Face Of The Monster

***29***

Phoebe Kim needs to relax and she knows it.

She isn't afraid of flying, but today, the prospect of lifting off the ground makes her heart pound wildly. Rising up from her old life, leaving it behind. She isn't sure if she can do it. There's a strong, hot pressure behind her eyes, tears wishing for a way out. She presses her forehead against the cold window, watching it fog up as she breathes.

Phoebe Kim needs to relax, but her body doesn't agree. She's shaking, her teeth, chattering. Her stomach churns, her head pounds. Her body is telling her to go back.

She hears the clanking and scratching of luggage being stuffed into the overhead bin beside hers. Phoebe curls further into herself, biting her lip to keep from crying.

People have been flashing across her mind ever since she left this morning. Emma, of course, and her tired, suffering face. Lars, his sweet little boy smile. Chloe, sick and stuck in her childhood town all over again. She thinks of her patients, of all the people she's leaving behind. The couple down the road whose kids she watches sometimes. The tiny woman with the huge dog who waves to Phoebe whenever they pass by the house on their walks.

There is a small gust of moving air, then a sweet, nutty scent like cinnamon and almonds. It reminds Phoebe of how her mother smells. Tears, those freewheeling bastards, are rolling away. Phoebe pulls the collar of her sweatshirt over her eyes. She can feel the person beside her glancing over from time to time, but saying nothing.

She stays like this until the screens float down from the ceiling of the plane and the safety video begins its quiet drone. Her nose and head feel stuffy with tears and she knows her face is blotchy, but she pulls down her collar and slowly opens her eyes to her surroundings. Her eyelids are sticky, scratching when she blinks.

Phoebe snatches a glance at the person beside her. She has her eyes lifted to the screen, taking in the video with her eyebrows creased. Phoebe's heart jumps, alight with tension she hasn't felt in weeks. The woman is soft-faced and sweet looking. Her hair, an untamable animal, is down around her shoulders, velvety brown curls resting around her face like sleeping snakes. Her skin is sandy brown, decorated with freckles like tea stains. Her eyebrows are thick and brown, her eyelashes curly and dark. Her nose is a soft little bulb in the center of her face and her lips are small and pink as a china doll's. Small wrinkles by her eyes, laugh lines, a comma-like crease between her eyebrows. Her eyes are bright hazel, almost yellow in the cold light of the plane.

The safety video ends and Phoebe looks away. The captain announces that there is no smoking on this flight and to please put on their seatbelts.

The woman reaches for her buckle. One of her fingers, delicate and soft as leather, brushes Phoebe's thigh. She looks up, smiles. "Sorry," she says.

Phoebe's heart stops. She has a dimple on the right side, faint but alive.

She's felt so alone for so long, Phoebe has. Even with Emma, there was a little piece of her that couldn't give itself over. It came with knowing that she didn't truly belong to Emma, didn't belong to anyone, anymore. It was a knot, a cold, hard knot in the center of her stomach that pulled and pulled until she felt sick with it.

Now, though, she can feel the knot loosening.

That crease in her eyebrow again. She frowns at Phoebe. "Are you okay? I didn't realize you were crying."

"Oh, I'm alright," she chuckles, her voice wavering. She looks away, feeling her face blush. She reaches for her own seatbelt and straps in.

The woman reaches down into her carry-on bag, digging around with her face up. "Ugh, I know I have tissues in here somewhere . . ."

"Don't worry about it."

"No, no. Oh, here they are." She pulls out a crumpled packet of tissues and opens it, offering Phoebe one. She takes it and blows her nose. "Is everything okay?" the woman asks again.

There is a man sitting on her other side, but he's already dozing off. Phoebe glances between him and the sweet-faced woman, aching to spill her worries.

"Everything's okay," she says. "I'm just overtired." Not untrue. She didn't sleep at all last night.

"Where are you headed?" the woman asks.

"New York. Actually, I'm moving there."

"Are you really? You're going to love it! Where, exactly?"

Phoebe tells her she has an apartment rented in Brooklyn and the woman says she lives in the East Village, which is only about half an hour away. Phoebe's heart seizes and sputters between words.

They talk for awhile longer, shouting over the wind as the plane shuttles down the runway. She is a nurse, three days a week at the hospital, three days as a visiting nurse. Her name is Charlotte, her friends call her Charlie. Phoebe tells her she is a psychologist.

"Oh, really?" Charlotte says. "Are you opening a new practice in New York?"

"No," Phoebe tells her with a chuckle. "Actually, I'm going to work at a prison."

Charlotte looks at her with something like admiration. She puts her hand on Phoebe's elbow, sending a brigade of shivers through her. "Are you scared?" she asks. "I know I would be."

Phoebe wants to hold her hand. They're so close, her hand lying over Phoebe's forearm. She could just slide it down a bit, wrap her fingers around Charlotte's. She doesn't want to go through the pleasantries of small talk and friendship and first dates. She wants to consume her, all of her, right now, end this terrible loneliness. "No," she says. "I think I'm ready."

Chloe has her phone number. Chloe knows her new address and her new workplace. So does Lars. They are the only ones. Everyone else, she has left behind without a trace. She hasn't even told her family yet that she's moving. She did not give any of her old clients any contact information apart from her email address. Emma has her cell phone number, but she supposes that will be changed to a New York area code soon, as well.

But as much as she feels lonely, Phoebe feels liberated as well. She is alone here and no one can stop her from building an entirely new life. Not even the boy, it seems. As the golden gate bridge faded in her rearview mirror, so did he. Perhaps this is all it takes: starting anew, letting go of everything. Maybe, maybe he loves her enough to let her go.

Phoebe focuses on the heaviness of Charlotte's hand on her arm, this beautiful stranger sat beside her with no idea what torment is tearing at her on the inside. Phoebe doesn't want to think about Emma and Enrique and the baby. She wants to think about Charlotte, about slipping inside her and keeping safe until all her problems fade away.

But thoughts of her always get back in. If Emma kills herself, Phoebe knows she will never forgive herself. How could she leave her friend at such an awful time, during a day so utterly inflated with grief? Right now, Emma needs a shoulder to cry on, a neck to stifle her sobs.

That's the problem, Phoebe supposes. She's don't being that shoulder, that neck, being a comfortable pillow to lay on at the end of a tough week. The fact is, she's done being a surrogate lover, providing the comfort and affection everyone feels their life is lacking. She's done complying, done being jerked around. She feels like a robot sometimes, but Phoebe knows that in New York, she will treat herself like a human. Emma hurt her, abandoned her. Therefore, she will leave.

"Phoebe? Hey, I'm sorry, was it something I said?"

There are tears spilling, stuffing up her nose. Phoebe realizes with an edge of delight that Charlotte has taken her hand. "I'm a little scared," she admits. "Not of the prison, but . . . I don't know anyone in New York. I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Well, you know me," Charlotte says. "That's one person."

Phoebe smiles through her tears. What a wonder. Her new life has already begun, and she isn't even at the airport yet.