Dreaming of the Netherlands by Jennifer Companik

I noticed her heel-click-hip-twist hourglass silhouette as we walked toward bright light at the end of a long corridor between Terminal B and Terminal C. My husband, teenage son, and all the other travelers flowed past on the electric walkway: She and I the only ones who'd chosen to move on our own locomotion. She clicked along a good twenty feet ahead of me, blonde hair in a chignon, a few locks flying loose around her face. She trod with long-strided purpose. But her heels could not outpace my flats. I caught up, though I did not overtake her. That's when I noticed the zipper pull on the back of her uniform: a little silver plane-shaped pendant hanging three or four inches from the top of the zipper on a blue jeweled chain.

Did the dress come that way? I asked.

No, she said.

I like it.

Thanks, she said. She smiled with dimples.

I blushed.

The winged pin on her chest, which I'd hoped would say her name, said, "The Netherlands."

I'd never been. So many places I’d been... But not there.

I slowed my stride to match hers. She noticed me noticing.

You should come, she said.

We both walked more slowly. She brushed the inside of my palm with her fingertips.

I should, I said, blushing harder.

My men hailed me from the end of the hall like a pair of foregone conclusions: I hurried to rejoin them.

I didn't know then we'd be on the same flight; where she would serve me water and champagne, coq au vin, strawberry tarts, honeydew like a plate of crescent moons, and for breakfast an omelet and rose-petal tea; where my men would sleep, one row up, snoring, farting, oblivious; where I'd spend the eight and a half hours between Paris and Boston awake, dreaming of pulling her zipper; where she would offer, in the dark, on her break, somewhere over the Atlantic, to “tuck me in”; and where I would, foolishly, decline.

​​​Jennifer Companik holds an M.A. from Northwestern University and is a fiction editor at TriQuarterly. Her accomplishments include: Pushcart Prize Nominee, Border Crossing; first prize, The Ledge’s 2014 Fiction Awards; and work appearing or forthcoming in: Adanna, Muse, and Northern Virginia Review. By reading her work you are participating in one of her wildest dreams.

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