Mark Hage is a writer based in New York City. His fiction has recently appeared in LITnIMAGE, Contrary Magazine, Metazen, and other indomitable publications. He recently contributed to a "Cadavre Exquis" story for Electric Literature. 

There Wherein Her Realm (November 20, 2010. Issue 22.)

This won’t involve you much. For the most part, it concerns three women who will soon meet.

Let us begin with Hortence. Hortence grew up in Montreal. Two weeks ago, she completed a seminar in assertive communications given by Fabrice Labreque, right-hand man in Quebec to international self-help authority, Refky Kubelaj. Hortence is the petite blonde in front of you. She just stretched her arm and pressed the flight attendant call button. The plane is idling, 58 minutes late, an announcement from the cockpit gargled words before and after LaGuardia Airport.

This is how you relate to the grid: you are on the aisle, in seat 12D. Hortence is on the isle, in 11D. Now look to your right, at the woman sitting next to you examining her nails. That’s Janet Lo. Janet is Taiwanese. She is from Taiwan. She will be even less involved in this than you. Janet is the mistress of Wai-Fong Ke, the billionaire industrialist from Taipei who is flying her to New York. One last thing; the man sitting in front of her, next to Hortence, that’s Reng Yamato, Wai-Fong Ke’s enforcer, and he was sent to kill Janet, spectacularly.

The safety manual in the pouch identifies the aircraft as an Embraer E-175, (made in Brazil), with two seats to each side of the single aisle. Across, to your left, the redhead you are aligned with will not be of importance. She will have a chance to be in this, but will slide down in her seat and raise her magazine. Now lean left and look ahead. The second main character here, the tall woman with the large gyrating breasts who is walking up the aisle toward you, swiveling her head left and right with the cadence of an automaton, that’s Char. Char is the flight attendant for the rear section of the plane, your section. You look up and watch her retract her glue-on nails before slapping an overhead bin door shut. She looks down at Hortence and calls out:

“Yes?”

Now, before we hear the exchange, let’s examine the four people to your left, across the aisle. The two men at the window seats are napping, reading, etc. These are travelers: insurance, pharmaceuticals, a role in a wedding perhaps. The woman aligned with you, the redhead, we have discussed. This leaves us with the last seat in the cluster: 11C, the one across from Hortence. That’s Lainie, the third woman in this.

Lainie was born in Greenwich Village, the only child of Hank and Christine Leclerc. She grew up in a lucid, doorman white brick building on the southern fringe of Fifth Avenue. Their terrace, wide-angled onto Washington Square Park, and the drug circuitry below. In The Fifties, her mother, Christine, was part of a small group who derailed a proposal to extend Fifth Avenue through the park. While others planned and petitioned, Christine was known for screaming the loudest. She was immortalized in a photo, her mouth a wide circle, eyes squinting, her protest sign held high by its edge like a cleaver, ready to come down and parcel an opponent’s carcass. Lainie’s father, an attorney, represented many neighborhood artists, often accepting artwork as gift or payment, which would eventually make him wealthy. The Leclercs were pedigreed activists of the early kind, a grade of nobility in The Village and the diameters beyond.

By the time Lainie became an adult, The Village did not attract many artists or activists any longer. The cafés menued for the tourists, fashion models towered, and as is often the result, the bonused of Wall Street permeated.

Lainie sought to carry on with her birthright, the family’s advocacy mantle. But in the new millennium, the activism she grew up with had waned. So she hectored Korean deli cashiers who gave her the wrong change more than once, screamed murdererrr as she passed women who wore fur, and drafted letters to the CEOs of companies naming names of those in customer service who had rudely serviced.

Now let us get back to Hortence and Char.

“Yes?” Char had last said.

”I have a connecting flight at 4:30, do you think I will make it?” asked Hortence.

“I donno,” Char answered.

“Is there a way to find out?” Hortence said.

“Ask them,” Char answered.

“Who?”

“When you get there.”

Lainie and the redhead behind her, turned toward each other.

“Is there a way to find out now?” Hortence asked.

“Call the airline.”

“Can you give me their number?”

“I don’t have it,” Char said and walked away, the back of her straightened dyed mane aerosoled into bleached submission, the rest of her a belly dance.

Lainie and the redhead mimed gargoyles.

“Can you believe what she just said?” Lainie yelped. She looked for eye contact with Hortence, probed other nearby faces.

“This is outrageous,” whispered the redhead behind her. The two had been chatting before the incident, about traffic in New York.

Like Lainie, Char grew up in New York, but on the opposite tip of Manhattan. She was born Charlamina Yolarnys Pons, the daughter of Dominican immigrants Segrapio Pons and Mayrobi Lonbelle Guerra. Char’s father and her uncle Rensis owned a pawnshop in Upper-Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. When Char was seven, Luther Ruiz, a slight mustachioed man forced his way into the store. Ruiz anchored a show called “Hook A Crook” where merchants suspected of bad business practices were ambushed and exposed in prime time on Television. Inside the store, cameras whirling, he confronted the Pons brothers for selling as real, fake Timex watches. The two brothers were seen on TV synchronizing blows on Ruiz with pawned merchandise. A year later, the shop had to be shuttered. Char grew up listening to her father lay blame for their hardships on Ruiz and his ilk of cabrones that prey on working people.

Lainie turned to the redhead and said: “she can’t get away with this.” She reached up and pressed the hostess call button. In the horizon, Char raised her head. She walked over and loomed.

“Yes?”

“I am going to need your employee number,” Lainie said, aiming pen to paper.

“185438P,” Char said and walked away.

“Excuse me,” Lainie said after her.

“Yes?”

“185438P, that’s P not B, right?” Lainie said.

Char nodded a feeble and resumed her walk.

Lainie and the redhead whispered. Lainie handed her the piece of paper. The redhead copied the number and returned the original.

Lainie pressed the call button again.

Char walked over and stared.

“I am going to need your name,” Lainie said.

“It’s on my tag. You can copy it.”

“I need your full name,”

“I already gave you my employee number, and my name is on my tag.”

“I need your last name,” Lainie said.

Char bent closer and said, “I need to prepare for take off. You are delaying our departure buzzing all the time.”

“Don’t you talk to me like this,” Lainie said, “you have no idea who you’re dealing with. You’re messing with the wrong woman, you’ll see.”

Char walked the opposite way. The plane had started to roll toward the runway. Lainie repeated unbelievable, unbelievable to the redhead. The two women scrutinized other faces. Forward facing, impassible faces.

The plane taxied a bit longer, then stopped with a jerk. The captain announced that there would be a delay, while a passenger was removed from the aircraft. The front door opened and two policewomen came up the aisle.

“Hello. Gather all your belongings miss, and come with us,” one of them said to Lainie. The redhead slid down in her seat, and raised a magazine. Lainie started to speak, changed her mind, stood up, and pulled out her duffle from the bin. She looked to the redhead behind her. The woman did not glance back. Right after Lainie was taken out, the plane moved. Char walked the aisle radiating flight attending. She stood next to the redhead, hovered, singling her for a tailored blend of taunt and congeniality.

The plane accelerated on the runway. The plane climbed through crumpled clouds, then leveled. A chime permitted unfastened seat belts. Char came up the aisle pushing a cart. She distributed miniature peanut bags and canned beverages. She reached the row before Hortence’s, and gave out fluids and snacks to the people in those seats. She reversed course, pulled the cart behind her, omitting service to Hortence’s row and to all passengers to the rear beyond. Shortly after she reached the front of the plane, there was an announcement: “this is the captain, due to turbulence, I have requested that the flight attendants discontinue the complimentary beverage service.”

There was no turbulence.

The plane landed.

Reng Yamato stayed put until Janet Lo passed his seat, then he got up and followed.

You rise and walk to the exit. Char stands next to the cockpit, facing the passengers. Amiable, as if she had done her job on a good day, and nothing was out of the ordinary. As you leave the plane, you thank her. Your desire for silence, for an act of resistance, involuntarily overcome; not convinced she has exhausted her reach. You hurry up a ramp, down a flight of stairs. On your way out of the bathroom, you see Char dragging her bag, the captain to her side smiling, with Hortence in tow.