by Christopher Maggio
The first time I think of her as my wife is when she, without my asking, reaches into her seat pouch and hands me her barf bag, so now I have two.
Over jet engines, I hear her by the window oohing and aahing at the Santa Monica Boardwalk below, but my eyes stay shut because the next to last thing I want to do is look down, and the last thing I want to do is look down at a spinny ride (even if the Pirate Ship is where I proposed).
The plane levels, the fasten-seatbelt sign dings off, the chocolate edibles—which my sister-in-law handed to me (“For the flight.”) as my wife and I ran through the rice—kick in.
Turbulence knocks over my cup, donut-shaped ice clattering like dice across my tray table, but the spill—which I wipe with an empty bag of pretzels until she hands me a cocktail napkin—provides a fleeting distraction.
She pulls out her left earbud—our song, Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”—and asks if I’m doing ok, to which I ask, “Ever get the feeling? That everyone on the plane? Is watching you?,” to which she asks, “Why don’t we both rest our eyes for a little bit?”
I awake first, and beyond her, the desert is blue, but no, this isn’t Vegas, this is the Pacific Ocean; this isn’t our first vacation, this is Vacation Number … well, we’re on something that is a vacation except it’s more than that.
I try flipping through one of the mangas that we brought, not even bothering with the words, just the pictures, but I’m not even a page in when the city-smashing robots start spinning, and I’m closing my eyes again, praying it will pass.
“You know,” I say, “one etymology for the word ‘honeymoon’ refers to all the mead the Teutons would drink after the wedding,” and she leans forward over her armrest, so close that I can count every freckle on her nose and says to me—“Nerd.”
More turbulence, this time through black clouds, so with flashbacks of my first plane ride ever, as a kid to Florida with my parents, Mom’s rosary wrapped around her fingers as she secured my oxygen mask over my mouth, only this time I clutch my wife’s hand, my palm pressed over her wedding ring, thinking if the plane crashes, but if we hadn’t met, we wouldn’t be here, yet I would choose a few years together over a lifetime apart.
We land: ten hours flown, zero barf bags used, and courtesy of the International Date Line, the first day of our marriage lost—but when she smiles and suggests, “Sushi first, nap later?” I say yes, knowing we’ll reclaim it.
Christopher Maggio is an assistant professor of humanities at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He’s also a previous winner of River Styx’s Micro-fiction Microbrew contest, and his work has also appeared in University of Pittsburgh’s “The Original.”