'So very sorry.' A bloated little Charlie Chan looked fearfully at this departing apparition, then doubled over to scoop his dinner beneath the seat, fiddling with the ribbon.
'Think nothing of it,' I said.
I was feeling kindly towards everyone that day. Flying was still a novelty. My friend Howard, of course (as I'd reminded audiences earlier in the week), used to say he'd 'hate to see a~roplanes come into common commercial use, since they merely add to the goddam useless speeding up of an already overspeeded life.' He had dismissed them as 'devices for the amusement of a gentleman'-
but then, he'd only been up once, in the twenties, and for only as long as $3.50 would bring. What could he have known of whistling engines, the wicked joys of dining at thirty thousand feet, the chance to look out a window and find that the earth is, after all, quite round? All this he had missed; he was dead and therefore to be pitied.
Yet even in de. ath he had triumphed over me...
It gave me something to think about as the stewardess helped me to my feet, clucking in professional concern at the mess on my lap - though more likely she was thinking of the wiping up that awaited her once I'd vacated the seat. 'Why do they make those bags so slippery?' my elderly neighbour asked plaintively. 'And all over this nice man's suit. You really should do something about it.' The plane dropped and settled; she rolled her yellowing eyes. 'It could happen again.'
The stewardess steered me down the aisle towards a restroom at the middle of the plane. To my left a cadaverous young woman wrinkled her nose and smiled at the man next to her. I attempted to disguise my defeat by looking bitter - 'Someone else has done this deed!' - but doubt I succeeded.
The stewardess's arm supporting mine was superfluous but comfortable; I leaned on her more heavily with each step. There are, as I'd long suspected, precious few advantages in being seventy-six and looking it - yet among them is this: though one is excused from the frustration of flirting with a stewardess, one gets to lean on her arm. I turned toward her to say something funny, but paused; her face was blank as a clock's.
'I'll wait out here for you,' she said, and pulled open the smooth white door.
q~hat will hardly be necessary.' I straightened up. 'But could you - do you think you might find me another seat? I have nothing against that lady, you understand, but I don't want to see any more of her lunch.'
Inside the restroom the whine of the engines seemed louder, as if the pink plastic walls were all that separated me from the jet stream and its arctic winds. Occasionally the air we passed through must have grown choppy, for the plane rattled and heaved like a sled over rough ice. If I opened the john I half expected to see the earth miles below us, a frozen grey Atlantic fanged with icebergs.
England was already a thousand miles away.
With one hand on the door handle for support, I wiped off my trousers with a perfumed paper towel from a foil envelope, and stuffed several more into my pocket. My cuffs still bore a residue of Chinese goo. This, it seemed, was the source of the treacle smell; I dabbed ineffectually at it.
Surveying myself in the mirror - a bald, harmless-looking old baggage with stooped shoulders and a damp suit (so different from the self-confident young fellow in the photo captioned 'HPL and disciple') - I slid open the bolt and emerged, a medley of scents. The stewardess had found an empty seat for me at the back of the plane.
It was only as I made to sit down that I noticed who occupied the adjoining seat: he was leaning away from me, asleep with his head resting against the window, but I recognized the beard.
'Uh, stewardess - ?' I turned, but saw only her uniformed back retreating up the aisle. After a moment's uncertainty I inched myself into the seat, making as little noise as possible. I had, I reminded myself, every right to be here.
Adjusting the recliner position (to the annoyance of the black behind me), I settled back and reached for the paperback in my pocket. They'd finally got round to reprinting one of my earlier tales, and already I'd found four typos. But then, what could one expect? The front cover, with its crude cartoon skull, said it alclass="underline" 'Goosepimples: Thirteen Cosmic Chillers in the Lovecraft Tradition.'
So this is what I was reduced to - a lifetime's work shrugged off by some blurb-writer as 'worthy of the Master himself,' the creations of my brain dismissed as mere pastiche. And the tales themselves, once singled out for such elaborate praise, were now simply - as if this were commendation enough - 'Lovecraftian.' Ah, Howard, your triumph was complete the moment your name became an adjective.
I'd suspected it for years, of course, but only with the past week's conference had I been forced to acknowledge the fact: that what mattered to the present generation was not my own body of work, but rather my association with Lovecraft. And even this was demeaned: after years of friendship and support, to be labelled - simply because I'd been younger - a mere 'disciple.' It seemed too cruel a joke.
Every joke must have a punchline. This one's was still in my pocket, printed in italics on the folded yellow conference schedule. I didn't need to look at it again: there I was, characterized for all time as 'a member of the Lovecraft circle, New York educator, and author of the celebrated collection Beyond the Garve.'
That was it, the crowning indignity: to be immortalized by a misprint! You'd have appreciated this, Howard. I can almost hear you chuckling from - where else? - beyond the garve...
Meanwhile, from the seat next to me came the rasping sounds of a constricted throat; my neighbour must have been caught in a dream. I put down my book and studied him. He looked older than he had at first - perhaps sixty or more. His hands were roughened, powerful looking; on one of them was a ring with a curious silver cross. The glistening black beard that covered the lower half of his face was so thick as to be nearly opaque; its very darkness seemed unnatural, for above it the hair was streaked with grey.
I looked more closely, to where beard joined face. Was that a bit of gauze I saw, below the hair?
My heart gave a little jump. Leaning forward for a closer look, I peered at the skin to the side of his nose; though burned from long exposure to the sun, it had an odd pallor. My gaze continued upward, along the weathered cheeks towards the dark hollow of his eyes. They opened.
For a moment they stared into mine without apparent comprehension, glassy and bloodshot. In the next instant they were bulging from his head and quivering like hooked fish. His lips opened, and a tiny voice croaked, 'Not here.'
We sat in silence, neither of us moving. I was too surprised, too embarrassed, to answer. In the window beyond his head the sky looked bright and clear, but I could feel the plane buffeted by unseen blasts, its wingtips bouncing furiously.
'Don't do it to me here,' he whispered at last, shrinking back into his seat.
Was the man a lunatic? Dangerous, perhaps? Somewhat in my future I saw spinning headlines:
'Jetliner Terrorized ... Retired NYC Teacher Victim ...' My uncertainty must have shown, for I saw him lick his lips and glance past my head. Hope, and a trace of cunning, swept his face. He grinned up at me. 'Sorry, nothing to worry about. Whew! Must have been having a nightmare.' Like an athlete after a particularly tough race he shook his massive head, already regaining command of the situation. His voice had a hint of Tennessee drawl. 'Boy' - he gave what should have been a hearty laugh - 'I'd better lay off the Kickapoo juice!'
I smiled to put him at his ease, though there was nothing about him to suggest that he'd been drinking. 'That's an expression I haven't heard in years.'
'Oh, yeah?' he said, with little interest. 'Well, I've been away.' His fingers drummed nervously impatiently? - on the arm of his chair.