Paper Plane

The man with the paper plane sat in the eighth row back and drank his whiskey. Eric watched him and nursed his own plastic cup, his filled with apple juice.

"Do you want your coloring book now?" his mom asked. Eric looked away from the man and up at his mom. There was a smudge of black makeup on her cheek that fit right in with the stray wisps of hair framing her face, and the manic urgency in her eyes. They were on their way to Orlando, where his mom and dad would be together in the same room for the first time in three years.

"Okay," he said and she handed him a pink book with a bent cover. Most of the pages had been colored already and not all by him. There was still a '.20' garage sale sticker on the cover. Eric didn't mind. He flipped through the yellowed pages and found one that hadn't been colored on yet. It was of a large dinosaur; he thought it might be a diplodocus, stretching its neck to eat a leaf. He selected a green crayon and began coloring the leaves.

"Are you done with that sweetheart?"

Eric looked up to see the flight attendant smiling down at him. He glanced at his mom who had her eyes closed and appeared to be asleep.

"I can take that from you." The flight attendant said and reached over for the little paper cup. He smiled shyly and bent his head back over the coloring book. The flight attendant, whose nametag read Bethany, tossed the paper cup into the garbage sack and continued up the isle.

"Are you done with that, sir?"

The man in the aisle seat of row eight ran one long finger around the rim of his cup and raised an eyebrow.

"You can take it, sweetheart."

Something about the way he spoke made Beth pause for a moment, before she forced a practiced smile again. She reached for his cup and noticed his other hand playing with something.

"What's this?" She asked reaching towards the little object he was moving between his fingers.

The man lifted his hand and she frowned. There was nothing there on the tray. He watched her and said nothing but still it seemed that he was mocking her. She grabbed his empty cup, still frowning, and tossed it in the garbage sack.

"Thank you sweetheart." He said with the slightest nod of his head.

"Thank you," She said automatically. The practiced smile was gone. There was something wrong with this man, she was sure of it. The sooner they landed and he was off the plane, the better. She was glad the seat beside him was empty.

"Excuse me," someone was saying. There was a tug on her arm. Beth turned to the wrinkled woman who sat across the aisle, next to a man who must be her husband.

"I asked for a blanket fifteen minutes ago." The older woman was saying. "Fifteen minutes ago, wasn't it Fred?" She nudged her husband who opened his eyes and looked around.

"Did we land?" He asked.

"No. Has it been fifteen minutes since we asked for a blanket?"

"I will go see about getting you a blanket right away," Beth said. "Mam."

"We'll see about her seeing about it." Miriam huffed in the self-satisfied way she had perfected years ago. "Are you sure you rented a room on the first floor, Fred?"

"I told you I did." Fred leaned against the little round window and half-heartedly hoped the plane would crash.

"Yes, well you said that in Tulsa and somehow I ended up carrying three bags up three flights."