Fearless (7 page)

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“New York,” she stammered between sobs.

The medic nodded and covered her hand with his other. “Does the leg hurt?”

She had forgotten all about it. “My baby,” she bawled.

That made him look away. He knew something. He knew Bubble was dead.

She stopped crying and felt cold. The perspiration covering her was chilled; she felt as if a thin blanket of ice had been thrown over her. She shivered.

The medic’s attention returned. He noticed her condition and fussed, covering her with another blanket and taking her pulse. Her head lolled toward the window. Outside the sky remained empty and pretty. She couldn’t find a single cloud, not even a wisp. In the plane she remembered they flew above a puffy floor of them.

She felt Bubble in her arms again, his sweaty head bouncing underneath her chin, his stomach pushing against her hands.

Why couldn’t she remember losing him? She had him and then he was gone and she couldn’t remember. Why?

She was uneasy about herself and her actions. She shouldn’t have allowed them to carry her off. She shouldn’t have left the airport.

Carla braced her elbows against the stretcher and pushed up.

The medic said, “Whoa,” and gently stopped her progress with a hand, coaxing her to lie down.

“I can’t go to the hospital without my son. I got to go back and help them find him.”

“Everybody’s out of the plane. They’re taking everybody to the hospital, okay? You’ll see him there.”

He was lying. He didn’t know a thing about Bubble.

She was nauseated suddenly, so powerfully that she threw up all over the blankets without giving a thought to how disgusting she was being.

“I’m sick,” she told them after it was out.

“Jesus,” one of them muttered.

She fell back and watched the blue sky while they cleaned her up.

Max accepted a drink of orange juice from a Red Cross volunteer and watched the mother and baby enjoy their reunion. He moved away from them, however, in order not to overhear whether they had been traveling with the father. He didn’t want to learn that she had been widowed.

He caught sight of the blond mother standing beside a fireman, intent on the people and bodies they brought out of the wreckage.

A man wearing a uniform and a name badge and carrying a clipboard with what Max presumed to be the DC-10’s passenger manifest stopped at his elbow. “Were you on the plane?” he asked breathlessly, pen ready to check him off.

Max disliked this fellow. Although the airline official was in his twenties, his hair had thinned, his belly had grown, and he had the nervous sweaty manner of a middle-aged bureaucrat. Max crumpled the half-sized paper cup and shook his head no.

The airline man frowned at this response and hustled over to the blond mother. She answered him, her mouth moving angrily. She gestured at the plane, pointing.

Where had she been sitting? Max tried to find which of the three sections of destroyed plane had been hers. It was the first part. A bite had been taken out of the right side of that piece. It was charred and disintegrated, scarring the cornfield. Max turned away.

I’m alive, he thought without shame. He looked at the glass walls of the terminal. A gang of people had stayed indoors to watch. He walked toward them.

His face was very hot. Nobody stopped him from entering the terminal. He didn’t know what airport this was, although it was obviously somewhere between New York and Los Angeles. He found a water fountain just inside the building’s doors. A reporter and a cameraman came through jangling equipment and went out onto the runway while he splashed himself with cold water.

Jeff is dead.

That was a complicated thought and he had no desire to consider its implications.

He walked away from what had everybody else’s attention, making a reverse commute into the heart of the building. The baggage carousels were bare and still. The car rental counters were deserted. The ticketing terminals flashed green at nobody.

He found a newspaper vending machine. The local paper inside told him he was in Canton, Ohio. If he remembered correctly then he was at the home of the Football Hall of Fame. That seemed funny.

“My big chance,” he said aloud.

Max went out the airport building entrance. He saw a few empty cabs. Farther along, standing at the edge of a chain-link fence, were a number of men who might be drivers. They were watching the wreck and the rescuers. A bench against the wall invited Max to sit, and he was tired enough to accept, but he wanted to keep going, to move away from the crash and its cover-up, the steady accumulation of details all designed (he knew this now, understood the process so much better) to reassure the rest of humanity that it couldn’t happen to them.

He walked up to the men and asked if they were taxi drivers.

Two said yes, one a haggard young man with long unkept hair, the other a fat elderly man wearing an electric-green short-sleeved shirt.

“Is there a good hotel nearby?”

“Sheraton’s the best,” said the young man.

“Give me a ride there?”

The young man looked at the scene: at the trucks, still spewing liquid; at the smoking slices of plane; and farther back, at the hangar where a semicircle of survivors limped into the arms of volunteers or peered back in shock or wept beside the ambulances and cars. “Think I should stick around,” he said, leaning his elbows into the fence.

Max noticed that a man on the other side of the driver was recording the scene with a home video camera.

“I’ll take you,” the fat man said.

Max followed the shimmering green shirt to a white station wagon.

“No bags?” the old man asked Max before getting in.

The interior had been cooked by the sun. Its upholstery smelled of manure. “Sheraton?” the driver asked.

Max nodded. He felt guilty, as if he were fleeing a crime.

With tantalizing slowness and grace the old man drove around the circle that led them out of the airport. He had to dodge a number of cars stopped at random, presumably abandoned by rescuers in too big a rush to park properly. “Were you in that crash?” he asked as they straightened out and exited onto a regular road.

Max denied it with a vigorous shake of his head. “Thank God,” he added.

A young man in a blue hospital gown looked at Carla’s leg and at her left hand and flashed a penlight into her eyes. “She’s okay,” he said in a clipped dismissive voice, almost a rebuke. He hurried away, followed by an attentive nurse.

Because of him Carla noticed for the first time that the back of her hand had an inflamed red stripe across it. She remembered the burning sensation she had felt during the crash. Other sensations and images came fast: Bubble wedged in her lap, his hair brushing against her chin; the spinning people and seats, the roaring tigers, and the horrible shock of her empty arms.

“Help me up!” she called. She tried to will her legs over the edge of me gurney. The broken one refused her order.

She looked around. She was in a hallway. Blue letters pasted on a glass panel told her she was outside the emergency room. Through the window she saw a middle-aged man’s chest split open like a chicken on the butcher’s counter, his mouth overwhelmed by tape and a white funnel. The sight was fleeting—they drew a curtain around him. Everywhere there were people and hurried activity.

The people here are really sick, Carla. So lie down and shut up. You’re all right
.

“Oh God,” she said sadly. A state trooper glanced over at her. He stood with his arms folded facing the entrance’s double doors, as if expecting wrongdoers to make a charge. She waved to him. He frowned. And then he came over. He made noise when he walked. His belt was loaded with things. “You seen a two-year-old boy with black hair?” she asked.

“They took the kids to Pediatric Emergency,” he said, still stern, as if she were at fault for not knowing they would. “Looking for your son?”

His accent squeezed the sounds into a whine. She had to repeat his sentence to herself before she understood it. “Yeah,” she drawled. Her tongue was thick and slow. Must be the shot. “What did they give me?” she asked. When the cop didn’t understand her question Carla mimicked an injection with her thumb and fingers.

“Don’t know. Could be morphine. I’ll ask somebody about your boy.”

He moved off behind her. She attempted to turn herself in order to watch where he went. Her eyes were surprised by the glare of the fluorescent panels on the ceiling. She blinked, her elbows slipped, and she fell back with a thud.

Just relax. Give yourself a break
.

“Hi, honey.” A voice wakened her. She wasn’t aware of having fallen asleep.

The face she saw was wrinkled and big and square. Large glasses twitched. They were lightly tinted and had a twinkling jewel at each corner. Carla recognized the frames as being the same as her mother’s. They were an extravagance, costing over two hundred dollars.

“My name is Bea Rosenfeld. I’m a social worker and a family therapist…” she smiled beneficently, tilting her head as if making a joke: “…and some other things. My husband says I like being a student, but you know how men like to belittle what they don’t understand. I guess women do too—but what do you care? You’re in pain. How’s the leg? Has a doctor seen you?”

Carla nodded. “It’s broken.”

“That looks temporary,” Bea said, glancing at the cast. “I was told you said you were traveling with a little boy. Your son?” She studied a sheet of paper. “What’s your name?” Before Carla could answer, she added: “Or what was the name on your ticket?”

“Carla Fransisca.”

“Beautiful name. Franchesca—”

“No. Fran
sis
ca.”

“Right…uh huh. Okay.” Bea’s glistening frames rose up from the paper and shined at Carla. “Well, I think you should know that he’s missing.” The glasses reflected two bars of fluorescent light. She told Carla the fact boldly. She put a big warm hand on Carla’s uninjured one. “Was he in a seat or in your lap?”

“I couldn’t get him in the seat! The belt wouldn’t work!” Carla felt stupid yelling, but she was nervous that her story wasn’t going to be believed. “Ask the stewardess,” she pleaded in a hoarse voice. “Even she couldn’t make it work! It got stuck!”

“Nobody’s saying anything to contradict you, honey. Okay? I’m asking questions to find out some fact that might help us find out what happened to your son.” Bea studied her sheet of paper. “The airline hasn’t made a seating plan available. You don’t remember your seat number, do you?”

“Forties. It was in the forties. Forty-eight?” Carla pulled on Bea’s hand to prompt her.

“I don’t know. Really. I’m telling you everything I do know.”

“Is he dead?”

Bea was neither shocked nor wary of the question. “I don’t know. I know he isn’t here in this hospital and they tell me that all the children are here. But that’s not definite. I don’t want you to assume that they’ve got all their facts straight. There’s a lot of confusion. Can I call someone for you? Your husband? The airline is supposed to notify everyone they can reach, but you probably know how to get to him faster. If you tell me a number I’ll call him now and tell him you’re here and you’re fine.”

“He’s at work,” Carla said.

“Do you know that number?”

“It’s in Manhattan. It’s 555-4137. That’s a 212 area code.”

Bea was writing it down. “Okay. What’s his name?”

“Manny.” Carla was exhausted by this conversation. After Bea left, she collapsed. Her head hurt. Feeling returned to her injured leg; it throbbed and there were pangs just below the knee. All her muscles also wakened to pain. Up and down her back, through her shoulders, down to the tiniest muscle in her arms, they were bruised.

She moaned.

A nurse came over and said, “They’ll be getting to you in a jiffy. We’ve got a lot of people who are badly hurt.”

Shut up. What have you got to complain about? You’re alive, ain’t you?

She cried as quietly as she could.

In his room at the Sheraton Max took a shower. He turned on the hot water so high he nearly scalded himself. When he was done he stood between the twin beds facing a wall mirror, rubbed himself dry, let the towel drop and studied the full length of his body. He had a trim and vigorous figure, thanks to both genetics and regular exercise. A fine down of black hair draped over his pectorals and swirled about his dark nipples. Max shut his eyes and touched his chest lovingly, as if it belonged to someone else. Then he skimmed down with the flats of his palms, feeling his rib cage and fatless flanks, his pulsing stomach and rubbery penis. It was a young man’s body. He opened his eyes and saw a middle-aged head on top. His kinky bush of hair was all gray and the curls were exhausted, squashed at their apex, unfinished circles. His face looked overused and it was. He wondered how many times he had scraped the skin with a razor, fried it in summer, blasted it with exhaust or cold. His ears were big, growing into the elephantine excess of old age. His mouth was pinched by fatigue and his pale lips showed disappointment at the corners. Worst of all, his light blue eyes, which used to twinkle with wonder and mischief when he was young, were dead. They cowered beneath a prominent forehead inhabited only by worried and angry thoughts.

He stroked his penis with one hand and held his testicles in the other. He had no sexual fantasy in his head, no tickle of desire prompting him. He wanted to be erect.

The old unhappy face changed. His eyes brightened, his skin relaxed. His cock lengthened, surged away from his shadowed pelvis, and announced him to the world.

Satisfied that everything worked, Max dressed. While putting on his clothes he remembered his fight with Jeff over his choice of jeans and a polo shirt. The purpose of this trip to LA was to win a major job from the owner of a chain of discount electronics stores. The owner was interested in hiring them to design and oversee the construction of his expansion into New York City. The immediate project was worth a lot of money—as much as their architectural firm had earned over the past two years—for what would probably be six months’ work. And there was also the promise of more. Nutty Nick stores planned similar expansions into Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, and Miami. If Mr. Nutty Nick approved, it was possible that their design might become the basic model, which meant money coming in for years and years with a minimum of additional effort.