Disorderly Notions
By Tom Darby
Copyright Tom Darby, 2012
At the top of
the stairs they were met by a solidly built flight attendant whose orange hair
was done up in a beehive-like coiffure. Inside the plane was a chaos of
swarming bodies and the aisles were jammed with people pushing and shoving,
attempting to claim seats. Many were trying to stuff bundles, boxes and
suitcases into the overhead baggage compartments. Hamilton glanced down at the
number on his boarding pass, turned around, looked at Andy and, with a motion
of his head, signaled him to follow. Through the moving bodies they eventually
arrived at the seats that had numbers appearing to correspond to their boarding
passes. But there was a woman in one of the seats. Hamilton could see rolls of
brown flesh protruding from the wrap of her pink and yellow sari. In the
maelstrom, she appeared calm.
“Sorry, Madam,
but you are in my seat,” Hamilton said, producing the boarding pass for her to
see. She glanced at the pass and casually looked up at him.
“No,” she said.
“Look lady, I’m
sorry, but you have to move to your own seat.”
“No,” she
replied without looking at Hamilton.
“That purple
spot between your eyes looks like a bullet hole,” he told her.
“You white
devil,” the woman replied calmly.
Hamilton made
his way to the front to find the flight attendant. “There’s a woman in my seat
and she refuses to move. Here’s my boarding pass and seat assignment.”
“Ha! We have no
seat assignment. This is Soviet airplane. All is equal here,” she said shooing
him back into the swarm.
“Fucking
Stalinists! Told you, Hambone,” Andy said.
Finally, they
did get seats. The engines roared and they were in the air. It was dark outside
and the lights of London and England’s little island passed under them.
Hamilton marveled that such a tiny island had once ruled an empire so vast that
at any moment in time some part of its territory had never been dark. Through
the crack between two of the three seats in front of them, Hamilton noticed the
woman who had been sitting beside him in the loading vehicle. She had raised
the armrest and was asleep across all three seats. Suddenly, there appeared an
old brown man wrapped in layers of coats. He smiled and looked at the reclining
figure through spectacles as thick as slices from a crystal ball. Behind him
was the flight attendant.
“You must move.
There is one seat only for every persons. You must move.”
“Sorry,” the
reclining woman replied. She was groggy and sounded confused. “I haven’t slept
for two days.”
“You must move
and let them seat!”
A second man
was behind the flight attendant. She took two black garbage bags and a tied-up
box from him, opened the overhead compartment and jammed them inside. After
several tries, she latched the door. Hamilton could see the tired woman
gathering her things – a sweater, jacket and bag – move to the inside seat and
close her eyes. The two men crawled in and sat, and the attendant left. Andy
was snoring again. When the attendant came around with a cart of drinks, Hamilton
ordered two little bottles of vodka, but then decided not to wake Andy and
ended up drinking them both. Then he dozed. He dreamed of himself and Jud
sitting on the rocks at the island on the Ottawa River. It was Jud’s island
where he has a cottage in which he’s lived for the past three years. Jud looked
at him: “. . . some have fallen,” he said. Jud wore an orange turban.
Hamilton’s dream faded and he slept deeply.
He was awakened
when the attendant came by with a cart of food, but Hamilton was not hungry and
Andy was still asleep. They could eat in Moscow.
“No thanks,” he
told her and, without even a glance, she went on.
Hamilton
thought of the first time he was in Rye. It was during the seventies when he
and Jud were together at Oxford. Marti, Rodger’s wife, was in France and Rodger
joined her after one day, giving Hamilton and Jud the run of the place. With
them were two girls who lived near Oxford. They borrowed Rodger’s old Morris,
threw back the top and rambled through the Romney Marsh. They went to the
castle at Salt, and they took the road that leads into the downs and through
the wood to Canterbury. They cycled the public paths around the town and, on
one day, walked across the meadow behind Benjamin House, went up the hill to
Winchelsea and swam in the sea. On the way back, they made love in waist-high
wheat, each couple laughing at hearing the other lying a few feet away. That
night they took a ladder and crawled to the top of the Martello Tower near the
house and, over bottles of wine, pretended to be fierce smugglers slipping
contraband into Rye; pirates preparing to sail to the Indies; and Royal Marines
standing on the tower and looking out over the marsh, the rivers and the
Channel in an attempt to sight Napoleon’s invading ships. Those days were gone
now, and with them the magic.
Hamilton’s
attention turned to a commotion in front of him.
“Bathroom!
Please, you must let me out. BATHROOM!”
It was the
woman with the Mohawk haircut. “RESTROOM!” she repeated desperately, but the
men on either side of her did not understand. Hamilton could see the old man
with the thick glasses looking and smiling at her. “Never mind,” she said, and
like a cat she was up above the seats, one foot on the armrest between the two
men and the other dangling in the air. Her hand was on the outside of the
overhead baggage compartment, steadying her. She was about to leap, but the
latch to the compartment sprang open and, with two bundles bound in black
garbage bags and a tied-up box, she fell. She landed astride the lap of the old
man, knocking off his glasses. Hamilton could hear the two men laughing. It was
surprised, embarrassed laughter. Then, like a frightened bird released from a
cage, she disappeared down the aisle.
Hamilton looked
over at Andy. Although he could not hear because of the drone of the engines,
he knew Andy was snoring. He could feel the vibrating air. He looked out the
window. In the distance he could see streaks of rose, crimson and orange. The
sun was rising. Just as he closed his eyes again, the woman was back and the
flight attendant was behind her. The woman wore silver loops in her ears, her
nose was prominent but not too large and, despite her dark hair, her eyes were
sky blue. But they were bloodshot, as she had been crying and, as she had informed
everyone, had not slept for two days.
“Please. My
sweater, jacket and bag.” She pointed to her things and looked at the old man.
“Sweater.
SWEATER!” she pleaded, reaching as the man finally understood and handed them
across to her. She took her things and with a blank, tired expression, turned
and followed the flight attendant down the aisle. Hamilton wondered where she
had gone.
It was getting
light outside. Hamilton looked down and could see water and land. They passed
over the Baltic and then there was the frozen coast of Finland. Hamilton could
not go back to sleep, but dozed. Sometime later, he was pleased to see the
flight attendant come by with a cart of coffee, tea, juice and buns. The inside
of the airplane was beginning to stir. There was a soft buzz of conversation
and people were lined up to use the toilet. Andy stretched, raised his head and
looked around as if trying to figure out just where he was.
“Andy, we’re
over Russia. Here, coffee. We should be landing any minute now. What time does
your watch say?”
“Hell, I
haven’t known the time since 1968. I’ll take that coffee.”
Andy lit a
cigarette and drew deeply. They were descending, circling. The flight attendant
came down the aisle to make sure everyone was buckled in. Andy did not like it
when she made him extinguish his cigarette. Suddenly, they left the blue sky
and were in the thick clumps of white clouds that had been under them.
Hamilton’s ears popped. He looked across and saw the flaps on the wings lower
and the red light on the wing tip flashing on and off – white, white
everywhere. Then they were through the cloud, descending fast and, like a great
bird of prey, the airplane swooped down, bumped twice and taxied toward the
box-like terminal. Moscow. Yes, they had been in a snowstorm. When the airplane
stopped, people crowded in the aisles, reached for their baggage and pushed
toward the door. Hamilton and Andy decided to sit and wait for the throng to
leave. Finally, they gathered up their bags and moved down the empty aisle. When
they were standing near the door, Hamilton noticed a floral, plastic curtain
covering an entranceway. He stepped back and looked through a crack between the
two panels. There she was, reclining across three seats. The side of her head
rested in her hand, propping herself up on an elbow. She stared blankly. With
thumb and index finger Hamilton opened wider the two panels of the greasy
plastic curtain. She at first continued to stare blankly, but then tightly
focused on him. Hamilton smiled and, with his other hand, waved. Hamilton could
feel the current of her glare. It was then that she raised her middle finger
and jabbed it up into some imaginary space. “Fuck off,” she hissed. “Fuck off,
you creep!”
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