Stranger and Stranger

I handed my passport to the TSA agent and waited as he looked between it and me, raising his brow. The little booklet had one stamp from a trip to Canada when I was 16.

“Why travel now?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

He let out a huff and closed the booklet with a snap. He used it to point to a conveyer belt before handing it back to me.

“Good luck with that.”

“Thanks.” I knew he was being sarcastic, but I didn’t let that bother me. Instead, I tugged at my rolling bag and followed his direction. As I did, I pinched the nose of my two masks so nothing could get in.

The narrow seat nipped at my arms, that I had tucked at my sides to be as small as possible. The plane wasn’t as full as it would’ve been a year ago, but there were still enough people to fill almost every row. The man next to me had already fallen asleep when we took off. I only knew from his snoring, which was loud.

Once in the air, I tugged open my old leather backpack. It fought me, caught on its own rusted snap closure. I almost smacked myself in the midst of the battle, and accidentally hit my seatmate’s leg instead. I froze. Waiting for him to wake. He didn’t. He just went on snoring like I’d imagine a walrus would.

Heart still pounding, I pulled out the little black notebook and a pen, and shoved the backpack between my feet. I opened the book on my lap. On the inside cover, in small neat script, it said: Take this money and live. Live and write. Write down everything.

I’d read the message a hundred times. Compared it to letters and cards, even old checks, wondering who had sent it to me. Only finding more questions than answers. I flipped through the pages and wondered, why. Why had someone left that envelope at my window? Why did they give me $20,000 and a notebook?

I leaned back in my tight airplane seat, and looked around for the first time since boarding the plane. I looked at the curtain to first class seating. I looked at the flight attendants, their bodies shaking with muffled laughter, their smiles hidden behind layers of masks. I looked at the ambient lights which gave the plane a sleepy glow.

I looked at my seatmate. First at his arms, which were strong and crossed at his chest. Then his neck, stretched from his head falling back, weighted by dreams. Then his head. He was facing the ceiling, likely with his mouth wide open behind his masks, letting out snores that reverberated throughout the cabin. He had straight brown hair and soft olive cheeks. His eyebrows were wild and his eyelashes were thick and dark. I clicked my pen and wrote it all down.

The snoring stopped at some point I wrote. I was putting the book away when I noticed the lack of vibrating snores emanating from the seat next to me. I fought my desire to look. Instead, I slipped the notebook back into my lap, just in case, and hooked the pen on the cover.

I leaned back into my seat and glanced to the side. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and let out deep yawns. I kept watching, even after he’d taken his hands off his eyes and blinked rapidly to adjust to the bizarre lighting. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop watching him. Maybe because of how normal an action it was. Maybe because the more I looked at him the more attracted I was.

When he finally finished waking up he unbuckled his seatbelt, and I closed my eyes quickly.

“Crap.” He expelled the word as softly. I could only just hear it. I felt the armrest that we shared jiggle against my arm, and opened my eyes to see his chest turned towards me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to touch you ‘cause, you know.” I looked up to his eyes. They were hazel and rimmed with red from sleep, and his eyebrows were mussed even more. “Would you mind letting me out?” It took me a moment to realize that I had to respond.

“Yes, yeah. Sorry.” I kicked my backpack under the seat before unbuckling and getting up; holding the book by my side. His eyes were crinkled as though he was smiling somewhere under his masks.

“Thanks.”

He passed me. I plopped back into my seat and madly wrote it all down. When he returned, I was still hunched over writing.

“Um,” I looked up at him.

“Oh,” I jumped out of my seat and into the aisle. He slid by me and into his seat.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

I clicked my pen and hooked it back onto the cover of the book. There was a moment of silence. I moved to put it in my backpack, breaking some unspoken stillness.

“Are you a writer?”

“Huh?” I looked over and his head was turned towards me. His arms were crossed over his chest again.

“Like, an author… or journalist?”

“Oh, no. No, I actually don’t have a job right now.” I finished putting the notebook back in my bag and sat back. “I actually just graduated from college.” I paused before looking at him. Wondering if that would be the extent of our conversation.

“That’s exciting. Is that why you’re going to Paris?”

“Um, no. I’m just kind of… going.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed with my response, but I didn’t want to stop talking to him. It felt electrifying. Maybe because it had been so long since I’d been next to someone I didn’t know with nothing to do. Maybe because I liked the feeling of his eyes on mine.

“I’m, uh… I’m kind of on an adventure.”

“To Paris?”

“To everywhere–anywhere.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Why are you going to Paris?”

“Work.”

“What kind of work?”

“Boring work.”

“How could it be boring if it takes you to Paris?”

“‘Cause it’s the same job, just in a different place.”

I looked down, thinking about the little black book. Thinking about what we were doing. We were both being paid to see the world, but I’d been told to live in it and he’d been told to work in it. Why had I been given the chance to live?

I looked at him again, he was still looking at me, the skin between his brows crinkled as he pressed them together.

“You’re brave, or maybe just crazy.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re traveling, in the middle of a global pandemic, for no discernable reason.” I thought about this.

If the envelope had not been left at my window I would have been sitting in my apartment, alone, working on applications, watching tv, and doing puzzles over and over again. I would have been utterly unhappy, but alive, surviving. I was tired of it.

“I want to live… you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Being alone at home, doing the same thing every day, that’s not living. There are so many beautiful things in the world that I want to experience, and I can’t do that from my couch.”

He just looked at me. Like he was taking in what I had just said and answering his own question about me. He looked down and uncrossed his arms before looking back at me.

“That’s how I feel about my office.”

I felt a twinge in my chest at what he’d said. I guess no one was living anymore. But that’s been true since before the pandemic. We’ve all been on autopilot.

I did what I was told was ‘making a life.’ I went to high school, college, worked summers, and then, I wasn’t sure. I’d run out of the obvious steps to take. Like the breadcrumbs home had stopped after only walking a few steps through the forest, with so much further still to go.

“Why do you work there?”

“To pay the bills.” He looked forward. “But if I could do anything, I would want to be a musician.”

“Why don’t you do it?”

“It’s unrealistic.”

“Why?”

“How many people really make it as a musician?”

“I don’t know. But you should at least try.”

“Oh yeah. Well, are you doing that? The thing you would do if you could do anything.”

“No.”

He looked at me, this time turning his whole body to face me. I turned toward him, lifting a leg onto the seat and dropping my hands onto it.

“What would you do?”

I looked down at my hands and smiled. I wondered if he could tell. “I would make clothes. I would make beautiful clothes that make people feel beautiful.”

“Have you tried?”

“No one will hire me. I didn’t go to design school.”

“Have you tried?” He asked again.

I looked up at him. He was looking so intently at me, like he was either trying to prove a point, or like he genuinely wanted to know. I found myself wanting to reach out and grab his hand. To say that I felt the same fear that he did. I started picking at my jeans instead, then raised my chin to give myself courage.

“No.”

We looked at each other. Knowing that we’d both been afraid to live, for fear of failure. For fear of rejection. For fear of losing our dreams.

I felt his hand slide under mine. His palm pressed against my palm and his fingers wrapped around and enclosed my hand in his. I should have been mad, or horrified, but I wasn’t. I should’ve run and dunked my hand in a bucket of sanitizer, but I didn’t want to. It made life feel normal again.

“I think you should do it.”

“Do what?”

“Be a designer.”

I shook my head and looked down at our clasped hands. “I told you, no one will hire me.”

“Do it yourself.”

“How?”

“Just have faith in yourself, and others will too. You don’t need to work for someone else to make clothes.”

“Yeah…” As I thought about this the flight attendant’s voice came over the loudspeaker saying we were about to land.

He tentatively pulled his hand away from mine, and turned back in his seat. I did the same, crossing my legs away from him. Knowing that was the end of our conversation. The only other movement we made as the flight came to an end was him reaching down to grab his briefcase, and me following his example and grabbing my backpack, snapping it closed at the same time.

We didn’t say another word, even as we landed and deplaned. I left the airport with my rolling bag and old leather backpack without seeing him again.

I stopped at a café on my way to find a hotel, and waited until my coffee was delivered to open the little black book and write it all down. As I reached into my backpack, I pricked my finger on a piece of card-stock. It was a business card. It was his business card. It had to be.

Wonderingly, it turned it over in my hand. On the back it said: Follow your dream. At the END you’ll wish you’d lived in your dreams instead of your fears.

I couldn’t move, because I knew it immediately upon reading that small neat script. I pulled the book out of my bag and placed it on the table, and opened it to the same clean lettering on the inside cover. I paused for a moment. Looking at the words on each. Then one word: END. I flipped all of the soft lined pages over to the inside of the back cover. There, it said: This was how you made your dream into your reality. If you ever feel like you’re not enough, read it again, and realize that you are enough.