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 .   .   .   .  .   .  .   .  .   .                "On A Plain"
 .   .   .   .  .   .  .   .  .   .
  . . .  .   .   . . .  . . .  . . .                by Infernal


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        He scowled and picked at his teeth with a too-long fingernail as the
 plane began its descent.  "Christ, but this takes forever," he muttered
 to himself, resenting the long up-and-down procedures of the plane,
 preferring either life on the ground or in that happy, level, horizontal
 surreality above the clouds.  Getting up there and back down to the dirt
 sucked.

        "Business or pleasure?" crowed the fat man in the seat next to him,
 poking him in the ribs with one round, larded elbow.  He could see the
 ring of sweat under the fat man's arm and he thought of a bellows,
 pumping b.o.-laden air out into the world with a wheeze like a
 vaudeville calliope.

        "Uh, business, I guess," he stammered, unused to talking.  Since
 affirming to the bored clerk in Detroit that he had no bombs or other
 instruments of ill will on his person, he hadn't said a word to anyone,
 feigning sleep when the stewardess asked about drinks or headphones for
 the movie.

        "Business business, eh?  You're one of them dot com guys, huh?  Goin'
 to Silicon Valley to work on them Pee Cee's, huh?  Me, I don't even have
 one yet.  Mister Caveman, huh?  That's me, huh?  I couldn't tell you
 about no Internet if it bit my butt, huh?"  The man was a tidal wave of
 good cheer and fat.

        "Uh, no, actually, I'm a writer.  Going to sign a book deal."  As
 soon as he opened his mouth, he cursed his vanity.  Why not just smile and
 nod, and turn your head?  Because you don't do that, that's why.
 Because you've got to prove to every gawping idiot on earth why you fly
 now instead of suffering on the bus, why you dare to leave the midwest
 in the first place, why you think you've got the right to hope to scrape
 the figurative cowshit of Ohio off your boots forever and hang with the
 pretty people on the glittering coast...

        "A book deal, huh?  Well, that's pretty slick!  That's slicker'n deer
 guts on a doorknob!  Honest to God author, huh?  What kinda books you
 write?"

        "Well, you know, um, sort of music books."

        "Oh!  You mean like the sheet music, for the py-anos and stuff?  We
 got some o' them at home, the wife likes to play a little and -- "

        "Uh, just music books."

        The man sensed the hesitation, jumped on it, worried it like a
 terrier.  "Like what kind of music books, huh?  It ain't a bad book, is it?"

        He took the bait despite himself.  "A bad book?"

        "Some book about devil music, or Satan rock, or those nigger groups
 with the beatin' up on women and shootin' each other with guns, huh?  Not
 like that kind of book, huh?"

        He paused for a beat.  Swallowed his mutineering heart.  Cracked a
 cold smile and replied "actually, yeah, it's pretty much that kind of book
 to a T."

        The fat man seemed to unplug for a second, jowls no longer suspended
 by a grin, eyes sinking back into their slits like rolling marbles.  Then
 his face darkened, he pursed his lips, and with a decisive "mm-HMM!" he
 turned around dramatically in his seat, giving his seatmate a
 hemispherical view of his broad, sweatered back.

        Later, he couldn't begin to describe the kick he got just by pushing
 a button on this fat busybody, but it felt like a dam had burst inside
 him.  That one defiance felt as good, if not better, than signing the
 book contract did -- gave him a part of his adulthood that he thought
 had never been installed, infused him with that much more assertiveness,
 that much less taste for looking at the floor and appeasing.

        He felt a twinge of guilt for making the fat man feel bad, or angry,
 or uncomfortable.  Then it hit him -- fuck that guy.  I just gave him a
 story to tell everyone who'll sit still long enough for the next fifty
 years.  If I'd made polite small talk with that prick, I'd feel like a
 worm for it, and he'd forget me five minutes off the plane.  Now, he'll
 be talking about me till he keels over into his lobster in 2025.

        He decided he was getting the hang of traveling first-class.

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  .           anada 170                   by Infernal  (c)2000 anada e'zine .
      
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