Jenny lets him share the table with her. There’s a table in the far corner, but she hates to be rude.

Someone behind her bumps her elbow. She looks, but then they’re gone. Just another body in the throng.

The man – golden hair, a dimpled chin, a white button-down shirt with the fabric pilling on the collar – licks his teeth and lifts a finger for a waitress.

“What are you drinking?” he asks over the noise.

Jenny holds aloft her own glass – a mostly drained Merlot. She says it aloud, just in case.

Waitress comes. Takes the orders. He asks for a gin-and-tonic. All around, the crowds thicken and tighten like a belt, like a pair of hands. She hates this place. Airports smell like airplanes. Ozone and cleaning spray and old perfume and coffee stains. Here, the added bonus of the tang of wine and gin and slushie nuclear neon margaritas (which she knows aren’t margaritas, but she loves them just the same).

“Where you flying?” he asks.

“Dallas,” she says.

He nods, like he knows. “Me too, me too.”

He’s got a dark blot on his blue tie. Looks purple.

“You’re very handsome,” he says, an odd choice of words, but there it is. “Pretty eyes.”

The waitress brings their drinks, hurries off. Jenny hoists the glass and takes a sip, and decides right away to stick the needle in his balloon. “I’m married.”

“No kidding.” He says it like he knew it. He already saw her ring, she figures. Just in case, she waggles that finger around her glass. The ring tinks against it.

She shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint.”

He waves it off. “I’m married, too.”

“Oh. Oh, good. I just thought — congrats.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jenny. Jenny Slater.”

The man’s mouth opens, agape. “Hey, Jenny Slater. That’s crazy. My name’s Paul Slater.”

“That’s my husband’s name.” Something feels off, now. Something she can’t identify. Like a knick-knack on a shelf moved away from the others, like a painting replaced in the night.

“I know,” he says, and smiles, and licks his teeth again. “I’m your husband, silly girl.”

“That’s not funny.” Already she’s looking around. Is this a joke? Where’s Paul? Is he here? She looks for police. An air marshal. Somebody. Anybody.

He raises his voice to match the volume of the crowd. “I don’t mean it to be funny, babe.”

The man slides across the table a driver’s license, and taps it against the bottom of her glass. It’s her husband’s license. She’d know it anywhere, because the corner was chewed up – teeth marks from their unruly terrier.

But two things, two things were different.

First, the picture. It wasn’t her husband. It was this man. With the golden hair and the dimple chin.

Second, on the corner opposite of the teeth marks – a rusty spot. A dried circle of weathered red.

Jenny feels dizzy. Her world, whirling. Her guts drop, like she’s already on the flight taking off, ascending, leaving an old place and going to a new one. A destination she didn’t choose. She’s motion sick. Again she looks around, she raises a hand, but nobody sees it. The ground is gone beneath her.

“We’re going to Dallas together,” the man says, chuckling. “A couple’s time away. From the kids! From little Becky and littler Melissa. It sounds so nice.”

He puts his hand over hers. His fingers are callused. The nails, chewed and ragged.

“The kids,” she says, the words barely loud enough. “My children.”

“They’re fine.” He tightens his hand. The calluses bite. Hangnails scratch. “And they’ll continue to be fine, because Daddy loves them very much, and Mommy loves Daddy. And that makes it all okay.”

Outside the bar, the announcement: flight’s boarding. Her flight. Their flight. To Dallas.

“Ready?” he asks.

“I don’t – what’s happening –“ She feels tears moving down her cheeks.

“Time to fly, babe.”

She’s taken away. She leaves the table, leaves the airport bar. With him. Her mouth is dry. Her nose filled with the airport stink. Everything feels loose, unmoored, flying high and getting higher.

The man winks. Smiles. Licks his teeth. And pulls her toward the gate, ticket in hand.

…

For the Crash And Burn Steve Weddle Memorial Airport Flash Fiction.

The book is real. His notes sketched into margins, equal signs and question marks. But what I take out of this book isn’t what the technical writers put into it. I don’t think like a pilot thinks. When I see that there are two main kinds of drag, I assume we’re speaking metaphorically.

So Manual of Flight is a symbolic book to me. An educational work, a foreign text, for sure, but as much about personal momentum as airspeed, and more about drag than drag. The only way I know how to communicate that is to change the context of the words until they’re weird for you, too. I hope.

This is the final poem in this series.

Parasite Drag

Reduced pressure equals increased lift.
Parasite drag increases with airspeed.

Work your empennage.
Work your elevators.

Positive static is stability tending
toward your original equilibrium.

Negative static? The ball’s displaced
and moving farther from equilibrium.

You yaw in the direction of the lowered aileron.
Call it adverse yaw. Call it.

To measure your true course, center
over an intersection.

The course line crosses the azimuth in
the direction of flight.

Increase your airspeed and the parasite
drag increases, too.

I say again: negative, out, over.
Read back.

Roger. Say again. Speak slower.
Stand by.

That is correct: verify.
Check with originator.

© 2009 Will Hindmarch

From a series of found poems drawn from my father’s copy of Cessna’s Manual of Flight.

The wind side of the computer
determines the altitude which results
in the highest groundspeed, as they say.

This is accomplished
by comparing the winds
aloft with the course.

The wind forecasts each altitude
on the rotating azimuth
like a groundspeed/true heading problem.

The true heading problem — the difference
is that more than one wind is plotted
and each wind dot is identified.

The plotter portion of the sliding grid is used
to measure true course. You can think
of it as a device that measures directions.

The following instructions explain
how to determine your true course.

© 2009 Will Hindmarch

This is part of a series of found poems drawn from the Cessna Manual of Flight, which I got from my father.

Once you establish the bank, relax.
The pressure on the ailerons and rudder
pedals? Neutralize them.

Not all of the lift is available
to overcome weight.
You’ll tend to descend.

It’s a shallow spiral.

Roll out
before the desired heading
or you’ll overshoot.

—

© 2009 Will Hindmarch.

This is the second found poem in a series from my dad’s old copy of Cessna’s Manual of Flight.

This increases drag.
This decreases airspeed.
Steeper turns you must add,
power to overcome,
the drag.

Or you’re faced with the choice:
lose altitude or airspeed after you
roll out, of your turn,
reset power
for cruise
so you can fly
hands off.

© 2009 Will Hindmarch

(So I found this Cessna pilot’s guide, called Manual of Flight, in with my father’s books. The thing is full of found-poetry fodder. One of the best reactions I’ve ever gotten to a poem came from an early version of this one, which I’ve just rewritten after losing the original years ago. All this week, I’m composing found poems from this Manual of Flight.)

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I’m happy to report most of the turbulence seems to be behind us, and we’re back at a cruising altitude now. The rest of your flight looks like it should be fairly smooth.

“Unfortunately, it looks like we’re not going to make it to our destination, today. As you might imagine, this is due to spatial flux caused by the Proxima Centaurian spacecraft that was over London until just a few minutes ago. Their matter reorganization array has shifted our planet’s geography, however, so London is no longer there.

“As we do not have enough fuel to turn back now, we are going to proceed on to London’s former location, which seems to now be occupied by Los Angeles, formerly of California. London, meanwhile, appears to have materialized in Peru, so please talk to your boarding agent about catching a connecting flight. If you were proceeding on to Tokyo with us, it’s expected to rematerialize in about 320 minutes.

“Please, now, sit back and enjoy your flight.”

© 2009 Will Hindmarch