“The rear engine blew up. There are no hydraulics. They can’t steer.”
For a moment he had no reaction. Then Jeff nodded and his great eyes were dulled by a film of something, not tears, but a kind of liquid glass, a protection against pain. “What about manually? Can’t they—?”
“Not in something this big.”
Jeff accepted it, nodding again. His attitude was much braver than Max had expected. No whining, just curiosity. Max felt ashamed of himself for his desire to torment Jeff and now wanted to comfort him. “You know, there’ll be plenty of money for Nan and Debby and the kids. The average settlement on a plane crash is three quarters of a million dollars. And we have the business partnership insurance, which goes to them if we both die while conducting business. That’s another quarter of a million each—”
“Are you sure?” Jeff’s interest was intense. That’s why they were partners, after all. They had peculiar attitudes, more concerned with the structure and mechanisms than the feelings and philosophy. It was almost as if their debate over whether they could afford to die was as significant as the pilot’s efforts to land. “I thought the business policy was only for the surviving partner.”
“No. There’s a provision—”
Max stopped because he noticed that Mary and Lisa and the other flight attendants were tossing the shoes into the lavatories. That answered a question which had worried him, namely where could they stow them so they wouldn’t become missiles. With the shoes put away, the flight attendants began their final surveillance of belts, their chant of emergency procedures, first illustrating the crash position, and then arms akimbo to point out the exits. The teenager continued unsuccessfully to pull at his boot.
Jeff banged Max again. “Go on!”
“—if we die on a business trip, the widows get the money. And also—” Max smiled at Jeff. But his partner wasn’t looking. The greyhound head had fallen back against the seat, its eyes shut. “—we paid for the tickets on the gold American Express card—”
Jeff twisted his head abruptly and interrupted: “What difference does that make?”
“Automatic flight insurance. That’s another half a million for each of them. They’ll end up with one point five million apiece.”
“Jesus,” Jeff mumbled, upset. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Max asked.
Jeff hesitated, his narrow dog’s mouth hanging open. Then he barked: “We’re worth more dead than alive.”
With a shudder and an alarming whine, the landing gear was lowered. It felt and sounded as though the floor were being removed. Jeff cursed into the noise:
“Fuck! God damn it! I can’t take this! Fuck! Hurry up!”
“It’s the wheels,” Max tried to calm him. But they had made an unusually loud and terrible sound. Was that an illusion? Max wanted to know much more about the how of his death. He envied all those people who would spend tomorrow morning secure at home, sipping coffee and enjoying their superior knowledge about the cause. He pictured the spate of newspaper articles based on leaks from the investigation until months later, when the final judgment of the National Transportation Safety Board would be followed by orders for the defect that produced this fatality to be repaired in all the DC-10s, luring passengers onto more planes which would fail in some other insidious way. As an architect he had come to understand that most things were made shabbily and more so with each passing day. The deterioration was first in their look; now it was in their fundamental engineering.
Mary and her helpmates were done. She returned to get Stacy, guiding her up to the front, to the jump seats by the bulkheads. That put them beside one of the emergency exits. While they made this maneuver someone shouted:
“Look! The airport!”
All heads turned together in a uniform movement of hope that Max pitied.
Jeff stabbed Max’s biceps with his elbow. “Hey! He did it!”
Max hunkered down to get a better angle on his side view of the landing strip. Sure enough they were heading straight for a medium-sized airport. He saw spinning red lights atop a row of tiny trucks, miniaturized into toys by the perspective of their height. The presence of rescue equipment wasn’t a clue to their chance of survivaclass="underline" fire trucks were a standard precaution for any unusual landing. Instead of being dismayed by the sight of this wary welcome, for a moment Max believed in the continuation of his life.
But then the captain lost control again. This time the plane tilted instead of dropped. The right wing disappeared below and their bodies followed. All the passengers were unwillingly linked on this wild ride and they moaned together in dismay…
The right wing reappeared with a sickening jolt and then continued past the horizon, rising to the heavens. The seesaw now pulled everything the opposite way, tilting down to the left, and Max was unnerved to see the ground pass vertically, as if the floor he wanted in a department store had just gone by, lost forever, and he tried to cry out, to tell everyone—I’m sorry we aren’t going to live anymore. I’m sorry we don’t have time to change—but no sound came out of his mouth into the horrible roar…
And they were abruptly level, everyone’s stomachs arriving late, jarring into place.
The teenager threw up on the pink boot which he still hadn’t gotten off.
“He’s doing it, Max,” Jeff’s voice said faintly. The engines were screaming at this point, howling with pain as the jet descended in jerks, as if they were bumping down a flight of stairs on their ass.
Max checked what he could through the windows. The plane did seem lined up properly with the runway and it was close to touching down, moving fast at the ground. But they were rushing to an earth that wouldn’t forgive airborne clumsiness.
Max unbuckled his seat belt. “I’m going to sit with the boy,” he said to Jeff, more sure than ever, after that awkward maneuver with the wings, that they were going to crash. He expected Jeff to plead, to beg him to stay.
“What?” Jeff called, bewildered instead. Max had no time to answer. He was frightened to be up and walking on the breakable floor. He stumbled his way forward three aisles, found the boy seated alone, waved a casual goodbye to his partner, and fell into the empty seat.
“Hi,” he said and buckled himself in. He put his hand on the boy’s neck. “Head in your lap.” The child obeyed, dutiful, concealing his loneliness and fright to the last. Max thought of how proud this child’s parents would be of their son’s bravery and he wanted to weep.
Max bent over as well, turning his head so he could look at the boy. “What’s your name?” he shouted.
“Byron,” he said, also placing his head sideways to see Max. There was something comforting about their huddled position, as if they were lying in a bed and chatting intimately. As recently as a year ago Max used to do that with his son at bedtime, listening to stories of boyhood quarrels and contests, providing advice that only a child would think wise.
Max thought he had misheard. “What did you say?”
“Byron,” he repeated. “Like the poet.”
There was a sudden lull, the engines cutting as they were about to touch ground. Max had succeeded in distracting Byron for a second; unfortunately the change in sound refocused the boy on his terror.
“Everything is wonderful,” Max said into Byron’s worried face. “Are you scared?”
Byron nodded; with that admission his lips trembled.
They were floating just above the earth, gliding in their big ungainly airship. The back wheels touched pavement—
Max gently pushed Byron’s head flush to his knees. “We made it,” he said, lying.