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Nothing About a Girl

I only nodded my head and swiftly returned my attention to the book spread open in my lap. The woman looked desperately old, her voice like a claw, and she gave me the creeps on many levels. She carried not a single piece of luggage and didn’t seem to have any carry-on items at all and gave no outward indications that she actually had a flight to board. I imagined that she spent most of her time in airports and malls trying to engage strangers with her mutterings. Shortly, the attendant called my section to board and I left the woman without a word, the small bird flapping off as I passed.

When I reached my row on the aircraft I discovered a girl seated by the window in mid-conversation on her cell phone. People hardly ever look attractive when talking on phones; somehow the scrunched cheek-to-shoulder posture and the in-drawn secretiveness makes people on phones into conspirators, even (and especially) if their talk sounds happy. The woman in the window seat did not glance up towards me as I took my seat on the aisle. Her body curved away so that she appeared to be talking to someone behind the double-thick windowpane. I could only see her face as a porthole reflection: despite the phone it was completely attractive.

By the time her cell phone conversation concluded the opportunity for a perfunctory neighborly greeting had passed. Usually such greetings happen during the moving into the seat process as a sort of social reflex. The disinterested, automatic tasks were gone now; everything had to be intentional.

And it’s hard to be intentional when face to face with an ethereally beautiful person. Nothing was right. I felt naked and unshaven. At no declination of the adjustable seatback did I feel unawkward. She had like shampoo commercial quality hair and just the implication of freckles on her fair face and an equine neck, impossibly smooth and lovely. Even with the open middle seat between us I could smell the lavender female prettiness which she seemed to emanate. I sat silently, more or less observing her through my peripheral vision, occasionally venturing to glance past her out the window, and generally feeling predatory and meek and stupid.

Suddenly, as if moved by an urge, she swooped down to her bag and retrieved a pair of thick white socks. Instead of bringing her feet up to her lap (as I would have), she sort of crouched downward and maneuvered each sock over a slightly elevated and dangling foot, comprising a delicate motion that looked at once precarious and sexy. 

"I hate to fly," she sighed with exertion, turning her head upwards and noticing my gaze.

"Yeah, I only hate landings. Are you afraid of crashing?" I asked, trying sound like nothing.

"No, I just get restless and crazy."

We exchanged names and places, talked of destinations. Every word of it felt like effort. What is it you try to calculate in this situation? I think I wanted to sound like I was worthy of something, some imagined future with a porch swing and brass bed and all good things. Is that stupid? Am I guilty?

After a while, she stooped down again and produced a plastic vial of green pills. "I get these prescribed," she said shaking the container at me coyly. "They knock me right out. Like the sleep of death."

"Oh, because you’re a restless flier," I stated. So dumb.

"Yeah, just don’t take it personally if I start to get all groggy. It’s nothing personal." I promised my neutrality to her grogginess, but it was lie. Everything is personal in proximity to a beautiful girl.

As a sign of my indifference I opened my book and tried to confine my eyes and thoughts to the lines of black text. She curled her legs into a ball, seeking a comfortable position for her drugged sleep, tossing and turning. She raised the armrest to the middle seat, tested an expanded position, found it displeasing, and retreated back into her own territory again. I wanted to offer my shoulder or sweater or lap– anything– but quickly reconsidered. As I watched, she assumed a position I had never imagined possible: she curled her legs up in a fetal position and laid horizontally on the seat, tucking her socked feet and ankles into the magazine pouch on the seatback in front of her.

It was too much. I couldn’t read and felt like some pervert watching her sleep. I stood and left for the bathroom, dodging the encroachments of strangers in the aisle as I walked, anything to get away.

I returned to my seat, purchased two-pronged headphones for $3.00 and occupied myself with the mini-TV overhead while she slept. The saddest part about it all, I thought, is that she isn’t even doing anything. But here I  am tearing at my breast, trembling with self-consciousness. I am a fool, I thought.

Like a bolt, she sat up rigid and threw off her blanket, a zombie raised. At first I thought she was waking from a nightmare, but she continued to move with stark purpose down towards her bag again. Her eyes were slits and it was unclear if she was awake or still asleep or somewhere between. She popped up with a small make-up mirror and comb and proceeded to fix her hair as if transfixed. Just as suddenly as it at began, she snapped her make-up mirror closed and lowered her combed head back under the blanket. And I just laughed. It was all too entirely endearing to even be real anymore.

I saw her one last time after we deplaned. Her bag came before mine at baggage claim. Mercifully, no one was there to pick her up. I thought it might make me sad and splintered to see her leave, but as she faded with her simple beauty it didn’t make me die because everything goes away from me now like that, girls and visions and everything just in that same way.