“Where Brian Went” by Jack Kaulfus, page 5

        A slim, dark haired flight attendant appeared behind Frances and asked her to take her seat. Frances obliged, begrudgingly.
        “I wish you could still smoke on these planes,” he said. “You used to be able to buy cigarettes from the flight attendants.”
        Frances looked at him. “If something happens to me,” she said, “will you call my family?” She pressed a business card into his hand.
        Brian laughed. “Are you serious?”
        “Serious as the invisible baby.”
        Out the window plumes of dusky cloud were breaking up over the wing. They were not cruising anymore.

**

        At first it seemed as though everybody was in on it – everybody but Brian and Frances. On the tarmac, the others pulled bottles of water from their carry-ons and sipped while they checked their phones for the time. For signals out. Brian did not regret following Frances into the forest. Her hand was warm and strong, and they all ended up in the same place anyway.
        The information given at the first breakfast briefing was sketchy, at best. At the front of the room, flight attendant Ella seemed less linebacker and more game-warden in a crisp safari outfit. Brian tried to listen, but Ella’s microphone kept fading in and out. There were about thirty people sitting in front of trays of food. Upon his plate sat an unappetizing attempt at French Toast. To his left, Frances sipped black coffee. They’d been shown to private hotel rooms the night before and left to themselves – told only that breakfast would be provided at 7:30 the next morning. Brian’s room had no television, no phone, but he could hear a canned voice, maybe a radio, down the hall. He tried the door, found it locked, and was not surprised. Exhausted, he set his travel alarm and fell asleep in his clothes on top of the hotel comforter. The next morning, he had opened his luggage to find his holey jeans and sweaters gone, replaced with three white cotton jumpsuits. His toiletries, too, were missing. His beard trimmer.
        “…may stay, free of charge, as long as you want,” the microphone was in, then out again. “And you are free to walk away anytime you like. We don’t provide transportation home, but we trust you will find your way when you are ready.”
        Frances raised her hand. “Walk away from what?”
        “Your ideas matter,” Ella went on. “After each briefing, you may choose to meet with a personal counselor to ask questions and share your thoughts. You can be sure we are listening to what you have to say.”
        Frances waved her hand again. “Where the fuck are we?”
        Ella redirected her focus squarely upon Frances. “You want to leave?”
        Frances nodded and glanced at Brian. Brian put his fork down. “We don’t want to be here,” he said. “We want to know how to get home.”
        Ella put her hands in the mesh pockets of her khaki tunic and shrugged. “The door’s open,” she said.
        It suddenly seemed absurd to Brian that they’d assumed they’d have to ask permission. He was thirty eight years old. A US citizen. The jumpsuit made him feel like a war criminal.
        “Let’s go,” Frances said. She stood and turned around and addressed the crowd. “Anybody else?”
        A woman and a long-faced kid met them at the back of the room, and the four of them filed out the open door. Brian followed Frances’s blonde head, reaching out for her again the way he did when she pulled him into this mess. There were men in safari uniforms posted at each door down the hallway, but they only nodded as the Brian and the others passed. “We’re leaving,” he told the men. Nobody tried to stop them.
        The raindrops were heavy, but there were fewer of them. The sky, where he could make it out through the dense canopy, was the kind of white that suggested things might clear up soon. Brian, Frances, and the other two stopped beneath the branches of a wide and ancient looking pine about twenty feet from the entrance of building. Michael and Stephanie introduced themselves.
        “We gotta find that plane,” Stephanie said. She was tall, and a bit unbalanced – her long legs seemed joined from the top of her thigh to her knee, opening into an “A” shape from knee to ankle.
        “Can you fly a plane?” Frances asked her. Brian wished Frances could be a little more friendly, given their circumstances.
        Michael said, “I bet it’s not there.” He was small and springy, but there was something up with her nose. It was the kind of crooked that had once been fixed.
        “You think they’re just gonna let us walk out of here?” Stephanie turned toward Frances.
        Brian squeezed Frances’s shoulder before she could reply. “We don’t even know where here is,” he said. “Or who they are.” He turned to Michael. “Do you?”
        Michael shook his head. “I wasn’t looking while we landed. But we were in the air about three hours. If we followed the flight plan, I think that might have put us somewhere near the border. Halfway.”
        Brian hadn’t been watching either – the baby wails had been deafening just before touchdown, and the usual announcements about seatbacks and tray tables hadn’t been made. Stephanie said she’d been dead asleep until she felt the plane hit the tarmac.
        “We didn’t follow the flight plan, I’m sure of it,” Frances said definitively. “Let’s just explore,” Frances said. “If we find the plane, at least maybe we can figure out how to call home.”
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