meal!” the little boy blurts impatiently. “I—want—a—happy—meal.”
The tweaker laughs at the boy.
“Pain in the asssss,” the naked man hisses, nodding his head at the boy. “I was going to kill the little shit, youuuu know. But you beeeeat me to it.”
“It was an accident,” I shout. “You know that.” I look at Mai and Samuel for help, but they just keep shoveling long noodles into their mouths. Samuel looks up, smiles, and jabs his chopsticks at my spoon.
“You beeeeat”—the naked man’s awful voice forces me to look at him—“me to iiiit.”
“No!” I shout, looking from face to pale face.
“You beeeeat me to iiiit.”
“No!” I look at Samuel. “Father, help me.” He looks up, a long noodle dangling from his closed mouth. He bobs his eyebrows and sucks it up until it disappears.
“You beeeeat me to iiiit.” I jerk my head back to the naked man.
“Sir?” I look over at Mai. Her eyes look into mine, but not the way she did the last time I held her. “Sir?”
Why is she calling me that?
“Sir?”
“Sir?”
Hand on my arm. Shaking me. “Wha… What?” I open my eyes and look into a pair of incredibly blue ones. It’s the blond flight attendant who greeted me as I boarded the plane. She’s kneeling beside me.
“I’m sorry to wake you, sir, but you were having a bad dream. You were shouting something. About noodles, I think.” She smiles at that.
I blink into reality and scoot up in my seat. “Sorry. Pizza gives me nightmares.” I haven’t eaten pizza, and it doesn’t give me nightmares, but I have to tell her something. “Maybe I should have had noodles.” She smiles again. “Are we up yet?” I ask, still disoriented.
“Not yet.” She pats my arm and stands. “There will be a short wait so passengers from a late Orange County flight can join us. It shouldn’t be too long. You going to Vietnam or Seattle?”
“Vietnam.”
“Enjoy your trip. It’s a long one.” She smiles again and moves up the aisle.
A middle-aged Asian woman across the aisle is looking at me through thick glasses, the corners of her mouth turned down. Must not have liked my yelling about noodles. “Sorry,” I say with a shrug. She looks back at her magazine and, for just a heart-stopping moment, the way she turned her head… she looked like Jimmy’s mother.
I wish now I hadn’t been in such a rush to get on board. The moment the flight attendant announced rows twenty-five through fifteen, I ran like an escaping felon toward the door, my airplane ticket gripped tightly in my extended hand as if it were the key to my freedom, which in a way it is. After I settled into my seat and the last few stragglers had found theirs, there were still two empties next to me. The last thing I remember thinking was that if they remained empty for the entire flight, I could sprawl my six-foot, two hundred-pound self across the three seats and maybe get the sleep that has eluded me for so long. As the tension of the last few weeks began to ooze out of my body, I zonked off into dreamland—it turned into nightmare land—that same one.
I look at the seats again. If my not-so-good luck continues, the late-arriving Californians are going to sit right here, gypsies with a screaming baby, one trained to pick pockets.
Damn, it’s hot in here. Tarzan jungle hot. I vote we leave without the Californians. We need some air in the plane.
I slip out of my light jacket and stuff it under the seat in front of me. Why does a plane have to be flying for the air conditioner to work? I close my eyes and lean my head against the window. Tired. So anxious about this trip that I haven’t slept much in the last couple of weeks, and not at all in the last two nights. Hope it’s because I’m anxious about the journey and not because of what Doc Kari talked about in our last session. She said that my poor sleep is likely part of my PTSD: fear of the dark. Not the dark in the room; the dark behind my eyes.
For a few weeks after… after it happened, I didn’t sleep at all; I just ran around on frayed nerves and Starbucks. Then I had a period where I’d sleep like I’d been knocked out, like the time I got cold cocked by that muay Thai fighter in LA. I’d wake up after a dozen hours and feel worse than before I went to sleep. Sweaty too. Sweaty and cold. That lasted a couple of weeks and then my sleep pattern was hit and miss, mostly miss.
I cross my arms and adjust my head a little against the window. Two orange-vested guys down on the tarmac are leaning against a white pickup and sipping from coffee mugs. They’re laughing about something, probably the fact that we’re all baking in here. Baking like biscuits. The plane’s vibration on the side of my head is soothing, like the sounds inside of a mother’s womb, a mom weighing about eight hundred thousand pounds, or how ever much it is.
I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. Contrary to what Doc Kari said, at the moment I’m enjoying the darkness behind my eyes, the sense of being alone, no one judging me, no one persecuting me, no one wishing me dead.
“Be in the moment,” Samuel said the two times we meditated together when he was in Portland. “Just follow your breath.”
I squirm a little deeper into the seat. Breathe in, hold it, breathe out, hold it… breathe in, hold it… breathe out… Getting sleepy in this… heat. I’m really liking the hum against my head. Better… than a sleeping pill. Just… got to… figure out how to get a… seven-forty-seven into my… bedroom. In… out… in…
“Hi.”
I jerk toward the voice. A boy, sitting next to me, Asian— Vietnamese, I think. Maybe fourteen or fifteen.
“Sorry,” he says, looking like he means it. “Your eyes were open. I thought you saw me sit down.”
“Oh, uh, yeah. No problem,” I say, shaking my head to awaken for the second time since I’ve been on board. Weird. I was following my breath and I must have dozed again. With my eyes open? Okay, could I get any more strange? At least this time I didn’t dream. That’s a plus.
I start to think about the dream. I’ve been having it, or variations there of, almost every night for the last two weeks. Even worse, sometimes I dream it when I’m awake. I quickly push it out of mind, most of it. I can still hear the naked man’s slimy voice. You beeeeat me to iiiit. You beeeeat me to iiiit. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and think of a lake near Mt Hood, Trillium Lake. Fifty some miles out of Portland, Oregon. Gorgeous blue, reflecting the snow-capped mountain on a windless day.
There, that’s better. My mind’s good now, good to go.
“No problem,” I say turning to the boy. Did I already say that? “Oh, we’re finally taxiing. You must be the guy who kept us waiting. The California guy. Just one of you?”
“Yes. My plane was a little late,” he says seriously. “I’m embarrassed to have held up this flight.”
He’s not a gypsy. Ooorah! Nice looking kid. Polite. A little somber, though. “Well, there were passengers chanting ‘Kill the California guy.’”
“Reeeeally?” His eyes widen.
“No. Not really.” I give him a blank face.
He bunches his eyebrows and looks at me for a moment, then sputters a laugh. “Oh, okay, so that’s how it’s going to be.”
“Sorry,” I say, smiling.
We’re silent for a few minutes while the plane noisily takes off. The kid has a mop of raven black hair falling down his forehead, dressed in a red T-shirt