16
WE SEE A BRAND-NEW RERUN
OLIVER AND CELIA SAT BUG-EYED in front of the television, stuffing cheese puffs into their mouths. Their faces were blank, their minds even blanker. Nothing existed for them but Love at 30,000 Feet. Even Oliver had overcome his resistance to all the kissing and was entranced. The children watched and were happy.
Of course, they didn’t understand a word.
The show was dubbed over in Chinese, so that when the actors’ mouths moved to make the English words, Chinese words came out. Subtitles ran at the bottom of the screen that indicated what the actors were saying, but the subtitles were in Tibetan, so even reading them was no help. They couldn’t tell that Nga kayrâng-la gawpo yö meant “I love you” or that Há la gyuk! Ngempa-po khyö! meant “Get away, you rogues!” but they could figure out what was going on by facial expressions and lip-reading and how the people moved or shouted at each other. It helped that they had seen every episode.
In this episode, the captain was arguing with his copilot about something. He kept pointing toward the fuel gauge. The copilot pressed a lot of buttons and the plane jerked in all directions. Passengers shouted, and the stewardess said calming things to them, trying to maintain her balance. The actress playing her had bright white teeth and smiled widely in a familiar way, but she wasn’t very comforting. She also wasn’t very steady on her feet. She fell right into the lap of a man in a shiny birthday clown costume with a bright red nose. He said something to her that made her laugh. He said something else and she slapped him.
Back in the cockpit, the captain regained control of the airplane and everyone cheered. Then he looked at his copilot and said something very serious. His face was pale, his eyes like steel. A tear trickled down the copilot’s cheek.
“Captain Sinclair is about to ask the Duchess in Business Class to tango!” Celia exclaimed. It was her favorite moment in the whole series. She had made Oliver watch this episode at least ten times. She had wanted to watch it again the night their father dragged them to the Ceremony of Discovery.
“I thought this was the one where Captain Sinclair falls unconscious and the traveling birthday clown has to land the plane,” Oliver said.
“That wasn’t even in this season. Just watch.”
“I’m pretty sure Captain Sinclair’s about to fall over. You can tell when someone is going to faint on television. They get all pale and wobbly.”
“That’s romance. He’s in love.”
“Looks pale and wobbly to me.”
“That’s what love looks like.”
“If you say so.”
“Shhh, just watch,” Celia hissed.
They watched as Captain Sinclair rose, pale and wobbly, to his feet. He left the cockpit, holding on to the backs of the big leather seats to steady himself as he marched down the aisle. Passengers gazed at him with awe. His uniform was crisp and blue.
When he reached her seat, the captain extended his hand to the duchess and helped her to stand. He said something to her, and she smiled. His eyes looked glassy and his legs swayed. He didn’t fall over, though. And he didn’t ask the duchess to tango, either. He pointed her toward the bathroom. Then he went to the stewardess and said Nga kayrâng-la gawpo yö, which of course the twins still didn’t know meant “I love you,” but they did know what it meant when he got down on one knee and proposed to the stewardess with a diamond ring.
“Hey!” The twins said in unison. The twins knew that that wasn’t supposed to happen. Oliver and Celia were quite certain that reruns didn’t change when you watched them again.
The stewardess broke down in tears and her lips clearly said “Yes, I will. Yes!” even though her voice said something in Chinese and the screen said Nga kayrâng-la gawpo yö, which by now the twins guessed meant “I love you.”
The show was completely different than they remembered it. And if there was one thing they were sure of, it was how their shows were supposed to go.
“I’ve never seen this episode,” Celia muttered. “Maybe they get different seasons of it here.”
Oliver suddenly remembered the yak that came to him in a dream on the airplane. “You will have to remember enduring Love if you want to escape a terrible fate,” it had said. Enduring Love . . . it must have meant he would have to remember enduring that marathon of Love at 30,000 Feet that his sister had made him watch. He thought back to that weekend when they watched fifty-two hours of this silly soap opera, only pausing to nap and to go to the bathroom. Their father was away in Bhutan at the time, otherwise he never would have let them spend so long eating junk food in front of the television. Oliver thought as hard as he could through the story of the show, through all those seasons.
“This never happened,” he said. He looked closer at the screen. That stewardess did look familiar, but not because they had ever seen her on the show before. She was the stewardess from their flight! On her jacket, she wore a gold pin with a tiny key on it. “Do you recognize that symbol?” Oliver asked.
“Yes!” Celia gasped. “That’s the symbol from the tunnel at the Explorers Club and it’s what the air marshal and the man in the shiny suit had on their rings when they threw us out of the plane!”
“And I think that birthday clown looks awfully familiar.”
“His suit is really shiny . . .”
“There’s something else,” Oliver observed, terrified. It was his turn to get all pale and wobbly.
“What is it?” his sister asked, alarmed.
“The TV’s not even plugged in.”
The children looked at the flashing images on the television and then to the limp cord resting on the dirt floor.
The flicker of the TV set cast crazy dancing shadows across the skeleton of the yak in the corner, and the strange dubbed laughter of the smiling stewardess filled them with dread. They remembered the warnings of Choden Thordup and of Lama Norbu, and they both had the same thought at the same time.
“The Poison Witches!”
