Close your eyes chapt4

Chapter 4

"Passengers of flight N Y3412 to Barcelona airport are kindly requested to approach gate 9, I repeat, passengers of flight...... "Here I am! Here I am! All right!" hugged Giulia, who could not hold back her tears. Bianca was struggling to stay calm in that situation, so in the face of all that bitterness, she tried to de-dramatize. "Well, you're not going to cry now, are you? I'm not dead! I'll be back with a Spaniard in my suitcase as a souvenir! What do you think you can do with it?" She realized as she spoke that the time of her return was far away, and that she had no idea what would happen, so her eyes also began to sting her, so she tried to cut short before she collapsed, and turned to her mother, trusting in her usual hasty greeting. "Hello mom, good summer!" Bianca embraced her mother who remained motionless unable to answer. Although everything about her, her posture, her tone of voice, her facial expression revealed nothing but a farewell ritual on the verge of a mechanic, the woman's eyes became clear. It was Giulia who noticed, not Bianca. The latter remained entrenched in his controversy with the illusion that his anger could take over the anxiety he had heard mounting half an hour before check-in. 

When her mother told her about her plans, she didn't even think for a moment about getting on a plane. In his mind, the idea of a small village on a coast was at best coupled with that of a ferry.

It had been so for Elba and Tremiti and nothing had made her think otherwise until one morning when her mother had already vanished at work she found in the kitchen a black and white printed sheet bearing the check in low cost with the date of her departure: June 10, 2018. It was the first time, he thought, that he had one in his hands, because usually his mother was very careful not to lose it, so she would not give it to anyone until the end of the journey, not even to his father, not even for the last minute pee at the airport.

EU/EEA Booking Number axd354s7891y

First Name Passenger Surname: Bianca Dalton. 

Number of Baggage 1

Non-smoking place. 

His first thought was about the word non-smoker. "Why..." he asked, "do they give me a non-smoking seat when you haven't smoked on the plane since before I was born?" Then he suddenly realized that that place on a low-cost plane suspended in the air, you don't know how, was just his. And it bleached. He called his mother pearly with cold sweat and I try to shout her dissent as loudly as possible. 

"You shouldn't have done this to me!" 

"But Bianca!" 

"No mom!! You know I'm terrified! I'm not getting on those flying boxes anymore! Is that clear!?!" 

"But Bianca I couldn't do otherwise! It's the end of May and the ferry seats have already been booked! The train has too many intermediate stops for you to make the journey alone! And then there are no Jumbo Jets that do the Italy-Spain route. It's too short!" Then with a slightly more uncertain tone: "You know I can't move your departure date!" "Of course! Otherwise you should take care of me!" 

"Don't say that!" 

"Oh yes, I say so! This isn't a holiday, it's a tour de force! And what's more, with a grandmother I've never seen and whose handwriting I only know is on her Christmas cards!" 

"And that's fine. What do you want in return?" 

"New York-Los Angeles to maturity with Giulia.". She knew she had shot at the top, but she also knew that not even a guided tour of the White House by the President of the United States himself would unleash as much adrenaline as she did on that goddamn non-liner. He remembered exactly when he started to be afraid. It had been three years since then. On that night of thunder and lightning, she could not understand why the flights had not been blocked, but she could not share this anguish with anyone because her father and mother had been plunged into a fight on the shuttle from the station to the airport. And there they are, sitting in far too tight seats, trying to find a way to continue to hold their positions. The quarrels between her parents had this characteristic of ascension, as she called it, or "from the micro to the macro" as she called them to Giulia. We started with an ironic tone about the different point of view for the management of things, and as the contrast was generalized to other situations, the eloquence was snapped, the fake smile on both faces disappeared and the volume began to grow. Definitely their quarrel had a more linear takeoff than the plane. Her parents were so preoccupied with that tried and tested ballet that they didn't care about the other ballet in the cabin. It was like we were sitting on a giant rodeo bull all busted up kicking the cowboy on duty. Even soaring the plane did not want to know to take altitude and Bianca found herself with her fingernails stuck in her arm. As her parents continued to waltz their accusations fearlessly, the plane made such an unsightly jolt that a pair of hat-bars opened themselves. The peak of the quarrel usually touched on existential concepts, such as "But how did I marry you???", or "At this time I would have graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art of Proietti!". Then it was her mother's turn: "If I", she resumed the main role with great ease, sometimes beating on her chest like a sorrowful Mary, but without too much pain. "if I hadn't met you at this hour I would have been much more serene and self-centered!". Bianca knew that 10 minutes to the fight would usually be followed by an endless silence. All this, of course, while the plane continued to bounce. Now wet with sweat, she wished her parents would continue to fight as much as possible because this was the only way she could distract herself. Then the flight settled down but that terror imprinted on his memory like a tattoo. 

Three years later, on her first solo flight, she fastened her seatbelt and remembered Giulia's words, the afternoon in which she vented after the news: "I recommend Bianca, on the plane she stares well at the face of the hostesses. If they are stretched it means that everything is ok!"

"Well," he said, "I'll spend my time staring at the hostesses. They'll think I'm crazy."

"Ladies and Gentlemen good morning um, this is the captain speaking to you, we are travelling at an average speed of 312 km/h, at an altitude of about 750 meters. The outside temperature is 4 degrees and we take the disturbance behind us, so there will be possible air voids."

"Well, I knew it, let alone if I missed them this time around. Besides, we're flying so low that it will take a moment to crash..." he thought as he fastened his seat belts, obeying the light signal.

The relaxed smile of the Hostesses does not reassure her at all. At that point, all she had to do was put into practice "the guessing of life", a stupid game she had invented together with Giulia on her way back from school by subway. You chose a passenger among those who were more absorbed in their own thoughts and therefore less likely for them to be discovered staring at him or her, sex made no difference. Then he made up a story about his phantom life, mimicking the voice they thought that person might have. 

Here, however, he saw only heads, moreover, turned to the other side.

It didn't take long. She was too anxious not to try.

First he focused on a lady full of curls three rows down, and imagined a roaring voice presenting his own story of three children and a separation. She imagined telling her, full of enthusiasm, how she had finally managed to drag her best friend, the Mogano-colored head next to her, on a trip to Barcelona, and (here her voice became more acute) after having slapped the offspring of her husband's young and brand-new companion. Trip is definitely deserved after a year of banging at the shoe factory.

 The second head that caught between the seats belonged to an olive-brown and bald guy, Mohammed thought, inside himself, that he was now telling her with an excited tone and strong Arabic accent, that he was the merchant of carpets between Spain, Morocco and Italy, but precisely for this reason that he was often subject to checks both at the airport and on the plane. "Once in 2002, in sha allah, the passenger next to me started to sweat coldly. I saw him press the call button and in four and a half the security guards arrived just because he had heard the big alarm clock with the Ramadan rally song that had gone off while I was putting my luggage under the seat..."

Bianca remembered seeing that scene on a TV show and for a second she smiled at being herself.

And then the last head before the landing, the cap of the Ceres beer on blond Slavic hair with a prominent tan. Or maybe not, maybe he's just one of those alcoholics blushed when young because of dilation of capillaries or something like that Giulia had told her during one of her Wikipedia moments... or he's red with his skin, he thought.

"Hello I'm Gunte I'm 20 years old and I haven't touched alcohol for 2 hours!

 The plane began to seriously shake.