My girlfriend, Jill, and I are strapped into this plane over Diamond Bar. It’s after our vacation, and we’re heading home to Milwaukee. I’m looking at this guy across the aisle. He looks like Gary Milhowski might’ve if he’d lived another 20 years—instead of killing himself at age thirty-two. This guy still wears out-of-fashion, brown large-framed glasses like Gary wore. He flips through a magazine, and then he talks to a middle-aged, nicely dressed woman. She wears a thick makeup base, bright red lipstick. Her mouth set in a sturdy frown. Earlier, before takeoff, she asked if she could have Jill’s aisle seat. I said, “No, we’re together.” Her frown creased deeper. (She was that close to sitting next to me for four hours. Whew!)
The Gary look-a-like asks her, “Do you want a drink?” She accepts. He slips closer to her.
Now I think: Maybe this is your lucky day, Lady, and Gary will scoop you up. Except right about then he says, “The Ladish corporation didn’t want me anymore…(then, he sounds like a sitcom commercial) after I gave them nearly 30 years of my life.”
She downs her drink, turns to her computer, “I’m sorry, but I have to get to work.”
He doesn’t get it, and says, “I was a mechanical engineer….” He looks like a cork floating in the Great Salt Lake. He skims another magazine. I can see the cover: “Latest High Tech Generator Manufactured In Brazil.”
I look away. Jill is napping. I see Gary, again. He is scuba diving, then he is walking on the beach with those dumb rubber fins. Water drips from his acne-scarred face.
With nearly four hours to go, we fly above dead clouds. North, northeast of LA.
John Sierpinski has published in California Quarterly, Icon, Crucible, Beginnings, North Coast Review, among other publications. He is currently writing at the Vest Conservatory for Writers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.