Up in the Air (33 page)

Our captain speaks and, as usual, minimizes, and I can see mottling on Morse’s wrists and a coiled desire to shout at someone and demand results this very minute, but the huffy, flushed look seems childish under the circumstances, and Morse knows this, it seems, and won’t look me in the eye but mentally shuts himself inside his office, refusing to take calls. We bronco again and then bang down an escalator that must floor out somewhere but keeps not doing so, and then we’re on a whole new ride, even steeper, and my wineglass ejects a column of solid liquid that hangs for a time directly before my eyes and actually shows inner particles and bends light.

Our keel evens but it’s a trick and no one’s buying and yet it remains even, just to torture us, though level is level, I see after a while, and normal is the most usual condition, so why question normal? Normal’s what got us here. There’s also more light now, both under and ahead, and light somehow speaks more reliably than flatness about the prospects of its own continuing.

Morse unbuckles to show us all the way, back in the lead and comfortable again, because during normal his orders must be obeyed and his moods are the collective rudder. The episode is over, his face declares, and already he’s revising its severity and telling a little story to himself of uninterrupted control. His airline not only lies to customers, it deceives itself. We’re steady on now and we always have been.

“Christine, two new glasses. These ones spilled,” he says. “Take them away, please.”

Already concealing evidence. The continuum would include him, but he won’t let it, though soon he’ll have to work harder to stand alone, when he’s cooling his heels in an office in D.C. as just another aviation lobbyist or whenever a baseball game comes on TV while he’s at home with his new and plainer mistress after another long day at the trucking line or the regional frozen foods distributor. Not me, though. I know when I’ve come through a rough patch and voiced silent prayers that promised deep reforms—the same reforms everyone else was pledging, too, with the full knowledge that we’ll dishonor them the moment we’re down and safe.

I can see to the ground now between white disks of cloud that meet in the pattern four dinner plates would make if pushed in against one another on a table. The pattern repeats and repeats, and through the breaks shaped like perfect diamonds with curved-in sides I notice that we’re no longer above the west. I recognize the tic-tac-toe green fields and the corner placements of windbreak maples. There’s a definite American longitude dividing the cottonwoods and scrappy desert trees from the wet shady maples, and we’ve passed it.

I check my watch to confirm, but I don’t have to. The plane icon is well beyond Fort Dodge and in a few minutes I’ll be on top of Kara, casting a shadow on her eastbound car. Which means that I missed it, as I was bound to miss it. But I still crossed. I hand Morse the cheapie camera and instruct him to shoot me front and back and from the sides, though of course he can’t stand on the wing and shoot from that side. How kind of my family to come pick me up. Will they be able to see it on my face? Morse looks silly snapping that little button. It was worth it to watch this. “From below,” I say. I’ll tramp along the Jetway, in my boots, and see them all there at the gate, where they’ve been waiting, though I wonder why. Will we last a whole week together? We just might. Everyone’s exhausted. Exhaustion soothes. It’s a fable now, anyway. We’ve used up our real substance. In a fable, you find new resources, new powers. Pick an animal, then take its shape.

Morse runs out of film and begs my pardon: he needs to check in on the cockpit and exercise what’s left of his authority. Two more weeks and the pilots will shut this airline down. He’s getting out just in time, and so am I.

“My miles go to children’s hospitals,” I say.

“That’s great. What a gesture. We should get this out. I’ll contact press relations when we land. You’re serious?”

“Don’t use my name. No name. It’s not a gesture. It’s barely charity. I’m sick myself; I can’t use them anyway. Plus, I’ve been everywhere you people fly.”

Of course I’ve had seizures. Why skirt it any longer? One after another, some mild, some not, but nothing one talks about if one wants a job—and didn’t I land in the perfect one. Too perfect. My family knows, but we’ve learned not to discuss it. It started when my car went in the lake. We tried medications, and some worked better than others, but what worked best was lowering my standards for what was not a seizure. And forgetting. I’m not there when I have them, so really, what’s to say? How can I tell you a secret I don’t know? The spaces between them are getting shorter, though. The signs all agree. The mental gaps are widening. I made my appointments at Mayo before the trip and Mayo has wonderful instruments, so we’ll see. I’ll drive down alone, in case it’s not good news.

There’s one last item and this will feel complete. I slide my credit card through the airphone slot. I sense the account’s being drained on several continents, but it brings up a dial tone, which is all I need. I punch in my own number and get my voice mail, then press more buttons to reach the little message I recorded . . . when? Three weeks ago? Or was it four? It was after I saw the specialist in Houston, the one I haven’t mentioned, since no one’s asked.

“You’re there,” the message says, then tapes my answer.

“We’re here,” I say. Just that. No more. “We’re here.”

walter kirn
is currently the fiction editor for
GQ
magazine and a contributing editor to
Time
magazine. His work has appeared in the
New York Times Magazine,
the
New York Times Book Review, GQ, Vogue, New York,
and
Esquire
. He is the author of three previous works of fiction,
My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me,
and
Thumbsucker
. He lives in Livingston, Montana.

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

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D
OUBLEDAY
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are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of

Random House, Inc.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Book design by Claire Naylon Vaccaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kirn, Walter, 1962–

Up in the air : a novel / Walter Kirn.—

p. cm.

1. Frequent flyer programs—Fiction.      2. Business consultants—Fiction.

3. Air travel—Fiction.      I. Title.

PS3561.I746 U6 2001

813’.54—dc21            2001028362

Copyright © 2001 by Walter Kirn

All Rights Reserved

July 2001

A section of this book was previously published in
GQ.

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eISBN: 978-1-4000-3324-9

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