Page 8 of Every Step She Takes
I settle back into my seat, elbows tucked, legs crossed, AirPods in, eyes fixed forward. It’s the body language of the unsociable and emotionally closed off. I can feel her shifting beside me, scrunching up her coat and tucking it into the small of her back. She attempts to squeeze her Hydro Flask into the seat front pocket, but her legs are even longer than mine, so she spreads them wide to accommodate the oversized water bottle, and her knee bumps mine.
With every movement, she jostles our joined seats, making me feel like a small boat on the open ocean.
And that’s when I pop a Xanax and wait for it to carry me off into a blissful, anxiety-free sleep.
But then Window Seat leans over me to accept a moist towelette from the flight attendant, and I suddenly feel more awake than ever. Her Seattle grunge aesthetic suggests she should smell like a compost bin, but as she dangles her body in front of mine, I get a whiff of… sandalwood? Clean laundry? Sunshine after an afternoon rain?
She smells like opening a window on the first warm day of spring.
It’s as I’m sniffing this stranger and thinking about Magnolia Park in early June that I realize she’s talking to me. I pull out a single AirPod again, and the music cuts off in my ear. “I’m sorry, what?”
She’s still smiling, and she gestures to her long legs. “They really don’t make these seats big enough for normal-size humans anymore, do they?”
I’m not sure what to do with this comment, so I sort of laugh, sort of cough in response.
“Where are you headed?” she asks in that same indistinct accent that’s either European or merely the effects of chain-smoking during her formative years. “What’s your final destination? London?”
“Oh. Uh…” This is not a hard question, but my brain has never performed well on-demand. “Porto,” I finally tell her, politeness winning out over introversion.
My seatmate presses a hand to her chest. “Me too.” Then she rattles off a few foreign words. Andah.That must be the accent.
“Oh, sorry, but I don’t speak Portuguese.”
“Desculpe,” she says, still smiling.
“Sorry?”
“Exactly.Desculpeis ‘sorry’ in Portuguese. Seems like something you might want to know.” She keeps smiling at me until the pilot comes over the intercom for the welcome speech. “There’s only one reason Americans fly straight to Porto,” Window Seat continues over the announcement. “Are you doing the Camino?”
I nod.
“Cool. Are you doing the interior route out of Porto or the coastal route?”
I have no idea what that even means. “I-I don’t know.”
“Just winging it, then?” she asks. “Nice. I did that on the Camino del Notre a few years ago. If you have any questions or want any advice, let me know. This will be my fourth Camino, and a friend of mine actually—”
“Free headphones?” a flight attendant asks, shoving a basket in our direction. I’m grateful for the interruption as we both take a pair. When Window Seat opens her mouth again, introversion triumphs, and I jab the AirPod back in place. I point to my ear and mouthsorry.
Then I close my eyes and wait for the Xanax to save me.
The wine is free on international flights.
I learn this when the attendant pushing the drink cart takes one look at my face and asks if I’d like a mini bottle of the generic red in an overtly pitying tone. He passes me two with a wink before getting Window Seat her ginger ale, probably because he’s caught me crying during an episode ofProperty Brothers: Forever Homeon my seat-back screen.
The Xanax has failed me. We’re only two hours into a ten-hour flight, and I’m such a mess of anxiety that another flight attendant comes by to give me a third bottle of red after I polish off the first two. And it’s as I’m crying into my wine that it happens. The airplane seems to hiccup in the stratosphere. For a second, I think I’m more drunk than I realize.
The plane trembles a second time. My right hand reaches for the armrest at the same time Window Seat does. Our fingers brush as a shot of Drew’s face freezes on my personal TV with the wordsPA ANNOUNCEMENTbannered across the screen.
“Uh, hello there, folks,” says the American pilot. “Looks like we’re experiencing some unexpected turbulence, so I’m gonna go ahead and turn on the fasten seat belt sign and ask—”
The rest of the announcement is drowned out by the intense jolt that rattles the overhead bins.
And holy shit. Thisisgoing to end in aYellowjacketssituation. I squeeze the armrest tighter and realize I’m actually squeezingWindow Seat’s calloused hand. I’m too panicked to care, and I cling to her as the plane rattles.
This is just anxiety-brain running away with reality, I tell myself.We’re not going to crash.
The plane rollicks, and the red wine in my stomach rollicks along with it, and for a fleeting moment, my stomach exists in zero-G, floating up toward my rib cage like it did when I first saw Window Seat’s face, before my whole body seems to slam back into my seat, with more force driving me downward.
