bought her a Quarter Pounder and told her he didn’t care who the father was. He said he would love the baby as much as if it were his own. Sandy had already scheduled the abortion. Bobby told her, calmly, quietly, that if she came with him, he would give her and the child a good, happy life, but if she drove to the clinic, she would murder a child and lose her own soul. She had gone with him, and it had been just as he said, all of it. He had loved her well, had adored her from the first; he was her miracle. She did not need the loaves and fishes to believe. Bobby was enough. Sandy fantasized, sometimes, that a liberal—a Code Pinker, maybe, or one of the Bernie people—would try to assassinate him, and she would manage to step between Bobby and the gun to take the bullet herself. She had always wanted to die for him. To kiss him with the taste of her own blood in her mouth.
“I wish we had phones,” the pretty Asian girl says suddenly. “Some of these planes have phones. I wish there was a way to call—someone. How long before the bombers get there?”
“Even if we could make calls from this aircraft,” Bobby says, “it would be hard to get a call through. One of the first things the U.S. will do is wipe out communications in the region, and they might not limit themselves to just the DPRK. They won’t want to risk agents in the South—a sleeper government—coordinating a counterstrike. Plus, everyone with family in the Korean Peninsula will be calling right now. It would be like trying to call Manhattan on 9/11, only this time it’s their turn.”
“Their turn?” says the Jew. “Their turn? I must’ve missed the report that said North Korea was responsible for bringing down the World Trade Towers. I thought that was al-Qaeda.”
“North Korea sold them weapons and intel for years,” Bobby lets him know. “It’s all connected. North Korea has been the number one exporter of Destroy America Fever for decades.”
Sandy butts her shoulder against Bobby and says, “Or they used to be. I think they’ve been replaced by the Black Lives Matter people.” She is actually repeating something Bobby said to friends only a few nights before. She thought it was a witty line, and she knows he likes hearing his own best material repeated back to him.
“Wow. Wow!” says the Jew. “That’s the most racist thing I’ve ever heard in real life. If millions of people are about to die, it’s because millions of people like you put unqualified, hate-filled morons in charge of our government.”
The girl closes her eyes and sits back in her chair.
“My wife is what kind of people?” Bobby asks, lifting one eyebrow.
“Bobby,” Sandy cautions him. “I’m fine. I’m not bothered.”
“I didn’t ask if you were bothered. I asked this gentleman what kind of people he thinks he’s talking about.”
The Jew has hectic red blotches in his cheeks. “People who are cruel, smug—and ignorant.”
He turns away, trembling.
Bobby kisses his wife’s temple and then unbuckles his seat belt.
MARK VORSTENBOSCH IN THE COCKPIT
Vorstenbosch is ten minutes calming people down in coach and another five wiping beer off Arnold Fidelman’s head and helping him change his sweater. He tells Fidelman and Robert Slate that if he sees either of them out of their seats again before they land, they will both be arrested in the airport. The man Slate accepts this placidly, tightening his seat belt and placing his hands in his lap, staring serenely forward. Fidelman looks like he wants to protest. Fidelman is shaking helplessly, and his color is bad, and he calms down only when Vorstenbosch tucks a blanket in around his legs. As he’s leaning toward Fidelman’s seat, Vorstenbosch whispers that when the plane lands, they’ll make a report together and that Slate will be written up for verbal and physical assault. Fidelman gives him a glance of surprise and appreciation, one gay to another, looking out for each other in a world full of Robert Slates.
The senior flight attendant himself feels nauseated and steps into the head long enough to steady himself. The cabin smells of vomit and fear, fore and aft. Children weep inconsolably. Vorstenbosch has seen two women praying.
He touches his hair, washes his hands, draws one deep breath after another. Vorstenbosch’s role model has always been the Anthony Hopkins character from The Remains of the Day, a film he