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...One Hour Later...

  She wavered between sleep and non-sleep while the plane glided across the cloud cover below; she watched the lights flicker a few times and only half-listened to an announcement in German about snacks and duty-free. Her eyes opened and closed, creating a slide show of images. She thought of sex to kill the time. She imagined two hands reaching around the back of the seat and grabbing her, while a masculine flight attendant fit his head between her legs. She draped the flight blanket over herself and slid two fingers down her pants to settle her spirits before landing. She put pressure on her clit and slowly moved her index and middle fingers in circles, careful not to get too wound-up and make a spectacle of herself. The anxiety of having an audience and her bleeding prevented her from achieving anything but slight stimulation; still, it helped her relax.

  …Two Hours Later...

  An announcement about the plane descending roused her. The plane landed with a thud, bounced up once, and landed again smoothly. Bettina unbuckled her safety belt. Dust, the same color as the girl’s shiny skin, billowed from the air stirred by the jet’s wings, the sand scattered and fractured hurling itself in all directions to get away from the engine’s blast. Bettina resisted the instinct to turn away from the onslaught, so she caught a face full as she exited onto the tarmac. A bus took the plane-load of passengers to the airport terminal. She went through customs and continued walking, she decided she wouldn’t stop walking until she arrived. So she walked outside the airport, down a busy street lined with beige stucco walls, yellow dust, a derivative of the copper-colored dust but painted an unnatural white, and she kept walking. She walked toward what looked like the center of town. Rugs suspended from shop ceilings and what seemed like thousands of lamps hung from the rafters, absorbing the light from stringed bulbs laced along shop entryways. She walked through the Jewish quarter of town, past the bargaining salesmen and the veiled heads of the women who were trailed by a sea of children. She walked past the walls of the city to the southwest. The inside heel of each boot rubbed the skin on the back of each foot, she could feel it ripping away. She saw the girl’s tattoo pointing and the flesh surrounding it falling away, the bones and blood, the meeting point at the wrist, and the tightening of the muscles that wrap around each other like lovers losing themselves. A sharp pain shot up the back of each calf and she winced. She thought of her ex and his vapid face appeared in her mind. The eyes open wide with a child’s wonderment, his mouth hanging down one side, the flesh of his face that used to sit taunt now sagging off the skull. He stared at the white hospital floor, the light gave his face a saintly pallor. He was oblivious of the colorful ‘get well’ cards and flowers well-wishers had dispersed around the room. With the exception of these gifts, the room was as characterless as his face. Mostly she thought about the pain when he looked at her, a look that revealed he had no idea who he was with. He was hooked up to machines now; they sometimes walked him and re-taught him basic skills, like talking and writing. “What a waste,” she thought “a terrible waste. But the scales must be balanced; they always are in the end.” She said this out loud and tripped over the toe of her boot, forcing a cloud of dust to rise up into her face. She coughed and kept walking with her eyes fixed ahead of her. She had kissed him on the forehead to say goodbye, “ what a disgusting place to kiss someone,” she thought, “so undignified. I was too arrogant.” The buildings began to disappear and gave away to a barren steppe with sparse patches of grass, but she could already see the dunes stacked and hollowed with a veil of sand being discarded with each breeze.

  ...One Year Before Bulgaria...

  “What do you mean emptiness? Like an empty bottle or what?”

  “Yes, yes a water bottle.” She stared ahead.

  “You’re not listening.” He laughed.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean emptiness?” He asked it too casually.

  “Nothing. Don’t worry.”