Missed Connection

After looking for him so long, the last place I expected to see him was in the quiet, cool corridor of a plane headed for Chicago. I was shuffling back to my seat and he appeared, hair now dusted gray, peering through glasses at a folded magazine. I hoped he wouldn’t see me but the intensity of my stare and the force of my surprise sufficed to draw his attention and he looked up and the recognition was immediate and breathtaking for us both—like the flash of love rekindled, a mix of excitement and nervousness and a physical churning. I kept walking, though my knees quaked, and he held my gaze a moment too long before lowering it to a magazine article we both knew he’d never finish.

Minutes passed before I was able to tear my eyes away from the back of his head, the few short hairs emerging from his cornflower blue collar, the twin aluminum rods of his glasses tucked behind his ears. I imagined myself shooting him, sending a bullet through that accursed skull, that malicious little brain, but even if I had a piece I couldn’t have, not with all these people, not in such a confined space. I only wanted one person dead; if there had to be a second, I’d rather it be me.

I decided he wouldn’t be stupid enough to forgo the security of the cabin by visiting the bathroom at the plane’s rear, where I could easily break in and strangle him or drown him in the small toilet. If he was smart—and I knew he was—he would sooner piss himself than risk leaving the safety of the crowd.

I wondered if I could approach the front of the plane and somehow fall into him, driving the shaft of my pen through his throat. Could I make it look accidental? I decided I didn’t much care. It had been too long I’d been looking for him to let this chance slip. The gold and black Cross was sturdy and with enough force could damage his carotid enough to doom him up here with no real medical facilities. I wished I had some sort of poison applied to the tip, but I couldn’t think of anything sufficiently deadly to bother with.

I waited for the captain’s Okie voice to permit us to leave our seats and headed toward the front, hoping no one would question my wandering in the opposite direction of the facilities. I tried to manifest calm confidence; I didn’t want some jackass to get the idea of being a hero, thinking I was headed toward the cockpit.

He looked up just before I fell on him, just before I thrust the pen up and in, hoping like hell the tip pricked his spinal cord, and my error registered too late. The stranger gurgled his own blood like a drainplug pulled suddenly, and the vibrancy of his shocked stare faded to dull anonymous senselessness.