HE BOUGHT a comb, a razor, a bar of soap, and a can of hairspray in the magazine store. He went to the bathroom, wet his face and his hair in the sink. He slicked his hair back with the comb. He fogged his head with hairspray He tucked his shirt at his belt, and leaned over and pulled his socks from around his ankles. He stole a pen from the bar, and put it into his front pocket. He fished out the wedding ring.

He had seen the dead ones at the plane yard, and he saw them as dots overhead, but he never conjured being in an airplane this way, like a carnival ride or a funhouse, and he felt like he got away with something, like he owed the pilot more money.

A stewardess pushed the front curtain aside and came down the aisle. She touched the heads of the seats. Her uniform was royal blue. The stewardess put one hand on the head of the chair in front of him. She smiled and tilted her head down.

I’d like a drink, he said. A drink with alcohol.

He unlatched the tray from the back of the seat and clicked the ring on the plastic.

And a pair of wings, he said.

What kind of drink would you like? she said.

He thought for a moment. He rubbed his chin with two fingers.

A bourbon and cola, he said.

She didn’t ask for identification like he expected, just smiled again and turned back down the aisle.

The plane dropped with turbulence. He kept his hands against the meal tray The stewardess came back with the drink in one hand and a pair of wings wrapped in plastic in the other. She put them both on the tray.

Thank you, he said.

He tore the plastic open and held the wings in one hand. He couldn’t push the needle down from the back of the wings. The stewardess leaned down. She smelled like soap and flowers.

Here, she said.

She pushed the pin away from the back of the wings, bunched a crease in his shirt over his heart and slid the needle through. She hooked the point back into the wings and patted his chest.

All done, she said.

He looked down at them, bronze plastic.

I like them, he said.

The stewardess went back down the aisle and pulled a curtain behind her at the end. He got one of the old dead man’s pills from a pocket and swallowed it with the Coke and bourbon. He chewed ice. It was seven-thirty in the morning. He rubbed his eyes, and finished the drink, and then he put his face against the streaked glass at his right shoulder, and the propeller hummed a fast wheeze, and the wing was lit by the sun, and sky behind it, and the patched skin of the ground beneath, each one nuclear, a fission, burning and neon.