Photo by Oskar Kadaksoo on Unsplash
I must look like a cougar on the prowl, but I can’t stop eyeing the tall, twenty-something redhead across from me in the airport waiting area. It’s not so much his good looks as his palette that rivets me: brassy hair, an unzipped cobalt blue jacket over a white t-shirt, and mustard yellow jeans. He evokes a lankier, brighter-haired version of James Dean. Only James Dean never sported such an interesting color combination.
Flying as often as I do for work, I’m in the priority boarding group. I feel a bit sad heading onto the plane while he sits there, white birch twig fingers idly swiping at his iPhone—Swiping left? Swiping right? What do I care? still waiting. Not that I want to see him again—what I want is both less, and more, than to see him again. I’d like to stand behind one-way glass, watching him shift and pace in a garishly-lit interrogation room on his languorous limbs, those long white fingers drumming the table, playing with his zipper, or sliding casually into the waistband of his jeans.
I take my seat by the window in a two-seat row, looking, despite myself, for flashes of mustard yellow, cobalt blue, and flaming hair in the stream of boarding passengers. And then there he is, like an exotic bird, white-breasted and red-crested, cobalt jacket slung rakishly across his carryon as he approaches. I drop my gaze. Moments later a body that might be his slides into the seat beside me. Glancing at the armrest, I find confirmation: a column of flecked granite overlaid in red hair even brighter than the hair on his head.
I close my eyes, pretending to doze. It means nothing. This isn’t a goddamn meet-cute. Had I been a painter or photographer, we might’ve collaborated to memorialize his singular look. That would’ve satisfied me more than a fling which, realistically, wouldn’t entice him unless his dick didn’t happen to have anything younger or hotter with which to busy itself. I’m a middle-aged woman on her way back to a house with an empty fridge and an overflowing laundry room, husband and kids rankling for the resumption of services. Yes, my marriage is a trainwreck. Yes, I work more than necessary because it’s easier than being home. But I need to knock off the Bovarism and stop longing for things that aren’t real. The young man next to me isn’t the reincarnation of a brilliant, enigmatic actor. He is, in all likelihood, more style than substance, still at the stem cell stage of developing a personality that might, in ten years, be interesting.
I hear what sounds like the crackle of lips parting, preparing to say something.
Whatever you do, I think, Don’t speak. Don’t ruin it.
And he doesn’t, for the entirety of the three-hour flight. What he may or may not sense is that I, in my surreptitious peripheral vision, savor the contrast of long red hairs against speckled porcelain skin, imbuing this one exquisite arm—this reliquary object—with all our unrealized possibilities.
Francesca Leader is a self-taught writer and artist originally from Western Montana. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Wigleaf, Fictive Dream, Barren, CutBank, the Leon Literary Review, JMWW, the Mom Egg Review, Roi Fainéant, the Harpy Hybrid Review, and elsewhere. Learn more about her work at inabucketthebook.wordpress.com.