In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel (17 page)

The voice mail picks up at Phoebe’s parents’ house, so he leaves a message, saying he’s on the way and will call during his layover.

“I’ll be there soon,” he says. And then he’s hurrying through the nearly empty security line and echoey terminal, as if that could help him keep the promise.

*   *   *

Ninety minutes and a spectacularly uncomfortable nap on the floor later, he’s nodding absently at the woman in 16A as he stows Cecily’s knitting bag in the overhead compartment and collapses into 16B. Seat belt buckled, impotent cell phone switched off. There’s pressure in his ears as the plane speeds up and propels into the brightening sky. Still in his coat, still freezing, Adam tries to rest his head on his shoulder in a way that won’t result in a neck kink, closes his eyes.

Darts with Cecily only they’re not darts, but arrows he fires from a giant bow, and it’s not the bar, but a grand venue where crowds cheer.

Sharp squeeze of his hand.

Adam pops awake and finds the girl in the window seat is gripping his wrist on the armrest they share. Blushing, she lets go.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I don’t fly a lot.”

Even half asleep Adam knows he should say something about air travel being extremely safe.

“It’s just a little turbulence,” he says, and Jesus f-ing Christ he hopes he’s been turning in better performances on set. “They haven’t even turned on the ‘fasten seat belt’ light.” Adam points to the panel above their heads. His finger is still in the air as the pilot comes on the speaker announcing they’ve hit a patch of rough air and he’s turning on the seat belt sign.

Adam smiles. “Now you can panic.”

The girl laughs. She’s cute, nymphlike. “I’m Callie.”

“Adam.”

“So, are you starting out or heading home?” Her voice is still shaky, eyes terrified and wide, so he tells her that he was working in Vancouver but has to go to Chicago for a funeral, labels Phoebe his “best friend,” which
is
true. Callie says appropriate conciliatory things, and once she determines the dead person was not someone personally close to Adam, asks polite questions about what he’s working on. She reacts with genuine enthusiasm when he tells her he’s an actor and they’re making an
E&E
origins show. She even claims to have watched a few episodes of
Go Go Trons
with her nephew.

“Wow, that’s wow.” She lowers her lids, then raises her eyes in a way he’s pretty sure she intends to be seductive. “I’d have flown more if I’d known you could meet TV stars.”

The stewardess comes by offering plastic tumblers of soda and pretzel packets, and Adam realizes his jaw isn’t clenched anymore and he’s no longer shivering, that he’s momentarily forgotten how tired he is.

Before Callie even sips her Diet Coke, he’s devoured his snack, remembers the last thing he ate was a different handful of pretzels fourteen hours ago.

“Here.” Callie hands him her own pretzels. “I stopped for breakfast on the way to the airport.”

As he eats, she tells him about Salt Lake City, jokes it’s not just Mormons. Originally Adam thought she was barely into her twenties, but as she talks it becomes evident she’s not a girl but a woman who knows how to work personal space—a light touch of his elbow, subtle bump of her shoulder to his. Perhaps it’s just habit, but he finds himself flirting back.

Callie explains she’s an assistant in a dermatologist’s office and writes the name of a lotion on a cocktail napkin when he tells her how the Rowen makeup makes his head itch. “This stuff is a godsend,” she says. “It’ll keep you ageless.”

As the plane begins its descent, she asks when his connection leaves. “If you’ve got time, we could grab a coffee?”

So totally something he would have been up for yesterday, or last week, or any number of days before Phoebe’s messages.

Since it’s only thirty-seven minutes before his next flight, Adam doesn’t have to lie.

“That’s too bad.” She sighs. “Well, maybe you’ll come back for a proper visit, or I’ll get out to California one of these days.”

“Yeah, that’d be fun.” He nods but doesn’t give her his info even when she says she wrote her number on the napkin.

Stuck in a holding pattern, they land fifteen minutes late. Hurriedly handing Callie her bag from the overhead bin, he calls a quick good-bye and sprints down the jetway. Behind him he can feel her deflate.

Ultimately there’s no need to rush; monitors list his connection as canceled. As is the flight to Chicago scheduled two hours later. In fact, several flights to Midwestern cities he’s never been to—Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis—are no-gos.

Callie appears next to him, roller suitcase in tow.

“There must be bad weather,” she says.

As if further proof is needed, CNN Airport Network is showing a puffy-coated reporter braving wind and sleet above the headline:
SNOWSTORMS
PUMMEL THE
MIDWEST.

They both stare at the screen.

“You can stay with me,” Callie offers. “You’re not going to make the funeral, and I don’t have to work until Monday. I can show you the city.”

There’s something creepy about the offer, but also sweet.

“That’s really nice, but I need to get to her. Maybe I can fly nearby and drive the rest of the way?”

Callie opens her mouth as if she’s going to protest but changes course. “I’ll stick around until you’re rebooked, just in case.”

“You don’t need to do that—”

“It’s no big deal.”

Protesting more will achieve nothing, and a line of grumbling passengers is already forming at the United counter, so he agrees and gets in the queue.

“This way you’ll have a place to crash if you end up shipwrecked in Salt Lake.”

Flash of what it would be like to stay with this girl. Blond hair splayed across pink sheets, golden throat under his lips, a lacy negligee he’ll pull up to expose her breasts, let it cover her face like a veil.

He shivers, cold again.

Clocks all over announce it’s almost 10:00
A.M.
, noon in Chicago, he’s pretty sure. Adam starts to run fingers through his hair but hits skin and remembers that, in addition to likely missing Chase Fisher’s funeral, he’ll soon be late for work. Work on a project with hints of brilliance hidden behind its too pretty cast, a project where he beat out hundreds of other actors for an iconic role. He needs to call his agent.

Apologizing to Callie, he checks voice mail on his finally working cell phone.

Four messages from Marty in varying degrees of distress, each first relaying the calls and exaggerations he’s made thus far on Adam’s behalf, then insisting Adam call immediately. One message from Cecily, asking if he got in okay. Another from his mother he simply skips.

There’s a message from Phoebe, voice pebbles and blood, telling him not to worry if he doesn’t get there in time for the funeral, giving directions to her father’s house and the cemetery. “Thank you, Adam, I … thank you.”

Callie’s eyes on him.

For the second time in a dozen hours, a very pretty girl is looking at him expectantly, and all he can think of is the tender flesh of Phoebe’s earlobes and the way she braids her fingers together and clasps them to her heart when she’s sad. Phoebe, who over the years he’s hurt countless times, countless ways. When, he wonders, did it become his lot in life to disappoint beautiful women?

Finally he’s at the desk where a rep tells him there’s no way he’s getting to Chicago until tomorrow morning. Callie lays a hand on his elbow.

“Please, I have a funeral, is there anywhere within driving distance?” Adam asks the clerk.

The man presses lips together and nods, as if to convey that he feels bad as Adam is probably bald from chemotherapy and all, but he’s not the only person trying to get somewhere. “Right now we’re still going to Cincinnati; I think it’s about a six-hour drive.”

“Perfect,” Adam says, feels Callie stiffen.

“Did you check a bag?” the clerk asks. Adam shakes his head. “Good, I’m going to put you on the eleven forty-five, which gets in at four ten.”

Right around the time Adam would conceivably be filming his lone scene for the day and just late enough to guarantee there’s no way he’s making his 5:00
A.M.
call tomorrow.

“So I guess you’re off then?” Callie says. His flight isn’t for another hour and a half, and Adam says a silent prayer to various deities that she won’t insist on waiting with him.

“Yeah.” Burying hands in his coat pockets, he looks at his feet. “It was really nice meeting you.”

“Is it wrong I’m bummed you’re not staying?” she asks, young and timid, like when she was scared on the plane. “Is this chick in Chicago really that much hotter than me?” She forces a laugh but seems authentically injured, and it breaks his heart a little.

“Callie.” He brushes his lips to her cheek; he’s always been good at making people believe things that aren’t true. “She’s got nothing on you.”

*   *   *

By the time Adam boards Flight 568 to Cincinnati, the fact that he hasn’t slept in thirty hours is becoming increasingly evident. It takes considerably longer than it should to find his row, and he almost sobs when he sees a girl wearing an Unaccompanied Minor badge in the leg-roomier aisle seat.

The kid might be the most striking he’s ever seen—perfect red curls down her back and skin the color of the vanilla ice cream he used to serve in his grandparents’ shop. This doesn’t make the prospect of sitting next to her for three hours in the cramped space by the window any more appealing.

“I would actually prefer the window, if you would rather have the aisle,” the preternaturally pale child says in the polite, perfect English of no young person he’s ever heard.

“I’d like that.” As they shuffle into their places, Adam decides she might be the best kid ever.

“Natasha.” The girl extends her hand, offering a surprisingly firm grip. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Adam expects her to begin a conversation like Callie, and frankly he’s so grateful for the extra legroom, he’d happily oblige. But Natasha says nothing, only removes items from a pink backpack: a book of Japanese anime with its wide-eyed schoolgirls in short skirts, a bottle of water, and a Ziploc bag of homemade trail mix that looks significantly healthier than the too-sweet Cinnabon he’d eaten about a third of at the airport in between leaving messages for Phoebe and taking the incredibly cowardly route of calling his agent’s assistant and telling her he was about to get on a plane before she could patch him through to Marty.

Eyelids heavy as anvils, Adam can’t quite fall asleep, so he skims the in-flight magazine and learns he can watch
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
and that he will have his choice of Coca-Cola products.

When they finally do take off, a full hour and a half late, the air is too choppy to focus on the words. Things get disturbingly rough an hour in. A major dip knocks his coffee from the tray, spilling it onto the sleeve of the jacket he’s still wearing. Remembering Callie’s fear, he smiles at the girl in the window seat. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he says. “Just a few bumps.”

“I know. My father’s a pilot, and my parents divorced when I was six. I fly all the time.” She points to him wiping coffee from the sleeve of his jacket. “I can fix that. I’m good at laundry.”

Dipping a napkin in her water, she dabs lightly at the stain until it’s gone, not even damp.

“Which of your parents lives in Cincinnati?” he asks after he thanks her.

“My mother and her fiancé.” Her nose crinkles with dislike. “Are you from the area or just visiting?”

“A friend’s brother died,” he says. “I was trying to get to the funeral, but…” His watch says 1:15
P.M.
, though he has no idea what that means in conjunction with their current position above the Earth. “I’m pretty sure I’m missing it.”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha says.

“I didn’t know him very well.” He shrugs. “Actually, I think he kind of hated me.”

“But you love your friend?”

Lowering his head, Adam nods, heat on his cheeks—troubled to admit this even to a complete stranger, to an unaccompanied minor.

“Does she know?”

And he wonders if Phoebe
does
know, know he thinks too much about her oddly chubby fingers and the way she can’t say “milk.” Know she’s the best friend he’s ever had, and that he can’t quite reconcile that with the times he’s fucked her so hard her inner thighs were bruised. Know the reason he’s never suggested they give things a shot for real has more to do with how much he
does
care than with any great desire to sleep his way through Los Angeles.

“I hope so,” he says.

Natasha doesn’t need to say Adam could tell Phoebe, just raises ginger eyebrows in a way that makes him forget she is only a child, makes him feel like the one who’s underage.

They fly the remaining hour in companionable silence, eating nuts and M&M’s out of her trail mix.

As they start their landing, the turbulence picks up; Adam grips the armrest.

“It’s like birth,” Natasha says. “My father says it’s the closest thing to being born that we ever experience.”

It’s a weird concept, but he likes it.

*   *   *

The Cincinnati airport (which is inexplicably in Kentucky) is massive, and par for the day’s course, he’s at a remote terminal galaxies from the rental-car kiosks.

After a shuttle bus, three stops on a light rail, and a gigantic escalator (plus a brief detour to meet Natasha’s equally pallid mother and ponytailed stepfather at passenger pickup), Adam finds himself checking his voice mail in the Avis line.

Marty’s messages, all five of them, simply say, “Call me now.” There’s one from Phoebe detailing specific directions to her father’s house. “Don’t worry about it being late. I’ll wait up for you.” Her voice is so defeated, it wrenches Adam’s chest.

Behind him a strung-out-seeming girl with enormous blue eyes and what looks like a bloodstain on her sleeve grumbles, and he realizes the clerk is ready for him.

Driver’s license shown, credit card charged. Yes, he knows dropping off in Chicago will cost more; yes, he will return with a full tank of gas; no, he doesn’t want supplemental insurance; fine, he’ll take the supplemental insurance.