Dinah jumped and then cringed away from the sound of Crew-Neck's voice, pressing her cheek against the side of Laurel Stevenson's breast. She was not crying - not yet, anyway - but Laurel felt her chest begin to hitch.
'DO YOU HEAR ME?' Crew-Neck was bellowing. 'I AM DUE IN BOSTON TO DISCUSS AN UNUSUALLY LARGE BOND TRANSACTION, AND I HAVE EVERY INTENTION OF ARRIVING AT THAT MEETING ON TIME!' He unlatched his seatbelt and began to stand up. His cheeks were red, his brow waxy white. There was a blank look in his eyes which Laurel found extremely frightening. 'Do You UNDERSTA -'
'Please,' Laurel said. 'Please, mister, you're scaring the little girl.'
Crew-Neck turned his head and that unsettling blank gaze fell on her. Laurel could have waited. 'SCARING THE LITTLE GIRL? WE'RE DIVERTING TO SOME TINPOT, CHICKEN-SHIT AIRPORT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, AND ALL YOU'VE GOT TO WORRY ABOUT IS -'
'Sit down and shut up or I'll pop you one,' Gaffney said, standing up. He had at least twenty years on CrewNeck, but he was heavier and much broader through the chest. He had rolled the sleeves of his red flannel shirt to the elbows, and when he clenched his hands into fists, the muscles in his forearms bunched. He looked like a lumberjack just starting to soften into retirement.
Crew-Neck's upper lip pulled back from his teeth. This doglike grimace scared Laurel, because she didn't believe the man in the crew-neck jersey knew he was making a face. She was the first of them to wonder if this man might not be crazy.
'I don't think you could do it alone, pops,' he said.
'He won't have to.' It was the bald man from the business section. 'I'll take a swing at you myself, if you don't shut up.'
Albert Kaussner mustered all his courage and said, 'So will I, you putz.'
Saying it was a great relief. He felt like one of the guys at the Alamo, stepping over the line Colonel Travis had drawn in the dirt.
Crew-Neck looked around. His lip rose and fell again in that queer, doglike snarl. 'I see. I see. You're all against me. Fine.' He sat down and stared at them truculently. 'But if you knew anything about the market in South American bonds -' He didn't finish. There was a cocktail napkin sitting on the arm of the seat next to him. He picked it up, looked at it, and began to pluck at it.
'Doesn't have to be this way,' Gaffney said. 'I wasn't born a hardass, mister, and I ain't one by inclination, either.' He was trying to sound pleasant, Laurel thought, but wariness showed through, perhaps anger as well. 'You ought to just relax and take it easy. Look on the bright side! The airline'll probably refund your full ticket price on this trip.'
Crew-Neck cut his eyes briefly in Don Gaffney's direction, then looked back at the cocktail napkin. He quit plucking it and began to tear it into long strips.
'Anyone here know how to run that little oven in the galley?' Baldy asked, as if nothing had happened. 'I want my dinner.'
No one answered.
'I didn't think so,' the bald man said sadly. 'This is the era of specialization. A shameful time to be alive.' With this philosophical pronouncement, Baldy retreated once more to business class.
Laurel looked down and saw that, below the rims of the dark glasses with their jaunty red plastic frames, Dinah Bellman's cheeks were wet with tears. Laurel forgot some of her own fear and perplexity, at least temporarily, and hugged the little girl. 'Don't cry, honey - that man was just upset. He's better now.'
If you call sitting there and looking hypnotized while you tear a paper napkin into teeny shreds better, she thought.
'I'm scared,' Dinah whispered. 'We all look like monsters to that man.'
'No, I don't think so,' Laurel said, surprised and a little taken aback. 'Why would you think a thing like that?'
'I don't know,' Dinah said. She liked this woman - had liked her from the instant she heard her voice - but she had no intention of telling Laurel that for just a moment she had seen them all, herself included, looking back at the man with the loud voice. She had been inside the man with the loud voice - his name was Mr Tooms or Mr Tunney or something like that - and to him they looked like a bunch of evil, selfish trolls.
If she told Miss Lee something like that, Miss Lee would think she was crazy. Why would this woman, whom Dinah had just met, think any different?
So Dinah said nothing.
Laurel kissed the girl's cheek. The skin was hot beneath her lips. 'Don't be scared, honey. We're going along just as smooth as can be - can't you feel it? -and in just a few hours we'll be safe on the ground again.'
'That's good. I want my Aunt Vicky, though. Where is she, do you think?'
'I don't know, hon,' Laurel said. 'I wish I did.'
Dinah thought again of the faces the yelling man saw: evil faces, cruel faces. She thought of her own face as he perceived it, a piggish baby face with the eyes hidden behind huge black lenses. Her courage broke then, and she began to weep in hoarse racking sobs that hurt Laurel's heart. She held the girl, because it was the only thing she could think of to do, and soon she was crying herself. They cried together for nearly five minutes, and then Dinah began to calm again. Laurel looked over at the slim young boy, whose name was either Albert or Alvin, she could not remember which, and saw that his eyes were also wet. He caught her looking and glanced hastily down at his hands.
Dinah fetched one final gasping sob and then just lay with her head pillowed against Laurel's breast. 'I guess crying won't help, huh?'
'No, I guess not,' Laurel agreed. 'Why don't you try going to sleep, Dinah?'
Dinah sighed - a watery, unhappy sound. 'I don't think I can. I was asleep.'
Tell me about it, Laurel thought. And Flight 29 continued east at 36,000 feet, flying at over five hundred miles an hour above the dark midsection of America.
CHAPTER 3
The Deductive Method. Accidents and
Statistics. Speculative Possibilities.
Pressure in the Trenches. Bethany's
Problem. The Descent Begins.
1
'That little girl said something interesting an hour or so ago,' Robert Jenkins said suddenly.
The little girl in question had gone to sleep again in the meantime, despite her doubts about her ability to do so. Albert Kaussner had also been nodding, perchance to return once more to those mythic streets of Tombstone. He had taken his violin case down from the overhead compartment and was holding it across his lap.
'Huh!' he said, and straightened up.
'I'm sorry,' Jenkins said. 'Were you dozing?'
'Nope,' Albert said. 'Wide awake.' He turned two large, bloodshot orbs on Jenkins to prove this. A darkish shadow lay under each. Jenkins thought he looked a little like a raccoon which has been startled while raiding garbage cans. 'What did she say?'
'She told Miss Stevenson she didn't think she could get back to sleep because she had been sleeping. Earlier.'