"Maybe." June looked up at her. "But I'm going to tell you something my mother used to tell me. She said, June, the trouble with good people is that they're always waiting for somebody else to be good first." She smiled. "Anyway. That's all. I just wanted you to know that somebody saw. And that I'm sorry I didn't do anything. And that I think what you did was right, and I think the way you did it was even more right. I've been a teacher for forty years and I know the difference between somebody who wants to win and somebody who wants something to change. You didn't want to win."
"No," Naomi said. "I didn't."
"I could tell." June patted her hand, once, quickly, the way a grandmother pats a hand. Then she stood up, slowly, holding the console. "Well. I'd better get back. Walter will want to know everything you said, and I'll have to make some of it up, because I'll have forgotten it by the time I sit down."
Naomi laughed. It surprised her. She had not expected to laugh today.
"June," she said. "Thank you."
June Pryce went back to 3C and sat down beside her husband, who had his eyes closed and was very obviously not asleep, and Naomi heard her say, in a low voice, "Well, she's lovely, Walter, you should have come yourself," and heard Walter say, "I'm too old to be lovely to," and heard June laugh.
Naomi opened her laptop again. Under WHY IT HAPPENED, she typed: Good people waiting for somebody else to be good first. Including crew. Including passengers. Including me.
* * *
Lunch was served somewhere over the open Atlantic. Tessa brought it, and Graham. They moved through the cabin together with the cart, quietly and efficiently, and when they reached row 2 Graham set Naomi's tray down himself, a small plate of smoked salmon with crème fraîche, a green salad, a piece of grilled halibut on a bed of lentils, a glass of sparkling water. He did not say anything when he set it down, but he met her eyes, and she saw that his face had returned to something like its normal color.
"Thank you, Graham," she said.
"My pleasure, Ms. Morgan."
He moved on. At row 3 she heard him say to June and Walter, with all his old warmth, "Now, I understand congratulations are in order. Fifty-one years? I think that calls for something better than the house champagne," and heard June protest and Walter not protest at all, and heard Graham laugh, a real laugh, and go back to the galley for a bottle.
Naomi ate the salmon and part of the halibut. She had not realized how hungry she was. Halfway through the meal, the man in 1F got up, stretched, walked to the lavatory at the front of the cabin, and on his way back stopped beside her seat.
He was big, well over six feet, with a shaved head and a close-cut beard and the easy, unhurried physical confidence of someone who had spent most of his life being good at a sport. Up close, he was older than she had thought at first, perhaps in his late thirties.
"Ms. Morgan," he said. "Andre Battle. I'm in 1F."
"Mr. Battle." She shook his hand. "I know. You saluted me."
He grinned. "I did. I don't usually do that." He crouched down in the aisle beside her seat, so that his head was level with hers, the way a coach crouches beside a kid on a bench. "I just wanted to say. I played professional soccer for twelve years. Mostly in England. Now I coach youth teams in New Jersey and I fly back and forth a lot for scouting. I've been in a lot of first class cabins. I've been asked if I'm in the right seat, I don't know, thirty times? Forty? I stopped counting. One time a guy on a flight to Manchester asked me to get his bag down from the overhead bin because he thought I worked for the airline. I was wearing a tracksuit with my club's name on it. He still thought I worked there."
Naomi winced. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's not your fault." He shrugged. "But I've never once seen anybody do anything about it. You know? The crew always just kind of looks away. Smooths it over. Gets everybody settled. Makes it go away. You're the first person I've ever seen actually stop the airplane."
"I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a general policy," Naomi said.
He laughed. "No. Probably not." He stood up, his knees cracking. "Anyway. I just wanted to say I saw it. And I'm going to keep flying Meridian. And if you ever want somebody to talk to your crews about what it's like being on the other side of it, I coach teenagers for a living. I'm very good at talking to people who don't want to listen."
He handed her a business card. It said ANDRE BATTLE, DIRECTOR OF YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, and the name of a soccer club in Newark.
"I might take you up on that," she said.
"I hope you do." He went back to 1F.