Fearless (12 page)
“The Hawaii one? The pop-top jet?”
“Pop top?” Perlman’s voice got deep and quiet. His red eyebrows came together above his nose.
“Isn’t that the 727”—Max indicated the cabin of their plane—“this very model plane—whose top came off on a commuter flight?”
“Pop top…?” Perlman repeated Max’s joke to himself in a mumble. “That’s a cruel way of talking about it.” He was almost inaudible, practically speaking to himself.
“What would be a kind way of talking about it?” Max asked. “Excuse me…?” he called forward to the senior flight attendant, a formidable middle-aged woman with a stiff hair-sprayed arc of blond hair and a shiny wide brow. “Could I have another?” he indicated his empty drink cup.
“Would you like a Valium?” Perlman asked, nodding at Max’s drink cup.
“No, a Scotch,” Max said and laughed hard, delighted by his irreverence. He was usually solemn and respectful of authority. But was Perlman authority? The flight attendant acknowledged his request from a distance with a nod. Max lowered his cup and said to Perlman, “Sorry. Dumb joke.”
“You’re doing fine. Don’t apologize. Your wife was amazed that you were willing to fly home.”
Max could imagine her anxious whisper of a voice responding to Perlman, rising to a louder incredulity: “Max is flying back to New York? That’s crazy!” Max thought he had better show some concern for her, lest Perlman think him a barbarian: “How is she?”
“Well, we spoke on the phone for a little while. She sounded all right. Upset that you hadn’t called. Worried about you, of course.”
“My wife is very beautiful,” Max said and remembered her ten years ago, not very different from today, the same weight, skinnier if anything, her hair still a luxuriant brown, her pale skin still smooth, her light brown eyes wide and worried. What had changed was the animation of her features. Her mouth used to be open and laughing, teeth generously exposed, her throat vulnerable. That was how she showed her age: she didn’t laugh; she smiled with sealed lips, polite and without enjoyment. She was tall and desirable, a dancer’s figure holding up at forty as if she were exercising daily and injecting collagen monthly. Although she wasn’t taking collagen, she taught ballet to children and kept herself in shape. She wore little makeup and usually dressed in jeans and plain tops. Even her few and rarely used formal dresses were basic colors and unadorned by complicated fashion. But Max thought her vain, anyway, vainer for her indifference to cosmetics, believing her intention was to emphasize her beauty by showing that it required so little help. “Could you tell from her voice that she’s beautiful?”
Perlman paused before answering. He frowned and stared ahead. After a moment, he swallowed, as if he had at last ingested Max’s meaning. “No. Why do you ask?”
“She has a friendly voice,” Max explained. “But it doesn’t sound like the voice of a beautiful woman. She sounds short and sympathetic and smart and nervous. But she’s actually tall and a little cold, and I’ve come to the conclusion she’s not as smart as she seems. She’s selfish and that holds her back. She can’t see beyond her own point of view. She is nervous, though. Terribly nervous that something will come out of her. Something ugly and irreversible.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. And I think maybe I should stop caring.”
“Does she love you?” Perlman was grave. He rattled the ice in his plastic cup, concerned.
“Yes. Very much.” Perlman beamed at this answer. Max smiled back, delighted to have pleased the furry red giant. “That’s the worst part. She thinks I’m great.”
“And why is that bad?”
“Because I’m not who she thinks I am. You know, I already have a therapist.”
“Yes, your wife mentioned. I tried to reach him, in fact.”
“We spent quite a lot of time these past weeks discussing my fear of flying.” The flight attendant arrived with Max’s second Scotch. “He told me I had nothing to worry about.” Max held up the plastic cup, toasting Perlman. “Cheers.”
“Cheers. Are you angry at him for being wrong?”
“No!” Max smiled into Perlman’s serious, evaluating eyes. “That would be neurotic. And I wouldn’t want my shrink to think I’m neurotic.”
“Do you want to talk about the crash?” Perlman tipped his cup all the way to get at an ice cube. It bounced off his upper lip and rolled back to the bottom.
Max saw the DC-10 in sections, in flames on the bleached runway, but the action was stilled, as if photographed for a picture postcard. What had happened to him was inside the pieces, deeper in his memory. He didn’t want to give up the safety of being outside the wreck for the sake of Perlman’s curiosity.
“No,” he told Perlman and turned away. Across the aisle, outside this jet’s windows, the sun had lowered and yet was fierce, unveiled in the cloudless blue sky, its dominance threatened only by the horizon’s rim. Max stared at it until the brilliance forced his lids to shut. The impression danced on the red world of his closed eyes. He thought the innerscape was like his childhood visions of the red planet, Mars. He remembered his thrill at hearing JFK vow that Max’s countrymen would reach the moon before the Russians. Max had immediately wanted more—a mission to Mars—an advance that would take them to other worlds, other peoples. During his college years, in spite of the druggy cynicism about national policy, Max had rejoiced at
Apollo’s
success and assumed the United States would conquer the solar system within his lifetime. Landing on the moon was still, to his mind, the only achievement of his country worthy of its stature as an Empire. The space shuttle blowing up and the cowardly aftermath were further proof of how second-rate the United States and its leaders had become. The hostility of conservatives and liberals to further space exploration was all that he had to point to—surely anything both sides agreed was a waste had to be worthwhile and noble. Sitting next to the airline’s hired therapist, Max understood something that had bothered him for a decade, that he had known only in a sleepy, evasive way. He was living in a reductive age, a time where any diminishment of person or goal was popular. The astronauts were now considered to be frauds and no one believed racism could be conquered. The two longings of his youth, to live in peace with all the races and ethnics of his city, to see men walk on other worlds, were laughable, even stupid desires in the eyes of the smart and sophisticated and powerful people of his time. It wasn’t the disappointment of designing discount electronics stores that had embittered Max; it was living in a nation without dreams that made reality so hard.
“It was stupid,” Max said at last and his cheeks felt heavy. His eyes watered.
“What was stupid?”
Max rubbed the tears back into his eyes. He drained the plastic cup. The Scotch made him feel empty.
“What was stupid, Max? The crash?”
“Yeah,” Max said, returning his attention to the furry red therapist. “It was pointless.”
“That makes it very hard,” Perlman agreed. “That seems to be the hardest thing for everyone who’s hurt by an accident to deal with. They feel it’s senseless.”
Max’s heart hardened, his tears evaporated. He looked over at the big man. Perlman filled up even the relatively spacious first-class seat. “Have any of your patients succeeded in making sense of it?” he asked the plane-crash therapist.
“Well…after a while—it takes a while—they find a kind of peace about it. I think it’s appropriate for survivors and relatives to feel that it’s senseless, because it
is
senseless.”
Unless I give it sense, Doctor, Max thought. Unless I give it a point. Max nodded agreeably at Perlman, pretending to agree with his philosophical bumper car, bouncing merrily off all the hard jolts of life. Max had his mission now and saw no reason to share it with a civilian. He was glad the FBI had found him and turned him around. He had been going the wrong way, into the failed past. Now things were set right. He put his head back and listened to the engines, thrilled by their power. Mr. President, he thought, I’m ready. Max was launched, roaring out of Perlman’s orbit, able and willing to land on the strange terrain of his home.
Max was aroused by his wife. Debby greeted him with a firm wholehearted embrace, pressing herself against him from toe to head. They were almost the same height, had always seemed to fit nicely, although it had been years since Max had felt so thoroughly hugged. He squashed himself against her, ran his hand down her strong straight back until he reached the top slopes of her ass. He was erect.
“Isn’t almost dying a wonderful thing?” Max whispered in Debby’s ear.
She bit his earlobe hard. He jerked his head away and saw her face was animated, eyes brilliant, face flushed. “Why didn’t you call?” she said, angry and excited. Her voice was loud, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Everyone was Debby’s parents, Max’s mother and sister, his son, his wife’s closest friend, and someone he didn’t recognize, a mild fellow wearing a light gray business suit. The man in the suit had a youthful, fleshy face, no chin, bashed-in shoulders, and appeared both shy and obtrusive, that is, his body hung back while his head jutted forward, apparently straining to overhear what Max had to say.
Entering his home Max had ignored them, even his son Jonah, who was half-hidden anyway, slouched by the hallway to his bedroom, willing to observe, but keeping distant from his father’s arrival. Max moved past them all into Debby’s open arms.
Getting to her arms from the airport had been difficult and dramatic. On landing at La Guardia two Transcontinental employees entered the plane before anyone had a chance to depart. They led Max out into a car that was waiting on the runway. The other passengers from Pittsburgh watched him go, impressed by how Max was ushered ahead in this special way, hustled off as if he were an important official. Max had said goodbye to Dr. Perlman at their seats. The therapist handed him a business card and said, “Call me anytime. I’m either at that number or my service will know how to reach me.” Perlman then shook Max’s hand and stepped back to wave goodbye. He did this with the insecure reassurance of a parent sending his child off to the first day of school.
Max went down the ramp and into a waiting car, an ordinary dark sedan. One of the airline employees got in with him. He was a short blond man with wire-rimmed glasses. He introduced himself as a media liaison for the Transcontinental New York office.
“Does that mean you’re in public relations?” Max asked.
The blond admitted it did. He got right to his job, even before they had cleared the airport, while their sedan still swayed through the exit loops onto the Grand Central Parkway. “There’s probably gonna be press at your apartment building. I saw two TV crews at the terminal, but we’ve got you past them. They have your name. Not from us. Our policy is not to release names—but you were wandering out there for a day—and we didn’t…” he waved his hand, “Anyway, do you want to avoid them at your building?”
Max wondered why reporters wanted to talk to him. What did they know? Did they know he had seen Jeff dead? Did they know he had left the scene? Did they know about his dropping acid? No, of course not. What was especially interesting to them about his experience?
“That is,” the airline man said, “
if
we can avoid them. Is there a back entrance, a service entrance?”
Max told him there was, although it was only halfway down the block, within view and a quick jog from the front doors. This information caused a long silence from the PR man that lasted until they had crossed into Manhattan. “You know what?” he came to life as they bucked on the city’s streets. “We don’t know if they know what you look like. They may have paid the doorman to tip them off, but they’ll be expecting you to come by car. If you approach on foot—no,” he interrupted himself guiltily, as if he had committed a taboo. “That’s a nutty idea—”
“What?” Max was game. “You mean, let me out and I’ll walk in? I’ll do it.”
“No, no,” the PR man said, vehemently shaking his head. “I can’t.”
He’s not supposed to let me out of his sight, Max guessed. They’re worried I’ll run again. Why do they care? Was there some sort of general faith in Max’s life, in his marriage and his work, in his friendships and family relations? What was it to Transcontinental Airlines whether he returned home? “I don’t mind going in alone,” Max said.
“No, no.” The blond took off his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Terrible idea,” he mumbled.
“I’d prefer it,” Max insisted.
“If anything went wrong,” the blond replaced his glasses and stared earnestly at Max to emphasize his point: “they’d fire me.”
“Come on,” Max protested.
“Oh yes indeed,” the blond nodded solemnly. He turned to the driver. “Can we take a pass by the entrance and see how bad it is?” The PR man bit thoughtfully on his index finger. They were about twenty blocks away from Max’s building on Eighty-fourth and West End Avenue when the PR man abruptly turned all the way in his seat to face Max, removed his finger from between his lips and demanded, “Why did you leave the crash site?”
Max said, “I’m not sure,” which was the truth.
“Shock?” the blond offered.
“Probably,” Max agreed.
There was only one television crew and one print reporter camped in front of his building. They loafed under the awning. The video and news reporters were chatting near the doors; the TV crew was idle by the curb, their video camera drooped to the pavement, unprepared for a sudden appearance by Max.
“Let’s do it now,” the blond decided on the first go-by. “Stop it here.” He spoke rapidly and with great excitement. “Come on, Mr. Klein, get ready. We’re gonna run past them. My suggestion is just say, ‘No comment.’ Better still, say nothing.”
The driver stopped. The blond hopped out, rushed around to Max’s side, opened his door, and practically dragged Max from the sedan. They had to squeeze between two parked cars on their way to the curb. That allowed the television crew time to start shooting and for the reporters to get between Max and his building. The television reporter stood to one side, angling a mike at Max’s face; the newspaperman bounced ahead of him, hopping back as Max advanced.
