Page 139 of Knottingley Ever After
The flight attendant, professionally amused, hands it over.
I, with the small slow drag of a man whose anxiety pill has finally, on the back of a small smooth flight and an Omega thumb against the bone of his wrist, kicked in, open one eye.
Iris is balancing two food trays on the small fold-out table between us with the precision of a goalie balancing two pucks on her glove. She has unwrapped his linen, his cutlery, his small dinner roll. She has, by the look of it, sniffed the wine sauce on her own tray and pronounced it acceptable. The cabin smells ofroasted chicken with thyme, a small white-wine reduction, the warm yeasty release of fresh roll, and the small chemical-citrus of the linen cleaner she has just shaken open.
“Oh,” she informs me, without looking, “you are awake. Good. You were not, defenseman, going to miss this food.”
“Iris.” My voice is sleep-rough. “You could have let me sleep.”
“Rémi.” Affronted. “First-class meals, I am told by reliable internet sources, are the closest the airline industry comes to producing a Michelin-restaurant experience at altitude. I have never been to a Michelin restaurant. I am, therefore, ethically, structurally, and on the basis of my own personal joy ledger, unwilling to allow a defenseman next to me to miss the closest available proxy for one. No.”
From the row behind, Matteo’s head pops up between our seats.
“Pinky. Note. We are taking you to an actual Michelin-rated restaurant during the next conference break. Confirmed. Public record. Bellerose is paying.”
“Santori,” I say, mildly, without opening both eyes, “I accept the line item. I do not, however, accept the volunteer.”
“You are the one with the wallet, Bellerose. We have all known this for two years. The fiction is, frankly, ridiculous at this point.”
Jude, from the aisle seat of the row behind, adds, evenly: “He is right, Rémi.”
“Fine.”
Matteo’s head disappears.
Iris, on my left, finishes laying out my tray. She picks up the small heavy stainless-steel fork from my place setting. She loads it, neatly, with a small precise bite of roast chicken, a small soft cube of root vegetable, a tiny drag through the wine sauce.
She turns to me. She lifts the fork.
“Open,” Iris instructs, mildly.
Iris.
I arch one eyebrow at her. “O’Shea. Am I, on this particular flight, receiving the special feeding treatment.”
“You are receiving,” Iris informs me, primly, “the small thoughtful proxy-care of a small thoughtful Omega who has, in the past forty-five days, learned that the defenseman she is in the process of falling for does, in fact, eat his Michelin proxy food too quickly when left to his own devices. We are slowing the pace. We are tasting the meal. Open, Rémi.”
Oh.
Oh, Pinky.
I open. She slides the bite into my mouth. The chicken, against my back molars, is the slow careful preparation of a kitchen that has, in fact, taken its craft seriously for the entire duration of the four-hour catering window, and the small slow shocked sigh I do, into the cabin air, is not, frankly, in my budget to suppress.
“Mm,” Iris approves, watching my face. “See.”
“Mm.”
She loads a second bite. She offers it.
Then, on the third bite, she leans in.
Not far. The small careful three-inch incline of an Omega closing the distance between her mouth and the shell of my ear with the small dignified casualness of a woman who has decided, on the back of a small smooth flight and a forearm that has been hers for the past two hours, to escalate the energy of the conversation by exactly one notch.
Her breath against the bone behind my ear is warm.
“Defenseman,” she whispers, very low. “I can be bold. And I can mention, for the record, that the wide one at the front of this cabin is, for the entirety of this flight, mine and mine alone. And that the entry to it has a small considerately curtained vestibule on the cabin-side. And that the flight attendant whowould be the only person to ask any questions has, in the past nine minutes, given us the small professionally-blank face of a woman who is, frankly, paid not to ask questions. And that the entire equation is one hundred percent dependent on how bold a man you might, in fact, be willing to be about a small spontaneous in-air rule-bending exercise.”
She leans back. She loads a fourth bite of chicken. She lifts the fork to my mouth with the bland innocent expression of a woman who has just done none of the above.
