Another little clip from my short-story-in-progress ‘The Newly Weds’. Read earlier bits of Fela and Chinny’s story here, The Newly Weds and The Newly Weds II.

She sat on the plane eager to get to her parents’ in Warri, oblivious of his eyes darting her way intermittently. In a cartoon world, his caption would scream “Why wont she look at me?!?!” in a white bubble above his head. In reality though, his calm façade masked a storming mind. Finally, girding for action, he leaned over the empty seat between them and queried the pretty woman in seat 12C, “A penny for your thoughts?”

“I would not rob you” Fela smiled a little as the Hilary Mantel quote readily came to mind.

His “Stunning AND smart” pushed her smile back into its shell, settling the glazed look he had approached her to erase back into her eyes. Before her eyes, and attention, could slip away he drew her again by asking if he could help her.

“Help? How…Why?” Her confusion was evident. He wanted to ask if she couldn’t tell that she looked as though someone had spilled sadness on her soul, she seemed wrapped in the slow sweetness of sorrow as she stared unfocused at everything, at nothing, clutching her vulnerability to her chest in silent surprise.

“Can I help? Actually, it’s probably more ‘May I…’?”

His questions might have ended the talk, she had already graced him with the back of her head, but nature is a funny thing. Before she could retreat into the fullness of her depression, the plane suddenly nosedived and she clutched his closest hand automatically. The terrified eyes she turned to him answered his last question even as mayhem released a heaving chaos down the aisle. As though a sudden madness descended on the plane, people attempted to bolt from their seats, hit windows, dismantle baggage compartments and struggle to remember the air hostesses’ directions at takeoff…while simultaneously praying in a myriad of tongues. Their worried hosts in the skies were forced to initiate restraining actions when a man took off his clothes to reveal a veritable collection of cowrie-entangled contraptions. It was the sound of the bell on his waist tolling in time with the screams as he tied a red cloth around his neck that spurred the air hostesses into preservative action.

If they were not on death’s corridor Jide might have laughed, but the fear in her eyes cut through his worry for himself and had him shifting into the seat next to her and holding her as the plane seemed to summersault midair. He whispered quiet words of reassurance he didn’t quite believe into her ears as the pilot’s words of assurance fell on the deaf ears of Nigerians displaying the full extent of their innate acting ability. Jide vaguely wondered why Nigerians felt the need to scream to God even when in the skies they were already so close to Him in His heaven.

They survived that incident. Captain Kambili managed to wrestle the elements and secure a harried but successful emergency landing. Jide and Fela’s paths had crossed irreversibly; you do not survive a plane crash in a man’s embrace and leave him on solid ground. She didn’t spend her week in Warri with her parents. She spent it with Jide.