Planet Reese. Cordelia Strube
“Besides, there’s E. coli on organic produce. All that cow shit.” She has always been very capable, practical, fearless of plumbing. For this reason Reese was astonished when she told the mediator that she was afraid of him, that she perceived him as uncontrollable. Reese has always felt that he has surrendered to her with little protest. He has even agreed to all of her settlement demands.
The magician is twirling his spikes. “Have you had your PSA tested?” he asks. “Everybody should get tested. Get this. The first urologist said there was nothing wrong with me, didn’t even order a biopsy. In two years my PSA score doubled. Doc number two said, ‘We gotta get that tumour out.’ A bunch of quacks out there.”
The nose-haired man stumbles back and begins to dig around in the overhead compartment. Jackets and bags fall on the magician’s head as over the PA system the captain warns them of pending turbulence. The magician stands, stuffing the jackets and bags back into the compartment. The nose-haired man, weaving about, possibly with delirium from the altitude and alcohol, flails his arms, trying to fight off the magician.
“Easy now,” Reese says, wedging himself between them. “We have to sit down now, turbulence coming. Time to buckle up.” He guides the nose-haired man back into the window seat. Within seconds he passes out. Reese fastens his seatbelt as he should be fastening the seatbelts on his children.
“Every time I fly they do this turbulence number,” the magician complains. “Like, what’s the big deal?”
As the pregnant flight attendant checks their seatbelts, Reese resists an urge to stroke her swollen belly. He is in awe of pregnant women. They are miraculous, sacred, untouchable. Even Roberta was miraculous and sacred, although had she expressed desire to have sexual relations he would have obliged. Fortunately, she was never particularly interested in sex. Previously he’d been dating an Argentinian accountant who’d believed that multiple orgasms assisted her English Language studies.
The magician unwraps another stick of Juicy Fruit. “Cancer changed my life. Used to be if somebody offered me yogourt, I’d toss it. Now I’m a total low-fat yogourt junkie.”
The turbulence begins. Reese fears for his children, wishes he could be with them offering assurances about modern technology and jet planes. In their last stormy exchange prior to the cruise, Roberta had warned him that he’d better stop condemning modern technology because Clara and Derek were entering a modern technological world. “You scare them,” she’d said.
“They told you that?”
He’d had them the weekend before, had set up a tent in his basement apartment. They’d eaten Fruit-to-Gos and played Jurassic-period and then Cretaceous-era dinosaurs. They hadn’t seemed scared.
“Do you think it makes children happy,” Roberta had asked, rhetorically, “to hear about species extinction and loss of wilderness and ... and corporate takeovers?”
“Such is the reality.”
“The reality is I buy Nike because they’re good.”
“They make’em cheap and sell’em high.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
She always says, “I don’t want to talk about this,” as though her wants are the only ones worth discussing.
“They think the world’s ending,” she’d said.
“Yes, well?”
“You don’t know that.”
“A few thousand Earth scientists seem to think we’re at a unique point in a multibillion-year history, that we can proceed to environmental ruin and wide-scale suffering or try to turn it around.”
“You’re telling them that?”
“The point is our children still have a choice. They can take action. They deserve to know that.”
Without warning, the plane drops. Despite the seatbelts, Reese’s and the magician’s heads bang into the ceiling. Women scream, babies wail. The flight attendants, buckled to their seats, are nowhere in sight. The magician falls to his knees in the aisle and puts a blanket over his head.
“I don’t think you should do that,” Reese says.
“Bug off. I’m praying.”
The captain explains that they have dropped fifty feet but that they should be through the worst of it. The magician continues to pray. Reese removes his belt and staggers down the aisle towards his family. A crew-cutted man shouts, “Sit down, dickhead!” at him. Roberta is hunched forward with her arms around both children, who have their eyes squeezed shut. The German is moaning.
“We’re alright,” Roberta says with that look Reese has come to dread. The look that says, This doesn’t concern you, we don’t need you.
“Go back to your seat, Reese,” she says. “It’s safer.”
He staggers back to the magician.
“Can’t you read?” the crew-cutted man shouts. “The sign says ‘Fasten seatbelts’! Sit the fuck down!” He’s wearing a College Girls Gone Wild T-shirt.
Reese squeezes past the magician, who is still praying under the blanket. He decides that if the plane doesn’t crash, if they live to see another day, he will do whatever it takes to keep his family intact. No sacrifice — philosophical, psychological, or financial — will be too great. He may even renovate the bathroom. For years Roberta has complained about the chipped pink bathtub and Reese has argued that, though pink and chipped, the bathtub still works, why add it to landfill? He has told her that he has a vision of his children sitting on the pink and chipped bathtub on a massive pile of other discarded but perfectly serviceable bathtubs. “Reese,” Roberta said, quite loudly, “it’s like we live in a slum. That’s a slum bathroom.”
As the plane stabilizes, Reese vows to renovate the bathroom. Any bathtub she wants, she shall have. Although, he would like one of those water-saver toilets.
The magician crawls back into his seat, his spiked hair flattened by the blanket. The nose-haired man, having slept through the excitement, indicates that he needs to use the wash-room again. The magician and Reese stand to let him pass. Reese moves up the aisle to check on his beloved family. All three are blissfully asleep, cuddled. He wants to put his arms around them, cherish them, forever. They are the posts to which he is pegged. Without them he would collapse. He kisses all three of them lightly on their heads while the German stares.
The movie has engrossed the magician. Reese tries to signal that he wants to resume his seat, but the magician remains oblivious. Reese takes the opportunity to use the facilities. As he approaches the toilets he sees the nose-haired man speaking to the pregnant flight attendant. He appears to be looking for something on the floor. As the pregnant flight attendant bends over to help him search, the nose-haired man presses his groin into her buttocks and grabs her breasts. The flight attendant shrieks. Within seconds Reese has grabbed the nose-haired man and pulled him to the floor. He expects other passengers to assist him but they are all asleep or plugged into the movie, iPods, or laptops. In the seats immediately around Reese is a contingent of seniors. He wrestles the nose-haired man, pushes his knees into his ribs. The man vomits onto his hands. The flight attendant disappears, presumably to get help. Reese has no choice but to hang on, inhaling the stench of vomit. A senior nudges him with his white loafers. “What in heck d’you think you’re doing?” he demands.
The crew-cutted man in the College Girls Gone Wild T-shirt shouts, “It’s a fucking terrorist!! Everybody stay calm!!!”, tackling the nose-haired man’s twitching feet. “Way to go, man,” he yells at Reese, who is feeling the nose-haired man losing strength. A gnarled woman with brown teeth warns, “Check him for combustible fluids!” Suddenly everyone is panicked about combustible fluids and the terrorist. Reese’s only concern is that he keep the nose-haired man away from the pregnant flight attendant or any other unsuspecting females. Roberta, when she wakens, will applaud him for his heroic deed.