In the Blood Read Free Page A

husband.”
    Tayte imagined she must have gone through a few.   He just nodded politely.
    “You do, it’s almost spooky.”   She turned to face him.   “He was a cuddly man,” she mused.   “Tall too.”   Her knees edged closer, straining beneath a dark trouser suit that was as sharp and raven as her hair.   The body language told Tayte that he would not be allowed to face his fears quietly.
    The woman continued to stare at him.   “You have nice eyes...”   She sounded very sincere.
    Tayte felt trapped.
    “Did you know you had nice eyes?   I bet you didn’t.”
    Nothing about Tayte felt nice.
    “I bet you’re a kind man.   Kind men usually have nice eyes.   Well that’s my experience.”
    She went quiet.   Tayte could feel her studying him again.
    “They’re a nice shade,” she said.   “A girl could drown in there!”   She giggled, then at last she turned away and pulled a magazine from the holder in the back of the seat.   “My dog has brown eyes too,” she added.   “Not so nice as yours though.”
    Tayte was thankful for that at least.   He didn’t know if she was coming on to him or just couldn’t help herself.   He figured the latter and weakly smiled.   Then he closed his eyes, fixed a song from Les Misérables in his head and pretended to sleep.
    This would be Tayte’s second flight ever; the first was twenty-five years ago and he remembered it like it was just last week.   He was fourteen, taking an internal flight to Vermont from Washington National Airport as it was known before it was dedicated to Ronald Reagan in 1998; a promising winter vacation ruined by the sickening worry of the return flight home.
    Everyone had said how lucky they were and that the storm hadn’t really been that bad.   Planes are designed to deal with lightning strikes.   He’d looked up the statistics and discovered that every commercial plane in the States is struck, on average, just over once a year.   He also knew that the last time a plane had crashed because of a lightning strike was back in 1967, when it hit the plane’s fuel tank.   But none of that put him any more at ease.   He remembered reading that you are many times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to be in a plane crash and thinking that he’d very nearly had both together.
    The passenger safety announcements came and went.   The video screen in the headrest in front of him was blank again, reflecting unruly black hair that needed a cut and a comb, and a tired, sagging face in need of sleep.   He knew he should have paid closer attention to the announcements, but it made him think of all the negative situations that could occur.   He pictured himself fumbling beneath his seat for the lifejacket, and wearing the oxygen mask that would drop from the hatch beside his air nozzle as the plane plunged and they lost cabin pressure.   Then sliding down the inflatable escape chute, arms crossed on his chest as he sank into a freezing sea.   Yeah, he thought.   A great help.
    He looked out the window beyond Julia Kapowski who was thankfully buried in the duty free pages of the inflight magazine.   There were a few clouds, but it was otherwise clear.   He almost began to relax in spite of his thoughts and memories, then he heard the jet engines pick up and he continued to squeeze the seat arms.
    A voice over the intercom said, “This is your captain speaking.”   Tayte tried to switch off - shut himself down until it was all over.   He only heard snippets: “Taxiing ... runway ... cleared for takeoff.”   Already way too much information.
    The plane jolted as it began to move and Jefferson Tayte’s toes curled.   He took some comfort from the odd bump or two as the plane’s wheels caught the ridges in the asphalt, letting him know he was still connected to terra-firma.   Then the plane stopped and he knew they were at the end of the runway.   A lump came to his dry throat as he waited.   He