public bathroom because I'd spaced out. That was some kind of embarrassment.
But this wasn't that. It was a quick, dam-bursting break from the old normal.
"No, really," I continued. "What's the problem? Why is it a—what did you call it? A hard pass?" I forced a snicker. Snickering didn't come naturally to me, probably because I didn't dedicate much time to condescending to others or mocking people. But this guy? The one in the trousers pressed within an inch of their fancy-fiber-loving life? The one with the artfully tousled golden brown hair and the eyebrow arched as if speaking words was too great a request for him? He did more than enough condescending. He could take some coming back in his direction. "It sounds like you're dealing with a kidney stone, not scanning a résumé."
He bobbed his head, his gaze locked on the stripe of blue hair tucked behind my ear. The stripe I'd been told was childish. "Okay."
"No, no, friend. I asked you a question." I tipped my head toward his screen, the one with Zelda Besh screaming across the top line. "What's the disqualifier here?"
"I'm sorry but," he started, his infuriatingly beautiful hazel eyes crinkling as he spoke, "what are we talking about?"
I leaned back, crossed my legs, folded my arms over my chest. Stared at him for a beat. "That's my résumé."
"That's not possible." He laughed, but it sounded like a sticky grocery cart wheel. He glowered between me and his screen. "That's…that's just not possible."
"I'm not sure why you're saying that," I replied. "I know what my résumé looks like. I know I sent gobs and gobs of them last night and this morning. When you think about the odds, it's not so impossible."
Another sticky-wheel laugh from Mr. Fancy Pants. "Tell me about the odds, uh"—he glimpsed back at the document on his screen—"Zelda."
He said my name the way most people did at first. Zellllllda. As if it wasn't a name so much as a curiosity. If I had a dollar for every time someone asked if it was my real name, I wouldn't be praying my friends didn't mind me squatting in their apartments for more than a few weeks.
"All right, well, this is a flight to Boston," I started, waving both hands at the cabin around us, "and I'd estimate one-quarter to one-third of the passengers live in or around Boston. Given the early morning flight time and day of the week, half of these folks are business travelers." I shot a pointed stare at the trousers-and-dress-shirts dudes across the aisle, the ones with their Bose headphones around their neck and slim laptops on their tray tables. "Even by the most conservative estimates, that means twelve percent of the passengers are Boston-based business travelers. Are you with me so far?"
He blinked but I could tell he wasn't happy about it. Either the blinking or my reasoning. Could've been both. "I'm with you."
I shifted, leaning out into the aisle for a second. "On the low end, it looks like there are two hundred and twenty seats filled, meaning a little more than twenty-seven of them are businesspeople going home to Boston. Even if we eliminate ninety percent of those twenty-seven on the basis of whatever, the probability of one of those remaining twenty-three having the résumé I blasted all over internet job sites and to all of my friends between Newington and New York is greater than zero."
He stared at me for a long moment. Long enough for one of the flight attendants to march down the aisle, snapping overhead compartments shut as she went, and make her way back to the front. Stared and stared and stared as if he was trying to determine whether I was playing an enormous joke on him or this was a complete hallucination because there was no way in hell I was real. I knew this because I got that question about as frequently as the one about my name—Are you for real?
The pilot came over the speaker, drawling on about flight times and headwinds and the current weather at Logan International. The flight attendants yanked the doors shut and briskly paced the aisle. The plane pushed back from the gate with a jerk, and still, he stared at me.
If he could've done it without blinking, I was certain he would've.
The flight attendant stopped at our row and gifted my seatmate with a stern stare. "It's time to stow your tray table and power down all electronic devices, sir."