Halfway to the departure gate Kim felt the boss’s cell phone vibrate in her front trouser pocket. She shifted her bags around to free one hand and tried to fish the phone out without slowing her stride. She couldn’t do it. The phone buzzed on. It felt alive, wriggling against her abdomen. She’d have to stop. But she couldn’t. The jet way door at their gate was already closed. She saw the plane through the plate glass window, still parked outside. But passengers could not be boarded after the doors were closed. Technically, the plane was gone. They’d missed the flight.
“We have to board,” Kim told the gate agent, breathless.
“I’m sorry, that’s not possible,” the gate agent said without looking up. She was working the final documents to get the plane in the air.
Kim felt the cell phone buzz on. She’d never failed to answer the boss. She never planned to. She kept her voice calm. She said, “I need you to open the door.” She put her hand in her pocket. To get the cell phone. But the gate agent misinterpreted. Her left hand darted under the counter. She hit the panic button.
Kim gave up on the cell phone and kept both hands in plain sight. She stood stock still. Where the hell was Gaspar?
He showed up three paces behind two TSA personnel. They had guns drawn. Kim kept her hands in view and said, “FBI,” as calmly as possible. She reached slowly across her body with her left hand and opened her jacket to reveal her badge, clipped to her waistband.
Gaspar came up behind her and flashed his badge, too.
“What’s the problem?” he said.
Kim held her breath while the agents looked them both over. In the corner of her eye she saw the plane begin to move.
“You’re too late,” one of the TSA guys said.
“Let’s pretend we’re not,” Kim replied.
The phone was still buzzing.
Time stood still.
Then the first agent said, “OK, hurry.”
Agent two opened the departure door wide enough to slip through. Kim ran. Gaspar followed. The door sucked shut behind them. The boss’s phone bounced against Kim’s hip as she ran. She turned the final corner and saw the jet way separating from the plane’s open door. She stopped at the widening gap. Cold November air blew into the tunnel. The flight attendant was on the phone in the cabin. To the gate agent, presumably. She called out to the jet way engineer. The jet way stopped moving. The plane stopped moving.
Four feet of empty space.
Maybe five.
The stewardess said, “You can make it. I’ve done it lots of times.”
Kim lifted her computer bag off the travel bag and telescoped its handle down. She grabbed one heavy bag in each hand, swung both, and tossed them over the void. The stewardess set them out of the way. Kim breathed in, breathed out, rocked back and forth like a varsity high jumper, and leapt across the empty black hole into the plane. The stewardess caught her by the arm and then they both moved out of the way to let Gaspar follow.
Gaspar had a problem.
He was right-handed. Therefore he would want to push off from his right leg. But his right leg was the one with the limp. And even if he could push off with his left, would his right leg be sturdy enough to stick his landing?
“Can’t we go back?” Kim asked.
“You don’t want to know what would happen if we did that,” the stewardess said.
So Kim braced her foot at the raised edge of the bulkhead doorframe. She grasped the molded handle on the inside frame with her left hand and leaned her body outside, into the frosty abyss, jutting her right arm toward him as far as she could reach.
“Now, Gaspar,” she called.
“On my way,” he called back.
In one fluid motion, as if they’d choreographed the move and practiced for decades, he backed off ten feet, and transferred his heavier bag to his left hand, and slung his computer bag over his back, and came in at a run. He got his bags swinging for momentum, he got his feet in place, and he pushed off with his right leg.
His right leg didn’t hold.
No elegant arcing trajectory.
The weight of his bags jerked him onward while gravity pulled him down. Kim lunged and grabbed his left forearm in her right hand and she pulled with all her 97 pounds of body weight and hauled him in. His left foot landed inside the bulkhead frame. He sprawled on the galley floor. She thought he might have said, “Thanks,” with something very vulnerable in his voice. Something she didn’t want to be there. Not now. Not ever. For her sake, as well as his.
But whatever, they were on the plane.
Not that being on another plane was a good thing, Kim felt.
Gaspar struggled to his feet, breathing hard, and he said, “Thanks,” again.
Kim said, “From now on, we’ll answer to Karl and Helen.”
“What?”
“You know the Flying Wallendas are Germans, right?”
She got the grin she’d hoped for. He said, “Yeah, Gertrude. I know.”
She felt better, as if equilibrium had been restored. She watched the flight attendant secure the hatch. If the hatch failed, the plane would crash. She couldn’t move until the hatch was securely closed.
Her cell phone was still ringing.
She watched the attendant lock the door lever and test it. Then she moved.
Seat 1A was open.
She hated 1A.
Too much open space around 1A.
From 1A, she could see the galley and the door to the flight deck. She could hear the flight attendants talking among themselves or on the phone with the cockpit crew.
In 1A she’d be the first to know when something went wrong.
No.
She glanced back. “You take 1A,” she told Gaspar, before she hurried back to 3D.
She shoved her computer bag under the seat in front of her and left her larger bag in the aisle for the attendant to heave into the overhead. She belted herself in as tightly as possible and grabbed both armrests and closed her eyes and prayed.
The cell phone had stopped ringing.