31. Airplane Sections (cont.) / Waiting for permission to land

“So that was how the plastic surgery began. Because my jaw was shattered, I’d lost five teeth. And I was back with Peter, I had nowhere else. He paid for all that, and he wanted a beautiful girl. It really was that simple.”

Eddie stared inconsolably at his tray table. Suddenly the stewardess reached in and snapped it shut, latched it, and was off, saying “Excuse me!” brightly.

“Oh, God,” said Eddie. He tried to shift his weight of self-pity, which possibly Denise didn’t see the humor of. His Eeyore schtick.

She said, low and apologetic, “I’ve gone too far, of course. Really forgive me. Ah, I think we’re slanting. I get nervous now. Should I distract you with the story about my plane crash?”

He said, “But, like, you’re saying he was totally this gambler? You know, cause we grew up, he was supposed to be some fucking CIA guy.”

“Oh, that’s so not important. He wasn’t an agent. He just worked with them, after Vietnam.”

“But – not an agent? What did he work with them on?” Eddie caught his breath, thinking biological weapons, and she said, lightly,

“Biological weapons.”

And smiled. He stopped with her face stopping him. A brick wall. He muttered, hateful, “I guess that doesn’t matter?”

“No,” she confirmed. “It absolutely doesn’t.”

“Well, I don’t know how you figure that.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid: because he was good. I’m a bad person, just to give an example. It doesn’t matter if I do good things, it makes no difference, people see straight away. They don’t love me, if you know what I mean.”

Eddie took a deep breath, seized by an enormity. He said in a weighty, careful voice, aiming it, to break the evil spell:

“I love you.”

“No,” she said, untouched, “you don’t.”

“I’ve loved you for ten damn years,” he swore, and felt a prideful ache in his chest: No matter what. No matter what she looked like.

She sighed: “Anyhow, the people who love me, die, so I have to discourage you from thinking along those lines.”

So she broke him again, and her eyes changed focus, passing his profile to see Kuala Lumpur rising in the window, the tiny neighborhoods, near-geometrically aligned, like electronic circuitry only here and there bashed, coasting in, at the speed of wind, and Eddie croaked,

“Why did you want me here? Why?”

There was a long pause where he couldn’t read her expression at all.

Then she said, “Look, as I get older, you can see the scar when I smile.”

She smiled, and traced one finger down an S-shaped dimple, corrugated and deep in her soft cheek. Then unsmiled, as the plane touched down. “Oh,” she said, in pleased surprise. “We’re alive.”