52. Son of man.

Nan woke up disoriented and bothered by the white noise of the airplane in her ears. Her shoulders were stiff and her feet swollen. She swallowed drily.

Sid appeared to be watching something on the fold-up video screen on his seat, but when she looked closely she could see that he was staring right past it. On the screen was a sports game: basketball.

He glanced over at her. She smiled. The whole trip so far was coming back to her. She'd dreamed of a field of fragrant flowers. She stopped smiling. The air above the field had been filled with clouds of mosquitoes, each one powered by a tiny jet engine, darkening the skies.

"I can't believe we're going to India," she said, unable to think of anything else, and wanting to answer his gaze somehow. He watched her for a moment and then turned back to the video screen.

"Son of man," he said. Nan gave him a quizzical look. "You cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water." Nan sat up, wincing slightly, her back stiff.

"It's a poem," Sid said. Then he leaned back into his chair, adjusting it back to almost a full recline, and covered his chest with a red blanket. Nan frowned.

"Billy," he muttered, just when she thought he had fallen asleep.

"What?" Nan asked.

"Billy. That was the name of the boy you were trying to remember. While we were on our way to the airport." Now Nan was wide awake. And now Sid was asleep.

Two seats in front of them, one of the businessmen had nodded off over a little book. It had been given to him by his lover, who he saw during frequent business trips from Zurich to New York. It was a small edition of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."