Headwinds
an excerpt

Nothing screams “drug addict” louder than the signs and symptoms of a user in withdraw. There was the irritability, the jitteriness and the mood swings. Looking closer you could see the bloodshot eyes and the dilated pupils. They might clutch their bellies in pain or rub their temples at the headache that just will not go away. They sleep too much or maybe not at all, and they sweat, beads of perspiration pearling on their brow, wiped away, only to spring up again. April noticed every one of these signs in the person she was watching. Shaking her head, she looked away from the mirror and exited the airplane bathroom, weaving her way back to her seat.

Like most addicts, she kept her addictions a secret. She wasn’t in to anything illegal, only minor drugs that in moderation no one would ever question, but as she kicked her foot and fidgeted in her seat, she found herself once again, for the fifteenth time in the last five minutes, desperately wishing for a double shot of espresso. She could live without the cigarette, but she needed caffeine, real caffeine, not the sludge they were trying to pass off as coffee on the airplane. She had had one cup of it to try to take the edge off the searing headache that was threatening to crack her head open like an overripe melon, but had been unable to stomach any more. Nine hours down with one to go on a red eye flight to Madrid but she was long past her breaking point. She felt tears rising in her eyes and blinked furiously to keep them from falling. She hadn’t slept a wink, and the sleep deprivation was only adding to her misery.

She could make it through one more hour, she just had to focus and breathe deeply and try to relax. Deep breath in. It was one hour. Deep breath out. She could get through that. Deep breath in. One hour. Deep breath out.

April was just starting to calm herself as they turned up the lights in the cabin and started rolling down the aisles with breakfast trays. Passengers started waking, stretching, a buzzing chatter creeping in around her as people gloated over their restful slumber. She didn’t understand how anyone could sleep on a plane. She had even taken some Benadryl in the hope of knocking herself out for the trip. All it did was make her woozy and disoriented on top of all the other symptoms she was already feeling. Deep breath in. One more hour.

A breakfast tray was set before her as the woman sitting next to her started to wake. “Just coffee, please,” the woman said. April wanted to die. She would have given anything for just coffee, but her neighbor seemed impervious to the sludge that was handed to her. She stirred in sugar and drank it down without question. April slowly chewed the croissant she had been given hoping to stave off the nausea that was settling in her stomach. Deep breath out. 58 minutes.

“Did you get to sleep at all,” her seat mate asked. The last thing April felt like doing was making small talk. She wanted quiet. She wanted to be left alone. She wanted caffeine. She shook her head without even bothering to look in the other woman’s direction. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know how I managed to sleep. I’m so excited,” she bubbled.

April squeezed her eyes shut tight, cursing herself for being raised to be polite. She did not want to talk, but her neighbor was obviously fishing for a conversation. Maybe if she just didn’t talk, the woman would think that she didn’t speak english and would leave her alone. She focused on her food.

“Do you have family in Madrid?” her neighbor asked her in spanish as she ran fingers through her long dark hair. After nine hours on a plane, she looked like she had just walked out of her house. April looked like she had been dragged through the mud. It made her want to talk to this woman even less, but there was no avoiding her now.

“No,” she responded in spanish. “I’m going for business. How about you?” she asked.

Apparently, this was all the woman needed to open the flood gates. “No, I’ve never been to Spain before. I’m going to visit my boyfriend. He lives in Amsterdam. I know this sounds cheesy, but I am so in love. A smile spread across her face making her eyes sparkle and her skin glow. “We get together in different countries every two or three weeks for a long weekend. It’s so hard living so far away from him and only seeing him every now and again, but we are just so in love. I know, I sound like the worst kind of romance novel, but believe me. I never believed in love before, but,” she sighed audibly, her hand settling over her heart. “I love him so much.”

April raised her head, really looking at the woman for the first time. She seemed to honestly believe what she was saying. Even had April been feeling like herself, she still would have wanted to take this woman by the shoulders and shake some sense in to her. That kind of foolish love was not real. Likely, she had no idea who this guy really was. It was hard to really know a person when you lived half way around the world from each other. Even had this been going on for years, it seemed impossible to April that the brunette could have a true understanding of who this person was on a day to day basis. She was living in a fantasy, idolizing a fairy tale.

Out of curiosity more than any real desire to talk, April asked how long she had been seeing her boyfriend. “Six months,” she responded. “It’s not long, but it feels like we’ve known each other for our whole lives. We just fell in love so quickly and we both knew it was right.. In the beginning, we would see each other every four or five weeks, but we’ve just not been able to stay apart and so it’s more like every two or three now.” April didn’t think that her smile could have grown larger, but remarkably, it did. She bounced in her seat like an anxious child itching to be let out for recess. “I’m so excited I can’t even tell you. I was always such a skeptic. I was so cynical about love. I really didn’t think it existed, but I am so in love Oh, I love him so much ”

April smiled politely, hoping that her seat mate would recognize that she wasn’t interested in her school girl exuberance, but the woman continued talking and showed no signs of stopping until they touched down. She managed to tune her out, the polite smile plastered on her face, nodding occasionally but not commenting. She didn’t have the energy to burst this girl’s bubble. With all the traveling to different cities but never meeting in Amsterdam, April thought it more than likely that this “soul mate” was already married.

She finished her breakfast, bouncing her leg irritably as the trays were cleared and the cabin was prepared for it’s final descent. She was so close. So close to getting off the plane, finding some caffeine, maybe grabbing a few drags off a cigarette. One step closer to a hotel and a shower and blessedly clean clothes. She would make it. She closed her eyes in hope of a few minutes rest.

“Ugh, look at this picture ” her neighbor said. April opened her eyes to see the woman’s passport under her nose. The picture of Marie Suarez was more flattering than most identification pictures she had seen. According to the information next to the picture, Marie was 29 years old, two years older than April. As the wheels hit the runway, she wondered how it was that a woman older than herself was acting like a teenager. She really needed to find some caffeine.