A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [103]
“I’d get off,” Bridget said. “For Matt’s sake. When you have a child, you can’t make decisions for yourself anymore.” Agnes glanced over at Matt, whose face instantly reddened with embarrassment. “But I probably wouldn’t be on the plane in the first place,” Bridget added, “because I’m terrified of flying. I’d look at it as a wonderful excuse to bolt.”
Bridget’s sister, Janice, was seated next to Matt. Bridget’s mother had stayed for the drinks and toasts but would have her meal in her room, Bridget had explained. The woman’s arthritis was apparently so severe she couldn’t sit for long periods without pain.
“If Bridget got off, I’d go with her,” Bill offered.
“Cop-out,” Josh said genially.
“Anyone else?” Jerry asked. He’d shed his jacket and had his shirtsleeves rolled. Agnes wondered if he’d been preparing this question for the group all day.
“I think I’d engage one of the men in conversation,” Rob said thoughtfully. “I’d ask him what he did for a living. Where he lived. And then I might base my decision on his answers and his general demeanor and how the others reacted to my talking to the man.”
“Sounds sensible,” Harrison said.
“I’d tell the flight attendant,” Agnes said abruptly, without having given her answer much thought.
“What good would that do?” Jerry asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’d ask her if she’d noticed that six Arab men had just gotten on the plane.”
“That’s discrimination, right?” Jerry asked.
“Well, of course,” Agnes said. “But the configuration so mirrors what happened on 9/11 that I’m not sure the notion of discrimination applies any longer.”
“You wouldn’t mind that you were engaging in racial profiling?” Jerry probed.
“I might mind, but being politically correct would certainly never take precedence over trying to save my life. Not to mention the lives of two hundred others. Not to mention the lives of thousands who might be at another ground zero.”
“And what if the flight attendant did nothing?” Jerry asked.
Agnes thought a minute. She would already have publically raised the question. The men on the plane might have heard Agnes and the flight attendant in discussion. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You said first class, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, I’d stay on,” Agnes announced. “If I were lucky enough to get a seat on first class—which I’ve never flown by the way—I certainly wouldn’t give it up.”
Harrison laughed, and Nora, seated next to him, smiled.
“What about you, Nora?” Jerry asked.
Their hostess had on a black lace shawl over a sleeveless dress. The skin of her neck and collarbones was smooth and white and unblemished. Two black pearl pendants hung from her ears. Agnes had always admired the way Nora, with little obvious fuss, could make herself look so well dressed. “I figure if my number is up, it’s up,” she said.
“That’s it?” Jerry asked. “You wouldn’t get off the plane?”
“No,” she said. “No. I don’t think so.”
“I doubt I’d get off the plane either,” Harrison offered. He lifted a bulbous glass of red wine to his face and pondered it, as if looking for the answer there. He, too, had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie.
“You’re kidding,” Jerry said.
“No. Good manners would initially keep me in my seat. I’d feel extremely rude getting off. I’d be thinking, too, about the hassle of missing my flight and having to get another one. Then I’d be figuring the odds. The likelihood that these six men were terrorists would be, I don’t know, one in a thousand? One in ten thousand? And the odds that one of them got through security with a box cutter? One in a million? I’d be sweating bullets, but I don’t think I’d get up.”
“Julie?” Jerry asked, turning his head to his wife sitting beside him.
“I’d take a Xanax,