night,” Janice says. “Maybe we could get another plane in the morning.”
“I’m not sure anyone will be flying tomorrow morning,” says the nice-looking man apologetically.
“Because of something happening in North Korea?”
“No,” her friend across the aisle says. “Not because of something that’s going to happen there.”
Millie opens her eyes and says, “Shhh. You’ll scare her.”
But Janice isn’t scared—she just doesn’t understand. The man across the aisle swings her hand back and forth, back and forth.
“What’s the hardest word you ever spelled?” he asks.
“‘Anthropocene,’” Janice says promptly. “That’s the word I lost on last year, at semis. I thought it had an i in it. It means ‘in the era of human beings.’ As in ‘the Anthropocene era looks very short when compared to other geological periods.’”
The man stares at her for a moment and then barks with laughter. “You said it, kid.”
The movie star stares out her window at the enormous white columns. “No one has ever seen a sky like this. These towers of cloud. The bright sprawling day caged in its bars of smoke. They look like they’re holding up heaven. What a lovely afternoon. You might soon get to see me perform another death, Mr. Holder. I’m not sure I can promise to play the part with my usual flair.” She shuts her eyes. “I miss my daughter. I don’t think I’m going to get to—” She opens her eyes and looks at Janice and falls quiet.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing about mine,” says Mr. Holder. Then he turns his head and peers past Janice at her mother. “Do you know how lucky you are?” He glances from Millie to Janice and back, and when Janice looks, her mother is nodding, a small gesture of acknowledgment.
“Why are you lucky, Mom?” Janice asks her.
Millie squeezes her and kisses her temple. “Because we’re together today, silly bean.”
“Oh,” Janice says. It’s hard to see the luck in that. They’re together every day.
At some point Janice realizes the nice-looking man has let go of her hand, and when she next looks over, he is holding the movie star in his arms, and she is holding him, and they are kissing each other, quite tenderly, and Janice is shocked, just shocked, because the movie star is a lot older than her seatmate. They’re kissing just like lovers at the end of the film, right before the credits roll and everyone has to go home. It’s so outrageous that Janice just has to laugh.
A RA LEE IN COACH
For a moment at her brother’s wedding in Jeju, A Ra thought she saw her father, who has been dead for seven years. The ceremony and reception were held in a vast and lovely private garden, bisected by a deep, cool, man-made river. Children threw handfuls of pellets into the current and watched the water boil with rainbow carp, a hundred heaving, brilliant fish in all the colors of treasure: rose-gold and platinum and new-minted copper. A Ra’s gaze drifted from the kids to the ornamental stone bridge crossing the brook, and there was her father in one of his cheap suits, leaning on the wall, grinning at her, his big, homely face seamed with deep lines. The sight of him startled her so badly she had to look away, was briefly breathless with shock. When she looked back, he was gone. By the time she was in her seat for the ceremony, she had concluded that she’d only seen Jum, her father’s younger brother, who cut his hair the same way. It would be easy, on such an emotional day, to momentarily confuse one for another—especially given her decision not to wear her glasses to the wedding.
On the ground the student of evolutionary linguistics at MIT places her faith in what can be proved, recorded, known, and studied. But now she is aloft and feeling more open-minded. The 777—all three hundred–odd tons of it—hurtles through the sky, lifted by immense, unseen forces. Nothing carries everything on its back. So it is with the dead and the living, the past and the present. Now is a wing, and history is beneath it, holding it up. A Ra’s father loved fun—he ran a novelty factory for forty years, so fun was his actual business. Here in the sky, she is willing to believe he would not have let death get between him and such a happy evening.
“I’m so fucking scared right now,” Arnold Fidelman says.