The woman in the middle seat clears her throat delicately and he realizes his left leg is jiggling up and down as if he’s been electrocuted. He puts his hand on his thigh to still it.
He hears his wife’s voice: Do not spiral, honey.
He couldn’t believe it the first time she called him honey. The sweet feeling of that moment.
He smiles tightly in the vague direction of his seatmate, which he hopes she will take as an unspoken apology but not an invitation to chat.
Her name is Sue and her husband, in the window seat, is Max.
Leo knows this, and a lot more about them, because during the delay on the tarmac he had no choice but to overhear as the pair made an astonishing number of phone calls: “Wait, Sue wants a word!” “Let me give you back to Max!”
Max and Sue are a jolly, exuberant middle-aged couple just back from a trip driving a camper van around Tasmania. It was a blast! Sue is tiny, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, and big-bosomed. A silver bracelet loaded with charms jingles as she gesticulates. Max is tanned and white-haired, with a big firm proud tummy. Like Santa Claus back from his summer break. He has the same confident masculinity as the foremen Leo works with: strong, loud men who know what they’re doing and have no difficulty managing their time.
At first, Sue tried to chat with Leo but gave up when he answered in barely polite monosyllables. He knows he could have told her about missing Bridie’s concert, and he knows she and Max are the type to have offered instant sympathy and interest (he gathers from all the calls that they have grandchildren—“Grandpa and I can’t wait to see you!”), but he’d been too tightly wound up to chat.
He looks again at the time. Bridie is onstage right now.
Stop thinking about it.
His stomach growls. He is starving. He refused the “light snack,” because—and this is so stupid—he didn’t want to slow things down. He’d been irrationally annoyed by all those people happily snacking on their nuts and pretzels. He wanted everyone to focus on getting to Sydney.
The lady across the aisle from him unbuckles her seat belt.
She stands.
Until now, she has been a blurred figure in his peripheral vision. If asked, he could have described her as a small lady with silver hair, but there is no way he could have picked her out of a lineup of small silver-haired ladies.
She moves into the aisle, right next to him, facing the back of the plane.
She doesn’t move.
What’s she doing?
Leo keeps his eyes politely on the seat pocket on the wall in front of him. He reads the top line of an advertisement on the back cover of the in-flight magazine: What are you waiting for? Book your Jewels of Europe River Cruise today! “We’ll know we’re old when those river cruises start to look attractive,” Neve always says. Leo has not confessed that the idea of a river cruise already seems attractive to him.
The silver-haired lady is still not moving. It’s been too long. She’s kind of crowding him. Kind of bugging him.
He glances down. Her shoes are small, brown, well-polished, and neatly laced.
She says in a quiet, clear voice, “On the count of three.”
Chapter 3
Well, I once loved a very tall, skinny boy with the most vulnerable of necks who gave me the courage to go to parties and dances when I thought I might pass out from shyness.
“On the count of three,” he’d say while my heart pounded and my vision blurred, and he’d take my hand in his. “One. Two. Three.”
And in we’d go.
That could explain why I counted myself in: I was thinking of him.
Chapter 4
On the count of three, what?
Leo studies the lady. Her face is pale and blank. She seems bewildered. Possibly distressed. It is hard to be sure. He checks over his shoulder to see if people are blocking her way, but the aisle is clear.
He looks back up at her. She is the same age, height, and body type as Leo’s mother except that Leo’s mother would not be seen dead wearing sensible shoes. (Literally. Leo’s mother wants to be buried in her Jimmy Choos. Leo’s youngest sister said, “Sure, Mum, we’ll do that,” while mouthing No way at Leo and pointing at her own feet.)
Leo’s mother doesn’t like it when people “patronize” her. Would it be patronizing to ask this lady if she needs assistance?
He notices a silver brooch pinned to her shirt.
His parents ran a jewelry store in Hobart for forty years, and although neither Leo nor any of his sisters had any interest in carrying on the business, everyone in the family automatically clocks jewelry. The brooch is small, possibly antique? It’s a symbol of some kind. An ancient, old-world-y symbol. He can’t quite see it without leaning forward, which would be inappropriate, but something about the brooch is distractingly familiar. It is somehow strangely related to him. It gives him a sense of…ownership. Vague pleasure? It must be something to do with Vodnik Fine Jewels, but what?
Or is it the symbol itself that means something? Wait, something to do with school? No. University? Thoughts of university lead inevitably to one of his most painful memories, himself on a street, outside a pub, shouting like he’d never shouted before or since, nothing to do with this symbol, although, wait, he nearly has it—
“One,” says the lady.
Will she burst into song on the count of three? Is she in pain, perhaps? Trying to psych herself up to take a step forward? Neve’s grandmother suffers from terrible foot pain, poor thing, but this lady is much younger than her.
Leo’s dad always said that after September 11 he was “ready for trouble” whenever he traveled. “I crash-tackle anyone who behave even a little suspicious,” his dad would say in his Eastern European accent, so earnestly, even though he was a five foot four, benign, dapper-looking city jeweler, a sweet man who never did crash-tackle anyone in his life. “I not hesitate, Leo.”
Would his dad have crash-tackled this woman by now?
I not hesitate, Leo.
Jesus, Dad. She’s a harmless lady! You would so hesitate!
