My sister Noelle. What a gem she was. She always traveled for work, and therefore, she had a whole heap of frequent flier miles that she never got to use because, well, she worked too much.
I, however, got to benefit sometimes from her aforementioned frequent flier miles. She had transferred enough of them to me to bump me up to first class today on my flight, and I was loving it. I had lots of legroom, a more comfortable seat, and even a free drink while I waited for takeoff. Even better, I had the window seat, and the aisle seat beside me so far was empty. Maybe it would remain that way.
I could only hope.
I checked my watch. The plane was about ready to take off any minute now. It was a nonstop flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. I had been vacationing all by myself in Las Vegas for the past week as a present to myself after my divorce had finally come through.
God knew I deserved a present to myself. My husband had seldom bought me gifts throughout our entire 20 year marriage. It had been a sticking point for me, though my hints and nudges and sometimes outright mentioning it had always fallen on deaf ears.
While on vacation in Las Vegas I had done some minimal gambling, seen a few concerts, done some sunbathing, and had hung outside a bit at Bellagio in the evenings to watch the fountain. The whole trip was fantastic!
I had left the care of the kids with my now ex husband, though two teenagers didn't exactly take much work. Quick runs to fast food restaurants and nonstop internet service would entertain and suffice. Really, keeping them from burning the house down was all my ex had to do.
But now I was going to meet my aforementioned sister in Los Angeles as she had a couple days off there. Our goal was to see how many famous people we could in the two days we would be there. Oh, and we planned to shop and to see the Hollywood sign.
The plane's emergency landing procedures had just been demonstrated to us by our two flight attendants, and I was assuming the plane was just seconds away from taxing to the runway.
But I was wrong.
There began a slight commotion first between the two pilots, and then amongst the two flight attendants. This caught everybody in first class's attention. The flight attendants tittered and whispered to each other for several seconds. Those of us in first class all glanced at each other in confusion.
"What's going on?" A woman asked out loud.
"There better not be a delay," a man said angrily.
"The plane better still have both its wings glued on," a different woman said.
We all chuckled.
The door to the airplane that usually remained sealed at this point suddenly opened, and an airline employee I remembered from the airport counter stuck her head inside the plane. "This way," she said, as one extra man behind her squeezed onto the plane.
"Thank you very much. Sorry, but thank you," the man said to her.
I watched the tall, nicely-built, sunglasses-wearing man glance at the seat numbers. He began to approach me and came to rest in the aisle seat right next to my window seat. I looked at the man out of the corner of my eye. He had dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair with much lighter highlights around his face. He was definitely an older guy, in his upper fifties maybe, though his age was difficult to tell for sure from behind his Ray Ban sunglasses. He dropped his backpack onto the floor and it bumped against my left leg. I glanced over at him and shot him a small smile in greeting as he got situated in his seat.
He looked at me, sneered, and said quite directly: "Don't look at me, and don't talk to me."
I blinked and shook my head somewhat in shock. "Excuse me?" I said.
He glanced at me with a superior-looking smirk on his face and said, "You heard me."
I narrowed my eyes at him, but he'd already looked away.
I took this moment to look the asshole over. He was dressed in a black button down shirt, black jeans, and shiny black shoes. His backpack was also black. There was a theme here, I thought.
On his fingers were several sparkly diamond-looking rings - though there was no way they could have been real - and his scruffy face looked like he might have shaved maybe a day or so ago.
He dug around in his backpack and pulled out an expensive-looking, thin, gray, laptop computer.
His phone in his pocket suddenly rang and he immediately grabbed and answered it.
"Talk to me," he said into the phone.
He ignored me as I watched him and eavesdropped.
"You sent it to me finally? Yeah? Well, good. It's about time," he growled into his phone.
He pulled up an email program on the screen and I watched as he forcefully typed a few keys and a video came up. Music came blaring out of his computer as the video began.
I couldn't help but look at his screen. The video was as odd as he was. Waif-like women in silver bikinis in a city with tall buildings walked across a street to the beat of music. Then there was a close up of a dog that barked. Then lines swirled on the screen to the music, and then a diver swan-dived into a pool. It was all set to a song that was burned firmly into my memory from decades ago. I might have remembered a few words of the song, but I was currently so miffed at this man that the words escaped me.
He glanced over at me, noticed that I was watching his computer, and he quickly folded the screen down, effectively closing it. "Just a second," he said to the person on his phone.
He held his phone to his chest to muffle it as he looked at me. "I thought I told you not to look at me," he said gruffly.
I frowned, my anger spiking. "Well, I probably wouldn't have cared, but for the fact that you explicitly don't want me to look. But now it's like a car crash, and I can't look away," I said, giving him a shit-eating grin. "Real classy video, by the way," I said with a sneer. "Who made it? Monkeys with ADHD?" I asked.
He huffed out a breath and turned the computer so I couldn't see it so easily and he opened the laptop again.
A female flight attendant came by and leaned down next to the man. "Sir, you'll need to put your phone into airplane mode and return your tray table to its upright position," she said. "We're getting ready to take off," she said.
The man huffed out another breath but he begrudgingly did what the flight attendant asked him to do. He ended the call and he put his phone back in his pocket.
The plane taxied to the runway and minutes later we were barreling into the sky. The seatbelt light was not off yet, but the man still undid his seatbelt, unlatched his tray table, and got his computer back out way before it was safe to.
I eyed him with disdain. He started up the video again. I watched it out of the corner of my eye. There were more scantily-clad women but this time they were dancing to the music. Then there was a cat in the foreground cleaning its face. Cells split apart by mitosis. A water droplet dripped into a cup of water creating ripples. Then there was an alien ship that landed and little aliens got out and started walking around. A man with a huge Mohawk looked like he was screaming.
I couldn't help it, but I started to laugh.
The man quickly shut his laptop again. "You're laughing at me?" He asked.
I laughed even harder. "What the hell is that you're watching?" I asked, pointing at his computer.
He pushed his sunglasses up onto his head. His eyes gazed at me and they were clear and icy blue - cold. "What's it to you?" He said with a sneer.
"Nothing," I said. I continued to chuckle and shook my head. I looked out the window and watched the fluffy clouds that were around us and I watched the ground far below slowly pass beneath us.
"Excuse me? Sir? Mr. Kane?"
I glanced over into the aisle. There was a woman probably in her late 40's - a little older than me - standing there with a little pad of paper and a pen. "Can I have your autograph?" She asked.
Curiously I watched as the man next to me wordlessly took the pad of paper and a pen, scribbled a signature on the paper, and handed it back to her.
"Thank you! Thanks so much!" She said.
He nodded, said, "you're welcome," and she walked off.
The man looked at me with a smirk.
I frowned at him.
Then a man walked up to my strange seatmate. "Hi! Kane, you rock! Can I have your autograph, man?"
The man in the seat beside me nodded, and signed another piece of paper. "Thanks, man," the guy said.
"You're welcome," the stranger beside me said. They fist bumped each other, then the man in the aisle walked off just as the woman had done.
