Part 1

Margit wasn’t surprised to see Betty board the airplane. After all, they were headed to the same destination – a meeting with the same man: Mr. Anderson, an attorney from Minneapolis. She watched the thin woman stroll toward her down the narrow aisle to take a seat three rows ahead, sliding in with her large shoulder bag, a New Yorker peeking out at the top. So sophisticated. Betty’s light blonde hair was brushed back from her forehead, undoubtedly bombed with hairspray as thick and noxious as Zyklon B. Betty wouldn’t make eye contact, but Margit knew she’d been seen. How could Betty miss her, the woman who’d ruined her life?

Settling into her seat, vowing to remain as calm as the moon over the next couple of days, Margit studied the well-designed cabin. She depressed a button to make her seat recline and pushed the curtain aside to bathe in sunlight reflected from a shiny aluminium wing. The only time Margit had flown in an airplane was from New York to Minneapolis. A one-way journey. Before that, she’d traveled by a crowded train from Auschwitz to her vanished home in Budapest, then to London via rail and ferry, and on to New York by steamship. A refugee.

After arriving in Minneapolis, Margit had found work at a doughnut shop until her English improved enough to begin taking classes at the University of Minnesota. That’s where she met Jerry, married him, and quit school to make a home in student housing for newlyweds. No children came. Jerry began to drink in bars after class, while Margit grew bored, restless, fearful that her new life had stalled, that this was all her survival would give to her.

Jerry pursued a degree in accounting. That’s when he met Professor Leonard Bolden, a financial planning wizard who taught advanced statistics. The two men became friends and eventually, Margit and Jerry were invited around to the professor’s house for a barbecue and swim one hot June afternoon, a Sunday. Margit didn’t care for the way the professor’s wife, Betty, looked at her, but the woman had been polite enough.

Two Sundays later, in his own kitchen, Professor Bolden crept up to Margit as she sliced strawberries in her tight white bathing suit. He whispered into her ear, and she nodded, trembling with hope. After their first encounter in a motel bed, Leonard told Margit that he and Betty never made love anymore. She couldn’t have children, and it made his wife resentful of her body. Betty never let him touch her. Jerry was often exhausted or drunk in the evening, and Margit’s carnal drive had come on strong after her body healed from the deprivations of Auschwitz.

The affair with Betty’s husband had been discovered after two months. Betty demanded a divorce. Margit would divorce Jerry and marry Leonard. She didn’t love Leonard, but his money meant safety. She’d never starve again. The baby nestled in her belly now felt like a victory over everything that people had tried and succeeded in doing to her against her will.

Western Airlines would carry both women to Phoenix. Its celebrated Champagne Service offered sparkling wine from California – instead of the real thing – along with steak, corsages, perfume, and even cigars. Margit sipped her wine, touched the carnation petals of her corsage, and held the grape-sized perfume bottle so that the sun outside her window seat made the dollop of liquid glow. Carnet de Bal read the dangling tag. She’d asked for the cigars as well and planned to give them to Leonard.

Margit watched the top of Betty’s head refuse the corsage and perfume. It nodded for the counterfeit champagne. She’d probably ask for her steak so raw it twitched. Margit tasted the bubbly again and wondered how a stewardess could cook steak aboard the airplane. An open flame? A gas oven? So beautifully modern.