Chapter 1

The plane has reached its cruising altitude of 36,000 feet, and from my view by the window I look down at a break in the clouds to see the flat prairie of Illinois farmland below. The black soil, divided into neat section lines, with a patchy coat of snow from a late-season blizzard looks like a pan of badly-iced brownies.

My stomach growls. Selecting a cheap flight that left at 7 a.m. was a mistake. I had forgotten that I would need to get up at four a.m. in order to get drive to O’Hare and make it through the indignities of a full body inspection before boarding. I have had nothing to eat since last night when dinner, if you can call it that, was of a platter of nachos and a pitcher of margaritas with my best friend Miranda. I had not even managed a cup of coffee this morning, so in addition to hunger, my head is throbbing from caffeine deprivation.

The fasten seatbelts light goes off and the middle aged man who has squeezed himself in to the aisle seat next to me flips up the arm rest that has divided us up to know. His massive belly, now free from the constraints of the seatbelt rebounds to his normal girth and he heaves a sigh of relief as he looks in my direction.

“Looks like we survived the take-off anyway.”

It never fails. These times when I just want a few hours of silence inevitably find me placed next to A Talker. I had seen my seatmate in the terminal, plucking at the keys of his laptop while simultaneously carrying on conversations on his cellphone. “Hey, Joe? Buck here. How’s it coming on that contract? The boys ready to deal or not?”

His voice carried over the crowded waiting area, but he seemed unaware just how annoying he was and continued for some 45 minutes, hanging up only minutes before take off when the attendant reminded him cell phones had to be off.

His pale blue eyes bulge in anticipation waiting for my response to his witty remark. His body, tightly encased in a gray suit, seems to flow over the invisible boundaries of his seat space to intrude into mine.

“I fly all the time, but I tell you," he continues,"but the first few minutes always make me nervous. That’s when the trouble usually happens, you know. Take offs and landings. They’re the riskiest. The rest is usually a piece of cake. Unless there’s a bomb or something, of course, But that’s different.”

“ Yes, I guess that’s true.” I hope this perfunctory answer will be enough to be polite but discouraging, and I turn back to viewing the landscape below, but he continues.

“So you stayin’ in Raleigh or going on? Business or pleasure?”

“Yes.” Let him figure out just what I mean by that.

What would his reaction be if I spoke the truth? “I am headed south because my husband of 20 years, Richard J. Headly, outstanding pillar of the community and scion of the Headly family farming fortune, whom I now refer to as"Dick Head" decided last year that he needed to listen to the “cry of his heart.”

This particular cry of the hear phrase came from his therapist to me, I should add, since my former husband never in his life remotely used anything but sports analogies. Nor has he ever talked in the 25 years I have known him, referred to any kind of feelings at all.

However, as I began to understand it that “cry” apparently meant he needed to shack up permanently with the 30 year old administrtive assistant, whom he once referred to as "a bimbo." This was, apparently, before he discovered her other non-work related talents. Nowhere was there anything mentioned about the heartfelt cries from wife and two almost adult children--which, I might add--have been considerable.

We--or at least I-- apparently did not fit in with his newly-found self-actualizing lifestyle. I could, if pressed, explain to my seatmate that the real purpose of my trip is that I have no where else to go.

Our children, though I supposed at 18 and almost 20, Jake and Sarah are no longer children, are nonetheless and, very reluctantly they assure me, spending Thanksgiving with their father, aka, my former husband. She, of the amazing boobs and small brain, the aformentioned bimbette,is there as well, since it her apartment. Or maybe now it’s their apartment. No matter.

What matters more to me is the house we lived in for the last dozen or so years is sold to newlyweds who are, as I speak, placing Berber carpeting over the 100 year wood floors I refinished two years ago. Miranda, with whom I have been camping out for the past two weeks, had committed to go traveling to Wisconsin to see her ninety-year old mother-in-law. As a result, I had nowhere to go, so when my cousin Sam and his wife, Rhonda, asked to spend the week with them at their farm, I accepted gratefully. Pathetic gratitude is my response these days to almost any act of kindness. So, my plans are to use the peace and quiet they’ve promised to think about where I am going to do to live and, even more critical, how I will support myself for the next half-century or so.”

But, of course, I say none of this to my friend to the left. Instead I make a pleasant-enough rejoinder about how I’m spending Thanksgiving with my cousin’s family and yes, it will be nicer weather there than Illinois, for sure.

He nods then launches into his version of a story I have heard many times, something concerning bad weather in Chicago that either was so cold with the wind off the lake or so hot with all the heat coming off that asphalt and ending with, “I don’t know why anybody would want to live there.” He tells me how he has a place just outside of Southern Pines and plays golf every weekend.

I wish I had a book to read. Or a book to pretend to read so that I do not have to make conversation. Miranda tells me that many years ago she bought at a street sale something titled, “Spells, Charms and Covens. Real Witches Share Dark Secrets of the Fold.” She tossed the book, she says, but kept the dust jacket for travel purposes. She claims she wraps whatever popular novel she’s currently reading with this cover, and no one ever dares to talk to her. I’m not sure if this is really true, but Miranda is the woman who once climbed out the fifth floor window onto a ledge of a Paris hotel where we were attending a party, just to avoid talking to someone she didn’t like, so anything is possible. But I don’t have such a disguise, and, even if I did, with my luck I’d end up sitting next to a snake-handling evangelical preacher who would spend the next three hours trying to reform me.

Fortunately, the flight attendant, solicitous and so incredibly handsome that I know immediately he must be gay, rolls the beverage cart towards us and asks what I would like to drink.
“Coffee,” I say, then, trying to be casual. “…and vodka, please. Two, actually.” I pull a ten from my purse. His gorgeous blue eyes register no surprise.

“Certainly, “ he says, pouring the coffee into a Styrofoam cup and handing it to me. Then he plucks two tiny bottle from the liquor compartment. “Ice?”

I shake my head. I drink the cup of coffee so quickly that the inside of my mouth is immediately scalded. I uncap one bottle, pour it into the empty cup, then while my seatmate looks on in surprise, I open the other and do the same. Without pausing, I drink the coffee-laced vodka in a single gulp, feeling simultaneous sensations of burning in my throat and stomach.
I smile brightly at the man next to me. “I think I’ll take a nap, now,” I say, and before he can respond, I turn to the window and close my eyes. The next thing I register is the pilot’s voice on the intercom informing us to prepare for landing in less than ten minutes at Raleigh-Durham Airport where the weather is near perfect, no wind and 65 degrees.