Nonstop

Cloud Study by John Constable

What if the flight from Boston to San Francisco really did take forever and the captain came on the intercom and announced, “well, folks, I’ve got some good news and some bad news: the bad news is that the earth has disappeared from sight and no longer registers on our instruments, and so it seems that we are stranded here in the sky for all eternity, in a luminous, cloudy limbo somewhere between our original point of departure and our scheduled destination, and the good news is that there is an endless supply of fuel as well as complimentary beverages and meals—miraculously, our supplies completely replenish themselves after each usage, somewhat like that bottomless pitcher of wine in the ancient Greek myth—so at least we won’t be contemplating cannibalism or taking a sudden dive into an unknown void—and frankly I’m hoping that there might be a member of the clergy on board, or a philosopher, or even a scientist, who could help us all deal with the predicament in which we have found ourselves because, I confess, I am at a total loss,” would the passenger doing crossword puzzles in seat 21E volunteer to take a shift as a stewardess, and ask the name of each person to whom she served a meal on a plastic tray, saying “so glad to meet you,” in a warm, gentle voice with a southern accent, and would the passenger hunched over his laptop in seat 14B, close his spreadsheet and begin writing about his childhood on the coast of Maine instead, and would the passenger wearing headphones in seat 25A turn off her CD player and take her flute down from the overhead bin, and when everyone got tired and the shades were pulled down to simulate night, begin to play a mysterious, haunting tune, and would I stop reading, tucking my book into the seat pocket in front of me, and pull my son, who is on the verge of becoming too old for such things, onto my lap and simply hold him there, reveling in the tender-heavy  weight of his long limbs, the glistening fur-feel of his razor cut boy-hair, the unblemished nectarine skin of his summer-sunburned cheek, the cinnamon-vanilla-coffee  scent of his neck?

by Nina Zolotow

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