By Jim Valvis
As Peter Dallas approach the Detroit Airport, not to mention his thirtieth year, the pilot informed him, along with 250 others, that another plane had major mechanical problems and was going to need to emergency land and what that meant for them was an indeterminate delay while they waited to see what happened. Until that time, the Pilot said, they would maintain a holding position around the Detroit area.
A few people grumbled, more out of concern for their schedules than concern for the unlucky passengers on the endangered flight. They began fumbling through their magazines again, looking for one more interesting article to squeeze out of the pages. Peter Dallas himself grumbled. It was just his luck to be stuck over Detroit, a city with which he'd had a brief but terrible run-in earlier in his twenties.
The plane ascended to a higher elevation. The city below looked
like so many off center squares, like a repeatedly patched quilt.
It was when they were ascending that Dallas again felt the low
roaring pain in his upper abdominal area. All the trip long,
and for several days beforehand, he had suffered from mysterious pains
that seemed to have no cause and therefore no cure. He moved a hand unconsciously
to the offending spot and rubbed what had once been his flat stomach but
now was a mound of flab that felt as foreign to him as if it was someone
else's body. The pain continued. Maybe my appendix has blown up,
he thought. But it was too high for the appendix. It was too
high to be anything but an ulcer. But it did not feel like an ulcer.
Just my luck, Peter Dallas said to himself. I'll die of internal
bleeding circling Detroit on a plane bound for Paris.
Peter Dallas wasn't going to Paris, but the plane was. He was
just taking it to Detroit and then he was catching a connecting flight
to Jacksonville where he would visit his family for the holidays.
While he was doing that, the plane he was now on would be crossing
the Atlantic and its passengers would be continuing on to Paris.
Dallas looked around at the other passengers. One was a short man with
stringy hair and a perfectly groomed mustache who was reading an article
on proper waste disposal. Another was an older lady whose eyes were
very sleepy. Another was a business man going over some documents.
None of them looked to Peter Dallas like they needed Paris. They
looked like they needed padded cells.
A short while ago, when they were crossing Lake Michigan, Dallas awoke
from an uncomfortable sleep with his head against the window. He
woke up sluggishly but immediately saw himself 25,000
feet above an endless amount of water. He suddenly became very afraid.
He imagined he had overslept and the plane continued on to Paris, with
him missing his stop, and he was now crossing the Atlantic. Peter
Dallas looked around and could not recognize any of the faces. But
up until then, he comforted himself, he hadn't paid them any mind.
Why should he? They were just people and people were by and large
uninteresting.
But now he wished he had. He pictured his mother waiting for him at the airport in Jacksonville while he tried to explain to the customs people while he did not have a passport. He pictured his mother calling his girlfriend and asking her where he was. Then he thought fuck it. I'll buy a beret. I'll curse American tourists. I'll become dark and moody and throw myself off the Eiffel Tower. Well, he thought, I'm already dark and moody. No matter. I'm already more French than the French.
Then he saw land. The solid blue gave way to dark squares and light boxes. So this is Europe, he thought. I thought it would be prettier.
He wanted a cigarette.
Not long after that the pilot told them that they would be in a holding
position until they cleared the problem up. For a minute Peter Dallas
was relieved that he wasn't on his way to Paris, but that
relief soon gave way to another fear. The pilot was lying. Peter
Dallas was a fiction writer, and he could spot a lie a mile away.
It all became very clear to him. There was no other plane.
It was they who were having the problems. Something was wrong with
the landing gear and they were circling around in the sky helplessly, afraid
to land. Somewhere up in the front of the plane the pilots were fumbling
with switches and knobs and cursing at the air traffic controllers.
And didn't the stewardess seem just a little out of sorts, her hair just
a tad messy, her bow just a slight angle out of place. Yes, they
were fucked. Sooner or later they would run out of gas and then they
would be told to assume crash positions. Those silly little oxygen
masks would fall into everybody's lap, as if it mattered, as if you could
breathe while blowing up.
Peter Dallas looked around at the other passengers and noticed that not one of them was even slightly concerned. But isn't that just the way of most people. Even if they were told the truth, ninety per cent of them still wouldn't believe it was happening. They were Americans and everybody knows nothing bad ever happens to an American. The passengers read their Time Magazines and their Danielle Steele novels and listened to tapes of Bach as though nothing was happening. In fact, to them nothing was happening. But Peter Dallas knew better. Holding position, bah. There's no such thing. Life is a series of disasters with pauses to add to the effect.
It had been going too good for him, Peter Dallas knew, and something like this was bound to happen. The gods had given him a moment of calm before patting him on the ass and sending him onto this doomed plane. They had given him a kind and educated woman. A platinum credit card with a $10,000 limit. A Volkswagon Jetta. A condo. Two cats. A promising literary career. The gods had kept his father alive through three heart attacks and made all his mother's tumors benign. And then the gods put him on this plane, which was about to go nose first into somebody's TV dinner.
The pain in his stomach got worse, not that it mattered anymore, other than it was one last kick in the ass on the way down. And it did seem like they were losing altitude again, didn't it? He could almost make out individual cars as they rushed to wherever the hell it is those people go. He imagine one of them might be his ex-wife. The woman who left him for six different men, always coming back, then leaving again, always for a different man, until she got knocked up by one and could no longer come back. She was undoubtedly rushing off to fuck some guy she shouldn't be fucking. He imagined in another car was his ex-mother-in-law, the woman who had suggested he work three jobs and sleep less. She was off to blight some grocery store with a deluge of coupons. Another car was reserved for his ex-brother-in-law, a coke addict he met in the army. He was going to get a gram and didn't mean to share it either. He imagined a blue one was Knut Nammo, the poet, listening to some jazz tape, reciting Kerouac under his breath. Nammo was on his way home from making a damn living that was killing him. Yes, they had all resided in Detroit at one time or another, and only Knut Nammo and Peter Dallas came out of there with anything resembling a soul. Now it looked like Detroit would claim Peter Dallas too, and painfully. Somebody save Knut Nammo.
He watched the stewardess come down the aisle. She was pushing a little metal cart and smiling at people and handing them drinks. So this is the way it is. One last drink. If you die in a hospital they administer last rights, if you die on an airplane they administer last call.
The waitress (for that's all they really are) took her time dolling
out the drinks. What was the rush? It wasn't like she'd ever
see a paycheck. It wasn't like any of her passengers would be able
to
complain. Peter Dallas watched for any signs of panic and it
did seem she was fumbling with the drinks, uncertain of her footing and
her bearings. She finally got up to him.
"Maybe you should take off your coat, Sir," the woman said. "You're sweating."
"No thanks," Peter Dallas said. "I have my identification in my jacket."
"Okay," the woman said. and she gave him a funny look. "What would you like?"
"For my last drink?"
"Yes," she said. "For this flight anyway."
"Sure," Peter Dallas said. "For this flight."
The woman again gave him a funny look and for the first time he realized
that she too might have been left out of the loop. There was really
no need to tell the stewardesses yet, was there? Now
he felt doubly bad for her. Not only did she have to spend her
last moments handing out drinks, but she did not even know they were her
last moments. She was probably thinking about some boy she knows
in Detroit right now, thinking about meeting him in some motel room where
he would fuck her to multiple orgasms and scream proclamations of love
he half meant during his quick and triumphant spurting. No, the poor
beast didn't know a damn thing. Not yet. But pretty soon the
boy would be sitting in the motel room, swearing at himself for getting
involved with a high-priced waitress who was probably fucking a guy like
him in every city she landed and the stewardess herself would be an insurance
claim.
"Pepsi," Peter Dallas said.
The woman pulled some ice out of her metal cart, put it into a clear
glass, and filled it with Pepsi. Then she gave him the glass and
the rest of the can and went back to work. Peter Dallas sipped at
the Pepsi. He decided that once the word of the imminent
crash was announced, he'd flame up a cigarette and the rules be damned.
Hell, he'd offer them out. It was the least he could do.
Peter Dallas looked out the window and regarded Detroit. From up there, it held none of the menace it did on the ground. It was again just shapes, patterns in a mosaic, and he was above it all. This wasn't such a bad way to die, Dallas reflected. Much better than having somebody probe your innards for cancer tissue, but he would have liked to make it to the new century. Just one year short he would be. One year short of his thirtieth birthday and one year short of the new century. And of all the places. Detroit.
Whenever Dallas didn't like a place, he always said it reminded him
of Detroit. Detroit has always been commonly considered a scumhole,
but for him it was even worse. He had nothing but bad
memories regarding Detroit. Truth be told, however, he had never
spent much time in the Motor City. He had lived north of Detroit
and so did most of the people he had known. But he just clumped every
bad experience he had in Michigan into that one city. He refused
to watch the Lions play on Thanksgiving. He hated the Pistons.
He cursed the Red Wings. Motown music made him sick. Whenever
Chevrolet ran a commercial using Bob Seger's voice Peter Dallas changed
the channel.
It was the ex-wife of course. Even flying above it, he caught a whiff of her here and there, which was mostly whiff of other men's salty semen. He was not able to divorce the city from the girl, just like he had not been able to divorce the girl from the city. He could only divorce the girl. And he did.
He remembered the first morning they drove through Detroit. She
had taken him to where she had gone to grade school and to the high school
where she had dropped out as a freshman. Then they
drove passed her old man's house. Dallas knew that he had touched
her in way no father has any business touching his daughter, but she still
insisted on driving by. He left the windows up.
They passed the old man's house slowly and she pointed it out as if she was a tour guide at a freak show. Dallas nodded and they drove past it and she started crying.
"Why do you keep doing this to yourself?" Peter Dallas had said.
"Shut the fuck up," she answered. "What do you know?"
"I know enough to stay away from places I hate."
"Yeah, whatever."
Now he was circling over the same city and his own hypocritical prophecy
haunted him. The minute his girlfriend Lucinda had told him he had
a layover in Detroit he should have put the brakes on
the whole trip. But he had been feeling so good, feeling like
the unlucky past was behind him, and it was such a short layover after
all.
He hoped they crashed on the old man's lawn.
The delay was nearing an hour and Peter Dallas began looking though
the emergency landing pamphlet located in the pouch in the seat in front
of him. He read about the proper way to sit during
the crash. He learned how to put on the useless oxygen mask.
He looked behind him and located his nearest emergency exit. He was
suddenly glad he was not sitting in one of the seat that had an emergency
exit hatch. Then he was saddened by it. He didn't like putting
his life in somebody else's hands. Yet, he was doing it all the time.
He did it when he first stepped on the plane. He did it every time
he let Lucinda drive him in the Jetta. He did it when he walked next
to freeways. A man is always at the mercy of others, Peter Dallas thought.
From birth until the time he screams his last scream. Always, somebody
else's competence and responsibility means the difference between him seeing
another day or not seeing it. He didn't like the arrangement one
bit. Some asshole mechanic had fucked up the landing gear.
Some guy who laughed and carried on and just wanted to have fun with life.
Some guy who thinks everything is a joke. He had wanted a beer and
a blow job. He had rushed. He had skimped. A nut hadn't
been tightened. That's all it takes.
He remembered driving to Detroit one Sunday to get his mother-in-law some blood sausage. Blood sausage is one of mankind's biggest mistakes. It smells like death in an ashtray and tastes even worse and has all the nutritional content of a mylar jacket. Half the reason, Peter Dallas figured, that the Poles are constantly the blunt of so many "stupid" jokes is their insistence on eating blood sausage.
She had wanted to go alone, but Peter Dallas insisted on going. They got the blood sausage and he sat in the car to read while she did some window shopping. Suddenly two men approached his ex-wife and started talking to her. She tried to ignore them but they followed close behind her. Dallas was sitting down, reading a book while she shopped, but he could see what was going on. She turned and addressed them and pointed at him almost carelessly. He acted like he was reading. The one guy nodded and then they back off some. Then his ex-wife turned a corner. A minute later, the two men turned the same corner.
It was in this way that Peter Dallas found out what kind of sausage his ex-wife preferred.
The plane dropped in elevation some more. He looked out his window and looked at the wing. There was nothing wrong with it that he could tell. There was a flap that moved up and down and that seemed to be working fine. The rest of the wing was also fine. No, it was the landing gear that was fucked. When a car gets a flat tire you pull over, but what do you do when a plane gets one?
Peter Dallas felt most sorry for Lucinda. She had invested so
much in him and this would be her payoff. Here's your boyfriend and
lover, Ma'am, in these three bags here. Good thing he had
identification on him.
He also felt sorry for his mother. His mother would take it hard and wish the tumors had been malignant. She would wait at the Jacksonville airport until midnight and then call my father. He would tell her it's all over the news. A big crash in Detroit. 250 passengers. No survivors. Sorry, hon, our boy's a statistic.
Dallas had tried everything to save his marriage, but nothing worked.
He wasn't capable of it, he guess, or she wasn't. A problem had happened
with them, a mechanical problem, no doubt, but it
was beyond either of them to make heads or tails of it. Just
one nut that hadn't been tightened, but that's all it took. So they
went about their days, as if in a holding position, though there was very
little holding going on, and slowly but certainly lost more and more altitude,
used up more and more fuel, until she bailed for another plane and then
another and then another and he went down hard. He supposed that
even as he was now plummeting, somewhere down there in the muck and mire
of Detroit she was strapping on yet another parachute.
There are people who have it and there are people who don't. And
there are people who don't have it when they're together. Peter Dallas
reckoned that he and his ex-wife didn't have it and he and
Lucinda did. Sweet Lucinda. Sweet responsible faithful
Lucinda. Peter Dallas hoped she had some idea how thankful he was
to her, even if she hadn't been able to stop his fate.
The pilot spoke again. "We have been cleared for landing. The
other plane made it safely to the ground. We're sorry for the delay.
All connecting flights to this plane have been rescheduled. The
temperature in Detroit is an unseasonable 70 degrees with cloudy skies.
Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience. We will be on the ground
shortly, and thanks you for flying
Northwest."
Peter Dallas took the cigarette out of his mouth and returned it to his pack. He looked around to see if anybody was as relieved as he was, but it didn't look like anyone else had even heard. They went on reading their articles and sipping what was left of their coffees and orange juices. Of course, none of them had ever guessed. Somebody had told them that everything was fine and they had believed it. Of course it was fine. How could it not be? They had deadlines to make and wives and kids at home. Nothing could ever happen to them. For exactly 78.8 years they would walk the planet, eat cheese, fart, smoke, complain about the weather, eat fish, go to bed, whistle at the girls on Baywatch, eat cheeseburgers, scratch themselves and fall in love.
Peter Dallas knew he had no guarantees, but if he was going to die let it be in New Orleans, Chicago, maybe even Paris, just not Detroit. Anywhere but Detroit.
The plane descended and touched down flawlessly and began to drive to
the gate. One man left his seat boldly and the stewardess yelled
at him to sit back down. And what was on her face? Relief?
Gladness? A smile? Yes, and maybe a bit of anticipation of
the night ahead, with her boyfriend and the motel and the multiple orgasms
and maybe this guy would pop the question and put her wicked ways to rest
and then she could tell the guys in Seattle and Paris to get lost.
She would tell him
about her near death experience and how it made her think about him
and things and all that.
Peter Dallas grabbed his overhead bag and made his way to the front
along with everyone else. As he was about to step off, the cockpit
door opened and he saw the pilot. A neatly trimmed head of
hair mostly covered by a flat blue hat. A face of stone that
seemed incapable of a laugh, but a serious face, a competent face, a face
of responsibility, yet a face that was sweating just a bit and seemed to
still be carrying some burden. What was a pilot? Nothing but
a high tech cab driver, but thank goodness for this one. The pilot
noticed Dallas looking in at him. For a second their eyes met.
Then Peter Dallas was going through the tunnel with the others.
He walked slowly, the pain in his stomach somehow worse, the bag he was
carrying as heavy as a casket, his hair going gray and
his knees popping with each step. But he felt good just
to be moving again, to be out of the holding position and going somewhere,
anywhere, everywhere, even Detroit.