A hurricane is turning Florida\u2019s peninsula into an exclamation mark. Thousands of miles away, Derek and the rest of the flight crew are left in a not uncommon limbo. Luggage slumps on decoupled wagons beside the empty plane while the waiting passengers spill their discontent to neighboring gates and eye the flight crew in the semi-open lounge.<\/p>\n
Derek is thumbing through Sonja\u2019s selfies with company pilots, flight attendants, and ground crews, as well as her shots of the sinuous glaciers of Greenland, of night skies shimmering with auroras. Sonja has the most followers of all the airline\u2019s employees, not counting Captain Williams. Williams is perched at the bar with other pilots, his hands gamboling with a story, his upper body slightly too wide and slightly too short, like all pilots. Williams\u2019s time-lapse flight-deck storm videos have racked up millions of views, the lightning apocalyptic, the clouds enraptured with ionic war. Williams makes a claustrophobic trans-Atlantic hop seem like the thrill of a lifetime.<\/p>\n
If Williams is Mars, then Sonja is Venus. Before Sonja began working Derek\u2019s routes, each flight felt like a journey through a long windowed tube arcing over the sea. Sonja\u2019s presence has made the hours bearable, bleakly reassuring him that it\u2019s tubes for everyone, even the exquisitely beautiful. He is also thankful for her imperfections: her freckled nape when her cravat is loose, the span of her bare arms humanized by a pair of moles, and those touches of perspiration whenever she leans across the middle aisle to receive a bottle of wine from his generous, outstretched hand.<\/p>\n
A baby grand piano sits in the lounge where Derek waits with his colleagues Sonja, Brigitte, and Pierre. Derek takes a seat at the piano and plays \u201cSummertime,\u201d then \u201cMy Favorite Things,\u201d then \u201cNobody Knows When You\u2019re Down and Out,\u201d sharing a sampling of his repertoire, though it\u2019s really all he can play competently. He hopes Sonja will recognize the opportunity and sit beside him on the bench to capture a selfie. He imagines her next post:\u00a0Flight crew member Derek entertains passengers about to depart (maybe) to Florida! Isn\u2019t he something?!<\/em>\u00a0She\u2019ll plant a performative smooch on his cheek as the passengers applaud. All her followers will see that he is more than just flop sweat, clogging airplane aisles. It takes all kinds to run an airline.<\/p>\n Williams and the first officer stride past wheeling their high-end carry-ons. \u201cFlight\u2019s on. And stormy,\u201d Williams says to Derek, like it\u2019s the best news in the world.<\/p>\n No one applauds after Derek\u2019s final piano flourish, though they applaud Captain Williams after he pumps up the crowd with a \u201cWho\u2019s ready to fly to Florida!\u201d<\/p>\n The trans-Atlantic flight is as Williams describes it\u2014stormy. Theirs is one of the last to come in before all flights are grounded. It\u2019s after midnight when he, Sonja, Brigitte, and Pierre climb from the airport shuttle. The pilots continue on with other plans. Debris floats down the gutter in front of their hotel. The wind tries to steal their carry-on luggage.\u00a0GET LOST DEREK!<\/em>\u00a0is spray-painted along several plywood sheets protecting the hotel\u2019s ground-floor windows. Sonja makes him pose for a photo while the others laugh. It\u2019s just his luck to share a name with a hurricane.<\/p>\n \u201cGet lost, Derek,\u201d Pierre says, playing bouncer at the hotel door until Brigitte tells Pierre to fuck off and let them all in.<\/p>\n The kitchen is closed, and since it\u2019s too windy and wet to go out for food, they scrounge together a meal from snack bars, chocolates, and bags of nuts from the minifridge in Pierre\u2019s room. From his carry-on, Pierre pulls out a bag of potato chips which promises to contain at least one chip infused with Pepper X, three million on the Scoville scale\u2014which means nothing to Derek. He and the others take turns plucking out a chip at a time as they watch the hurricane on TV, the storm no longer the point in an exclamation mark but a white swirl of erasure.<\/p>\n Sonja bites into a chip and is unharmed, filling Derek with relief. Every time the bag comes past him he chooses the most sinister-looking chip, hoping to keep Sonja safe from Pierre\u2019s game of Russian roulette. Sonja\u2019s on her phone looking at Williams\u2019s feed when she snaps upright, eyes gleaming, hands fanning her face. She\u2019s laughing, then not. Then not at all. She\u2019s choking on what might be Swedish curse words. Brigitte rushes her a glass of water, but drinking it only increases Sonja\u2019s agony.<\/p>\n \u201cMilk!\u201d Pierre says.<\/p>\n Derek hurries downstairs to the bar, but it\u2019s closed. He heads out into the storm without a second thought, searching. He returns to the hotel soaked but nestling small cartons of chocolate milk from a liquor store blocks away. His colleagues are gone.<\/p>\n Pierre replies to Derek\u2019s text.\u00a0Hospital<\/em>.<\/p>\n Hospital!<\/em>\u00a0Derek has the front desk call him a taxi. He doesn\u2019t know whether to bring the chocolate milks or to toss them, not until he sees Pierre roll his eyes as Derek enters the hospital waiting room.<\/p>\n \u201cHow is she?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know as much as I do,\u201d Pierre says, gesturing for one of Derek\u2019s chocolate milks. \u201cBriggy is with her.\u201d Pierre shakes the carton, then downs the contents in one go.<\/p>\n The waiting room fills with injuries: abrasions, broken bones, cuts from flying debris, heavy bleeding. Derek hears the storm through the hospital\u2019s air conditioning: mediated sighs and moans and a clanging that sounds like something being lifted and dropped over and over. He browses Sonja\u2019s photo stream while waiting for word on her condition. Her last post was twelve hours ago from their departure gate. He appears in the background of a selfie. The unintentional forced perspective makes him appear to be standing on Sonja\u2019s shoulder. He could be happy at that size, whispering compliments into her ear. Not an angel or devil on her shoulder, but Derek the Admirer.<\/p>\n Pierre grabs another chocolate milk, then the last carton. He looks down at Derek\u2019s phone. \u201cShe\u2019s paid extra to do that, you know. It\u2019s a recruitment tool. Same with Captain Thunder.\u201d<\/p>\n Derek doesn\u2019t believe Pierre. He\u2019s seen Sonja gaze out the galley windows without her phone, the light bouncing off the cloud tops and gracing her with that otherworldly glow found only at rarified altitudes. She genuinely wants to share her vision of the world.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of her followers are bought,\u201d Pierre says.<\/p>\n Derek only intends to take back Pierre\u2019s last chocolate milk, but he ends up squeezing the cartoon with such force that the contents gush across Pierre\u2019s throat and shirt.<\/p>\n \u201cThey think it\u2019s mostly a panic attack,\u201d Brigitte says, appearing before them. They quit their shoving match immediately. Brigitte holds out Sonja\u2019s room card. \u201cShe wants her makeup bag.\u201d<\/p>\n Back at the hotel, Pierre heads to his own room to change. In Sonja\u2019s room, Derek opens her tidy suitcase and finds the clear bag of makeup and, beneath it, an identical bag with prescriptions. Should he bring those as well? He sees a spare second uniform, workout clothes, tan underwear, a bra with one cup spooned into the other\u2014clothing he does not touch or disturb, though an untamed part of him wants to. He compromises with a graze across the curve of one cup with his knuckle. Emboldened, he unzips the makeup bag and removes a pencil and holds it under the light. Printed along the side it reads: Lanc\u00f4me Le Crayone Khol 03 Gris Bleau 1.8g .06 oz. It\u2019s another language. The dark gray barrel has a tapered gold cap. The nib has a greasy feel to it, slipping surprisingly quickly across a page of hotel stationary.<\/p>\n Derek collects his jacket from Pierre\u2019s room.<\/p>\n \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t treat her like a Madonna,\u201d Pierre says, wearing nothing but a blue thong as he walks back to his bed with a drink in his hands. The rain on the window sounds like someone is hurling gravel. \u201cI could tell you stories,\u201d he says, but Derek is already out the door, down the hall, fast-tapping the elevator call button, Sonja\u2019s makeup bag nestled in his free hand, then tucked in his jacket once he\u2019s outside.<\/p>\n The hospital releases Sonja in the night\u2019s final hours. Despite the storm, all three of them fall asleep in the taxi and have to be jostled awake by the driver when they arrive at their hotel.<\/p>\n Curtains drawn, eye mask ready, Derek climbs into his own bed. He hears a tapping at his door. He wishes it were Sonja, asking for a glass of milk, but he assumes it\u2019s Brigitte. He\u2019s slept with Brigitte a handful of times, once at this very hotel. She\u2019s a dynamo. He enjoys watching her little unintentional dance at work as she reprimands her uniform\u2019s climb up over her hips with frequent tugs in the opposite direction. But Brigitte has a husband and three teen boys, and he doesn\u2019t like the fact that her family is not enough for her, or that messing around is the only way someone will sleep with him. That last time, Brigitte role-played that he was Captain Williams and she was Sonja. She even swiped a captain\u2019s hat for him to wear and dolled herself up past the point of parody as Sonja. The whole thing made him feel ill. To the best of his knowledge, Sonja and Captain Williams have never slept together, but maybe that\u2019s one of those stories Pierre could tell.<\/p>\n Derek ignores the taps and tries to fall into dreams in which he and Sonja have imaginary conversations about how difficult it can be to get through a day, about whether she, too, deep down, also believes that they\u2019re passing through metaphorical tubes in the sky, never really traveling, knowing, or experiencing the vast world below. Does he want her to admit she\u2019s falling apart? Of course not, but a little.<\/p>\n He knows she would never allow him into her life, but he dreams of her tripping into his: reveling in sloth on her days off, doing nothing but eating, napping, surfing the web, masturbating to porn, binging TV\u2014the rewards for making it through another week\u2019s shifts. To agree with him that renouncing willpower and hope is an act of philosophical acceptance of the human condition.<\/p>\n But the knocking at his door could also be Sonja, asking for a glass of milk.<\/p>\n The hallway is empty. He hears the noise again, but from behind him. He pulls aside a curtain and cups his hands against the warm glass. A tall palm sways, the end of one shredded frond grazing the hotel\u2019s fa\u00e7ade several floors below. Tap tap tap.<\/p>\n He wakes a couple of hours later to find that Williams has posted a fresh storm video from their approach into Florida yesterday, as well as one captured from a high-rise last night. While he\u2019s scrolling, Sonja posts a new photo. It\u2019s him, Derek, standing in front of the boarded ground-floor windows the night before. She\u2019s cropped the photo so the only word next to him is DEREK!<\/em>\u00a0No one has commented or liked the photo yet. It\u2019s fresh and his alone, his added heart feeling as loud as a shout.<\/p>\n He finds the others downstairs finishing breakfast. The light in the restaurant brightens by degrees as workers remove the plywood panels covering the windows. Sonja, sitting as far from Pierre as the table will allow, suddenly glows. She\u2019s back to perfection, though Derek can still see her in tears, gasping, beauty broken. When he first saw her on Brigitte\u2019s arm in the hospital waiting room, he didn\u2019t recognize her at first. Swollen lips, reddened eyes, and makeup that Brigitte must have inexpertly applied. He had looked away from the disfigurement then, but now wonders where it went in the night.<\/p>\n Derek fixes himself a breakfast plate and sits down. No one mentions the night before. The TV is on with a survey of the damage which is now the main subject; hurricane Derek has been downgraded to a tropical storm.<\/p>\n Late that afternoon, after the runway has been cleared and they\u2019ve left Florida on the same plane they arrived on, Sonja thanks him for his help the night before.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course,\u201d Derek says, heating meals in the plane\u2019s galley.<\/p>\n Because he finds it painful to look at Sonja in such a confined space, he gazes out the window. Only rain clouds remain of what was once a hurricane. When he turns back, Brigitte has joined them. She tugs down her uniform and prepares the coffee and tea. Pierre is checking the vegan, kosher, and children\u2019s meals. Not until Derek unlocks his loaded cart and pushes it clear to the first row of coach, does he lose the sensation of Sonja\u2019s hand on his shoulder that moment ago when she thanked him, a moment already miles and miles away in an empty tube in an empty sky above an unnamed storm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He knows she would never allow him into her life, but he dreams of her tripping into his: reveling in sloth on her days off, doing nothing but eating, napping, surfing the web, masturbating to porn, binging TV\u2014the rewards for making it through another week\u2019s shifts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-franz-jorgen-neumann"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22589,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22581\/revisions\/22589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}