56. New Delhi.

Nan was ready to jump out of her skin the last few hours of the flight.

That the airline thoughtfully provided a way to watch the slow progress of the plane over land and water didn't help. The exotic names of the places they were flying over or near (Karachi, Kathmandu, Mumbai) enticed her, but then, at this point, so would Cleveland. It almost didn't matter what mysteries awaited them when they got to ground: she just wanted to get out of the airplane.

At least the food had been good, she thought, pausing again at the impossibility of flying in first class. She began to wonder for the hundredth time what she was doing, without even clothes or money or a passport, and for the hundredth time, found some way to distract herself from the growing fear underneath that question.

The things that had happened, the way Sid was, the things he knew and the seemingly magical way he just walked through life and now onto an airplane and into another country--how were these possible? Could she still convince herself that he was just a crazy charismatic? And if he was crazy, now she was in another country with him, having broken international law. They threw people in jail for a lot less that traveling without a passport, and he didn't even have a driver's license.

Or did he? Her mind paused in its reeling. His pockets. She would wait until he was asleep somewhere, and check his pockets.

She felt a sense of elation as the captain announced that landing was imminent. The crew busily puttered around the cabin. She looked over at Sid, who was sitting upright now, as the announcement had instructed him to do, and looking at nothing in particular as he sometimes did.

The plane landed with a bump, and the first class passengers (all four of them) filed out into a dingy, flourescent-lit hallway. At the end of the hallway, against a glass wall behind which drowsy travelers waited (the captain had informed everyone that the local time was 11pm), was a sign that pointed the way to immigration. Nan noted with foreboding that it was entirely hand-made, each letter cut out of plastic and stuck to a substrate of red glass.

"You'll see a lot of that in India," Sid commented, once again accurately following (guessing? reading? just knowing?) her thoughts. "It's easier to make things by hand in most cases here. More people than machines."

Nan lingered at the sign a moment before following the two businessmen down the hall. Above the English text was lettering in Hindi, curly but blocky at the same time, more so because of the crudeness of the sign. She had enjoyed listening to the Hindi announcements on the plane. The announcer had a pleasant voice, but there was something about the sound of the language, rhythmic and repetitive and lilting, that sounded comforting to her.