“Bet she did,” said Kim out loud, as she has no filter.
“I bet she did too,” said the captain gloomily, and they all laughed.
“I’d like to know when and how I’m going to die,” said Anders. “I’m so bummed I missed a prediction from the lady.”
“It’s not real,” Ellie said, with such conviction you would think it was a rule she’d learned in Ground School. “She was just making it all up as she went.”
Allegra remembers that Jonathan didn’t contribute much to the conversation on the bus, just looked at his phone and avoided all eye contact with Allegra, who also didn’t speak much, as she sat stiffly in her damp clothes, her back so fragile it felt like it could explode into a million pieces at any moment.
“So she predicted I’d die by self-harm at the age of twenty-eight,” says Allegra now.
Jonny flinches. “That’s horrible. You’re twenty-eight now! That was your twenty-eighth birthday!”
“I’m aware,” says Allegra. “It’s fine. I’m not worried. I’m not…you know, depressed or anything. I will not be self-harming.”
He frowns. “Imagine if she’d said that to someone experiencing mental health issues.”
“But I’m not,” says Allegra. “So it’s fine.”
He looks intently at her. “My brother got bad depression in high school. It was a scary time for our family.”
Goodness. What is going on? He’s basket-weaving pastry, he’s sharing personal stories about his family, he’s being vulnerable.
“Anyway,” she says. She’s certainly not going to share stories with him about her family’s history of depression. She sees those claustrophobic mustard-yellow walls again from her long-ago nightmare, thinks of her grandmother, waiting, waiting, possibly still waiting.
“Did you do an incident report?” asks Jonny. “For a passenger disturbance?”
Is this his pompous work persona emerging? Good. He’s being too nice. It’s weird.
“I thought about it, but nothing really happened; it was all over before it began,” she says. “I did a safety report for my back injury, and the vomiting kid, but the psychic lady…no.”
He nods. “Sure.”
“Do you think I should have?” She is momentarily anxious. “Maybe I should have.”
“No, I’m sure it’s fine,” he says, and he puts a comforting hand on her arm. “Sorry. I don’t mean to worry you. It would only be if a passenger complained or a video went online. That would have happened by now if it was going to happen. How long has it been?”
“Six weeks,” says Allegra. “Yes. I guess it would have.”
He puts his glass down next to his dumbbell and nasal spray, rolls onto his side, rests his head on his hand, and looks up at her with a smile.
Oh, no. Please. Stop it. You can’t actually like-like him, Allegra.
The fragrance of baking fills the apartment. She imagines him carefully cutting strips of pastry and feels a weightless sensation, a roller coaster tipping forward of her heart.
Her mother taught her that relationships begin with mutual respect and friendship that leads to love and then, only then: sex. But if you started with sex, could you loop your way back to friendship? Could you do things out of order and end up at the same place? In an actual relationship? With First Officer Jonathan Summers? Of all people?
He says, “Tell me your life story, Allegra Patel.”
He says it like he really wants to know.
Chapter 44
Tell me your life story, Cherry.
Said a man with liquid black eyes on a summer night while he topped up my red wine and nudged a basket of garlic bread toward me across a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, and he said it like he really wanted to know.
You do not want to know my life story, at least not in the same way that he did, because you are not hopeful that I will take off my green crocheted dress later tonight and go to bed with you.
But you do want to understand how I came to be “the Death Lady.” I want to understand it myself.
I will therefore attempt to tell as accurate and concise a version of my life story as possible, and I will not try to be charming or funny, like I did that night in the Italian restaurant in Glebe.
(Don’t try to be funny, Cherry, the liquid-eyed man said, years later. That’s the way it goes sometimes. You no longer beguile.)
I promise I will circle back to the dinner party and the ringing of the doorbell.
My good friend Jill hated that phrase: circle back. She worked for a man who said it all the time: “Let’s circle back to that, Jill.” It made her grind her teeth. Sorry, Jill.
But the older you get, the less linear your memories, and the more everything seems to circle back to something else.
Chapter 45
Budget your time like it’s money!
Leo looks at the text from his boss and tries to remember if he ever actually asked Lilith for help with time management strategies over the last three years, or if she has noticed it’s a weakness of his and she’s trying to mentor him, and if that’s the case, he is of course grateful and open to constructive criticism.
He feels a little ill each time her name appears on his phone or computer screen. Does this indicate internalized misogyny because she’s his first female boss? But he is used to bossy females. He has three younger sisters. He was their horse! He had to crawl around the house on hands and knees while they shouted, “Giddy-up!”
