And Then Life Happens (29 page)

Back then I did not yet fly as much as I do now, and I liked to strike up conversations with other passengers. Never before, however, had a fellow passenger attracted my attention as much as this man. In vain, I tried to focus on my book. I noticed how nervous I was. I simply could not sit still, so I got up and went to the bathroom. There I stood in the ridiculously small space and looked into the mirror. “What's the matter with you?” I admonished my reflection. “You don't even know the man!” I slapped my cheeks, washed my face with cold water, and tried to come to my senses. But nothing helped.

When I had returned to my seat, I was again powerfully drawn to him, with a downright palpable magnetic energy, which was stronger than I was. Again I fled to the bathroom and talked to myself. “You haven't even seen his face!” I reproached myself. I simply could not figure myself out. “Are you interested in the back of a stranger's bald head?” Shaking my head, I left the bathroom and returned again to my seat. But the desire to get to know this man did not abate.

He was sitting by the window, alone in a row of three seats. After my initial change of seats, I, too, had claimed a row of three seats for myself, so that I would be able to spend the night on the plane lying down.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that the man was sitting in the exact same row I myself had abandoned to look for a better one. If I had remained in the seat designated on my boarding pass, I would now be sitting next to him!

That must be fate, I thought, although I am not at all superstitious—and then the solution came to me. I would simply go back to my old seat! Now I had a good reason to sit down next to him. My heart raced, and I felt my palms become damp.
You can't do this!
said an inner voice. But like a remote-controlled being, I hung from an invisible wire; I resembled a will-less marionette. For the third time I proceeded to the cramped, now-familiar bathroom. From the sympathetic looks of some fellow passengers, I could tell that they suspected some sort of gastrointestinal problem behind my repeated urge to visit this place. They were not entirely wrong. For, out of sheer nervousness, I now felt ill.

“Now go over there and ask for your seat back. He can't say no,” I said, emboldening myself in front of the mirror. “It's your seat, after all, right?” I looked myself sternly in the eyes.
Oh God, I can't let him notice how flustered I am.

Someone tried to open the bathroom door. That meant that at least one passenger was waiting outside. This time I had stayed a little too long in the tiny room. In my nervous excitement, I would have preferred never to come out again. But I had no choice; I had to free up the room. Slowly, I walked back to my seat. No more restless trips to the bathroom, I decided. I would simply yield to the magnetic power of attraction. I promptly took from the seat pocket in front of me the small bottle of wine that had been served with the meal and that I had saved to calm my nerves and walked down the corridor toward the front.

“Um … I … This here is my seat.” I pointed to the aisle seat. “I … uh, changed my seat, but…,” I stammered, “I'm bored back there … all alone. Can I have it back?” I quickly added the last words before my courage threatened to abandon me.

The man at first gave me a puzzled look. Then he smiled.

“Of course.” He had a deep voice and an American accent.

I sat down and put the small wine bottle in the seat pocket in front of me. The seat between us remained empty. I did not dare to look at the man.

It was he who finally turned to me with a friendly, polite smile. A handsome, strong face, I thought. His expression revealed that he was open to small talk. I had, after all, given boredom as the reason for my seat change.

“You're flying to England?”

If I hadn't been so nervous, I would have answered cheekily, “No, to China!” But all I managed was to ask politely where he was heading.

He told me that he was on the way home. He lived in Auckland, California, about half an hour away from San Francisco. Because our conversation became more intense from minute to minute, I could finally get a good look at his face. I liked it. His shaved head formed an interesting contrast to his gentle and masculine features, the narrow eyes and the full mouth under a neatly trimmed mustache. His prominent forehead, strong cheekbones, and large nose stood out against the gentleness that emanated from his eyes and mouth. He radiated an inner peace, which made him even more attractive.

He was a businessman in the United States, as I now learned, and traded in arts and crafts from southern Africa. I told him enthusiastically about my week in Harare, about my family, about Ian and my daughter. I talked almost nonstop.

In the course of our conversation, I found out with mixed feelings that he had already been married twice and now lived with his girlfriend.
No surprise,
I thought. He was well built; the rolled-up sleeves of his denim shirt revealed muscular arms. His dark skin was a few shades lighter than mine and had a slightly reddish tint. I had a practically irresistible desire to run my hand over the fine, downy hair on his dark skin—and was startled by what was such an unfamiliar thought for me.

After a while, my neck began to hurt from turning my head and shoulders to the right the whole time in order to chat better. At first I tried to ignore the pain, but ultimately I brought myself to ask Marvin—we had introduced ourselves in the meantime—whether he would have anything against my moving one seat closer to be able to talk to him more comfortably. It was somewhat embarrassing for me to say this, but he just smiled and said completely without irony, “Be my guest!” And in the next instant I was as close to him as I had desired the whole time.

In the course of the next few hours, I eventually noticed that he liked me, too. There was something very cozy and intimate about the way we sat next to each other and talked. At one point, I thought I glimpsed an amused smile on the face of the passing stewardess. She had seen me change my seat. But that seemed unimportant. I was finally seated next to this attractive stranger and nothing else mattered.

A couple sitting in the middle row of the plane who, judging by their outward appearance, might have been from Somalia, kept looking over at us disapprovingly. For, in the meantime, I had asked Marvin's permission to lay my head on his shoulder. The nervous tension and the desire to be really close to him had actually intensified to the point that I could no longer restrain myself and again gave my neck pain as the reason for my request. Once again he answered without batting an eye, “Be my guest!”

“Please don't get the wrong idea…”

“Of course not!” he reassured me, and immediately I leaned on him and lay my head on his shoulder. I felt his body shake slightly. At that moment I knew that he was laughing.

“Fine, go ahead and laugh,” I said, laughing myself. “Okay,” I confessed, “my neck is not to blame—I just wanted to lean on you.”

He looked at me with amusement. “That's what I thought. I just wanted to be sure.” And then he drew me to him and gently pressed my head to his shoulder.

In this position we continued to talk, repeatedly joking about what the stewardesses and the people sitting near us must have been thinking. Ultimately, we stopped speaking in order to sleep a little. I enjoyed the intimacy between us, knowing well that our togetherness would only be short-lived. But in the few hours aboard this airplane inevitably approaching London, all that existed was the small world in which the two of us sat close together on our narrow seats.

*   *   *

“Looks like we'll be there soon,” Marvin said softly. It had gotten light out, and the sun was coming out behind a layer of clouds. My head was still lying on his shoulder. His voice was barely audible, as if he wasn't sure whether I was awake yet.

“Yes, looks like it,” I whispered. I had been staring out the window for quite a while and thinking with some sadness about the fact that I would soon be leaving Marvin and would never see him again. The feeling that we belonged together had crept up on me—but it was apparently simply not to be. It was the wrong time.

As if he could read my mind, Marvin suddenly said, “Bad timing, huh?”

“Sure is,” I answered. “Sure is.”

We had agreed not to exchange contact information so as to avoid painful complications in our lives. I was married, albeit unhappily, and he had a girlfriend.

“You know that I'll never forget you,” I said, after a pause, with a hoarse voice.

“I won't forget you, either,” Marvin replied.

“And that I usually don't do things like this,” I added.

“Like what?”

I sat up and pushed him lightly away from me.

“This here, of course,” I said with a laugh, and gestured to the two of us.

“Oh, I never would have guessed that. It seemed very skillful.”

I nudged him again and punched him playfully in the shoulder.

“I really mean it. I have no idea what came over me.”

“This guy here!” he said, laughing and pointing to himself. And I, who didn't at all want to, couldn't help laughing, too.

“You're impossible!”

*   *   *

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching London Gatwick Airport. Please get back to your seats, fasten your seatbelts, and bring your seats to the upright position.”

“That was it, I guess.” Marvin looked at me.

I took his hand and held it tight. He returned the pressure, as he averted his eyes from me. And so we remained in our seats, our gazes lost in the clouds, until the landing in Gatwick.

*   *   *

“Take care,” Marvin said for the third time.

“You, too.”

Our ways parted; he had to leave the airport and take a bus from Gatwick to Heathrow.

“You really have to go now,” I said, “or else you'll miss the connecting flight.”

Marvin let go of my hand and moved toward the transit exit. He took a step and then suddenly turned around at the exact moment I was about to call him back. Almost simultaneously both of us began to talk. We couldn't just separate like that, without a chance of seeing each other again. And when he gave me his business card, which he had apparently had ready in his jacket pocket, I opened my hand, which contained my own card. Both of us knew: We should not get in contact with each other. But Marvin looked at me so intently that it almost took my breath away.

“Good-bye for now,” he said, then he blew me a kiss—and now really went to the exit. I just stood there, emotionally drained, and watched him disappear behind a door.

*   *   *

Ian picked me up at the airport. In the car, I asked about Akinyi and my mother, who had come to England in my absence to look after our daughter.

“She's doing well,” he answered.

“Could I have your cell phone? I want to talk to Akinyi. And I want to tell my mother not to take her to preschool today.”

“Why not?” Ian asked sharply.

“I haven't seen Akinyi for ten days. I've missed her, and she has probably missed me, too. I want to spend some time with her.”

“That's selfish. She likes to go to preschool, and you'll get to see her soon enough.”

Taken aback, I looked at Ian.

“She'd rather go to preschool than see her mother again? I don't think so!”

“You're really selfish, Auma,” my husband merely repeated.

“Akinyi is just two years old. I don't think it will do her any harm to miss one day of preschool and see her mother instead,” I replied irritably.

Ian just shrugged and looked at the road. In the crawling London traffic, we made only slow progress. But the heavy atmosphere between the two of us was even more impenetrable than the mass of cars around us. I wondered how the man who sat next to me at the wheel, the father of my child, had become such a stranger to me. An immense sadness came over me.

Ultimately, I ignored his disapproving demeanor and spoke on his cell phone with my mother. Ian and I then continued to sit next to each other in silence. I was anxious and couldn't wait to see my daughter again. At the same time, my thoughts kept wandering back to the airport, where Marvin and I had just parted.

I didn't dare to look at Ian, out of fear that he could read in my eyes what had happened the previous night on the airplane. So I turned my head away from his rigid profile and looked out the window.

At that exact moment, the Heathrow Gatwick Express, which shuttled passengers from one airport to the other, passed our car, a high four-wheel drive, the windows of which were almost level with the bus. Absentmindedly, I looked at the vehicle, which was two lanes over from us. I caught my breath—and I fervently hoped that Ian hadn't noticed it. For there, in the bus, sat Marvin, only a few yards away! His head was bowed; he was probably absorbed in a book or a magazine. His black leather cap and the blue denim shirt left no room for doubt. Startled, I looked away, out of fear of my own reaction.

Luckily, the lines of cars in the various lanes shifted so that the express bus remained behind us. After a second of relief, however, I wished with all my might that it would pull up again and bring Marvin back alongside me. And it actually did catch up. But Marvin still didn't raise his head. Then began an arduous process of the two vehicles nearing each other and drifting apart again, which must have lasted about half an hour, until Ian declared that he was now going to take another route, not the usual one, to escape the heavy traffic. Although I was inwardly in complete turmoil, I prayed for Marvin to look up just once, to give me one last chance to look at his face. But it was not to be.

Overwhelmed by the intensity of my emotions, I heaved a deep sigh as we finally turned off the highway.

“What's wrong?” Ian asked.

“Oh, I'm just tired.”

*   *   *

After a while, I came to terms with the idea that I would never see Marvin again. At first, life in Bracknell took its familiar course. Ian and I returned to everyday life and tried to patch up the cracks in our marriage. But neither of us was happier as a result, and we knew that our separation was only a question of time. We even broached the topic of divorce. Ian blamed me for our rifts; he had the impression that he himself had tried everything. He regarded me as ungrateful and too demanding. All my explanations that I had wanted something different from him fell on deaf ears. I felt like one of his children—even worse, like a piece of his furniture, without my own identity. I didn't want to go on living like that.