DESCENT

He watched footage of take-offs all afternoon. The internet is his best resource, but he played his DVD as well, an amateur compilation obtained at a flea market for $2.50. Landings were yesterday’s task, and had demanded more attention. He took sick leave and searched YouTube for 13 hours: jets in elegant descent, smooth touchdowns with no fatalities.

His prior study is vital, a mental balm for plane-related terror. They’re on final approach to Wellington now, the aircraft cradling in a viscous crosswind and the city waiting in the coffin dark. It’s the vibration he hates; a throwback to jackhammers, the time the dentist slipped and drilled the nerve. Stable on terra firma – reason’s high ground – he could insist that flight is safe. But his fear and logic are tuned in perfect antiphase. No argument can quash the sense that something bad is imminent. His one recourse is to summon images from study, soothe his panic with thoughts of wheels kissing tarmac. The squeal and the smoke and you’re home.

He is in the exit row obviously, on the aisle.

All around him are people blind to risk. No one knows that safety is tenuous, and contingent on his wishing. He opens one eyelid, and through the sweat-stung blur he can see it’s still black beyond the window. The cabin lights flicker to a moth-wing beat. His guts turn cold and weightless through a dip. In the judder of turbulence the reality of flight is most apparent. It’s a hurtle in a metal tube, at speeds in multiples of rollercoaster. At this velocity he can see the euphemism: civil aviation means brutal momentum. His eyes stay closed, and when the tyres finally chirp, he knows that next time he should drive.