“Thank you. Let's see what happens.”
“I'm on my second marriage. I have learned to wait exactly four minutes before having a word.”
Her hand withdrew. Somebody opened a window shade behind them and sunlight fell across the empty plate in a perfect white rectangle. On June's phone, the last photo from her sister was a picture of a small pair of brown shoes laid out beside a purple dress. You think the buckles are too grown? Tess had asked at five that morning. June had written back, She's nine. Let her look nine however she likes. A second message had come forty minutes later. She's asking if you have the song. June had sent a photograph of a little cassette in a plastic case. Of course I have it.
The cassette was in the front pocket of her carry-on under the seat. She checked. This was its third trip across the country, the first with her father in a toolbox, the second in the pocket of her mother's coat when they had moved back east after his funeral. It contained twenty-six minutes of songs taped off the radio and, near the end, a minute and a half of the two of them in the kitchen singing the wrong words to “The Way You Look Tonight.” Three weeks ago June's niece Ada had found it in a drawer and asked what machine took a telephone charger that big. After a complicated explanation Ada had asked whether she could play that bit on adoption day. “I want some people there that can't be there,” she'd said. June had called every thrift store in three counties until she'd found a cassette player with a speaker that worked.
Meredith came back carrying a paper cup of tomato soup.
“The chicken entree is spoken for,” she said quietly. “I brought you something warm.”
“The card has my name on it.”
“We carry some trays that are no longer allocated.”
“Did you allocate the one with my name on it to somebody else?”
Meredith looked at Daniel. He had the sense to say nothing. “I can give you a credit that will post to your account within three days.”
“How much is a chicken worth in the sky?”
“Seventy-five dollars.”
“That seems like a lot for a chicken and very little for what just happened.”
June took the soup because she was still hungry. Meredith stood with a long white receipt between her hands. There was a line at the bottom for June's signature.
“What's that for?”
“To acknowledge receipt.”
“Of the soup?”
“Of a satisfactory alternative.”
June slid the pen back. “Thank you for the soup.”
The woman behind her said, “That's my four minutes.”
“Give me another four,” June said, and this time she laughed too.
Meredith's lower lip had a vertical line worn into it where her teeth met. June watched the woman worry that groove as she put the unsigned paper in her apron and made her way back toward the curtain. The aisle had gone quiet in the particular way people went quiet around an argument on a bus. Nobody wanted to be the first to admit what they had heard, but everybody wanted to know how it ended.
“May I ask you one question?” Daniel said.
“Seems like you're going to.”
“Was that handwritten note already on the card when she brought your tray?”
“I didn't write it myself, if that's what you're wondering.”
“Sorry. That wasn't where I was headed. The card shouldn't have gone through the curtain. The crew usually keeps it on the hot tray.”
“Maybe somebody wanted me to see it.”
Daniel sat back in his seat. He had a chicken in front of him. It had arrived as part of the regular service while Meredith was fetching soup. He looked at it and rang the call button. “I'd be happy to trade with you.”
“Would you have offered if there wasn't anybody watching?”
He considered it seriously. “Honestly? I might not have noticed.”
“Eat your lunch, then. Both of us going hungry won't do much.”
He cut his chicken. The knife was too dull. From the stern way he concentrated June suspected the instrument had become personally important to him. She took a sip of soup. Almost at once a younger flight attendant came through the curtain with a foil packet and a piece of bread balanced on her palm.
“From our crew tray,” she whispered. “It's cheese and potato. Hot in the middle.”
“My goodness, how hungry do I look?”
The girl smiled. She was perhaps twenty-five, with a little spray of freckles across her throat. A blue ballpoint pen stuck out of the neck of her apron. On her name tag, below the name Inez, someone had put a tiny yellow sticker in the shape of a duck.
“My mother would have my hide if I let you off this plane with nothing but leaves.”
“What are you going to eat?”
“I've got another half.”
The wrapper was folded back on one side, and the potato pastry had indeed been broken in half. June accepted it for that reason, because it was a real offer from a real person who would still get to eat. It tasted of pepper and greasy paper and the comfort of other people's kitchens.
“Thank you, Inez.”
Something moved across the young woman's face when June said her name. She glanced at the card. “Will you keep that?”
“Why?”
“We don't get a copy of what's written on them. Everything else has a copy.” A motor hummed somewhere behind the curtain. Inez looked toward it and was gone before June could ask another question.