LITMIR.BIZ

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almost eclipsed his nose. Almost. I wondered how many of his writing mates were using that incredible nose in their stories. What a gift! Duncan certainly saw it that way. It had taught him how to be blunt and open about things. What else could he do, with a nose like that?

      Martha finally emerged from her bag, trium–phant over her recovery of something. “Got it!” She waved her airline ticket at me. For a moment her own anxiety infected me and I found myself reaching for my bag to reassure myself that I had all my travel documents, even though I knew I did.

      “He’s good, you know,” said Martha as she began repacking her boots and winter coat, which had spro–inged all over the airport floor.

      “Who’s good?” I asked.

      “Duncan. He’s a good writer.”

      I looked at Duncan in frank astonishment. I’d read some of his coroner reports and even without the hor–rific handwriting his prose had been lean and mean, no flowers, no padding, just the facts and nothing more. He raised his eyebrows at me and shrugged.

      Martha caught sight of him and gave him a friendly swipe of her hand. “He just doesn’t know he’s good.

      But he’s done a nice little mystery piece on street kids and squeegees.”

      “Enough already, Martha,” said Duncan. “You’re giving away my trade secrets. Now, where’s the lineup for the baggage check in?” he asked, even though he was looking right at it.

      “Back over there,” said Martha. “Oooo look, there’s Tracey and George. And there’s Elizabeth.” Martha took off like a battleship with Duncan in tow.

      I hung back, not quite wanting to immerse myself in these people’s lives yet. For now I just wanted to observe. I guess I was afraid of being beside someone from the writing group who would talk my ear off for the entire flight. At least on the boat I could escape. I checked my luggage and then walked back down the hall to the donut shop where I bought a donut and O.J. Then I browsed for a book in the airport bookstore before making my way to the gate.

      On the plane I had managed to get a window seat, affording me some degree of privacy and comfort, as long as I didn’t have to use the washroom. But the seat in front of me was full, so I would have a meal tray in my teeth. I watched with interest as Terry Spencer struggled down the aisle, carrying a very large carry-on and a brief–case. When she got to my row she stopped, consulted her ticket, and then glanced at me. I nodded but she looked away and started trying to manhandle her carry-on bag into the overhead bin. A man in the next row finally got up and helped her.

      As she dumped the briefcase in the aisle seat she said to no one in particular, but everyone who was listening, “Why do airplanes always come with such tiny luggage compartments?”

      I refrained from saying it was probably because they figured most people would not take all of their worldly possessions on board. She clicked open the catches on the briefcase and hauled out a huge sheaf of papers, dumping them on the middle seat. As she did so a small object in the shape of an elephant flew onto the floor at her feet. I reached to retrieve it for her, but before I could she snatched it up and shoved it in her briefcase without even looking at me. I caught the eye of a dark haired woman across the aisle, who looked at me and hastily glanced away. Her face was so pale I wondered why she didn’t help it along with some makeup. Terry refastened her case, hoisted it above her head, and plopped down into her aisle seat, swooping up the papers as she went.

      “Glad you could make it” she said, without looking up from her papers or sounding genuine.

      I thought that was a little rude but maybe she was still planning her course and was nervous about not being ready — I know I felt that way. I went back to scrawling out some possible notes for my lectures, until a voice cut through my concentration.

      “George wants a word with you.”

      The odd, resigned but angry tone of voice made me look up. He was standing in the aisle fidgeting with his hands. He was of medium height and build, about forty-five years old with a full head of straight jet-black hair, too dark for his age, so dyed. He had bushy, too dark eyebrows, and telltale grey stubble on a face that must have needed shaving twice a day. His face was pitted by old acne scars and his nose was the red of a man who liked to drink. His chin dropped off like a landslide from his mouth into his neck. The only part of him that didn’t match his age was his body, which looked as finely tuned as a twenty-year-old’s.

      “They’re sitting across from me so why don’t we just switch.”

      Terry looked up and grimaced. “Can’t you handle it, Owen?” The way she said it sounded more like, “What kind of a fool are you?”

      “No. He wants to talk to you about his wife’s writing. She’s pretty upset about what you said.”

      “Christ, what a baby.” Terry quickly glanced up at him and then looked at me and began extricating herself form her paperwork. “All I said was that it needs work,” she scowled. “I could have said much worse.”

      As she finally stood up she looked back at me. “You two haven’t met yet, have you?” she asked, as if it were the most boring thing in the world.

      “Owen this is Cordi O’Callaghan. Cordi — Owen Ballantyne, my right-hand man.”

      I reached over and gripped his hand, then wished I hadn’t. It was like getting flattened by a rolling machine, my rings mashed into my skin. He smiled at me and what should have been his chin bunched up into seven folds of skin, his smile sliding into them.

      Terry stuffed her sheaf of unruly handwritten papers into Owen’s hand, and in a soft, barely audible voice said “Put them in your briefcase.” Then she moved forward and took Owen’s seat. Owen disappeared down the aisle and returned with his briefcase. He tidied the papers but didn’t put them away.

      As the plane took off and reached cruising altitude I kept to myself, reading a magazine about woodworking.

      But it was hard to concentrate because there was a fair amount of whispering going on in the row ahead of me.

      Suddenly, the seat in front of me bucked and a woman with the most amazing curly red hair stood up, forcing her seatmate to get up to let her out. He was a heavyset man in his early forties with a tremen–dous shock of pure white hair. I didn’t catch what he looked like because he sat down immediately. I pre–tended to tie my shoes and peered through the crack and watched as he took the woman’s purse, a red suede eye catcher, and opened it. He looked around furtively and I backed off, but my curiosity was too much for me. I stood up and as I did so I saw him take something from the bag and slip it in his pocket. He looked up and our eyes glanced off each other as I stepped past Owen and went to the washroom. I could feel his eyes on me all the way down the aisle.

      There was a lineup, of course, and I lounged against the side of one of the aisle seats. There was a man sitting in it who seemed to be nothing but a mass of hair. He was reading a paper that was about the illegal trade of wild animals. I wondered if he was a fellow lecturer. His seat–mate, a diminutive blond, was reading a comic book. I had scanned back to the paper the man was reading when suddenly he looked up at me. I quickly looked away, but not before I saw the annoyance in his face. Who could blame him? All these people hovering over him as they waited impatiently in line.

      When I came back the shock of white hair was gone and both seats sat empty.

      I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew was hearing Terry’s voice cutting through the plane “It’s just a piece of writing for god’s sake.”

      And then a male voice saying, “Lady, you have no right….”

      I couldn’t hear what happened next, just a lot of muffled voices, but it was enough to catapult Owen out of his chair. He dumped the papers he’d been reading on the seat with the briefcase and they spilled onto the floor along with the case. Two of the sheets fluttered after him as he disappeared down the aisle. I picked up a manual on hot air balloons and then had to get

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