Flight

Fourteen

OKAY, SO I GUESS that Jimmy the pilot is a dirty liar and a cheat.

My Indian father was a dirty liar and a cheat.

So I guess this is another kind of justice. I’ve been dropped into the body of a man just like my father.

But I do know that Jimmy feels terrible. There’s acid bubbling in his stomach and rising up his throat into his mouth. It tastes awful. Burning awful. I guess that’s what guilt tastes like.

“Jesus,” Helda says. “I didn’t mean—”

She doesn’t know what to say. She just stands there and stares at the doorway where Jimmy’s wife used to be.

“She’s never been here before,” Jimmy says. “I’ve been flying planes for twelve years, and never, not once in all that time, has she ever come down here.”

Jimmy is a traitor. I’m mad at him, sure, but I also feel sorry for him. Or maybe he’s just feeling sorry for himself, and so I feel him feeling sorry.

“What are we going to do?” Helda asks.

Jimmy looks at her. He doesn’t love her. I can feel that he doesn’t love her.

He is having an affair with a woman he doesn’t love. So he’s cheating on her, too, sort of. I mean, I don’t think you’re supposed to have sex with people you don’t love. I know, I know, I know. People do it all the time. But I really think you’re supposed to be a little bit in love with them. At least a tiny bit. And I can feel that Jimmy doesn’t love Helda at all. In fact, he thinks she’s irritating.

“Jimmy,” Helda says again. “What are we going to do now?”

“I’m going to go find my wife,” Jimmy says.

“But what about me?” she asks.

“I love my wife,” Jimmy says.

Helda starts crying.

Jimmy is a major-league jerk. He’s made two women weep and wail in two minutes. And he made Helda cry by saying, “I love my wife.” I mean, normally, those four words are romantic and lovely, right? But right now they’re as cold and sharp as an icicle stabbed into the heart.

Why do people hurt each other like this?

I just know I never want to be as much in love with anybody as these women are in love with Jimmy. You can’t trust people with your love. People will use your love. They’ll take advantage of you. They’ll lie to you. They’ll cheat you.

“I love my wife,” Jimmy says again.

“But what about me?” Helda asks.

“I have to go,” Jimmy says.

He leaves her like that. I try to make him stay. I try to hold him back. But I have zero control of his body. I try to influence his mind. I shout. But he can’t hear me.

He walks out the door and leaves Helda behind. I can hear her crying hard as Jimmy walks into the parking lot. Jimmy jumps into a big pickup and drives off.

He thinks about betrayal, so I think about betrayal.

He thinks of how many wives and husbands are cheating on each other. And thinks of how many fathers are abandoning their children. He thinks of how many people are going to war against other people. We’re all betraying one another all the time.

I think how I betrayed those people in the bank. Those people in the bank trusted me to be sober and smart and kind. I betrayed them. I’m a betrayer.

I want to weep, but it’s kind of hard to do that when you don’t have a body. I want to make Jimmy weep for me, but his eyes are filled with his own tears.

He’s crying about his marriage and he’s crying about other shit, too.

He’s crying about Abbad, I think, because that beautiful brown man suddenly materializes in the truck with us.

“Jimmy, Jimmy,” he says, “you Americans are so arrogant. You think the whole world wants to be like you.”

“All I know for sure is this,” Jimmy says. “You’ve lived in our country for fifteen years. And you’ve done really well — for yourself, for your wife, and for that new baby. Fifteen years, Abbad, fifteen good years.”

“Yes, Jimmy,” Abbad says. “I’ve lived here for fifteen years, and I have been sad and lonely for my real home on every one of my days. I live in the United States because my real home has been destroyed.”

Abbad is crying. He wipes his eyes and fades away.

Jimmy is alone in his truck. He drives fast.

He has destroyed his home, his marriage. He drives fast.

He has turned his wife into a refugee.

Jimmy drives into a small town, turns a corner onto a quiet street, and pulls into the driveway of a green house: his home.

His wife is there, too. And she’s throwing his clothes out the front door onto the lawn: shirts, pants, shoes.

Jimmy sits in the truck and watches.

She’s now throwing out magazines and books and CDs and DVDs and trophies and everything else that might belong to him.

Jimmy sits and watches.

Then she throws out plastic airplanes, toy airplanes, model airplanes, remote control airplanes. They crash onto the lawn. They crash into the apple tree in the front yard. They crash onto the driveway. They glide and crash into the street.

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty little plane crashes.

Jimmy sits and watches it happen. He watches his wife destroy all his things.

He knows he deserves it.

She carries out photo albums, opens them up, and tears out any photo of Jimmy, any photo that includes Jimmy, and any photo that reminds her of Jimmy.

Soon enough she realizes that every photo reminds her of Jimmy, so she throws all the photo albums into the yard.

She wants to tear out the parts of her brain and heart that remember Jimmy, but she can’t do that. So she tears off her wedding ring and throws that into the street. It clinks against the pavement and rolls and rolls and rolls and disappears.

That takes the last of her energy. She falls to her knees on the porch. She pushes her forehead against the floor and she weeps.

Jimmy sits and watches.

I wonder if my mother mourned like this when my father left her. I wonder if Jimmy’s wife will get cancer from her sadness.

Finally, Jimmy gets out of his truck and walks toward his wife. He steps over and around his things strewn all over the lawn. He steps onto the porch and stands above his wife.

“Linda,” he says.

Her name is Linda. A simple, pretty name.

“Linda,” he says again.

She doesn’t respond. She keeps weeping.

“Linda,” he says, for the third time.

Without looking up, without moving, she speaks.

“How long has this been going on, Jimmy?”

“A year, thirteen months,” he says.

“Do you love her?”

“No.”

She wails louder. Why is she crying harder now? I don’t understand. Would it have been better if he’d said yes?

“Linda,” he says, for the fourth time.

Does this guy think he can fix things if he keeps saying her name? Is he that stupid? He might be. People are that stupid.

“Did you ever do it in our bed?” she asks.

“No,” he says.

“You’re lying,” she says. “Tell me the truth, okay? For once, tell me the truth. Did you sleep with her in our bed?”

“Yes,” he says.

Linda suddenly sits up. She pulls a pistol from her coat, a little pistol, and points it at Jimmy.

And at me.