he seat was, as they always are and forever will be, severely cramped, and my legs were starting to swell from lack of movement. My carry-on bag took up just enough space under the seat to impair any shifting of my feet. The recycled air blowing ceaselessly on my face was getting annoying and the flight attendant had skipped my order in the drink service twice.

There was a woman next to me, older and bookish, was reading a magazine about celebrity shenanigans with brightly colored fonts and extra-enlarged photos that magnify every imperfection so as to say to the reader, “Look, they are just like you after all.” (What is the paparazzi for except functioning as the great equalizer, tearing down the towers of the great so that we all might wallow in mediocrity. Ah, jealousy.) The man next to her had his hands folded over his distended stomach and was attempting to engage her with a few off-color jokes. After each he would laugh until he coughed, clear his throat, and then settle back into a dejected state of boredom.

I occupied myself with craning my neck to peer out the window, staring at the maze of highways and forests below. This position was the most comfortable one I could invent under the circumstances. Its only drawback was that it forced me to listen without distraction to every word uttered by the man in the seat behind me. He had greeted me when I sat down with a comment about the coldness of the cold weather, which I hated because the swirling snow was visible out the window. It’s obvious. After this initial contact, I did not prove to be a suitable conversation partner, a fact of which I am greatly appreciative. After his introductory salvo, he turned to the plain-looking woman next to him and said, “And here we are, trapped again in hell.” Her personality, which he clearly considered to be inferior to his own, undoubtedly could not hold up to his exceptional speed of cognition.

“Yes,” she replied, hesitantly.

“You know, I guess I’m glad to be going home again, but I don’t really feel like it’s home anymore.”

“Yes, I know what you…” she began, but he steamrolled her reply and continued. “I’ll be glad to see the dogs and sleep in my own bed, but I want to spend the rest of my life on the road.”

“Yes dear, that’d be good for you, I think.”

“I know, I’d be good at it.” Pause. He looked out the window. I could hear him shift in his seat to move his head closer to peer under the wing. “Giant death traps,” he said, “I don’t even want to think about it.” No reply. “Well dear, what we have to do for the next four hours is pretend that none of this is real. There’s a book, I forget which, I read it and I remember that it said that in order to survive an ordeal, you have to make yourself into an outsider, an observer, and pretend that nothing that is going on affects you. And that’s how we’re going to spend the next four hours.”

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, unconvinced. He was not deterred.

“God, the fucking snow just won’t stop.” His expletive stood out like a cactus in a blizzard. The woman next to me looked up from her magazine and turned slightly, evidently displeased, but more surprised at its employment in a quiet, domestic conversation.

The flight continued, silent for a few hours. I believe he fell asleep but I cannot be sure. When we were beginning our descent, he perked up again. “I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in four days.”

“Didn’t you sleep just now?” she replied.

“Yeah, a bit, but it’s not the same. Did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Really? You looked like you were.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Well, you looked like you were. Are you sure you didn’t fall asleep for just a few minutes?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Well, I think you did.” Pause. He stirred his drink. “That conference was hard because it was so spread out over all those floors, I didn’t know what anyone else was doing.”

“Yes, it wasn’t the best one we’ve been to.”

“No, definitely not. I didn’t like that last talk at all; his book wasn’t nearly as good as it was supposed to be. You know, when Tom was trying to make friends with him at the last one, he seemed like a good guy, but he didn’t even stay until the end of the meal. And Jerry said that his book isn’t nearly as good as mine, and he didn’t even come to my talk. You know, you try to sit down with a guy, a meet and greet, a dinner, and you don’t get to know him at all.”

“Well, maybe next time you’ll get to talk to him some more.”

“I think my talk was better than his, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“But Tom said that even if you only get one nugget out of the whole book then it’s worth it so maybe I’ll read his again. But the accounts he talks about don’t exist as much in this country anymore so I’m not sure it’s even relevant anymore.”

The plane finally touched down. “Honey, we’re here, finally. Call Nancy and tell her we’re here.”

“I can’t, I don’t have the phone, you have it.”

“No, I gave it to you in Chicago. I don’t have it.”

“Yes, you do, you never gave it to me.”

“Really, I don’t have it, you aren’t listening to me, I don’t have it. Would you just stop talking back and find it?”

I got up quietly, took my bag, and walked slowly off the plane.