The Man Who Ate the 747 Read Free Page A

insignia.
    Yes, he had considered spending the weekend in Paris. He knew a divorcée named Héléne who ran a bistro on the Rue de Buci. She fed him exquisite meals and offered her warm back against his at night. She whispered in his ear that she needed nothing in return, but the look in her eyes, the farewell hugs that lasted too long, left him feeling hopelessly sad.
    Now he just wanted to get home.
    He thought again of Emily’s indictment a few years ago, that he knew nothing about love. He took it as a challenge. He was a relentless researcher and set out to learn everything about the subject. He read classics and pulp romances, crammed Shakespeare and Shelley, studied Mars and Venus, memorized the complete works of Deepak Chopra, delved into anthropology, biochemistry, and psychology from Freud to Dr. Ruth.
    He dated too, giving and receiving a fair share of pleasure and disappointment. In the end, true love seemed as remote as Messier 31, a rotating spiral nebula in the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, the farthest object visible to the naked eye, 2.31 million light-years from earth.
    But J.J. had learned one thing from experience, repeatedly and for sure. Casual intimacies on the road always ended with someone hurting. So this time, he did not call Héléne.
    Sticking around in Paris for the weekend also meant consoling the losers in the kissing contest. He knew that grim scene all too well. By now the crowds were long gone, the bright banners rolled up, and the street sweepers had cleaned the last litter from the road. Under the shadow of the drooping bridge, the doctors had finished ministering to the man still lying doubled up on the ground. The chronometer was frozen in time.
    30:44:56
    The crumpled man and weeping woman were four seconds shy of the world record. Four seconds from global recognition in one of the best-selling books of all time. Four seconds from history.
    Over the years, he had comforted thousands of the defeated, men and women who spent long nights muttering “what if?” In The Book, winning was everything. Second place was oblivion. The worst was the inconsolable Pakistani Air Force pilot who desperately wanted recognition for the longest fall without a parachute. Sucked out of his cockpit in afreak midair decompression, he had plummeted 33,301 feet, landed in a lake, and somehow survived. J.J. traveled to Islamabad where the aviator, mummified in bandages, was bedridden with 37 broken bones. Upon careful investigation, though, there was no new record. The pilot had come close—within 30 feet—but the place in history still belonged to Vesna Vulovic, a Yugoslavian flight attendant who fell 33,330 feet when her DC-9 exploded over Czechoslovakia. Learning of his defeat, the Pakistani pilot wept so hard on J.J.’s shoulder that his prized blue blazer was soaked through.
    No, there was no point hanging around, or even looking back for that matter. He had gotten involved too many times, stayed too long, cared too much. He learned the hard way. In the end, there was nothing he could do. He was simply there to authenticate. Sentiment only slowed him down; there was always another record somewhere up ahead.
    “Monsieur, what airline are you flying?” the driver asked.
    J.J. checked his ticket. Headquarters pinched every penny.
    “Dollar Jet,” he said. He was seven long hours from home.

TWO
    T he building on East Fourth Street was crumbling brick by brick. A homeless man was sprawled in the entryway, arms and legs splayed, a copy of
Martha Stewart Living
open across his bare chest. J.J. stepped over him carefully, saw that the elevator hadn’t been fixed, and trudged up the grimy stairs to his apartment on the fifth floor.
    New York, the greatest city in the world.
    His door was cracked open. The light from the hallway threw a fuzzy white rectangle onto the dusty parquet floor. He set his bags down and hung his jacket carefully in the hall closet. He called out, “Hello?”
    The place was still a