The cold from up in the mountains collided with the hot, moist air rising from the sea, and the plane started shaking. It was the announcement of their arrival in the New World. What was visible through the windows was no longer blue but rather green and brown. The mountains, the jungles, the plains, the tropical forests, the textures of a gestating continent. And a sky full of clouds in the shapes of monsters and demons so travelers would understand, once and for all, that they were entering a cursed realm.
Charlie hadn’t raised the blind. A little earlier, once she could move her legs again, she’d curled up in her seat and stayed like that, waiting for Larry to return. She no longer felt the urge to go looking for him. She dozed until she was awakened by the announcement to fasten seatbelts. She was dying of thirst. She looked back, toward the rear of the plane, trying to catch a glimpse of him. In the snarl of her hangover, she tried to find an explanation for why Larry had fled.
Did I say something I shouldn’t have? . . .
She didn’t remember everything they’d talked about or every detail of what she’d done, and apart from having started drinking again, she had no other regrets. But it had always been like this in the past—she’d wake up believing that nothing had happened, when in fact all kinds of things had happened.
She pressed the button to summon a flight attendant. Charlie requested a glass of water with lots of ice. A pang in her upper abdomen reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything. The drinks she was having now were making her feel sick, and churning along with everything else was her sadness over her dead father. She cried as she drank her ice water.
The airplane kept shaking gently, the passengers unfazed. The flight attendants’ bustling suggested that the plane would be landing soon.
They passed out the immigration form, and she took the opportunity to ask for more water. With her feet, she grabbed the purse she’d placed on the floor and dragged it toward her. She hunted through the jumble for a pen and an ibuprofen for her headache, but didn’t find either. She looked at the form, and it seemed to ask too many questions. There wasn’t room for all four of her given names. There’s never room for me, she’d once told a psychiatrist, I don’t even fit on forms, my full name won’t fit on a credit card. I’m not one person, I’m four, she told that psychiatrist, still drunk and burping rum.
She borrowed a pen from the man in the other seat. He passed her a cheap ballpoint with a hotel logo.
What happened to the Montblanc you used to fill out yours?
She thanked him with a smile. Even writing her names in tiny letters, she spilled out of the boxes.
I spilled out of boxes . . .
She answered no to all the questions, signed, and paused as she was about to put the date. What’s today?, she asked her neighbor, and he replied, November 30. As she wrote it down, Charlie knew she’d remember that date for the rest of her life.