Page 19 of In Flight

I’m not always the sharpest tool in the shed. It takes a few seconds before I realize his joke. “His name is Cash!” I try very hard not to laugh.

“Exactly. What are you going to do about him?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, hesitating briefly but wanting to be honest since he was honest with me. “I’ve thought some about what we talked about, but I think I need to get back home and spend time with him before I get a sense of the best thing to do.”

“That’s how you make all your decisions, isn’t it? Getting a sense of it.”

I frown, slightly hurt because I thought we were on friendlier terms now. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. It’s just different from me.”

“I’m sure it’s different. You probably make lists and charts and graphs.”

“Not graphs. Not about relationships anyway.”

Hiding a snicker, I continue. “You analyze and weigh evidence. I use my intuition and work with situations holistically. I don’t think either of us is wrong. There’s no reason to mock.”

“I wasn’t mocking. Seriously. I like that you feel your way through life, picking up vibes. Sometimes I wish I could do the same.”

“You don’t pick up vibes?”

Up go his eyebrows again. “I’ve never picked up a vibe in my life.”

I laugh again. I really can’t help it.

Since it feels like a natural conclusion to the conversation, I focus on my knitting while he opens his laptop and pulls up a spreadsheet.

After a few minutes of studying it, he turns his head toward me. “How was your cupcake party?”

“It was good. Kind of fussy, but that’s what Raven wanted. Everything went well.”

“And was the absence of the one cupcake noted?”

“Oh, it was definitely noted. I had to make up a story about it being accidentally crushed in transit or she would have thrown a fit.”

“Itwascrushed,” he says with a flash of a smile. “It was crushed in my mouth.”

There I go, giggling again.

***

THE FLIGHT GOES QUICKLY. We chat occasionally. I ask him about his job, and he explains he’s in the finance department of a national corporation that’s headquartered in Boston. They send him out to different branches to do audits all the time, so he spends at least half the year traveling for work.

It sounds like a terrible job to me, and even he admits that no one wants to see him coming. He’s as low-key as he can be about the process, but everyone thinks he’s there to check up on them.

And that’s exactly why he’s there.

“Isn’t that kind of taxing?” I ask him. “For people to always dread the sight of you?”

“Yeah. I’m not a fan if you want to know the truth. I know I’m supposed to detach and let it go, but it’s draining for people to look away whenever you appear. For them to put on a fake-nice act as if you’re only there to get them in trouble. And all the travel gets old.”

“Haven’t you thought about getting a new job?”

“Sure. I think about it all the time. But I’ve got a clear upward trajectory here, and if I make a switch, it will likely take longer to move up. I’m only thirty-two. I could get to the executive level by my mid-forties if I can just tough it out a few more years in this position.”

“I guess that makes rational sense.” I shake my head. “But it doesn’t seem worth it to me. People are usually happier with some sort of balance between work and the rest of life, and your job doesn’t really allow that.”

“I do fine.”

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