MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, AND ALL YOU'VE GOT TO WORRY ABOUT IS - "
"Sit down and shut up or I'll pop you one," Gaffney said, standing up. He had at least twenty years on Crew-Neck, but he was heavier and much broader through the chest. He had rolled the sleeves of his red flannel shirt to the elbows, and when he clenched his hands into fists, the muscles in his forearms bunched. He looked like a lumberjack just starting to soften into retirement.
Crew-Neck's upper lip pulled back from his teeth. This doglike grimace scared Laurel, because she didn't believe the man in the crew-neck jersey knew he was making a face. She was the first of them to wonder if this man might not be crazy.
"I don't think you could do it alone, pops," he said.
"He won't have to." It was the bald man from the business section. "I'll take a swing at you myself, if you don't shut up."
Albert Kaussner mustered all his courage and said, "So will I, you putz."
Saying it was a great relief. He felt like one of the guys at the Alamo, stepping over the line Colonel Travis had drawn in the dirt.
Crew-Neck looked around. His lip rose and fell again in that queer, doglike snarl. "I see. I see. You're all against me. Fine." He sat down and stared at them truculently. "But if you knew anything about the market in South American bonds - " He didn't finish. There was a cocktail napkin sitting on the arm of the seat next to him. He picked it up, looked at it, and began to pluck at it.
"Doesn't have to be this way," Gaffney said. "I wasn't born a hardass, mister, and I ain't one by inclination, either." He was trying to sound pleasant, Laurel thought, but wariness showed through, perhaps anger as well. "You ought to just relax and take it easy. Look on the bright side! The airline'll probably refund your full ticket price on this trip."
Crew-Neck cut his eyes briefly in Don Gaffney's direction, then looked back at the cocktail napkin. He quit plucking it and began to tear it into long strips.
"Anyone here know how to run that little oven in the galley?" Baldy asked, as if nothing had happened. "I want my dinner."
No one answered.
"I didn't think so," the bald man said sadly. "This is the era of specialization. A shameful time to be alive." With this philosophical pronouncement, Baldy retreated once more to business class.
Laurel looked down and saw that, below the rims of the dark glasses with their jaunty red plastic frames, Dinah Bellman's cheeks were wet with tears. Laurel forgot some of her own fear and perplexity, at least temporarily, and hugged the little girl. "Don't cry, honey - that man was just upset. He's better now."
If you call sitting there and looking hypnotized while you tear a paper napkin into teeny shreds better, she thought.
"I'm scared," Dinah whispered. "We all look like monsters to that man."
"No, I don't think so," Laurel said, surprised and a little taken aback. "Why would you think a thing like that?"
"I don't know," Dinah said. She liked this woman - had liked her from the instant she heard her voice - but she had no intention of telling Laurel that for just a moment she had seen them all, herself included, looking back at the man with the loud voice. She had been inside the man with the loud voice - his name was Mr Tooms or Mr Tunney or something like that - and to him they looked like a bunch of evil, selfish trolls.
If she told Miss Lee something like that, Miss Lee would think she was crazy. Why would this woman, whom Dinah had just met, think any different?
So Dinah said nothing.
Laurel kissed the girl's cheek. The skin was hot beneath her lips. "Don't be scared, honey. We're going along just as smooth as can be - can't you feel it? - and in just a few hours we'll be safe on the ground again."
"That's good. I want my Aunt Vicky, though. Where is she, do you think?"
"I don't know, hon," Laurel said. "I wish I did."
Dinah thought again of the faces the yelling man saw: evil faces, cruel faces. She thought of her own face as he perceived it, a piggish baby face with the eyes hidden behind huge black lenses. Her courage broke