Eve did not understand why she had to put her laptop away for takeoff. Turning off cell phones and putting away computers on planes were antiquated rules that should have been thrown away when they told people they had to quit smoking.
Eve refused to put away her laptop for takeoff.
‘Don’t you get how much work I have to do?’ she tried to explain to the flight attendant.
‘Miss, rules are rules. If you don’t comply with the FAA’s practices for takeoff I will have to ask you to get off this plane.’ The woman exhaled, glancing nervously at the tan curtain that separated the coach cabin from first class.
‘You’ll ask me to get off?’ Eve dropped her voice on the final word, offering it as a challenge, clutching her slim MacBook to her chest as she gulped down the last sip of her diet Red Bull. ‘You’re going to ask me to get off the plane? That’s ridiculous. That’s so ridiculous that I think I should share that. I think I should tweet that out to my huge network of followers from Glossy.com. How do you feel about that?’
Imogen touched her elbow.
‘Eve.’
She shook Imogen off. The old stewardess seemed to think she was kidding. Or maybe, like Imogen, she didn’t even know what Twitter was. She didn’t know the power that could come from one little tweet. I’ll show her, Eve thought. This will teach her not to fuck with me.
‘I am tweeting right now – @JetEasy Airlines is forcibly trying to take my computer and phone away from me like it is a bomb.’ Okay and one more. ‘YUP! @JetEasy is acting like I brought a bomb on a plane. They’re treating me like a terrorist! I mean!’
That ought to show them.
It didn’t take long for the air marshals to remove someone when she tweeted about having a bomb on a plane and made a joke about being a terrorist. It took almost all of Imogen’s miles and two hours with Homeland Security to get the two of them on the next flight back to New York City.
Eve was thankfully several rows behind her. Imogen let the roar of the plane’s engines drown out the pounding in her head as she pulled out her notebook to make a list of reasons why she should not stay on as the editor in chief of Glossy.com.
At LaGuardia Airport Eve popped two slim blue Adderall tablets and grabbed a cab straight into work, even though it was past four in the afternoon by the time they landed. Imogen went home. The walls of the old town house squeezed her like a mother who hasn’t seen her child in a long while. Her own kids were out with Tilly, and the hubby, as usual, was at work. Imogen fell into the cloud of freshly laundered sheets, let her head sink into the downy pillows and curled herself into the folds of her worn cashmere blanket. Soon she fell into a deep sleep. She never set an alarm.
In her dream, Imogen was in secondary school but she hadn’t studied for any of her exams. She didn’t even know what her class schedule was or how to go about looking it up. She found herself in an algebra class at a small desk with an exam book in front of her and no idea what test she was about to take. The teacher whirled to face the students from behind the large wooden desk at the front of the room. It was Eve Morton. The bell rang and Imogen woke up.