California Dreaming (5 page)

Yet another of the Airbus flight attendants was giving the instructions into an oversize handheld mic. She was petite, with honey blond hair in a glossy ponytail at the nape of her neck, and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She looked like a high school cheerleader, Anna thought, who should be explaining the way the human pyramid was going to work, not how to save your life in a plane's crash landing.

Crash. Plane crash.

Oh God.

Anna reached for the sleek white Airfone again. Since she couldn't get service on her cell, she'd tried to call her dad twice already on the Airfone, but had gotten a busy signal both times. She'd been able to reach Sam at least. Just hearing her voice had made Anna want to cry. How could this be real? How could it be happening? How could it be happening to
her
?

As Anna pressed her father's number into the phone with sweaty hands, she nearly laughed at the absurdity of it: this was what it took for Jane Percy's daughter's palms to perspire. When she heard the dull clanging of the busy signal, she hung up again.

“I can't get through, either.” Logan put his cell back in the pocket of his jeans. The flight attendants had confirmed that it was fine to use them in this emergency, but had said that the Airfones had a better chance of success. For Anna and Logan alike, nothing had worked, except the brief call to Sam.

Logan's normally tan skin looked pale, and there were a few droplets of perspiration near his blond hairline. He leaned back against the seat, breathing shallowly through his mouth, and Anna turned to face him, concerned. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. Instead he squeezed her hand.

She turned to gaze across the aisle at an elegant, slender woman with hair pulled back in a tight bun. Sitting impossibly straight in her charcoal Brunello Cucinelli shawl-collar cardigan, she looked like a former ballerina. As Anna watched, the woman extracted a set of ruby-colored rosary beads from a signature brown leather Louis Vuitton clutch. Next to her, a man whose stomach overflowed his seat belt—and his wrinkled lavender Armani shirt—was pounding his third Absolut on the rocks. The flight attendants had told him half-sternly that this one would be his last. His response: “Seriously?”

Funny. Anna was either going to laugh or cry or scream or—

“Hey.” Logan nudged his shoulder into hers to get her attention. “We'll be fine. The plane lands, we skid like there's no tomorrow, we slide down the emergency chute, and we have a great story to tell at parties.”

“Flashover's gonna get us,” the heavy guy mumbled to no one in particular. “Gases get trapped in the cabin and auto-ignite. It's not the crash, it's the fire. We're toast. No way out of this sucker.”

The older, elegant woman next to him closed her eyes and continued with her rosary. Her lips moved but she made no sound.

“I thought this kind of thing was only supposed to happen in the movies,” Logan mumbled.

Anna searched for a pithy, dry response, but nothing came. All she felt was fear. It was like a pit of acid in her stomach, growing and growing and growing as the plane zoomed closer to Los Angeles. She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes, trying to rein in her thoughts.

“I thought …” she began slowly, her throat suddenly dry. “I thought I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted. Go to school and get married and start a family.” Anna could feel hot tears fill her eyes, and she blinked them away. She looked down toward her lap, the white of her sundress making the world seem like a snowy blur.

Logan tightened his grip on her hand. “What seems ridiculous to me is fighting with my dad, my sister. We argued coming back from East Hampton, because she made me wait for her for two hours while she made out with some pretentious asshole from Berkeley who did performance art. I railed at her all the way home. Told her what a jerk he was and made fun of him. Why did I do that?”

“I'd like to talk to Susan,” Anna murmured. “To tell her I love her. And my parents. And Cyn—”

“Cynthia Baltres.” Logan nodded “I remember her. Didn't she bring her mother's fancy bag to first grade?”

Anna managed a small smile. “She did. And in second grade she didn't wear panties under her skirt and kept mooning all the boys in the cloak room.” Anna's smile quavered as she thought about the possibility of never seeing Cyn again. Why hadn't she kept in better touch with her childhood friend? Why hadn't she e-mailed her or texted her or called her every day? She regretted that now. Friends—true friends—were so important. She thought about Sam and gulped hard. Eduardo had sent that portfolio of wedding gown drawings to her. She'd looked beautiful in the sketches, her black-and-white alter ego wearing those gorgeous white flowing dresses. But if Anna didn't make it through this, she'd never get to see her wear one in real life. Instead of being there, watching her friend walk down the aisle with Eduardo someday, everyone would be saying, “Poor Anna.”

Anna shook her blond head as if she could shake off the morbid vision. A man sitting in front of them had his eyes closed, listening to music, and Anna suddenly wished she'd brought her own headphones so she could tune everything out. She tried to think of a song to sing to herself, any song, and a random melody flew into her mind. What was it? Some country thing …

“One of our housekeepers loves country music,” she told Logan, remembering. “She walks around singing this song all the time—something about how you should live like you're dying.” Anna felt a sudden relief as she thought of the lyrics. She leaned her head heavily against his shoulder and felt him kiss her temple, his slight stubble grazing her skin.

The plane hit a patch of turbulent air and pitched forward. Anna gasped and somewhere behind her, people screamed. The heavy guy across the aisle grabbed a barf bag and used it. Anna had to look away. In the row ahead of him, two men were praying in Hebrew, rocking back and forth as they did.

“I'm here,” Logan told Anna, his voice firm. “I've got your hand.”

Then another face—not Logan's—filled her mind. Dark brown hair, laughing blue eyes, and a strong jaw. Her stomach started to ache. And then her heart. Would she never see Ben again?

Logan slid an arm around her shoulder, and the fabric of his black T-shirt felt soft against her skin. “We're going to be okay, Anna.”

She looked up at him like a child hearing a bedtime story, wanting to believe him. “How do you know?”

“I just do,” he answered her without a flicker of doubt in his steely blue eyes. He was no longer sweating, or breathing like a marathon runner. Anna had no idea where his sudden resolution had come from, but it comforted her.

“Okay, it's a deal then.” She nodded slowly, as if she had the power to control such things. “We're going to be okay. And from this day forward, we'll live like we're dying.”

“We will,” he echoed. His eyes were drawn outside the plane's small circular window and he pointed with his free hand. “Fighter jets.” Anna followed his gaze. On both sides of the plane, fighter jets had scrambled from Edwards Air Force Base to escort their plane to the airport. She had a sudden vision of Logan as a little boy, playing with his toy planes, and she felt her lips curl into a small smile.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. I need your complete attention.” The captain's formerly easy, conversational tone had turned steely and serious, and the whole cabin looked up in rapt attention. “So, here we are. We're ready, the airport is ready. We've been through this many times, but it can't hurt to repeat it. Our landing gear won't lower, so we'll make a belly landing on the runway. There's foam on it to soften the impact, and there's a steady fifteen-knot headwind, so that should help our cause. Fuel's been dumped to lessen the fire danger.”

“Lessen. All he said was lessen,” the heavy guy across the aisle muttered, attempting to loosen his navy blue power tie, which clashed with his lavender dress shirt. He swiped a meaty arm across his sweaty forehead.

“When we come to a stop, the safety slides will deploy. Get to the emergency chutes as fast as you can—and do not stop for your carry-on luggage!”

Nervous laughter rippled through the cabin. “Better than screams,” Logan noted haphazardly. He gave Anna's hand a final squeeze.

“That's it, here we go,” the pilot concluded. “See you there. Hang on. Stay alert. Move fast, and good luck.”

“Put your head down, Anna,” Logan urged, and she did, hands behind her bare knees, just as the blond flight attendant had instructed. She rested her head on the cottony fabric of her white dress and closed her eyes, trying to imagine she was floating on a cloud.

The plane made a sweeping left turn in the sky, and Anna felt her body twist, but she kept her head where it was and her eyes squeezed shut. She started to feel everything careen downward, and she knew instinctually that the plane had begun its descent. The descent felt like the descent of most any other flight, except that the cabin was deadly silent, with the occasional whimper, moan, or cry. With her eyes closed and other senses alert, Anna had never felt so in tune with her own body. She could hear her heart beating, and it seemed to sync itself with the platinum Chopard watch she wore on her left wrist, its ticking loud in her ear. The moment that the plane hung in the air felt like an eternity of peaceful stillness, and Anna couldn't help but wonder if this was what heaven was like.

The plane's belly slammed down the runway with a screeching roar, and Anna had to press her head hard against her knees to remain in the brace position. She could hear metal being torn away as they skidded eastward at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, the screeching noise reminding her of a fork being raked across the surface of a metal bowl. There were a few stifled sobs and screams around her, but mostly everyone had managed to stay quiet, as if they were all waiting for the worst.

Please
, Anna found herself thinking.
Please
.

“Stay in seat! Stay in seat!” a flight attendant was admonishing, and Anna drew her head up slightly at the sound. Sparks filled the air outside the windows on both sides of the plane. Around her other heads began to lift, realizing they'd touched the ground. The plane continued at its manic pace, and out the window they skidded past the first bank of fire trucks. There was a flash of red light outside as the fire trucks roared into action, all sounds replaced by that of their sirens blaring as they gave chase.

The slide continued.
Just let it end
, Anna pleaded silently,
either way
. There were so many sparks now, it felt like being trapped in the middle of a Fourth of July firework.

And then, suddenly, they stopped. Anna looked to either side of her for confirmation, and all of the other passengers seemed equally shocked.

“Go, go, go!” The flight attendants were all yelling at once, flashes of navy blue uniforms as they sprung up from their seats and waved the passengers to the emergency exits. “Down the chutes! Down the chutes and away from the plane! Down the chutes!”

Anna and Logan jumped out of their seats immediately, and she could feel his steady hand on her back as they raced toward the emergency chute two rows in front of them. The emergency door of the plane gaped open, a black square of night outside, with the chute emerging from it like a tongue.

Standing in front of them was a little girl with her two front teeth missing, chestnut hair in messy pigtails and tears in her eyes. She paused at the chute, even as the flight attendants called to her to get on the slide.

Where were her parents? Anna had no idea. She put a hand on the little girl's shoulder and urged her forward.

“Jump! Jump!” The flight attendants pointed to the chute.

“Go, sweetie,” Anna urged the child, and the little girl slid down before her. Anna was next, with Logan behind her.

She jumped, and felt herself hurtle through darkness toward the ground. It reminded her of her favorite slide in one of the Central Park playgrounds she loved to go to growing up, except now she had no idea where she would land.

“I'm right behind you—”

Anna heard Logan's voice, but lost the end of his sentence as she reached the bottom of the slide. Two firemen in yellow flame-retardant suits grabbed her by the elbows and hoisted her to her slippered feet. It felt like an eternity ago that she'd tossed her pumps in the airport trash can, and for a second she wondered if they might still be there. But that was the only clear thought she had. Everything was happening so fast, Anna could only keep moving. Huge spotlights illuminated the plane and the fire engines’ sirens wailed on. “Run! Run to the buses!” a fireman on a bullhorn was shouting to her.

It was utter chaos, people running, some falling, many crying. Anna saw three or four yellow school buses parked in a row a good four hundred yards away. Logan was pulling her along, faster and faster. All around her, various passengers were doing the same, escorted by policemen holding orange flashlights.

A slender man in jeans and a button-up shirt had plucked up the little girl—he looked like her father. She clung to him as he ran with her wrapped in his arms, her brunette pigtails bobbing as they sprinted forward.

“We're going to make it,” Logan exulted as he tugged at her arm, his blue eyes wide as if shocked by his own statement. And in that moment, Anna realized he was right. They
were
going to make it. From the size of the crowd of people gathering by the school buses, it seemed that every single passenger on the plane was there. She looked back toward the crippled plane, a hunk of gleaming metal resting lamely on the runway. The firemen were pouring white foam on its body as a precaution, and it looked like huge tufts of marshmallow gushing from the enormous canvas hoses. But, Anna realized, if the plane was going to explode, it would have already happened.

“Holy—”

“Shit.” Logan finished the words for her. He laughed joyfully and hugged her hard, pulling her slender body into his strong frame. “Holy shit.”

There had to be at least two hundred firefighters on the scene. The chief was announcing that if they boarded the buses, they'd be taken back to the international arrivals terminal.