Flying Leap

I sit down next to a puffy man with a tight collar and sweating face. The Girl Scouts troop past. People bustle about, stowing baggage in the overhead compartments. Most of the bags are made of soft meaty-looking leather.

The seats on the plane seem unusually small and close. My neighbor and I battle silently for the armrest, both of us trying to force off the other’s elbow while seeming oblivious. The stewardesses recite the safety features in a familiar litany. The plane takes off. The pilot reassures us over the intercom that everything is normal—the weather is good; the sky is clear.

The man in the seat next to mine says he is a shoe salesman, just returning from a shoe convention. “You wouldn’t believe,” he says, “the synthetics they have now. I’ve seen stuff that looks like leather, smells like leather”—he raises his hands, widens his eyes—”pure synthetics. Incredible.”

“Yes,” I say. The stewardess approaches, trundling her beverage cart. The shoe salesman offers to buy me a drink. I say no thanks, but he requests two Bloody Marys anyway. “If you don’t drink it, I will,” he says.

I hear the crackle of cellophane, the crunch of peanuts all through the cabin.

“What’s your address?” the shoe man says. “I’ll send you some free shoes.”

“No thanks,” I say.

“No, really. I can send you some samples. What size do you wear?” A quick glance down. “Seven and a half, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“You know, you have nice feet. Nice thin ankles. You know what I always say—you gotta stay away from a woman if she’s got thick ankles. Even if the rest of her is thin. A woman with thick ankles is doomed. Over the years, or maybe overnight, you never know, that thickness will start creeping up her legs, puffing them up, then her thighs and hips and stomach, and eventually it reaches your neck and fats up your face. I mean, not your face—like I said, you have nice thin ankles, so there’s nothing to worry about.” The back of his hand brushes my arm.

“Thank God,” I say.

The plane suddenly swerves and plunges sickeningly; there is a confusion of running figures, a struggle, raised voices, a stewardess shriek. Three figures stand in the front of the cabin, hoods covering their faces. Each holds a gun so ridiculously large, it doesn’t look real. The plane veers over an edge into a realm of impossibility, of bad movies, tasteless jokes, the evening news.

The tallest one says, “This plane is being hijacked. Please stay seated and remain calm.”

Instantly all the passengers stand up and move into the aisles. Voices rise to a shrill pitch. People fumble about, push at one another. It seems they are not trying to escape; instead, they are all trying to retrieve their carry-on luggage. Then they sink into their seats, clutching their suitcases for comfort. Some, I think, are sucking their thumbs.

My head is ringing. I am in denial. I am thinking, No, this can’t be happening; this sort of thing never happens to me; it is some kind of joke, a silly dream. I look out the window, and I’m aware, as never before, of the emptiness of the sky, and our incredible distance from the earth. The shoe salesman tries to rise; he bucks and kicks, panting, nearly weeping, before he remembers to unfasten his seat belt. He finds his case of shoe samples and cradles it in his lap. He remembers the Bloody Marys and gulps them down.

The tallest hijacker retreats to the cockpit, to talk to the pilot (or perhaps he is the pilot? Their voices seem suspiciously similar), while the other two watch the cabin as the hubbub subsides. Then the shortest hijacker gestures to one of the stewardesses with his gun. It is the blond stewardess, naturally. He leads her into the lavatory in the front of the plane. The cabin grows silent; we listen to the thuds and screams as he ravishes her, in the tiny room hardly large enough for one. They soon emerge, the stewardess rumpled and weeping, the hijacker, in spite of the hood, undeniably smiling.

Now it is the middle-sized hijacker’s turn. He looks over the stewardesses, then begins walking up the aisle, eyeing passengers. It is silent except for the humming of engines, the sound of his slow steps. He approaches; I watch his scuffed boots. He is almost past me when I remember the Girl Scouts sitting near the back of the plane. Pretty braids, skinny legs. Lips scented with cherry lip gloss. The retarded one. I raise my hand like a schoolgirl, then undo my seat belt. It slides down my thighs and I stand up. He turns his head and gives me a nod.

We walk together down the aisle. He in his black executioner’s hood, I in my white linen suit crumpled from sitting. We walk with a slow, measured step. I stare at the passengers as I pass, but the women look away, breathing small guilty sighs of relief.

To the back of the plane we go, then through a secret door and down a ladder into the baggage hold. It is dark here; the suitcases are stacked up in hulking, uneven piles. I can see a narrow path winding mazelike among the mounds.

The hijacker removes his hood and his black leather gloves. He comes close and grabs my arm, his breath hot and heavy with peanuts. His sweat is rank like the sewers of a foreign country. Without a word, he licks my face and starts to tear at my clothes.

I begin to form a fantastic plan.

I push him away—gently. I give him a big smile and take off my jacket, dropping it on the floor. The shoes go next. He watches suspiciously. I start to unbutton the blouse, retreating into the luggage. I drop it on the floor and walk farther into the darkness. He begins to understand the game, and follows the trail.

He finds my skirt next, then my bra. This he holds in his hands a minute, trying to judge its size. The light is dim; we can barely see each other in the narrow passageway, a dark tunnel in the middle of the sky.

I leave my slip next; he fingers it, rubs it against his face. I pull off my stockings. The next bread crumb is a glittering pile of jewelry. I can hear him breathing harder now, getting excited as he imagines my bare body waiting just ahead.

Next I drop a girdle in his path. This confuses him; it takes him a moment to figure out what it is. He holds it in his hands, trying to remember how I looked in the lighted cabin. He squints now, trying to see me. He is wondering if perhaps this woman he is following is older than he thought. Perhaps she is not what she seemed.

Next he finds the panties, and these reassure him somewhat. They are skimpy, silky; they have a certain smell. He walks faster now, perspiring with desire, eager to reach the naked perfect woman waiting just around the bend, splayed out on a garment bag.

I have not yet laid myself completely bare. I now leave for him: false nails, a dental plate, corn pads, contact lenses. A tampon. He slips and skids on this litter. It disturbs him, and his mental picture begins to crumble. Yet he doggedly pushes onward, still hopeful that his goal will be curvy and intact.

But I have only begun to strip down; I am peeling myself like a complicated fruit and leaving the husks in his path. So many layers: scrapings of makeup, blobs of cellulite, breast implants like two clear disks of Jell-O. Scars, tattoos, an IUD.

Now I begin to pluck out the deeper things, which grate against my bones and aggravate my stomach. The things that fester in my cramping brain. Barbed memories, secret thoughts, hairy hands, thickened skin, dirty secrets whispered drunk late at night. Abortions, braces, blood tests. I am plucking these things out with tweezers; I am throwing them down in a flood of tears and mucus and menstrual blood. Here I am: This is my pure center, the fruit’s core, the inner nugget.

Down here in the luggage hold, I am unloading my own personal baggage and strewing it at his feet. And he—at the sight of this blinding nakedness, this shocking intimacy—flees, howling.

He races away, and I chase after him, scratching at his back with rough-bitten nails. He tosses the gun aside and vaults up the ladder. I follow after him, wild and cackling.

We dash through the cabin, past rows of surprised faces. The hijacker is raising his hands in surrender. I run faster; I am nearly upon him.

Then the shoe salesman leaps to his feet. He sticks his foot into the aisle and trips up the hijacker, who falls flat. I am running too fast to stop. I plow straight into the shoe man, who catches me in his arms. The passengers applaud wildly. He pushes me aside and plants a foot on the hijacker’s rump.

I look down and see that I am no longer naked. I am as I was before—sheathed, concealed; only bits of my clothing are missing. Passengers crowd around. The heroic shoe man nods and beams, accepting high fives and slaps on the back. The captain awards him an airline pin. Children beg for autographs.

I twist about, trapped in the crush. My blouse pops open and men are staring at my breasts. The stewardesses are passing out free cocktails. People are dancing around with oxygen masks on their heads for party hats, the elastic straps beneath their chins. The plane dives and loops; people raise their hands and whoop as if they’re on a roller coaster. The in-flight movie begins. I’m blinded by dancing colors. “You’re blocking the screen!” somebody yells. The passengers cheer as the opening credits scroll across my chest.

Framed in the window is a sunset, with the words The End sketched across the sky.

And then suddenly there is a whooosh, a great blast of air as the hatch is opened. Everyone turns to stare. The twelve Girl Scouts, fully equipped with parachutes and helmets, spring out into the air. They’re looking ahead, squinting, sunlight glinting on their braces. They float down two by two, holding hands. Sailing free and brave in the wide-open sky.

DIRECTIONS

This is a city of many faces. It folds itself into dark corners. It stretches out its fingers of neon signs and asphalt. It unrolls itself like a magic carpet. It changes from day to day. It had a heart that beats in the center, though no one knows where the center is. This is a city of paths and destinations. A hundred thousand people make their way through the maze. Their paths meet and cross; they leave their trails of broken hearts and bread crumbs behind them. They think their ways are secret, their desires unknown. But they are like the ants in an ant farm: Anyone watching from above can see exactly where they are going and where they have been.

Mr. and Mrs. Clark stand on a street corner. They are looking for the Theater District. They are visiting their daughter here in the city for the first time. They are to meet her for an evening show. She had offered to make arrangements for them, but Mr. Clark said, “What? Do you think we’re senior citizens already? We can take care of ourselves, thank you.” But now they are lost; they have wandered far from their hotel and the streets are unfamiliar. The boys playing on the sidewalk speak in foreign tongues. Some have no shirts; some have no shoes. Mr. Clark has a thick red neck. He is perspiring a bit. Mrs. Clark clutches his arm, not because she loves him but because her new shoes are too tight. Now Mr. Clark looks for a cab, then tries to make sense of the street signs. Mrs. Clark tries to ask directions of the boys. They laugh and call her “fat lady” in their own language, but she understands anyway. She turns away from them, lips trembling, and says, “We’re going to miss it, aren’t we? We’re going to miss the show.”

You’re lost. Or you’re looking for something. You’re trying to find your way. You turn a corner, then another—no, that’s not it. The streets all look the same, but they change their stripes as soon as you turn your back. You need a guide; you need a map. You walk with your collar turned up and your chin sunk in. The sun’s going down, the streets are empty, and it’s getting later and later. The something that you’re looking for is waiting for you to find it, but it won’t wait forever.

Gordon sits on the examining table in his underwear and a paper robe. His feet are very, very cold. “I’m sorry,” says the doctor. “I have some bad news.” “Yes,” says Gordon. The doctor shows him shadowy pictures of his insides. The doctor points to this dark splotch and that one, and tells him a long, dull story about the microscopic things in his blood. “I see,” says Gordon. “I’m sorry,” says the doctor. Gordon says, “How long do I have?” “According to the statistics, you have about five to ten years. But they could be wrong.” “Five years. Five years,” says Gordon. “Five years or fifty thousand miles, is that it? Is that my warranty?” The doctor has no sense of humor. He is a bald man, all business. Gordon looks with envy at the doctor’s bald head. Then he puts on his clothes and leaves. Outside, the receptionist tells him that his fly is undone. She is white-haired and wrinkled. Gordon looks covetously at the wrinkles in her face, the soft folds of her neck, and her twisted fingers.

This city wakes and stretches itself like a cat. New neighborhoods spring up overnight like tropical jungles. Old neighborhoods die majestically, slowly sinking to their knees in the muck like dying dinosaurs. The old theaters are the last to go, the gilded palaces filled with ghosts of music. They groan and settle and expire with a wheeze, and then there is only dust.

Natalie is a practical girl. Not about money or everyday things. She is practical with her heart. When she loves, she does it efficiently and well. Her heart is reliable. She has two arms and two legs and her hair is red. Just yesterday she lost something. She lost it to a man she thought she loved, and then afterward he put his hand on her thigh in a proprietary way and told her about his wife. Most girls would have slapped and cried, to have lost what she did, to a man like that. But not Natalie. She is a practical girl. She put on her shoes and she put on her coat, and she went out into the street and started walking. And she’s still walking today. She’s searching. She’s a practical girl—she lost something and now she’s going to get it back. “I’ll find it,” she says, “I’ll find what he took from me.”

You’re still looking. You’ll never find it. You know it’s here somewhere, but this city keeps teasing and changing in the corner of your eye. You’re about to give up—but then you look up from the sidewalk and there it is—the map shop, wedged in between the skyscrapers. It’s there waiting for you. Low, sagging, with a mansard roof like a hat pulled low on the brow. MAPS—GUIDEBOOKS—DIRECTIONS reads the sign. What a coincidence, you say to yourself, that it should be right here, right when I need it.

“Five years or fifty thousand miles,” says Gordon as he walks the streets with his hands in his pockets and stubble on his face. He passes the lit windows of shops: stuffed animals, grapefruits, shiny dresses on mannequins that gaze at him longingly. What should I do now, what should I do? he sings in his head. Quit my job? Spend my savings? Do I have time to love a beautiful woman, start a family, star in a movie, study Zen? Is there time to do anything before the time’s up? Maybe, he thinks, if I don’t have much of anything, it will be easier to give it all up. Maybe I should keep walking and walking, use up my miles as fast as possible, get it over with. Then I’ll never have to know what I’m missing.

You’re looking at the sign, peering in the windows. They’re coated with dust, broken, patched with cardboard. What a coincidence, you say. But it’s not a coincidence at all. It’s simply practical. People who know where they are don’t need maps; those who are lost do. So naturally, the mapmaker has situated his shop in the place where people are lost, the place where demand is greatest. The mapmaker and his shop are waiting here for you. He saw you coming; he put himself in your path. The map shop is here especially for you, like the gingerbread house in the heart of the deep dark forest.

“Look—maps,” says Mr. Clark. He’s hurrying up the sidewalk, mopping his neck with a handkerchief. Mrs. Clark wobbles after. “Surely they can at least give us directions,” he says. The place looks deserted, some of the windows broken. He reaches for the doorknob. It is shaped like a fish and slithers in his hand. They push their way inside. And inside—maps. Rolls and rolls of them, on shelves, pinned to the walls, lying crumbling in corners. Blurred splotches of color. Thin tangles of line that trail into nothing. “This isn’t what we need,” Mrs. Clark clucks. “Can I help you?” says the man behind the counter. “We’re lost,” says Mr. Clark. “I see,” says the man. “Theater District,” says Mrs. Clark, and stumbles against Mr. Clark in her tight shoes. “Sorry, lost my balance,” she gasps. “One thing at a time,” says the mapmaker.

Two men, in a booth, in a bar. Slouching before two glasses of beer. Victor has black greasy hair like Elvis. Nick has Elvis’s soft, pouty mouth. “Here’s the deal. It’s simple,” says Victor. “Yeah,” says Nick. Victor says, “We got the tools; we know the codes. It’s a cinch once we get in there. We can take it all.” Nick says, “Right.” Victor: “But we’re gonna need a way in. There’s got to be a way.” Nick: “Yeah.” Victor: “Yeah, maybe through the basements? Underneath? You think?” Nick: “Yeah. Sure.” Victor: “Maybe a garbage chute? The subway carries garbage; some buildings have a tunnel going straight down there.” Nick: “Yeah.” Victor: “Can’t you say anything useful?” Nick thinks for a while and says: “Yeah.” Victor grabs him by the hair and knocks his head against the table twice, spills the beer, and laughs.

Natalie walks the streets. She looks for what she lost. She looks in grocery stores and in alleys. She looks on park benches. She wanders through hotel hallways, watching the maids airing out the rooms and killing last night’s sweaty ghosts. She watches the people leaving the movie houses with their eyes glazed and dreamy, full of distant cities and music and imagined touches. She asks prostitutes and drag queens if they have seen it—the thing she lost. “Sorry, honey,” they say, “everybody knows once you lost that, you don’t ever get it back.” She knows that in a way they are right. But in a way they are not.

You go inside the map shop. Inside it is like a church gone to seed. High ceiling, stained-glass windows, a holy hush, the pews replaced by shelves. You almost wish it was a church. You would like that sort of guidance. Here are maps. Hundreds of maps in curling piles. Fantastic faded colors. Delicate lines across the paper like a lover’s hair on the pillowcase. Street maps as intricate as the designs on a computer chip. Continents cramped into strange new shapes: a dog begging, a charm bracelet of islands, a centaur, a toilet seat. Maps in which sea monsters, mermaids, and watery gods are drawn where the oceans spread into the unknown. The best parts, you think, are these unknown regions.

The wife says I should take a vacation. She says to me, “You should close up the shop, take some days off.” I tell her I can’t, but she doesn’t understand. “Your back,” she says, “you’re straining your eyes, and your arthritis. You’re old; you should retire.” “This is my job,” I tell her. “These people need me. What can I do?” “Let’s take a trip,” she begs. “Let’s go to another city. You draw maps of a new place if you want.” I tell her a new place wouldn’t make any difference, but she doesn’t understand.

The map shop finds Gordon. It seems to spring up out of the ground in front of him. He has been walking for days, nonstop, and he bumps his nose on the wall before he sees it. “Maps,” he says. “Hmmm.” He scratches the stubble on his face. He pushes open the door and steps inside. “Can I help you?” says the mapmaker. “Maybe,” says Gordon. “I’m looking,” he says. He looks at the mapmaker, who has wrinkles grooved deep in his face, marking his age like the rings in a tree. Gordon sighs. “I’m looking for something. A place I can go to. A destination. A reason to keep going. Do you have anything like that?”

“A simple street map,” says Mr. Clark, “of the neighborhood. A subway map even. Don’t you have anything like that?” Mrs. Clark says, “The Theater District. Everybody knows where that is!” The mapmaker looks at them blankly. “I’ll do my best,” he says, and sharpens his pencil. “We’re going to be late,” mutters Mr. Clark. Mrs. Clark moans, “She’ll think we’re getting senile.”

Natalie goes to the map shop. She makes a beeline for it; she knows it is there. She’s a sensible girl. As she goes inside, the bell on the door tinkles. She goes to the counter and explains what she is looking for. “I see,” says the mapmaker. He looks at the gooseflesh on her bare legs and the blisters on her heels. “I have something for you,” he says, and hands her a roll of paper. She studies it. “I don’t see anything,” she says. “You will,” he says. “Well, thank you.” She is as polite as ever, gives him everything in her pocket—a bus token and $3.45. He takes it with a gallant bow.

You ask the mapmaker if he has a map for you. He looks at your face and then takes your hand and studies the whorls and lines of your fingertips. His hair is white; his eyes are deep; his skin is dry and paper-thin. “I might have something,” he says.

“There is a map for you,” says the mapmaker, “but I don’t have it. It’s a map you have to find yourself.” “Then can you give me a map to find that map?” says Gordon. “Sorry,” says the mapmaker. “I see,” says Gordon sadly. He turns and leaves, and the bell on the door rings softly after him.

“I need a map,” says Victor, who has found the map shop even though it tried to hide from him. He says, “I need a map of the underground.” “The underground?” says the mapmaker. “Yeah,” says Nick. Victor says, “You know, a map of the subways and basements and things in the city. Infrastructure. Don’t you have anything like that?” The mapmaker says, “The underground? Is that like the underworld?” Nick says, “Yeah.” Victor says, “Yeah, I guess. You got anything like that? Something for the neighborhood around the First National?” The mapmaker smiles and says, “I do.”

Natalie steps outside and studies her map. Now she sees a line on it, starting in the middle and snaking to the right. So she turns to her right and begins walking. At the corner she stops and consults the map. The line has hooked to the left and now she can see it moving, bleeding across the paper in a decisive way. She turns left and follows it.

The mapmaker knows you. Some people say he can follow you everywhere. Your shadow is like the ink spot the mapmaker traces to draw your path. Some say he has your future and fate drawn out in the lines on his map, indelible as the lines on your hand, and as he watches you walk the paths of your life, he is proud of his handiwork. You don’t know what to think, but you look into his piercing hawk eyes and feel his talon grip on your wrist, and you are suddenly not sure you want to see the map he has for you.

“The Theater District,” says Mrs. Clark, as if it will help the mapmaker understand. She leans against her husband. Mr. Clark clears his throat in annoyance. The mapmaker bends over his work.

Gordon wanders the streets, not looking for anything. He tries to remember his mother’s face, the laugh of a friend, the dog that was a childhood companion, his toy soldiers. They are all gone, all lost. The streets are cold underfoot. He will not stop walking.

Victor and Nick wear dark clothes and leather gloves. They have made arrangements. They carry their tools and heavy metal things and ski masks. They follow the map, the map that the mapmaker gave them. They follow it down streets, down some stairs, down below the subway, through hidden passages, down and down and down. Past pipes and rats and blasts of steam, down into the underbelly of the city. “This map is incredible,” says Victor.

Natalie follows her map. She follows the line as it wanders over the page, bending, turning, twisting back on itself like a restless sleeper. She’s determined; she will reach the end. Her feet hurt terribly.