the famous woman says, with a certain dissatisfaction.
“That’s all I know right now,” Waters says. “We’ll share more information with you as it comes in. At this time we’re cruising at thirty-seven thousand feet, and we’re about halfway through your flight. We should arrive in Boston a little ahead of schedule.”
There’s a scraping sound and a sharp click, and the monitors start playing films again. About half the people in business class are watching the same superhero movie, Captain America throwing his shield like a steel-edged Frisbee, cutting down grotesques that look like they just crawled out from under the bed.
A black girl of about nine or ten sits across the aisle from Holder. She looks at her mother and says, in a voice that carries, “Where is Guam, precisely?” Her use of the word “precisely” tickles Holder—it’s so teacherly and unchildlike.
The girl’s mother says, “I don’t know, sweetie. I think it’s near Hawaii.” She isn’t looking at her daughter. She’s glancing this way and that with a bewildered expression, as if reading an invisible text for instructions. How to discuss a nuclear exchange with your child.
“It’s closer to Taiwan,” Holder says, leaning across the aisle to address the child.
“Just south of Korea,” adds the famous woman.
“I wonder how many people live there,” Holder says.
The celebrity arches an eyebrow. “You mean as of this moment? Based on the report we just heard, I should think very few.”
ARNOLD FIDELMAN IN COACH
The violinist Fidelman has an idea the very pretty, very sick-looking teenage girl sitting next to him is Korean. Every time she slips her headphones off—to speak to a flight attendant or to listen to the recent announcement—he’s heard what sounds like K-pop coming from her Samsung. Fidelman himself was in love with a Korean for several years, a man ten years his junior, who loved comic books and played a brilliant if brittle viol, and who killed himself by stepping in front of a Red Line train. His name was So as in “so it goes” or “so there we are” or “little Miss So-and-So” or “so what do I do now?” So’s breath was sweet, like almond milk, and his eyes were shy, and it embarrassed him to be happy. Fidelman always thought So was happy, right up to the day he leaped like a ballet dancer into the path of a fifty-two-ton engine.
Fidelman wants to offer the girl comfort and at the same time doesn’t want to intrude on her anxiety. He mentally wrestles with what to say, if anything, and finally nudges her gently. When she pops out her earbuds, he says, “Do you need something to drink? I’ve got half a can of Coke that I haven’t touched. It isn’t germy—I’ve been drinking from the glass.”
She shows him a small, frightened smile. “Thank you. My insides are all knotted up.”
She takes the can and has a swallow.
“If your stomach is upset, the fizz will help,” he says. “I’ve always said that on my deathbed the last thing I want to taste before I leave this world is a cold Coca-Cola.” Fidelman has said this exact thing to others, many times before, but as soon as it’s out of his mouth, he wishes he could have it back. Under the circumstances it strikes him as a rather infelicitous sentiment.
“I’ve got family there,” she says.
“In Guam?”
“In Korea,” she says, and shows him the nervous smile again. The pilot never said anything about Korea in his announcement, but anyone who’s watched CNN in the last three weeks knows that’s what this is about.
“Which Korea?” says the big man on the other side of the aisle. “The good one or the bad one?”
The big man wears an offensively red turtleneck that brings out the color in his honeydew melon of a face. He’s so large he overspills his seat. The woman sitting next to him—a small, black-haired lady with the high-strung intensity of an overbred greyhound—has been crowded close to the window. There’s an enamel American flag pin in the lapel of his suit coat. Fidelman already knows they could never be friends.
The girl gives the big man a startled glance and smooths her dress over her thighs. “South Korea,” she says, declining to play his game of good versus bad. “My brother just got married in Jeju. I’m on my way back to school.”
“Where’s school?” Fidelman asks.
“MIT.”
“I’m surprised you could get in,” says the big man. “They’ve got to draft a certain number of unqualified inner-city kids to meet