Passenger 322

Jonny and Sofie Hamilton

“Don’t worry, mum and dad are sleeping!” – Sofie whispered into her brother’s ear and smiled like only a mischievous 10-year-old can. – “You can lock the toilet door from the inside if you are worried that someone will come in.”

Jonny was hesitant. At the mature age of 6 years and 3 months, he knew that most spells aren’t real; they are invented by grown-ups for their story books that they sell for money. But he also knew that Sofie was smart and read a lot at school. He wanted to believe very much that this time the spell would work.

“Hey, just make sure you do everything in the right order. Do you remember the order, Jonny?” – Sofie was growing impatient. The batteries in Mum’s iPad were drained and she couldn’t find the cable to charge it. Sofie was bored. She consulted with her blue and pink plastic wristwatch to confirm that they will be landing in approximately… 2 hours and 30 minutes!

“Yeah, I think so…”

“Repeat it back to me!”

“Make my face wet with my eyes open. Turn around 3 times…. Counter wise?”

“Counter-clockwise, silly! It means this way” – Sofie took out a black Sharpie from the seat pocket in front of her and marked Jonny’s left forearm with an arrow. “Go on!”

“Okay, okay… Turn around 3 times this way, and then put soap on my hands and push the hands together. Close my eyes. Then say “Look at the Sun again, raise from the dead, my old friend!” and then clap 3 times. Is that it?”

“Yes, that’s all! And Brucie will be alive again! You’ll get to play with him as soon as we are back home!”

“Are you sure about all this? I am worried that it won’t work…”

“You’ll never know until you try. This spell only works when you are very high up above the ground. Look outside! We are above the clouds!”

It was Jonny’s second-ever flight on a real aeroplane, he had only flown imaginary ones before. Visiting Nana in London was fun despite what happened at home just before they left; he especially loved when they went to the Natural History Museum and saw all the dinosaurs and cool glittering rocks and even a one-eyed skull, that must have belonged to a cyclops! Jonny was so excited about the flight itself as well, but the aeroplane proved to be very boring; he wasn’t even allowed in the room where pilots work – the cockpit it’s called!

Two days before Jonny boarded a Boeing 777-300ER to fly to London, tragedy struck. He found his best friend of nearly two years, Brucie the Courageous Guinea pig, in his cage, not breathing and stiff as a rock. Jonny didn’t really understand what had happened, but he knew it wasn’t good. Brucie was just lying in front of his favourite house, that Jonny made for him out of red and blue Lego bricks. Poking him with a pencil didn’t help, so Jonny went to get his mum. As soon as Veronica entered the room and looked into the cage, her eyebrows formed what Jonny liked to call “a furry roof.”

“Oh, poor Brucie… I am so sorry, Jonny!”

“What happened to him? Is he tired?”

“Well, you can say that. Bruce is just…. Well… Dad will explain it better. Let me go get him!”

The wait was very long. When Robert finally came upstairs, he already had his eyebrows resembling a roof.

“Oh, Jonny… I am sorry about Brucie. He was a good friend!”

“But what’s wrong with him?”

“Well, everything has a beginning and an end. Do you remember how Brucie was so little when we got him? And then he grew up. And now… Well, and now it is time for him to move on.”

“Move on? Where is he going?”

“No one really knows, son. Some say heaven, some say another life… It is a mystery. But we have to give Brucie a proper send-off. Will you help me with that?”

“Send-off? What is that? Will I ever get to play with Brucie again?”

“Unfortunately, not… It’s okay to cry when you lose a friend. Come here!”

A strange feeling slowly rose from somewhere inside Jonny’s belly, a sticky sensation he has never felt before. Tears started streaming down his cheeks and onto his black Batman pyjamas… He thought he will never stop crying. Robert held him in his arms, slowly rocking him back and forth, thinking about how death is inevitable, yet every time it strikes nearby, no one is ever prepared to face it.

Bruce Guinea Hamilton was laid to his eternal rest in the backyard the following evening, with Robert reading a eulogy and Jonny holding his sister’s hand, their faces wet and puffy.

“Do you want to say a few words, Jonny?” – asked Robert while placing the black Converse shoe box with Brucie in it into the small hole he dug earlier by the Jacaranda tree, that just started blossoming with fragrant purple flowers.

“Do I have to? I don’t know what to say… Bye-bye, Brucie. You were my best friend and I will miss you a lot!”

That night Jonny had a strange dream, where he was in the cage with Brucie, but they were both the same size. Brucie was offering him tea with crackers on the front porch of his Lego house.

…………………

“Okay, I am ready. Wish me luck, Sofie!” – Jonny tried to unclasp the seatbelt as quietly as possible, but the buckle still made a scary noise and almost bit his middle finger off. Walking down the aisle towards the back of the plane, Jonny was repeating the actions he needed to perform in the toilet in the correct order to himself. He looked at the smudged arrow on his left forearm and took a deep breath, noticing how sweaty the palms of his hands were.

Sydney Lavigne

“Finally – some quiet time! These long hauls are getting to me. I wonder if we still have those salt and pepper crackers? They are oh so good, I can eat them all day” – thought Sydney and sat down in the corner she liked to call “Stewardess quarters”. It was her 284th flight today. She liked to think that flight number 300 would be a special one. Maybe she’ll meet the love of her life? Or win the in-flight scratchcard lottery? Preferably both!

“Highly unlikely” – said Sydney out loud. Her 100th flight was a very boring London to Reykjavik where literally nothing happened and her 200th was an excruciating torture that is Brisbane to London, where she broke her right heel and got puked on by a drunken idiot in first-class.

Despite the uncomfortable high heels (airline regulations) and the drunk passengers in first and business, who always thought they could get away with shitty behaviour just because they paid thousands for their seats, Sydney quite liked her job.

“It’s obviously temporary; I am just saving up for a flat of my own so I can finally sit down and write my first proper novel” – she liked to think to herself. “A cosy flat in LA would be nice, somewhere in Echo Park. Or I can just stay with gramps in London. London is better than LA, right? At least we have seasons here!”

Sydney’s favourite way of killing time on a long haul was to exercise her imagination and come up with stories about the passengers on board. She would usually choose a happy couple, a frowny businessman, or a hippie-looking lady in her 60s. Anyone with a distinctive appearance would work well. She would usually just observe the protagonist for a while, paying special attention to their clothes, luggage and mannerisms. And then, during the breaks, Sydney would scribble in her brown leather-bound notebook, lost in thought, with her left hand moving swiftly across the pages. She started this a while ago, and by flight 284 the notebook was quickly running out of pages.

Collecting characters “in the wild” was fun. Strangers, assembled at random by unconnected events, locked in a metal tube flying at 35 thousand feet for many hours, fascinated Sydney. She was always on the look for a good story. Eavesdropping became a true art form for her. And every interaction with the passenger she was interested in felt like a covert operation.

Today, on this Heathrow to LAX flight, Sydney had her eyes on a couple returning from their honeymoon. She tried to picture them picnicking in Hyde Park, near the Serpentine, feeding the geese and squirrels and drinking cloudy apple cider right out of the bottle, but their constant bickering about absolutely everything made her feel sorry for them.

“Who flies home after a honeymoon and looks like they are about to strangle each other? That’s awful!”

There was also a fascinating lady in row 32. According to the passenger manifest, her name was Ester Hopkins and she was about to celebrate her 80th birthday. Sydney was dying to talk to Ester since she boarded, but as soon as the landing gear was retracted, Ester was out like a light, snoring confidently, her long snow-white locks covering her beautifully wrinkled face. Sydney was keeping an eye on Ester, but as the hours passed it was becoming less and less likely that they will have time for a chat.

The lights were dimmed in the cabin and most passengers were sleeping. Only some faces were illuminated by the flickers of the in-built LCD screens. Even the light turbulence occurring regularly didn’t seem to wake anyone. The soft green light strips running along the carpets gave the cabin a mysterious yet soothing atmosphere. The murmur of the four jet engines mixed together with the light rattling of unknown origin. The cabin still retained a barely noticeable scent of preheated croissants and chicken tikka masala from an hour ago.

Sydney saw a boy walking down the aisle towards the back. He was the one who told her earlier that his Guinea pig had died back in LA.

“Do you need help?” – Sydney came toward Jonny and smiled.

“Erm…oh…no…I am okay. I just need to pee”

“Okay, well the toilet is that way. The lights will turn on as soon as you lock the door”

“Okay!”

The galley was at the back of the plane, so Sydney decided to have a look for those crackers. She also wanted to make sure Jonny was okay on his own.

The very last bag of Salt and Pepper Crackers was staring at her from the bottom shelf of the trolley that was neatly parked in its designated bay. “Nice one!” – thought Sydney and devoured the whole bag in record time.

Right when the last cracker disappeared into Sydney’s mouth, the plane took a sharp dive, as if all the air had suddenly disappeared from under the wings. Just like when you are going down on a rollercoaster and your stomach isn’t fast enough, so it ends up in your throat. This never gets old.

Sydney scrambled to find something to grab onto and inhaled rapidly. Small bits of the most delicious cracker ever made went into her windpipe. The lights in the galley flickered for a moment and a strange smell tickled Sydney’s nose. Choking on the cracker, Sydney grabbed a bottle of Evian and drank half of it in one go. The cracker was still scratching her trachea, but at least she could breathe again.

“Why are you crying?” – Jonny was standing beside her, his face wet and his hands soapy.

“I am not crying, just choked on a cracker. Why is your face wet? Do you want me to help you with that?”

Jonny’s expression changed from curious to scared. “No, no, no! I am fine, it will dry out by itself. I don’t need help, thanks!”

“Well, no problem then. But those soapy hands will get very sticky if you don’t wash off the soap. It’s gonna be yucky.”

“Oh no… I will wash them later. Just not now” – said Jonny and looked at Sydney through his small plastic glasses with disproportionately thick lenses. “Please don’t tell Mum and Dad, they’ll be mad.”

“Why would I tell them? Don’t worry, this will be our little secret! My name is Sydney. And you are Jonny, right?”

“Yup. You were the lady who helped us put the suitcase on those shelves”

“That’s right! Wanna know what we call these “shelves”? We call them overhead bins”

“Bins? Like the ones you put trash in?”

“Exactly! Isn’t that funny? Here, I have something for you!”

Sydney opened the top drawer of one of the trolleys and took out two lollipops, one apple and one strawberry flavoured.

“One for you and one for your sister! Here you go!”

“Wow, thank you, Sydney. I will have the strawberry one!”

“It’s my favourite flavour too!”

After Jonny left, holding the lollipops in both hands as if they were his most prized possessions, Sydney decided to walk to the other galley, located between first and business-class cabins, in search for new “protagonists” and some more crackers.

Business class cabin was mostly asleep as well, except for a couple of middle-aged men playing cards and an older lady eating a sandwich and drinking champagne. The colour of the floor lights here was a lighter shade of blue, creating an illusion of a cooler atmosphere, although the temperature on board was fixed at 23 Celsius or 73.4 Fahrenheit in all three cabins.

There was an old man sitting in the very last row of the cabin, right by the window. The darkness of the cabin didn’t allow Sydney to see much, but she thought that the man was wearing a tuxedo. Sydney decided to have another look when going back, but she was pretty sure that if there was a passenger boarding the plane wearing a tuxedo, he would have scored quite high on her “protagonist” list.

It took Sydney ten minutes to rummage through all five snack trolleys in the galley. No sign of Salt and Pepper Crackers! “They must have proved popular with these passengers!” – sighed Sydney and unwrapped a tuna sandwich instead. The bread tasted like a whole bunch of nothing, but the tuna was quite nice and juicy. Sydney made a mental note of her recent diet and promised herself to lay off the carbs. “The airline will surely ditch me when I don’t look the part anymore. I get a new uniform each year, and the size never changes. This is how the bosses make sure we stay thin… Poor Bianca saving up for liposuction. And Jess did her boobs last year…”

The sky was turning pink outside. Sydney was looking out of the cabin service door window, mesmerized by the sudden change of colour. This was her absolute favourite moment on every red-eye flight: when you can barely see the sun poking from behind the horizon. But you know it’s there, slowly crawling upwards. And then, all of a sudden, the cabin is flooded with glorious golden rays and the most beautiful canvas starts filling with colour, from gentle pink into sparkly tangerine all the way to bright orange and then rich yellow. A new day is born.

The vastness of the blue sky always puts everything into perspective. For a moment, all the worries and maladies faded and evaporated, lost in the eternal beauty of a sunrise, and Sydney enjoyed feeling small and helpless, stepping aside and just becoming an observer, with no yesterday or tomorrow. Just today. Just now.

Sydney was yanked out of the meditative state by an incessant beeping of her smartwatch. 15 minutes till breakfast has to be served. She then noticed the orange light that was on at the back of the business-class cabin. The last row.

Sydney felt her heart skip a beat. “The tuxedo man! Time to have a proper look!”

“How may I help you, sir?”

“Water… Glass of water. I am so thirsty…”

“Of course, give me two seconds”

The man was indeed wearing a tuxedo, but it wasn’t of a modern design, more like something orchestra conductors wore in the 1950s. It was probably black when it was new, but now the satin round lapels were more of a dull grey colour. The bright white shirt looked way too new compared to the tuxedo and the maroon bow tie seemed quite out of place.

The clothes were not the strangest thing about the man though. Sydney was surprised by the almost total lack of colour in the man’s cheeks; like he was a character in a black-and-white movie. And his very deeply-seated eyes were the lightest shade of grey, almost see-through and truly haunting. The wrinkles of his forehead resembled the most complicated highway intersection; you could see a lifetime of thoughts queuing for an exit in an eternal traffic jam.

Sydney was just standing there in the aisle, with her arm extended, holding the glass of water, not able to say a word. The man was looking out of the window, with both his hands with long bony fingers spread on his knees, trembling, as if he was playing an invisible piano.

The trans state that Sydney found herself in passed when another passenger asked her for a drink.

“Here’s your water, sir! Anything else I could bring you? We will be serving breakfast in 10 minutes”

“Thank you. How long till we land? What’s our destination?”

“We should start our descent into LAX in about half an hour. Are you okay, sir? Do you need help?”

The old man was looking even paler than before.

“I am fine, I think…. Just very thirsty…”

“Okay, please press the button again if you need anything or if you suddenly feel unwell” – said Sydney and smiled, but her smile felt strained.

Back at the galley, Sydney asked Bianca for the passenger manifest. According to the spreadsheet, only 4 people out of 321 passengers on board were older than 70 years – and they were all women.

A strange hunch was pushing Sydney to do a headcount. Breakfast was about to start, but she still had around 8 minutes.

There were 322 passengers on board. Sydney counted twice, just to be sure.

“What do I do? What’s the protocol? Who is he? I don’t want to make a fool of myself by talking about this to Eddy – what if my count was off? I couldn’t have been though…”

The third headcount confirmed the number: 322. There couldn’t be any mistake.

Serving breakfast in business class took a lot of concentration because every passenger had specific requests and it was only Sydney and Bianca on duty here today.

“Hey… See that man in the tuxedo in the back row?” – whispered Sydney to Bianca when there were momentarily back in the galley.

“Sure! What’s wrong, Syd? You look distraught!”

“Erm… well…. I am not sure… I think he wasn’t here before. I did a headcount. He is not on the manifest. I would have remembered him…”

“Whoa whoa whoa… Wait a second. Stop mumbling! This cannot be right! You must have made a mistake when counting”

“Bi, I counted three times… I am sure we have 322 passengers on board”

The intercom made a familiar major triad tone and Captain Edward Jackson’s baritone filled the speakers with the traditional: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are starting our descent into LAX…”

Sydney saw Ester walking down the aisle towards the toilet in the back. There was a queue there, so Jared directed her to use the toilet in the business class. Ester was looking sleepy, her cardigan was on inside out and she was wearing knitted knee-high socks with a snowflake pattern. She stepped through the business-class partition and at that very moment the plane hit turbulence.

Ester grabbed the headrest of the back-row seat. The sun was shining through the window and at that very moment time froze the business class cabin resembled a Monet painting, with colours subtle yet vibrant and the focus blurred at the edges.

Ester saw the man in the tuxedo. He turned his head to her and her gasp was heard over the whining of all four jet engines.

“Paul? PAUL! But how???”

Ester put her hand on her chest, her eyes opened wide, and her body collapsing. Sydney ran through the cabin and found her unconscious on the floor. Turbulence was intensifying, now exacerbated by strong gusts of wind. Boeing entered a thick cloud and all colour was drained from the cabin; the saturation of the painting turned to a bare minimum.

Ester’s pulse was weak. “Please don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die” – Sydney was whispering to her. Bianca called the captain to report the incident. The medical team was scrambled at LAX, ready to meet the plane on the tarmac.

There was a moment, just before the plane touched down, when Sydney raised her eyes from Ester to look at the man in the tuxedo. Passenger 322. Paul. He was sitting very still, with his hands on his knees and his light grey eyes full of tears. Sydney wanted to say something to him, but she totally lost her ability to speak.

The next 10 minutes were total chaos. Sydney was helping the medical team to get Ester onto a stretcher and off the plane. The skies opened up and the torrential rain was forming rivers on the tarmac and drumming vigorously on the fuselage.

When Sydney finally returned to the plane, soaking wet, most of the passengers have already disembarked and boarded the busses to the terminal.

LA TIMES, 23 March 2023, page 32, left column

A coffin transported on a commercial flight from London to LAX yesterday was found empty. The funeral home in Anaheim blames British Airways for misplacing the body of 77-year-old California native Paul Hopkins, who died of an aneurysm while on a vacation in London, UK. Widow Ester Hopkins fainted on board the flight just before landing and was taken to Cedars Sinai Hospital yesterday morning. She’s currently recovering from mild head trauma and has yet to hear the news about her late husband’s disappearance.

Ester and Paul Hopkins were visiting London for their 55th wedding anniversary celebration.

Updates to follow as the story develops.

Short-story by Dan Babitsenko and Elina Pasok