Transatlantic by Melissa Bean

It’s red eye flights, earnings reports, international SIM cards, postcards with National Geographic photos on the front, postcards that will get here long after she has come and gone again.

It’s six hours ahead, seven hours back. Four hours ahead. It’s under slept in twenty-four different time zones.

It’s different hemispheres, different languages, but the same beige carpet in every office everywhere, always. It’s take offs, landings, taxiing. It’s please fasten your seatbelts, we are going to experience some turbulence.

It’s me asking, “Where are you going to be next week?” And her saying, Berlin, Brunei, Dubai, Spain, Japan again, DC, LA, NYC, Heathrow, Dulles, O’Hare. The airspace over Anchorage. The jet stream between here and everywhere.

It’s pantsuits and pumps in hotel laundry bags, conference calls, stock options, life options. It’s business breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and half-finished coffee in the kitchen sink. It’s her secretary knowing me by voice, saying, “She’ll have to call you right back.”

I blink and it’s Five-thirty PM in Atlanta or Arizona or Argentina, and she asks, “Was this the right thing to do?” from Dallas, from Denver, from Sao Paulo, from San Diego. And I say, “From thirty-thousand feet, fifty-five stories, and one hundred-ninety-six countries, I don’t think we’ll ever be close enough to tell.”

© 2013 Melissa Bean

Melissa Bean is a student currently living in New York City. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in ‘Eunoia Review’, ‘The Rusty Nail’, and ‘Scissors and Spackle’. Like all other organic life forms she has a blog, www.melissabeanwriting.com

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