Blinding Light Read Free Page B

in anger. As for the question, everything about it, too, was wrong. The “you,” the “guys,” the very word “married.”
    â€œI’m Sabra Wilmutt,” the woman said.
    â€œI’m Jonquil J. Christ.”
    Sabra’s face looked suddenly slapped and lopsided. She said, “I don’t get it.”
    â€œThe J is for Jesus.”
    As Ava spoke, the reboarding announcement was made.
    What does it matter? Ava’s expression said to Steadman, who had heard it all. But Steadman had been attentive to the woman named Sabra, immersed in
Trespassing.
It was just this awful flight to get through, and after that they would never see any of them again.

2
    A IRBORNE ONCE MORE , isolated and blindfolded, with the slipstream crackling at the airplane’s windows and fizzing along the fuselage, the passengers were at last silenced. Steadman reflected on what they had said. They were boasting, of course, but because most boasting was bluff and lies, really they had given very little away. He took them to be lawyers, even the one who had sold his company, because of their affectations. Lawyers never volunteered the truth, because the truth was debatable, and this was why they could hold two opposing views in their head, and seemed capable of believing both, as they tossed out challenges and suppositions, speaking in irrelevancies calculated to throw you off. The merchandising of
Trespassing
was a wilderness of lawyers waving contracts. Challenge them with a tough question and they handed you a sandwich.
    But he said to Ava, “What was that all about?” for the way she had called attention to herself among those strangers. Steadman had described in
Trespassing
how it was always a fatal mistake in travel to be conspicuous. The greatest travelers made themselves invisible. An invisible man was a man of power.
    Ava just shrugged, pretending he was worked up over nothing. Yet she knew she was motivated by their breakup. Underlying her sarcasm was the suspicion that if the people found out that she was with Steadman the famous writer, he would have to take the blame for her behavior: her insolence was his insolence. Breaking up had liberated Ava and made her reckless and indifferent to his worry, helped her see what a baby he was—“and writing is your dolly.” She couldn’t play with it, couldn’t even touch it. He fussed with it in his room. And as time had passed the dolly had become more special, first a toy, then a fetish object, then a totem, and finally an idol that represented something approaching a deity. “Fucking writers,” Ava had begun saying.
    Steadman had carefully not asked the other people any questions for fear they would ask him the same things. He was on this trip for a reason, his own assignment, and he wanted it to be secret. He had covertly been taking notes, and he was still taking them. The meal trays had been cleared and he had just written the word
máscara.
    The lovely, dark-eyed, plump-lipped woman, looking like a prison guard in her black uniform, was the flight attendant. Brisk and busy, she murmured,
“Mascara, mascara
moving down the aisle, handing out blindfolds. Each passenger accepted one awkwardly
{as though they had been handed a condom,
he noted,
which in a sense they had)
and with varying reactions: bewilderment, suspicion, surprise, amusement, embarrassment. None had looked grateful, yet each had put the blindfold on.
    Turning to size up the masked passengers, Steadman had taken a good look at the Trespassing Treads—the hiking shoes—and the Trespassing cargo pants and multipocket vests and the Trespassing daypack at Hack’s feet. The woman named Sabra was reading
Trespassing—
or, rather, not reading it, since the thick thing lay spread open, turned over on her lap.
    Just behind them was Manfred, the man who had announced in a heavy German accent that he was an American. He pulled the mask over his