be in Phoenix for two days. I was in no rush to seek out the courtesy van to the hotel. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. “What the hell. Why not?”

  “Make it two.” The voice was soft and smoky, with a hint of a soft English accent. I took in deeply tanned skin and big freckles, her hair released from its usual ponytail. She looked out at an Airbus A300 taxiing out to the runway, the strip of passenger windows glistening like a zipper by candlelight. Max’s wide pupils formed an ellipse. I could tell she was locked on me in her periphery. She turned her head and looked deep into my eyes. “Mind a little company? I’ll be in town for a few days, and I don’t fancy drinking alone.”

  I waved toward an open seat. “Only if we can make it more than a couple of days.”

  She sat down.

  A BRIEF RESPITE

  Desiree

  I really didn’t want to go but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  He looked so excited, his greenish eyes sparkling.

  Our relationship wasn’t working. I’d known it for some time and I believe way deep down he knew it, too, even though he seemed content in his state of denial. I guess I was mildly in denial, too. It’s never easy to hurt someone.

  I was nervous about spending a week at his parents’ house. I was excited to see Chicago. I just hoped that I wouldn’t want to throw myself out of a window before it was all over.

  We were boarding the plane. I’d been very quiet and, surprisingly, he was letting me be. We’d always had trouble in this area and I was glad for the respite from his whining, no matter how brief it would be. Part of me hoped Drew would decide to stay in Chicago and not come back to New York, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. The plane was tiny and that made me nervous. It kind of reminded me of that episode of “The Twilight Zone” where that ape-like gremlin was on the wing of the plane.

  Before I knew it, we were seated and I felt like a death row inmate on his last walk.

  I pulled my sleep mask over my eyes not because I was sleepy but to avoid any conversation with my boyfriend. I had closed my eyes for all of thirty seconds when I felt a brush against my arm. I was instantly annoyed, thinking it was Drew trying to get my attention.

  “Excuse me,” said a deep voice. “Are you okay?”

>   I started to nod, but I wanted to see who the voice belonged to so I pulled the mask off of my eyes. I almost gasped as I stared up into a pair of piercing blue eyes accompanied by a warm smile.

  He was dressed head to toe in various shades of blue—a flight attendant. I was getting ready to write him off as gay but something in the way his hand lingered on my shoulder told me not to be so hasty to generalize.

  “I’m fine.”

  The smooth caramel of his cheeks folded into two dimples as he smiled warmly and went back down the aisle. Dimples were a weakness of mine. And a brown man with blue eyes was indeed a beautiful rarity.

  At least it would make for something nice to think about during the flight, I told myself. I sure as hell wouldn’t be thinking of Drew unless it involved ways to break free of him.

  Henry: that was the flight attendant’s name. I paid extra-close attention when he demonstrated the safety procedures. I imagined that if I was drowning, his strong arms would save me. I watched him demonstrate the proper use of the seat belt and I imagined him securing my wrists with the belt as he had his way with me. When he placed the oxygen mask over his lips, I imagined that he had covered my lips with his. And when he used his fingers to motion to the emergency exits, I almost shuddered in my seat thinking of how those fingers might feel pressing into me.

  I was getting wet thinking of Henry the flight attendant. So much so that I forgot I was sitting next to Drew. As Henry walked up and down the cabin, his thigh lightly grazed my arm.

  We were taking off soon and Drew, in his usual gregarious manner, started to make conversation with Henry. I was annoyed. This was my piece. Drew asked him if the color of his eyes was real. I rolled mine.

  “It’s real,” he replied, showing no sign that he’d taken offense at Drew’s tacky question. I could tell the color of his eyes was genuine because I had been staring, and colored contact lenses have a decidedly fake look to them, especially in person. Henry the flight attendant looked back and forth between me and Drew. “So you’re headed to Chicago,” he said. “You live there?”