Chapter 4 - Returning to the Brooklyn Apartment
The subway rattled beneath my feet, shaking the worn floorboards of the F train as it hurtged toward Brooklyn. My fingers felt stiff inside the pockets of my civilian wool coat, still missing the reassuring weight of the white gloves I had unceremoniously peeled off and dropped into my locker at JFK.
When I finally climbed the three flights of stairs to my apartment, the silence of the hallway felt heavy. I pushed open the deadbolt, stepped inside, and kicked off my sensible black heels. The apartment was small, clean, and predictably quiet—a studio with an arched doorway leading to a narrow kitchen and a single window overlooking a brick courtyard. Usually, this stillness was a refuge after forty hours spent in the pressurized metal tube of a wide-body jet. Tonight, the walls felt entirely too close.
I moved automatically through my post-flight routine. I unbuttoned the navy blue uniform jacket, checking the gold buttons for any scuffs before hanging it carefully on a wooden hanger in the closet. Beside it hung the pleated skirt and the crisp white blouse. I smoothed the fabric with my palm, my thumb brushing against the left lapel where my airline wings rested. They looked dull in the amber glow of the entryway light.
Walking over to the small laminate kitchen table, I dropped my canvas tote bag onto a wooden chair and pulled out my phone. The screen lit up with unread notifications—a group chat message from a junior flight attendant asking about layover recommendations in London, and a formal notification from the scheduling portal reminding me of my upcoming reserve shifts. I ignored them, tapping instead on the encrypted airline portal app to review the clipped incident log I had screenshotted before leaving the terminal.
The official report was sparse, bleached of any human element. It categorized the oxygen mask deployment as a minor cabin pressure anomaly during cruise altitude, resolved without incident. No mention of Mr. Vitelli's name. No record of the man with the neck tattoos, or the muscular security guard in the dark suit who had loomed so heavily in the blurred background. The system had swallowed the event whole, filing it away under routine maintenance.
My thumb hovered over the glowing glass, tracing the edges of the text. The discrepancy wasn't just an administrative omission; it was a deliberate erasure. They had wiped him from the manifest retroactively, or perhaps he had never truly existed on it under that name. But the image remained burned into my retinas: his head tilting back limply against the cream leather seat, his eyes unfocused, and then that sudden, startling shift when he opened his eyes and stared directly at me through the clear plastic mask with intense, unwavering eye contact. Your name? he had asked. And I had answered, breaking every protocol of detachment we were drilled on during initial training.
I set the phone down face-down on the table, rubbing my temples where a dull, persistent migraine was beginning to take root. I needed to wash up, make some tea, and try to sleep before my 5:00 AM alarm, but my body refused to settle into the familiar rhythm of rest. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the green tubing of the oxygen mask, the dark ink crawling up the side of his neck, and the heavy silence that had hung in the first-class cabin after the security guard stepped back.
A sharp, double rap on my exterior door sliced through the quiet apartment.
I froze, my hand still resting on the kitchen table. Nobody knocked on my door at this hour, least of all with that kind of percussive urgency. My neighbors in the building were polite, keeping to themselves behind heavy wooden doors and deadbolts.
The knock came again—two firmer raps, followed by the soft scuff of rubber soles retreating down the linoleum hallway outside.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a sudden, cold spike of adrenaline that felt far too much like the moment Mr. Vitelli had stopped breathing in row one. I crossed the small living space in three long strides, my bare feet silent against the hardwood floor. I didn't turn on the overhead light. Instead, I pressed my eye to the wide-angle peephole.
The hallway light flickered once, casting long, jaundiced shadows across the chipped paint of the opposite wall. The corridor was entirely empty. No delivery courier in a neon vest, no nervous supervisor from JFK, no security guard in a dark suit.
May you like
I turned the deadbolt with a soft click, pulled the door open a fraction of an inch, and looked down at the welcome mat. Resting right in the center of the coarse coir fibers was a simple, unadorned brown envelope. No postage, no handwritten address, no corporate insignia. Just a blank, flat square of heavy cardstock waiting in the dim light of the stairwell.
###
