Meeting An Old Friend On My Flight Home

The plane was bouncing, but not in a dangerous way. It was rhythmic and slightly nauseating. He and the airplane climbed together through the thick clouds above Marin county. His ears popped. I could hear a noise coming from his headphones, a hiss, above the sound of the engines. We sat over the wing, still, hung over the ocean. I wanted to tell him not to worry about grad school (he wouldn't), or about the girl he had been visiting occasionally, who might leave him, finally, just as he was able to join her in California. They had not met on the internet. And they were both very attractive.

He was so high. We were both gone, really. Drinks in the terminal. Seven dollar beers. And I felt like I should say something. His face was too calm, his hand too steady. I wanted to tell him something, anything.

I knew I shouldn't say anything because he didn't need help realizing that this easy streak might not last forever. But it just might. He knew it very well, as intelligent as I then believed him to be. But in those days we all heard this deafening sucking sound of collapse and decay, among other things, which had some effect on our ability to love simply and in reasonable slices of time: darkness, the night, your own body, and a sea of endless faces in time.

"You know she's not just a beautiful woman," he said.

"I know," I said. "It's obvious. And quite secret and astounding. I can't wrap my mind around it. Maybe that's something, just on its own."

"You can't wrap your mind around anything," he said.

"I know," I said.

When the plane reached cruising altitude, above the clouds, I felt uncomfortably exposed, like a martian astronaut who has hiked up to a nice spot on an alien mountain, only to find that the area is unsuitable for camping. Did anybody even like camping? The seat was too hot, the air too cold. My friend seemed to be drooling on his expensive shirt. I could not wake him. Then the flight attendants passed with drinks. He was still. I read a book and tried not to be jealous of him. There's no way to unpack your callousness on an empty plain of whiteness, infinite on all horizons.