He came down the aisle and stopped at the appropriate row. Pausing, the man took his pillow and stashed it up above in the nearest compartment and closed the hatch securely. Then he sat down, taking deep breaths as he flipped through the Skymall magazine, his eyes only glancing at each ad for two seconds. Setting the catalog aside, he ran his hand through his hair, impatiently waiting for the plan to take off.
Other passengers milled about and took their own seats. He wondered if anyone would be sitting between him and the window. In the worst possible scenario he imagined, he’d get stuck between two large chatty passengers who wouldn’t allow him a moment to think. As he waited, he stared at the images in the sky mall magazine until the colors congealed like those in an old man’s tattoo.
He’d been training for this day for a couple years.
“Excuse me sir.” She stood less than a foot away, wearing a blouse and a loose skirt. “I have the window seat.”
Nodding, he set his neglected magazine aside and stood up to allow her through. He dropped into his seat faster than a two-ton bomb and she floated down to hers a second later.
“I’m Callie.” She volunteered, watching him as he picked up the catalog again.
He nodded in reply, before glancing back through his catalog. Her persistent gaze attempted to burn holes in the paper.
“And what’s yours?”
After a little hesitation, he replied “Ali.”
“Oo, like the boxer?” She leaned forward over the empty seat between them.
“Yeah, like the boxer.” He smiled at the right corner of his mouth.
The flight attendants went through the demonstration, holding up oxygen masks for all the passengers to see. Ali looked around him to see if anyone paid attention; nobody seemed to. He wondered if masks were all that useful in certain situations. Certainly they wouldn’t work if the passengers had died on impact, definitely not if they burned alive. If the plane sank in the water, the masks would only serve to keep passengers alive for so long.
Soon enough the plane interrupted Ali’s thought process with the pull of takeoff. He stared at the no-smoking light as he counted the hours and minutes. Ali only had to wait two hours and—
“I’m from San Diego. You?”
He held back a sigh, and instead he smirked. “Where do you think?”
Callie pressed her lips together, narrowing her eyes as she ran through her bank of information. (Near as Ali could tell, she hadn’t deposited much in her account.) “You have an accent, that’s for sure.”
“So do you. It’s just different.” He laughed, managing to keep the nerves out of his voice.
“Mm, yeah, I guess so. Mm…..Dubai?”
Ali’s eye twitched. “You’re too kind.” He hated that dump of a city.
“One of those Stan countries?”
“Close enough. Saudi Arabia, actually.”
“Oh, neat!” She continued to chatter away, but Ali heard little of what Callie said.
He dug into his backpack, feeling each and every package he had inside. As required by airport security, each and every bottle had less than three ounces of liquid inside. They didn’t seem to care how many bottles he packed with him, however, and so he packed as many as he could in the quart-sized Ziploc back. Ali rehearsed in his mind the exact sequence and recipe that required such ingredients. Like his fellow trainees, he knew he’d have a hard time finding them in a supermarket. If Ali messed up the order he might destroy his foot, or burn a whole through the bottom of his backpack; he wanted to avoid both scenarios.
Callie still hadn’t stopped talking. “Me and my brother used to play soccer all the time before he died. He always dreamed of playing in the World Cup.”
“Really? So did my brother. But he decided to help my dad with his souvenir stand instead.”
“What souvenirs did you sell?”
“T-shirts, key chains, and postcards. And local candy.” Ali checked his watch, swallowing hard. He needed to focus. He needed to stop talking to a San Diego girl named Callie. He needed to act, but she was nice to talk to. He couldn’t silence her just yet.
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