The Art of Living Read Free Page B

boyfriends?”
    â€œNo.”
    Nimram shook his head as if in wonderment and looked quickly toward the front of the plane for some distraction. “Ah,” he said, “here’s the stewardess with our drinks.”
    The girl smiled and nodded, though the stewardess was still two seats away. “We don’t seem to have gotten above the storm, do we.” She was looking past him, out the window at the towers of cloud lighting up, darkening, then lighting again. The plane was still jouncing, as if bumping things more solid than any possible air or cloud, maybe Plato’s airy beasts.
    â€œThings’ll settle down in a minute,” Nimram said.
    Innocently, the girl asked, “Are you religious or anything?”
    â€œWell, no—” He caught himself. “More or less,” he said.
    â€œYou’re more or less in business and you’re more or less religious,” the girl said, and smiled as if she’d caught him. “Are you a gambler, then?”
    He laughed. “Is that what I look like?”
    She continued to smile, but studied him, looking mainly at his black-and-gray unruly hair. “Actually, I never saw one, that I know of. Except in movies.”
    Nimram mused. “I guess we’re pretty much all of us gamblers,” he said, and at once felt embarrassment at having come on like a philosopher or, worse, a poet.
    â€œI know,” she said without distress. “Winners and losers.”
    He shot her a look. If she was going to go on like this she was going to be trouble. Was she speaking so freely because they were strangers?—travellers who’d never meet again? He folded and unfolded his hands slowly, in a way that would have seemed to an observer not nervous but judicious; and, frowning more severely then he knew, his graying eyebrows low, Nimram thought about bringing out the work in his attaché case.
    Before he reached his decision, their stewardess was bending down toward them, helping the girl drop her tray into position. Nimram lowered his, then took the wineglass and bottle the stewardess held out. No sooner had he set down the glass than the plane hit what might have been a slanted stone wall in the middle of the sky and veered crazily upward, then laboriously steadied.
    â€œOh my God, dear God, my God!” the girl whispered.
    â€œYou are religious,” Nimram said, and smiled.
    She said nothing, but sat rigid, slightly cross at him, perhaps, steadying the glass on the napkin now soaked in Coke.
    The pilot came on again, casual, as if amused by their predicament. “Sorry we can’t give you a smoother ride, folks, but looks like Mother Nature’s in a real tizzy tonight. We’re taking the ship up to thirty-seven thousand, see if we can’t just outfox her.”
    â€œIs that safe?” the girl asked softly.
    He nodded and shrugged. “Safe as a ride in a rockingchair,” he said.
    They could feel the plane nosing up, climbing so sharply that for a moment even Nimram felt a touch of dismay. The bumping and creaking became less noticeable. Nimram took a deep breath and poured his wine.
    Slowly, carefully, the girl raised the Coke to her lips and took a small sip, then set it down again. “I hope it’s not like this in Chicago,” she said.
    â€œI’m sure it won’t be.” He toasted her with the wineglass—she seemed not to notice—then drew it to his mouth and drank.
    He couldn’t tell how long he’d slept or what, if anything, he’d dreamed. The girl slept beside him, fallen toward his shoulder, the cabin around them droning quietly, as if singing to itself, below them what might have been miles of darkness, as if the planet had silently fallen out from under them, tumbling toward God knew what. Here in the dimly lit cabin, Nimram felt serene. They’d be landing at O’Hare shortly—less than two hours. Arline would be waiting in the lounge,