parked on a Dulles runway, headed back to JFK. The Eastern Seaboard was about to get hit with Hurricane Erebus, reportedly the worst storm of the season. Right now, raindrops smacked against his small, round window, and the skies above were black. Takeoff had been delayed thirty minutes so far, and they were waiting for an announcement from the captain about whether they’d be lifting off at all.
This hitch in the weather wasn’t surprising. Since Bob Stern had countersigned the contracts to acquire Maginot Lines, nothing had gone right. Not the movie, or his subjects, or his cameraman, or even Audrey Lucas, the first and only woman to whom he’d offered his heart. The ring scratched inside his right trouser pocket. He wasn’t sure where else to put it, and it wasn’t beneath Wilson to steal it. So in his pocket it stayed. When Audrey had dropped it on the table of that greasy spoon in Lincoln, he’d been surprised by how small it was. Lighter than he’d remembered, too. He’d wondered whether she’d have parted with it so easily if the stone had been bigger than half a carat, and the band had been platinum instead of sterling silver. He’d also wondered whether he should throw it in her face.
Daniel’s advice now played in his head: You’re Jell-O, dude. If you showed a little backbone, you wouldn’t have these problems. Kick her to the curb, and she’ll come crawling back. Better yet, get somebody younger who New York hasn’t beaten down.
That’s why he’d left her at the Super 8 Friday morning. Returning that ring had pushed him past his limit. He’d feuded with his family over her, eaten spinach for her, even let her arrange his pint glasses into crazy-ass pyramids on the kitchen table for her, but every time he’d surrendered, she’d demanded more. She’d trashed welcome mats, hidden comic books, shut doors as soon as he got home because she said she’d needed time alone. The weirdest part was the stuff she’d moved small fractions of inches when he wasn’t looking. A found-art tin-can vase recentered. A desk shifted slightly to the right. The coffee mugs moved behind the pint glasses, instead of up front like the week before. At first he’d thought he was going crazy. Then he’d thought she’d been waging a covert passive-aggressive war, only it was so passive he hadn’t even noticed. It was only recently that he’d understood that it was a compulsion for perfection. She was a girl who cared more about appearances than substance. Right then, he should have realized that they were doomed.
Sure, things had started good. They’d been a team. Nick and Nora without the dog. But by the time she’d moved into his apartment, she’d already started treating everything he did with contempt, from shaking hands with strangers too enthusiastically (“Don’t be so eager to please!”), to his slumped posture (“Stand tall!”), to the way he was always winded by the time they got to the landing to their third-floor walk-up (“You’d better not keel over!”). Over time that contempt had translated into more closed doors, and more cleaning, and finally, packed bags. Sometimes he’d caught the contempt in her eyes as she’d frowned at him and understood that she was searching for reasons to leave. And how do you fight someone who doesn’t want to love you anymore?
So, yeah, you have to go after what you want. Yeah, love is all about patience. But maybe it was time he cashed in his chips and started over. He’d settle for lukewarm affection, even smiling but humorless Tonia, his former betrothed, so long as he didn’t have to be anybody’s doormat ever again.
Just then, the plane began to roll along the runway. Outside, everything was gray, like the rain wasn’t clear, but diluted black. Large metal cages in the air. It made no sense to him that these planes didn’t come crashing to the ground.
“What are your panties in a bunch about?” Wilson asked.
“Everything,” Saraub answered.
“What I don’t understand is how you didn’t see this coming,” Wilson answered.
At first Saraub thought he was talking about Audrey. I didn’t want to see it, he almost answered, but then he understood that Wilson was talking about Maginot Lines.
Most of the calls had come over the weekend, pretty much as soon as he’d accepted Sunshine Studio’s deal. The head of public relations at the World Bank, Internal Affairs at Servitus, a member of the House from Oregon, two farmers outside Buffalo,