Amy slept little during the flight. Jolted by turbulence and compressed in the inhumanely narrow space provided in economy class, she spent most of the night with her knees against the seat before her in a vigilant effort to keep the man sitting there from reclining. With her headphones tuned to the classical station, she did her best to ignore his huffing, swearing, and twisting in his upright position. She stared out the window, watching the lights on the wing wink trails across the dark sky. As her flight to Moscow hurtled to the east, crossing time zones and moving into the relative future, day broke with a flash.
Suddenly it was morning. The cabin was filled with light and the flight attendants were in the galley, clinking plates and brewing coffee. Travelers stirred throughout the cabin. The man sitting in front of her stood up and looked at her with angry, dark-circled eyes before walking across the plane to speak to another passenger. With the threat of a reclined seat temporarily suspended, Amy decided to use the bathroom.
She unbuckled her seat belt and slid past Pete, who still snored softly. Once she was on her feet, she looked to the back of the plane. Several rows behind her, a curly mop of hair projected into and obstructed the aisle. Dustin was splayed across his seat and the empty seat next to him. With his body limp and jaw slack, he looked dead. Before the flight he had offered Amy and Pete sleeping pills. With as little sleep as she had gotten the night before, tossing and turning with anticipation, she did not think it was necessary and declined. Once on the plane Dustin consumed a handful of little blue pills and, despite the warning against mixing them with alcohol, two flight-sized bottles of Merlot. Amy, who had not slept a wink, glared at him enviously, drool and all.
Seeing that there was no line for the bathroom, Amy hurried towards it. But as she stepped inside the lavatory, an unwelcome surprised greet her. The door closed, the light flicked on, and Amy saw a thin, gray haze hanging in the cabinette. The bathroom was filled with smoke. Cigarette smoke. Her nose twitched and quivered. Although she tried to hold it back (even drawing her finger to her nostrils, as if that ever helped) her body quaked with a sneeze. She sneezed again more forcefully as the plane hit a spot of turbulence. She lost her balance and slammed against the wall.
Amy burst out of the bathroom and nearly collided into a stewardess. She unleashed another nostril-flaring eruption. "Are you alright, ma’am?" the stewardess asked in a fine British accent.
"No, I’m not," Amy declared. "Someone has been smoking in the bathroom. I’m very…allergic…to…" she sneezed again, pronouncing "cigarettes" through her nostrils in a shrill whinny.
The stewardess poked her head inside the lavatory. "They did smoke in there, didn’t they!" she marveled before adding with a rueful lilt, "I’m sorry about that. Someone deactivated the smoke detector. I apologize." Then, in a lower voice so that only Amy could hear, the stewardess said, "This happens on these flights to Russia. Russians love their cigarettes. There really is not a lot we can do about it. They’re very difficult to catch in the act. They’re very sneaky."
Amy used the lavatory on the other side of the plane. After attending to her business, she cinched up her pants and inspected herself in the mirror. It is a universal truth that no one looks quite as bad as on a commercial flight. No one outside of First class is particularly well-rested. The lighting is harsh. And the recycled air whisks moisture away from the skin faster than a desert wind. Still, Amy marveled at how bad she looked. Her eyes were pink and muddied. There were lines on her face that she had never seen before anywhere else. But even worse than looking ugly, she felt ugly. Her head throbbed. Her lower back throbbed. Below her diaphragm and above her perineum, a soft-pink sea of crimson tides was brewing. Being bloated at sea-level was uncomfortable. Being bloated at 36,000 feet in a confined plastic tube was unbearable. Frowning at her reflection, Amy put on a pair of black plastic sunglasses that concealed her eyes and half her face to boot.
