“Neeeearrrrr bshhhh.” The boy zoomed his toy toward my fingers.
I pulled away just in time. “You, monster child,” I said. “Are you attempting to jinx our flight?”
“What?”He shot me a face of sour concern.
Children were so easy to read, never even attempting to hide their emotions. Their brains hadn’t developed enough for them to understand that restraint was power. Actually, now that I thought about it, Imogen was equally expressive.
“Every time you crash that model of our airplane, you taunt the universe to crash the actual plane. We could be one smash away from plummeting to our deaths. Well,yourdeath. I’ll be just fine.”
“What?”
Apparently the child’s brain was broken. He only appeared to be able to speak in noises and whats.
“Which part do you not understand?” I asked. “I suppose you need me to break it down for you. First, the engines sputter, the cabin shakes, nerves turn to panic across the mass of passengers.”
The man beside the boy, a business fellow based on his choice in formalwear, removed the strings from his ears. “Is there a problem?”
I asked the boy, “Is there a problem?”
The boy shook his head emphatically.
Pleased, I turned back around in my seat. The sounds and the banging ceased.
“That was…” Imogen’s saucer eyes showed a mix of emotion, the most prominent being admiration.
“I know,” I said. “Children.”
She folded her hands in her lap, cleared her throat, and said, “Have you really never flown anywhere ever? You’re so…”
“I’m so what?” I asked.
“Glamorous,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“I assumed you had flown everywhere, traveling the world as a posh jet-setter.” She looked around, then leaned in and whispered, “When you aren’t potty portaling about.”
“Commercial air travel was relatively uncommon in my day. The photographs were nothing like this. Seats were spacious. Planes offered fine china for meals and lounges in soft, inviting hues. It was nothing like this somehow devoid-of-human-touch yet crammed-like-prisoners scenario we are currently experiencing.”
“What do you meanin your day?”Imogen scrunched up her face in confusion. “You sound like my grandfather.”
“I’ll assume your grandfather is a lovely man, and that is intended as a compliment.”
“Yeah, of course,” she said with a wave of her hands. “He’s great. Totally. I only meant…we’re about the same age, right? So I assume your back-in-my-day stories would be about parachute pants and shoulder pads, not…the invention of modern air travel. I’m curious what I’m missing, because I’m pretty sure I’m missing something here.”
Of course she wouldn’t assume I was a relic of another era.
“We may appear to be approximately the same age, and in a way, we likely are,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re about forty, right?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Me, as well. Only my birthdate is closer to your grandfather’s than yours.”
Her brows furrowed.