Photo by Ben Iwara on Unsplash
Rushing from drop-off after the contract signing ran late, through the American airport security, and running hells-to-bells along the walking conveyors, had Irvin arriving at the gate to discover they had reassigned the First-Class seat his company had paid for to someone else as an upgrade since he had not answered any of the boarding calls. They apologized profusely but couldn’t sell his seat back before the gates closed; what they could do was get him a seat in economy on the crowded flight, bumping one of the people who had been hoping to fill in, or he could wait the seventeen hours for the next international flight.
He took the economy seat and pocketed the miles to his personal account for his summer holiday. Slinging his carry-on over his shoulder, he hurried down the ramp. Stepping across the threshold onto the plane, the airline stewardess greeted him in his native tongue.
“Bonjour” had never sounded so good.
She encouraged him to move along as she sealed the door behind him.
The aisles had no queues in the First Class and business seats, with their passengers long seated, granting him the grace to move quickly to the rear of the jetliner and seat 36B, between the window and the aisle, right next to the bathroom.
All the overhead compartments have been long-filled and closed. The stewardess in the back offered to take his bag, but it contained the physical copies of the contracts he had crossed oceans to get signed and they weren’t leaving his control until he handed them off to the legal department. Nothing in them were confidential, but after four weeks of hotel hopping and ass-kissing, they would not be misplaced.
A man was against the window and a woman in the aisle seat. The blonde, dressed casually and comfortably for the overnight flight, stood to allow him in. Irvin’s stuffed the bag as best he could under the forward seat, then arranged the knees of his long legs to not dig into the seat in front of him or end up in the laps of the people either side of him.
Ten hours in this position would render him cripple.
Maybe he could request the woman to trade after take-off. The stewardesses had already started the “in-case-of-emergency” routine, so that ask would have to wait until they reached cruising height. Irvin reached inside his jacket for his phone, checking to see if there were any more last-minute items he needed to take care of. Mercifully, his text, messenger, and email queue had no additions since the speedy car ride across the cityscape. Switching the device to airplane mode, he tucked it into his jacket.
Looking forward to the time he could lean back the chair and get some rest, he closed his eyes while the women explained how to buckle a seatbelt, to instantly startle into opening his eyes as the bathroom door banged closed. Lurid sounds emitted from the room louder than the explanation of how to put on an air mask in case of loss of pressure, until the strident vacuum suck of a successful defecation indicated the activity had completed. A man moaned out of the miniscule room, banging it again, wafting odor in his wake, while he muttered, “Je n’aurais pas du manger ces haricots.”
While Irvin’s bag had his inflatable neck pillow and an eye mask, it did not have ear or nose plugs. His exhaustion doubled just thinking about what was to come. In First Class or business he could have asked for at least ear plugs. He hoped he could rent some back here in the economy section but doubted it as his seat lacked any plugs. In fact, he noticed this final row of seats he sat in had a slightly different color from everything ahead of them. Likely, the row had been added after removing a stewardess preparation area to increase revenue, leaving them only the section between First Class and the rest of the plane for meal preparation. Something he just remembered was available only to Business and First Class. His stomach rumbled a protest after a day of only American coffee as they pushed through the last of the negotiations.
Beside him, the woman’s phone dinged a text message.
Irvin frowned. She should have switched modes or turned that off during the talk.
“What the?” she asked, pulling it out.
He hoped it was to turn it off as the plane started taxiing to its lane. Instead she opened and read it.
“Are you kidding me?!?” The subdued shriek had people who sat in row 35, immediately in front of the bathroom, in seats D, E, and F turning to look at her. “You are breaking up with me by text!?!”
Knowing he would regret it, Irvin pulled as much sympathy as he could after four weeks of negotiations, laying on his accent, “Does he not know you are about to leave the country on holiday?”
“Of course he does.” The woman snapped. “He is in seat 36A.” She started typing.
Thirty-six…A. Irvin turned his head to look at the man in the window seat.
“She is such a drama queen,” he said, his phone on the leg closest to the plane wall. When it dinged, he flipped it over and read it. “Humph. Well a merry fucking day to you too, bitch.” He started typing.
The phone on the other side of Irvin dinged.
“Oh, you did not.”
The artificial clicks came through the speaker on Irvin’s left side. When they stopped, another ding sounded to his right.
This was going to be a very, very, very long plane ride back home.
(words 948; first published 5/28/2026)