For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Marcus said, quietly enough that only the first two rows could hear it:
"I'd like you to repeat what you just said."
The woman smiled. It was a thin, pleasant smile.
"I said this isn't your part of the plane."
"That was the first part," Marcus said. His voice had not changed at all. "I meant the second part."
The smile went away.
"I have no idea what you mean."
"Yes," Marcus said. "You do."
* * *
The flight attendant arrived before either of them could say anything else.
Her name tag said PRIYA. She was perhaps thirty, slender, with a calm, attentive face and the faint lilt of a Bay Area childhood in her voice. She had been with Pacific Airflight for seven years and had worked first class for three of them, and she had developed, in that time, a very finely tuned sense for the particular kind of quiet that settles over a cabin right before something goes wrong.
She had felt it from the galley.
"Good morning," she said, looking from one of them to the other. "Is everything all right here?"
The woman in 1B sat up straighter. Something in her posture changed completely. A moment ago she had been lounging. Now she was upright and composed, her hands folded neatly in her lap, the very picture of a reasonable passenger who has been put upon.
"No," she said. "It isn't."
She lifted one manicured finger and pointed it at Marcus.
"This man is trying to take my seat."
Priya turned to Marcus.
"Sir?"
"I'm assigned to 1B," Marcus said simply. "I asked her about it. She doesn't agree."
The woman gave a short, incredulous laugh. "Oh, please."
Priya had a small tablet tucked under her arm, the kind the crew used for the passenger manifest. She did not look at the woman. She did not look at Marcus. She looked at the tablet, which was the right thing to do, and she said, in the same calm voice, "May I see your boarding pass, sir?"
Marcus handed it to her.
She scanned the barcode with the tablet. It beeped softly. She read the screen.
Her eyebrows rose about an eighth of an inch.
Then she tapped twice more on the screen, and her eyebrows rose a little more, and she turned to the woman in 1B.
"Mrs. Caldwell?"
"Yes."
"I'm showing you in seat 4C this morning."
There was a pause.
The woman's face did not move, but something behind it went hard and cold, like water freezing in a pipe.
"I'm aware of what my ticket says."
"Then I'm sure you won't mind moving to it," Priya said pleasantly. "We'd like to close the door on time."
Mrs. Caldwell looked at the flight attendant as though Priya had just tracked mud across her living room.
"I was upgraded," she said.
Priya glanced at the tablet. "I don't see an upgrade on your record, ma'am. You're confirmed in 4C."
"I spoke to someone at the desk."
"I can certainly check with the gate. But 1B is assigned to Mr. Reed."
"Then the desk made a mistake."
"It's possible," Priya said, in a tone that suggested it was not. "But in the meantime, I'll need to ask you to take your assigned seat so Mr. Reed can take his."
Mrs. Caldwell did not move.