The flight from Louisville had just descended from 34,000 feet and was leveling off on a parallel course with Chicago`s border with Lake Michigan. As a regular on this flight, Dean Dyksma, knew a steep bank to port was imminent, when the pilot would begin his inland approach to O`Hare.
That`s when his seat-window seat 27A-would dip hard to the left allowing him a low-level view of Montrose Harbor, and more importantly, the pool area of the high-rise he lived in off Marine Drive. But for the moment, the 41-year-old computer systems analyst-a computer professional, as he liked to say-was totally absorbed in the artful panorama currently on display out his porthole.
He touched his nose to the scuffed clear polymer, straining to see the magnificant glacial bowl below. He couldn`t get over how blue it looked, and how much it imposed itself on the miniature latticework of houses and smokestacks. He hadn`t given much thought to the lake in quite a while. He felt almost spiritual about what he was seeing. Yes! that`s it!, he informed himself. I feel spiritual.
His mind drifted to the woman he left at the Louisville airport not more than an hour ago: Linda Arnell would LOVE to hear him say a word like
”spiritual.” That first night she had told him she never heard a Kentucky man talk like he did. That`s why she liked Dyksma so much-he seemed so different, so worldly. To him, she was not only attractive but the most down- to-earth, instinctually bright, woman he had ever met-a hell of a lot more quick-witted than the VP who thought ”it would be nice” if Ms. Arnell, the new executive secretary, tagged along to lunch that first day.
He was brought back to the present by the pilot`s announcement that they would be touching down in a matter of minutes-a bit of information that made Dyksma blurt out loudly: ”Oh Gali!” (Gali was his Chicago girlfriend who had told him the first time they met: ”It`s pronounced just like the golly in
`Oh, golly gee!` ”)
He sensed the attention of the passenger to his right; surely she thought he was some kind of nerd for his childish- sounding outburst-for saying ”Oh, golly!” like that. But he had a larger problem now. He was dead serious as he thought exactly this:
What in God`s name will I tell Gali?
Until the respite of the lake sighting, his brain had been deluged with thoughts of the impending ugliness awaiting him in Chicago, and now it was refocused: How will I break the news to Gali? Gali, the godawful smart 34-year-old woman he had been deeply in lust with for eight months. Gali, with all her degrees, with her quick tongue and commanding presence. Gali, with her pale skin and liquid almond eyes. Gali, who never failed to articulate at exactly the right moment-the most extreme moment of their lovemaking-words that Dyksma lived to hear, words she would withhold until he was returning her close-up, cross-eyed stare for the umpteenth time that night. That is when she said it, screamed it: ”Oh, Dean, I adore you! I adore you, Dean!”
How was he to tell this Gali that he had met a woman more than a decade older than she in Louisville three days ago and had decided to move there and live with her and her 17-year-old son within the month. ”Oh, Gali,” he whispered, slinking deep into his seat. Gali would never understand.
Although Dyksma was well-disciplined in the art of developing a relationship over a period of months before even considering sex, all of that changed with the advent of Gali. It was one of those old-fashioned sexual chemistry things, the way people used to have. There was nothing to develop anyway. Their personalities were so different, it would be pointless to even attempt a balanced relationship. Their only fast rule was that they absolutely had to spend their nights together. It was an absolute that sometimes scared Dyksma. He figured it scared her too.
But, the demure secretary had that relaxed way about her-a softness of voice, of demeanor-that he couldn`t help but like. And she possessed what he considered the rarest of social graces: sophistication without
pretentiousness. The only drawback he could see was a touch of servility in her nature-something she had no apparent inclination to shake. She had fawned over him. He thought about how he and Gali would make fun of women who fawned over men. Gali would never fawn. And Gali could enjoy sex in a non-servile, aggressive kind of way. But . . . , Gali did have that edge to her.
He sat there at his window seat, day-dreaming about Gali`s edge, about Linda`s warmth. He felt his left shoulder being forced against the bulkhead;
the pilot had begun his steep bank to port.
It was time to start searching for poolside cronies: for Costa and Stephanie in their bright swim suits and deep Mediterrean tans; for Amy, with her sun bleached-hair atop her lifeguard station; for his tennis partner, Alex. Once, he told Alex he saw him double-fault as he served on the court adjacent to the pool, but Alex thought he was pulling his leg. It drove Dyksma crazy. ”No, really, Alex!” he argued. ”I saw you! Your big green racket!
Honest to God!”
But there would be no aerial reconnaissance game today-a wave of exhaustion had overcome Dyksma. He did a quick side-long glance at the woman seated next to him before collapsing back into his seat, letting the banking jet`s G-forces shove his limp body against the bulkhead, his eyelids relaxing only half open.
He thought about the woman next to him for a moment, about her stiff coif of hair and purplish spread of lipstick. He figured she was a smoker. She looked like one. Her gauntness. Her lips. They were a smoker`s lips. He speculated that she hated not being able to light up on domestic flights anymore. He let his eyelids close all the way. He thought about Gali. He thought about how tired he was.
It seemed just a second or two later that he felt a slight bumping sensation in his seat. He figured the bumps were due to the landing gear locking in place-he didn`t think he had heard that yet. But the bumping grew stronger, and his whole body started shaking. Then he heard what sounded like a dull ripping noise and, almost simultaneously, he felt a tremendous blast of something hitting him in the face. He tried to open his eyes, but . . . air!
. . . seemed to be pushing on him. He forced his eyelids open. . . .
”My God!”, he screamed the moment he saw a huge crack overhead. ”My God! The sky! The sky!,” he yelled, not hearing his own voice because of the rush of air about him. Dyksma was actually seeing clear sky-lots of it!-through what looked like a tremendous rip in the fuselage, just in front of where he sat. And then he heard a deafening noise!
Before he could think another thought, Dyksma felt himself in the sky. He couldn`t see the rest of the 727 anywhere. He felt his seatbelt cutting into his mid-section and his head bouncing around like a jack-in-the-box gone mad. Can this be? he thought. And then he saw that he wasn`t alone. The gaunt-faced woman with the stiff hair in 27B was still with him; her cotton print dress had blown up over her head and was flapping-snapping-crazily in the wind. He reasoned that their seats had broken from their moorings and were, indeed, hurtling through the sky. He felt exposed, helpless. It was difficult to breathe. He could see strands of the woman`s hair streaming up from the top of her . . . her face! He saw that the woman`s dress had blown completly off, exposing her head. My God, he recoiled in utter revulsion. What`s happened to her face?
From what he could make out, there was some sort of metal shard sticking out from where her . . . . It was too awful. He turned his eyes away. It was then that he saw that his left arm was missing, apparently amputated, along with his shirt sleeve, by a piece of the plane`s thin aluminum skin as they were swept from the fuselage. ”Dear God!” he gasped.
The first cogent thought that came to him after that was of immediate and complete identification-a spiritual bonding, so to speak-with every other victim of an airplane crash. He thought that after they hit, and he was dead, the first thing he would see would be all the other crash victims standing across some kind of bridge beckoning him to come over. And when he crossed over they would hug him-every one of them.
Among the greeters were the last crew of the Space Shuttle
”Challenger.” They were still in their flight suits, still dripping wet;
and as they embraced him he noticed they had exceedingly sad expressions on their faces, expressions that told him that they had lived through a long fall too.
Dyksma had always debunked the theory that a person lost consciousness while falling a long distance to his death. He knew it was just wishful thinking. He remembered reading where a skydiver whose parachute failed to open was seen wide-eyed and gapemouthed just before impact. Dyksma wondered if someone on the ground would notice the awake look on his face just before they hit. His brain was spinning.
