Rey leaned back in her seat, arching her back like a cat, settling forward with a sigh. She couldn't stop smiling.
Today had been a perfect day—she'd made a sale, found a new dress at Michael's, and oh, the snow had made it look like she was trapped in a perfect little NYC snow globe, like the ones they sold at the touristy gift shops. To round it all off, a cab had practically fallen into her lap at Rush Hour, saving her the stress of missing another flight, and now she was miraculously sitting in the right airport terminal at the right time.
The first flight hadn't been entirely her fault, of course—there had been this guy she'd been trying to sell to, and he'd seemed like an alright bloke at first, but then she'd noticed the way he touched his crotch all the time and it was one of those things that when you saw it, you never un-saw it. And then he'd followed her around for another hour in SoHo before he finally got the hint, if the first five I'm not interested-s and I have a fiancé-s hadn't been enough. By that point, her plane was already fifteen thousand feet in the air, and she was locking the door to her hotel room, phoning the lobby to keep him from coming up for an unfriendly visit.
At least he'd bought some of her shower curtain rings, as a sign of courtesy. She could report that much to her boss.
Bored, she flicked her book open to a dog-eared page. She was in the middle of a scene where a big-breasted Canadian Mountie was being intimate with moose, and Rey was so fascinated by the mismatched anatomy that she kept tilting her head to read it sideways, like that might make the puzzle pieces fit. The book was called The Canadian Mounted, and she'd bought it at a garage sale because she thought it was exactly the kind of prop that would scare away strangers.
Except—
In the next row of seats, a man was staring at her.
She peeked over page seventy-four (The Mountie was drizzling herself in maple syrup in a position Rey had never heard of, but wanted to try—the Alberta Snowshoe?), but the man's eyes darted down. His hands fidgeted in his lap.
She studied him. Now that he'd gotten her attention, he looked… familiar. She tried to remember where she'd seen a man like him—he didn't look like someone she'd soon forget, not with those broad shoulders and clean-cut suit. His face was all angles and lines and long nose, pretty in a way that made her heart flip, and god, where had she seen him before?
She turned over the rocks in her mind palace (she liked to imagine it had a koi pond and a little white beach). Maybe the handsomeness was a clue. Maybe she was attracted to him because of some weird residual sex-pheromone, and he'd been the guy she'd slept with in Stockholm when she thought it was the other one with the rat tail.
Well. Finn always said that she looked totally crazy when she kept her questions bottled up inside, so she clicked her heels against the floor, cleared her throat, and asked:
"Have we slept together?"
The man froze; a pink flush climbed up his cheeks. He coughed, though there was nothing to cough over, no sip of water or cigarette smoke.
He wheezed. "What?"
"I'm just trying to place you," Rey said patiently. Was he slow? If that was the case, she certainly felt sorry for not putting it in gentler terms. She slipped on a reassuring smile. "Maybe we met in Stockholm? Six years ago?"
"No! No, I'm sure we haven't… didn't…" His neck reddened; he mopped at his forehead, at invisible sweat. "I didn't sleep with you!"
A woman sitting next to them clapped her hands over her toddler's ears.
"Say it a little louder for everyone else to hear," she said drily.
"I didn't—" His jaw clenched. He took a slow, dragging breath. "I've never been to Sweden."
"You should. It's gorgeous in the spring." She tilted her head at him, now, but again, nothing came to her sideways. "You look dead familiar, though."
"You stole my cab."
He said it flat, edged with compressed anger, and the pieces finally fit together.
"Oh!" She pointed at him, astonished. "You're that lunatic. You chased down my cab!"
She could see it now, though he'd looked a bit wilder, a lot less composed—a giant in a black trenchcoat and windblown hair, screeching like a madman. She'd remarked on it to the cabbie, and the cabbie had tutted and said, "Just some crazy. Ignore him, sweetheart."
But the resemblance was striking, now, as the heat climbed up to his ears. "My cab," he gritted out, jamming a thumb back at himself. "I got to it first."
"Oh," she said again.
And suddenly, it did make a bizarre kind of sense. She wondered, now, why she'd never stopped to consider how easily she'd been able to snag a cab at five-thirty, in the busiest part of New York City; she'd simply thought the universe had walked it right up to her feet, and she'd been more than happy to take advantage.
And now the two of them were here, chewing on the motive, means, and opportunity of her crime. A crime that she may have committed murder over herself, had she been on the other side of that cab door, having flagged it down fair and square.
"God. I'm so sorry, I should've… I'm so sorry," she babbled, and she couldn't help it, but the room was swimming a bit with tears. She fiddled with her hands. What would Finn do in this situation? He was kind, and generous, and—"Can I make it up to you?" she asked in a rush.
The man didn't say anything, but his jaw eased a bit from its locked position. She took that as a good sign.
"I… I could get you something on the flight," she offered. "Maybe a Scotch, you look like a Scotch man to me, hm? Or some peanuts?"
He jerked his head in a slight nod. "No thank you."
"Or… I could get you something now." She was trying, he had to see that, but he was giving her nothing in return. She looked desperately about for something cheap, and found the shop next door. "I could get you a hot dog and a beer. How's that sound? American beer tastes like piss-water to me, no offense, but I could take a hot dog any day of the week. Wouldn't you like a hot dog, hm? I hear the ones here are the best in the city." (She hadn't heard that, actually, but it sounded better to say so.)
"I'm fine." He raised his hand, and Rey got the message—alright, already, Niima, don't oversell the pitch. "Really." He reached into the seat next to him and pulled up a newspaper. "I was just going to read this, if you don't mind."
"Not at all." But it did sting a little; it was a bit rude to end a conversation that way, simply picking up yesterday's news like it must be more interesting than anything you had to say. There was something particularly irritating in the way he opened it with a flourish, completely neglecting Page 1 for the Sports section. Rey knew nothing about American sports.
All this, and he hadn't yet told her his name. She cleared her throat, again.
"Yes?" He grumbled.
"I'm Rey Niima, by the way." She offered her hand.
The man took an inordinate amount of time to put down his newspaper and return the gesture. His hands were reptile-cold, which explained a lot about him, Rey thought.
"Dr. Ben Solo."
She lit up—interesting. "Oh, Doctor, is it? Which specialt–"
"Cardiology," he interrupted. When she didn't react, he sighed and went on. "Heart science."
"You mend hearts."
"Yes?" He lifted his eyebrows.
Rey swallowed a laugh. "Nothing. Just—"
"What?"
"Nothing."
They lapsed into an uneasy silence.
"Well," Dr. Solo—Ben—said at last, "Maybe you should get back to your… uh…" He was pink again, gesturing toward the book.
She picked it up, flashed the cover art at him, the Mountie's breasts bursting out of her red jacket. "You can borrow it when I'm finished."
"No, that's very… kind…"
He coughed again over nothing, and hurriedly skimmed through hockey statistics. Rey grinned.
"Nice meeting you."
"Yeah."
She returned to page seventy-six, where the Mountie was doing something anatomically improbable with a hockey puck, a beefy man in a toque, and a plate of poutine. What a shame—another beautiful man with a terrible personality (the doctor, not the man in the toque. She imagined that Toque-man was probably lovely). Well, not everyone could be Finn, she supposed, perfect boyfriend and fiancé. She closed her eyes, trying to picture his face, his easy smile.
Ten minutes later, they were boarding the plane.
"Well, I guess I'll see you—" Rey started, but Ben was already pushing his way to the front of the line. Arse.
She slid her carry-on bag onto her shoulder and walked to the back, a little bit sorry that she would never see him again.
—-
"This is a First Class ticket," Ben insisted, flapping the evidence under the stewardess' well-powdered nose. "I paid for a First Class seat."
"And I'm informing you, sir, that First Class is full. Please accept our full apologies." She had a patronizing smile on her face, like he was throwing a temper tantrum, like he shouldn't get what he'd paid for, which was all of the best American Airlines had to offer—drinks and warm towels and seats with leg room, because he didn't like folding himself into the regular seats. He wasn't a contortionist.
"I don't want your apologies. I want my seat, or I want a refund—"
"Oh, Jerry! Great to see you. Yeah, you're right over there in First Class." She beamed at a man squeezing past them in the corridor.
"Thanks," he said, "Love the upgrade."
Ben fought the urge to bang his head against the wall.
"Linda would be happy to escort you to another seat."
"But—"
"Sir, if you refuse to take your seat, I'll have to call airport security."
He took a deep breath; he nodded. "Please don't do that."
It was only a three-hour flight, after all.
He repeated this to himself as Linda walked him back toward Coach, to an empty window seat near the last row, where—
Oh no.
"Well, well, well," chirped Rey Niima, showing her teeth. "We meet again, Dr. Solo."
She patted the empty seat.
Ben did a slow count to ten. "Can't I at least take the aisle?"
"No," she said flatly. "I always need to pee."
He shoved his briefcase into the carry-on shelf with a great deal more force than was necessary.
—
"Ahh," Rey sighed, "That's better."
Her bare feet were wriggling out in the open air, stripped of red heels and pantyhose, filling the cabin with their cheese-stink. Ben tried to take shallow breaths.
True to her word, Rey had already taken two bathroom breaks, and they were less than a quarter of the way through their flight. Ben stared at the window and worried about the snow, the storm that the radio warned was coming.
"You know, I hate flying, but I do it all the time. Don't you think that's interesting, that I'm always putting myself in this position? I could have done anything else with my life, could've stayed in London, but—"
She'd hardly taken a breath since Ben sat down. So far, topics of conversation had ping-ponged between Nancy Reagan to Seinfeld to Demi Moore, and a few other names besides that Ben didn't care enough to recognize.
"—I'm talking too much, aren't I?"
Ben found the sudden silence unsettling after the rapid machine-gun fire of the past half-hour, like the calm before the next volley of artillery over the Marne. Her dark eyes had latched on to his face, and he wondered how much she could read.
Whatever she found, it made her frown and throw up her hands. "I knew it," she declared. "My fiancé Finn's always telling me to slow down, let the other chap have a chance to speak, and I haven't let you talk at all. You know, I hate it when some blabbermouth makes it impossible to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation, just talks until you want to blow your head off, isn't that terrible? I can't understand how anyone would—"
He'd long since forgotten to even keep up the pretense of listening, the mm-hms and sure-s that would have been polite.
"—But Finn's just the best man in the world, the only decent man to ever exist. Present company included."
"Sure," said Ben. He found that he couldn't be offended by someone so beneath his standards. Of course, he supposed in a certain detached, clinical sense that Rey was pretty, with her buttoned-up nose and full lips and easy confidence, but she wasn't the type of woman that Ben would have given a second glance at in a crowd. He hardly wanted to look at her now—it seemed to fuel her tendency to keep talking.
"Finn calls me his canary. He says that when I shut up, everyone knows that something's wrong. It's like—You ever hear about how they used canaries, in those old mines? Underground, there's pockets of poisonous gas that miners can't see, so they'd bring birds with them. If they heard the bird stop singing, they'd know to pack up their gear and pop up to the surface. See, the birds were smaller, so they'd die before the miners, and… Where the canary goes, everybody dies. I didn't mind the nickname, though, since canaries are sweet. I think I'd like to be reincarnated as one, wouldn't you? I mean, if I believed in that sort of thing. Really, I've no idea."
Ben, half-listening, thought that fiancé Finn must not have been so decent if that was the reasoning behind his pet name for her. Poor man.
(He glanced at her hands, finding it odd that she wasn't wearing a ring. He supposed that plenty of his married colleagues would take their rings off and forget to put them back on after they were done working; Rey seemed like the scatterbrained type to do something similar.)
"But life's a mystery, isn't it? That's what makes it so special. My line of work takes me everywhere, which I love to hate and hate to love."
Ben checked his watch. He could try to sleep, but the smell of her feet still hadn't quite dissipated. Might as well bite.
"What do you do for work?" he asked.
She brightened. "I'm a saleswoman for American Light and Fixtures," she said proudly. "I mostly sell these."
She flicked one of the thick plastic hoops hanging from her ears.
"Earrings?"
She smiled. "Shower curtain rings. They can be used for just about anything, cosmetics, health, as a household appliance—really, it's all about how you spin it. If you've got a shower curtain ring in your home right now, there's about a forty percent chance that my company supplied it. It's a pretty sexy line of work, lots of travel and networking with clients. I don't think I could ever do anything like what you do—"
Ben very much doubted she could.
"—All of that blood and guts and nothing to show for it. I hope your patients are grateful."
"They generally are, after I save their lives."
"But not all the time."
He could only stare at her in amazement.
"Everyone I sell to walks out absolutely loving me. And hey, I don't just do shower curtain rings, I've got these aloe and goat milk creams that do absolute wonders for your skin—and if you ever want to make an extra buck or two on the side, those things practically sell themselves, and you only need to invest a little. I have my own fees, of course, for supplying you with the product, but—"
She rummaged in her purse and tossed him a tube of white, viscous liquid stamped BeautyClear. "It's a great business opportunity. My girls earn tons." She nodded, quite seriously. She tapped the bottle. "You can keep that, it's a sample. Do something about those wrinkles under your eyes."
"I don't have wrinkles," Ben protested.
She snorted, but didn't press the issue. He pocketed the lotion.
"Thanks," he said. It was mostly sarcastic, but Rey didn't seem to mind.
"Not at all," she replied.
There was a long, unhurried pause—Ben took advantage of it to lean his head back and try to sleep. After a while, he cracked an eyelid and saw her slumped against the wall, mouth open, slightly snoring. He decided to follow her lead.
His watch read seven-fifty when he startled awake. There was something soft stuck in his mouth and a warm pressure at his side, flowery perfume and—
He pushed Rey off his shoulder. Her lashes fluttered; she stretched. She stared past him into the round egg of the window.
"Radio says there's snow, where we're going." Her voice was raspy from misuse; Ben wondered if she'd ever been this quiet for this long.
He nodded, and she sighed, sinking into her seat.
"Five bucks and my left tit says we won't be landing in Chicago."
—
They didn't land in Chicago.
Instead, the plane made a graceful turn to the west toward Wichita. Rey felt her heart drop.
"What?" said Ben, noticing something about her—she couldn't figure what. Maybe it was the way the blood had drained from her face, and maybe this was why he was finally paying attention to her after hours of one-word answers and head-shakes; his doctor-instincts were finally acting up, telling him that something was off. "Are you airsick?"
She shook her head. "I'm fine."
She didn't want to say it, but she'd traveled in the United States enough to know that Wichita was the last airport you wanted to be dropped into on a connecting flight to Chicago. It meant that a storm of epic proportions had scratched Chicago off the map—and that, effective immediately, all of them were stuck in Kansas. There would be no rescheduled flights, no easy way to get home until the storm had passed.
Presently, Rey was waiting for the airline to announce the canceled flight in the airport lobby, toeing her luggage with scuffed tips of her heels. She amused herself by watching the hundred or so passengers dial their relatives on the phone, gesticulating as they explained why they couldn't be home for Christmas Eve—caricatures of wide eyes, tears, spittle flying as Ben yelled into the receiver.
"Damn it, Hux, I told you she had a history of seizures—"
He was shouting loud enough for the receptionist at the ticket booth to point and whisper.
"Did you look at her chart at all? Even once?"
An old woman held a hand to her mouth, My goodness. Rey snickered.
She'd finished her own phone calls ten minutes ago, along with everyone else. Ben was the only one with a seemingly endless supply of quarters and rage, gripping the pay phone like he meant to squeeze the life from its plastic shell.
Honestly. And the man thought she liked to talk.
"Just wait until I get back, alright? Hold on, don't do anything…" He stopped and stared openmouthed at the receiver, where apparently "Hux" had hung up on him. Rey didn't know the guy, but she had to cheer him on.
Ben slunk back to his seat to pout.
"So," Rey prompted, "How's your mum? She alright?"
"She's fine." Ben's phone call to his mother had involved a lot less yelling and cursing and general melodramatic flair. Really, it had been rather sweet to hear him reassure her over the phone—Yes, Mom, everything's fine, I won't be there tonight but I'll be there, promise, I'd never leave you alone on Christmas. I know, I miss Dad too, but this year I'm showing up, I got off of work and everything. Yeah. Yeah, I love you too.
She hadn't known he was capable of even saying those words. Rey didn't know him that well, but she was willing to wager her other tit that he'd probably never said them to anyone else in his life.
"Excuse me. May I have your attention, please?"
A man with a pasted-on smile stepped up to the boarding table, bending over to speak into the intercom.
"Flight 109 has been canceled due to the inclement weather in Chicago. Representatives will be coming by shortly to help you make other arrangements. On behalf of everyone at everyone at our airlines, I truly apologize—"
Jeers and shouts of confusion lifted up from the crowd; the man made a quick exit. She glanced at Ben and saw the hope break in his eyes, slumping forward, hands limp at his side. It looked like the air had been sucked out of him, like the airline rep had punched him hard in the gut.
Rey couldn't help it; she felt a twinge of pity. She had yet to make up for the cab-stealing incident, after all.
She slid a cigarette pack from her pocket and fished one out with her teeth. She lit it, took a calm puff. The smoke settled nicely in her chest.
She offered one to Ben, but he put up a hand to decline.
"The motels are all sold out, you know," she said, mock-casually. "I called around and asked."
"Great," Ben deadpanned. "That's just perfect."
" But …" She rolled the word around in her tongue, delighting in the sight of his ears perking up, "I know the guy that owns the Interstate Motel in Wichita. Sold him some shower curtain rings a while back, and he said he'd fix us up."
When Ben hesitated to accept, she pointed down at a man snoring sideways on the cold tiled floor, jacket bunched under his head for a pillow. Passersby kept stepping on his luggage.
"Come on. Beats staying with him, doesn't it?"
She saw Ben consider it for a long moment, weighing the pros and cons of following her, the canary (and, like Finn says, bad luck follows wherever she goes) into the Kansas wilderness versus spending a night on the dirty floor of a strange airport.
"Alright," he agreed, and stood. "It's late, but I could try to call a cab."
Rey patted him on the shoulder. "No need."
—
A motel room did sound good, Ben thought, which was why he'd decided to ignore all of his survival instincts and follow this strange woman into a parking lot to wait for her mysterious friend of a guy I know's girlfriend that owned a cab running in the middle of the night—in theory, at least.
And, well—a taxi did show up eventually.
Technically.
It had the word "taxi" emblazoned on a sign latched to the roof, but that was where the vehicle's similarities to a cab began and ended.
Ben heard it before he saw it, the raw grit of the engine as it tore into the parking lot and skidded to a stop, bouncing on its enormous wheels. Ben's next impression was red, blood-red with flame decals licking up the roof, backlit by winding vines of duct-taped string lights.
It was the kind of vehicle you'd expect to find in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; and, observing their surroundings of dilapidated buildings and cracked parking lots, Ben thought that the comparison might not be too far off.
The hell-car's window rolled down. A bearded man's head poked through, cheeks pudgy with chewing tobacco. He spit a brown streak into the grass.
"Welp," he drawled, "You must be the shower curtain lady."
"Gus' friend sent you?" Rey had to shout over the roar of the engine, placing a hand over her eyes to squint through the hi-beams.
"Ah-yup." His eyebrows shot up high on his scalp. "Though he didn't say there'd be two of ye's."
"Will that be a problem?" Silently, Ben pleaded: say yes say yes say yes.
The driver's eyes met his, trailed down his body in a way that made him gather his trenchcoat tighter around his waist. The driver chewed for a minute, spat again, then shrugged.
"Don't think so."
Ben wasn't sure if he meant I could take you in a fight or if he'd sniffed out the money Ben had from the cut of his suit (something told him the former was much more likely than the latter).
"Great." Rey beamed. "Come on, then," and before he could protest, she was already dragging her trunk towards the back of the car. The thing was at least half as tall as she was, and twice as heavy; Ben still remembered the shock of it reverberating into his heel in New York City, the sky flipping upside down, making out those stenciled words that, at the time, hadn't made any sense—
REY NIIMA
C/O AMERICAN LIGHT FIXTURES
SHOWER CURTAIN RING DIVISION
P.O. BOX 30006
CHICAGO, IL
He laughed, once, out loud. It was all so absurd that he couldn't believe it was real—the red stop-sign car, the word "Dooby" scrawled in perfect Christmas-card cursive on the back of the trunk when he slammed the lid down over their luggage. He looked around for Rey, mostly to make sure he wasn't having some kind of panic attack-induced hallucination, but she was already up front claiming shotgun.
Ben shook his head and thrust open the rear-side door. Dooby. What could that mean? The car's interior stunk like stale tobacco and cheap beer.
He'd barely sat down when the cabbie pressed his heel to the gas and whirled them away, spinning around the curbs in vomit-inducing hairpin turns. Ben clutched at the ashtray and tried not to panic.
They hit a bump; cigarette ash spilled down his front.
He closed his eyes, tried to steady his breathing. There would be a shower at the motel, he reflected, warm and comforting and his muscles could unwind in the steam. It couldn't be long now.
They turned onto a county highway. Exit signs whirred past.
Rey chattered away in the front seat as she usually did, verbally poking at the driver's defenses. She didn't get much, besides for the fact that "Dooby" was the taxi driver's name (Ben had laughed at first, thinking it was a joke; it wasn't) and that he'd lived in a town called Claron just outside of Wichita his entire life.
"Is that where you're taking us?" Ben shouted over the blare of the radio—Alabama, "Christmas in Dixie." A skull decal bobbled on the dash.
"Ah-yup."
"How far is Claron?"
"Shouldn't be long, now. Thirty more minutes."
Thirty more minutes?
"Why aren't we taking the interstate?" Ben demanded. They'd passed three exits for it already.
Dooby glared at him through the rearview mirror. "You don't see nothin' on interstate but interstate. I got a bit more pride for my hometown."
"Makes total sense." Rey was nodding along sagely. "He's got pride in his hometown, Ben. That's a rare thing nowadays."
On the dash, the meter ticked up to one-twenty-five. Which, Ben realized now, was the game, why he'd trapped them here and driven them in mad circles in the middle of the night.
Dooby smiled a toothless smile.
Ben clapped a hand to his forehead and dragged it down his face.
Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight…
The radio screamed, the car shuddered, and outside the world slid quietly into featureless black.