I wanted to ask what was wrong.
I had the sentence ready. It was four words long and I had it in my mouth.
And she turned back towards the window, which is the oldest closing move there is, and I let her have it.
So I went back to my seat.
Which is the single stupidest thing I have done in thirty-one years, and I had been given about four separate openings in ninety seconds, any one of which would have done it.
The trembling hands. The arms around the bag. Perfectly, said by a woman who does not say perfectly.
I saw all three. I went and sat down.
PART 3
About twenty minutes later the cockpit door opened.
One of the pilots stepped into the cabin.
At first I assumed he was simply speaking to the flight attendants. They do that; I have seen it on forty flights.
Then I noticed how serious his face was.
He said something quietly to one of them.
She listened for about four seconds. Then she glanced towards the back of the aircraft and pointed, down the aisle, past about eleven rows.
I remember thinking: somebody is in trouble.
He turned. And started walking down the aisle.
Slowly. Carefully. Studying each row as he passed.
He was not checking the cabin. There is a way people check a cabin and it does not involve looking at faces.
He was looking for one specific person.
And he was doing it the way you look for somebody you have been given a description of rather than somebody you know.
Row after row. All the way back.
About a third of the cabin had noticed by row twenty. By row twenty-eight it was silent, in the particular way an aeroplane goes silent, which is not really silence at all because the engines never stop.
I got up and followed him, about four rows back, which you are not supposed to do.
Nobody stopped me. A flight attendant looked at me and then decided not to, which I have thought about since and which I think means she already knew something.
Then he stopped beside my grandmother.
She slowly looked up at him.
And the instant he saw her face, his expression changed.
Not recognition. He had never met that woman in his life.
Something closer to confirmation — the face of a man who had been told what he was looking for and had just found it exactly where he was told it would be.
