34. Heathrow International Airport, London, England, 2000

We sit in the boarding lounge, waiting for our connecting flight. We’ve been talking all night, on the flight from Singapore, and our eyes feel like felt from wakefulness and dry air. We’re not tired, though: we both keep mentioning that we’re not tired. We just look very pale, and we’re oddly clumsy.

They call to board disabled people and mothers with small children, and a flood of able-bodied adults streams past us. We watch them curiously, as if they’re our first people.

Then Ralph says:

“Going back.”

I wince. We both look at the crowded gate as if we’ll see California. It strikes me that our lives might not change. Then I realize Eddie won’t be there, and I look away.

“We could just stay here,” I say. “After all, you are British.”

He smiles nervously. “Actually, I’ve been putting off telling you this, but they may not let me back into the U.S. I overstayed my last visa by twelve years.”

“Oh. That’s pretty bad.”

We laugh irresponsibly. Ralph won’t be let in! Ha ha! Life down the drain! I say, laughing:

“Well, I’ll come back to England with you. We’ll get married! Obviously!”

“Obviously,” he says, not laughing.

I continue, improvising: “We’ll get married and go back to California. We’ll sell the mansion and use the money to open a pottery shop. Then we’ll have two children.”

He says, “I couldn’t have a pottery shop. It seems like going backwards.”

“A furniture shop, then. We’ll sell top-quality tables at a fair price.”

I think of the furniture shop as salvation. From now on, things will be ordinary and good. Then Ralph says,

“You seem to have my whole life mapped out for me.”

“Oh,” I whine, wronged: “But I was trying to map it out in the way you would map it out, so that’s actually ungrateful. Anyway, I don’t know what we’re going to do in the next ten minutes, as you’re well aware.”

They call to board first class. A few first-class people lurch to their feet. They don’t even look rich, and I glare at them sulkily. They should make an effort, I think, forgetting that I’m rich.

Then Ralph says, anxious: “Well, let’s try to stay together.”

“Sure,” I say, thinking, Oh, of course we won’t stay together, what garbage.

They call to board rows 65 to 45. We stumble to our feet, noticing again our absurd tired demeanor in the absence of any tiredness. We join the unmoving queue. Ralph drops our only bag heavily and I stop myself from dropping to the floor and embracing my hurt brother. We move forward a little bit.

Then over the tannoy, they call: “Would Miss Moffat please come to the Assembly Point. Miss Moffat, please come to the Assembly Point.”

A man behind us says, “Where your spider is waiting,” and his friends all laugh.

“It’s not me,” I whisper to Ralph. “I don’t –”

“No, of course,” Ralph says, hoarse. “It’s a coincidence.”

We look at each other with a bleak superstition. We both smile although we’re not tickled.

“I hope that was the last gasp,” Ralph says, tense.

“Of coincidences?” I clarify unnecessarily. We stand thinking. We move forward a little bit. I bring the bag along with a loving, herding motion of my foot, and consider that although the sudden appearance of a spaceship seems to prove a sly coherence in events, it is in fact just another odd event. Perhaps at random. Then my mind quits suddenly before I understand anything.

“Oh, well,” I sigh. “We made it from Singapore, after all.”

Ralph shrugs and turns away. Then he thinks again and takes my hand.

We move forward a little bit. I remember dressing for a Halloween party as Miss Moffat, with a large googly-eyed stuffed spider. My date stood me up and I sat all night on the couch with my spider, eating Orville Redenbacher popcorn and watching Carrie.

Then Ralph squeezes my hand. He says, “All right.”

“All right?” I bend and pick up the bag with my free hand. “I don’t like Eddie on the floor,” I say kind of reproachfully.

He bends way way down and kisses my forehead. He says, “I want to marry you and open a furniture store.”

“Oh, right,” I say stupidly. “I hope we survive, then.”

Then we’re at the front and hand over our passports and get them back. We start down the bouncy tunnel. We go boing boing along. It’s a happy-couple walk: I think officiously that this is what they should show in love montages in films, instead of people eating Chinese food and riding bicycles. Perhaps at the register of the furniture store, I could write screenplays. They would be innovative and thoughtful without sacrificing dramatic interest.

It’s then, as we hand our tickets to the stewardess, that I first think of writing an account of our experiences, in the hope that others might learn from our mistakes. It would be highly fictionalized, of course, to save time on fact-checking. The idea grows, and I already feel successful. Busily inventing a cool name for myself, I forget our worries. As I edge into my seat, with my fiancé’s hand tender between my shoulderblades, I’m euphoric. The glee mounts and I can hardly sit, I press my hand to the scratched window.

Then, alongside the plane, in the sickly, wind-beset grass, I see a jogging white towel. I start, nonplussed, but when it stops, it’s a cat. It crouches, looking up at the mammoth plane, inspecting it left to right, its tail alert. As it meets my eye, I guess, I am already looking up in the sky for God. Then a loathed thing drops behind me, I’m unsheathed:

The city courses on the deeps of the earth. Trees reach and fountain. The clouds and their mother lakes enter the powerful stone, the grass drinks them with its frail heels. This knowing is participation in its seamless play. It’s a gladdened, headlong, adamantine life.

The cat pounces up into the misted undersky. I pounce along, maddeningly clean and aware. Somewhere Ralph cries out, frightened.

The clouds peel away from the blue to let me go