working title: Suspect Primary
an excerpt

Dakota’s dark brown eyes flashed open, suddenly awake, as the plane lurched in a fit of turbulence. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she thought, paralyzed, “not this… again.” Now she understood why the fifty year-old man with sweaty palms and a mottled, greasy complexion had chosen to sit next to her, in the middle seat, despite the fact that flight 1745 from Dulles was almost entirely empty on this early Saturday morning. He had shrugged, and interjected in a raspy voice “Guess it’s just you and me, babe” and proceeded to settle himself too close to her. Dakota had pulled her seatbelt tight, smoothed her tailored suit skirt, looked hopefully for a blanket-wielding steward, then resigned herself to looking out the window, trying to ignore the coke-breath of her hopped-up neighbor.

“Hey sweetie,” he had asked, making her spine bristle, “would you mind lending me your in-flight magazine?” he reached across her lap before she could answer, “I don’t seem to have one.” She had refrained from making a snide remark about the fact that he could easily find one in another seat, perhaps across the aisle or even five rows up, and instead tossed her long, dark curls over her shoulder in mild annoyance. She knew that one never knew who one was dealing with - flying out of Washington, there was always the possibility of meeting –or pissing off— someone who could be important to her career in the future.

Right now, though, her thoughts were exclusively directed at the hairy white hand that was creeping up her smooth brown thigh, under her skirt, as her wide eyes registered that his other hand was busy working through his open fly. She wanted to vomit, wanted to break and sever each and every finger of his intruding hand from his pasty body, but she knew that the FAA frowned upon such acts of violence by civilian passengers while in the air, and like so many other times in her life, she sat frozen, suspending her breath until a more effective tactic presented itself or the intrusion went away of its own accord.