It was 6:00 AM and I was boarding a plane from Los Angeles to Denver. I’d already had four coffees and was sipping a green tea as I got to my middle seat. An elderly woman took the aisle seat next to me. She was wearing the biggest infinity scarf I’d ever seen in my life.

“Do you mind if I take the armrest?” she said. “I have tendonitis.”

I smiled warmly at her because it was too early to speak words.

The pilot came over the loudspeaker. “Hey there, folks. Looks like we've got a technical issue.” He sounded raspy, and I wondered if he was sleepy or just doing his pilot voice. “Hold tight while we figure this thing out.”

I turned to my neighbor in the aisle seat. She already had her eyes shut, which perhaps meant it was too soon to bother her about letting me go to the bathroom. She couldn’t really be asleep though, seeing as we’d only just sat down. But it was fine, I could wait. It’s good for the bladder muscles to hold it sometimes. Though not for too long, because then you’re playing with the devil. The devil being a UTI.

I was listening to a podcast and Tina Fey was the guest. The hosts asked about her husband and she told them he’s a very cute man. My husband is cute as well, and I wished I could say so on a popular podcast.

The pilot came back on the loudspeaker. “Alright, folks, we’re all fixed up and ready for take off. It’s currently 63 degrees and a beautiful day in Denver, where—” but I stopped listening because I wasn’t staying in Denver, it was just a layover, so the weather there meant nothing to me. I was going to Iowa City, where my husband and children and entire family lived going back generations and where forecasters had long ago given up trying to predict the weather.

Some time went by, and the whole having to pee issue was becoming a bit serious. I looked at my neighbor in the aisle seat. Now, not only were her eyes closed, but she had an eye mask on and her infinity scarf draped around her whole head and face. I assumed this was to prevent people from seeing her asleep with her mouth wide open, which was unfortunate, because I got a lot of pleasure from seeing people asleep with their mouths wide open. Much of that pleasure had to do with Schadenfreude, which is my favorite German word aside from antibabypille, which is the German word for birth control.

I decided to wait until the seatbelt sign dinged off. At which time, I would gently pat my neighbor on the shoulder and do a shrugging motion while gesturing to the back of the plane. She would know what that meant.

Thirty minutes went by. Tina Fey told the podcasters that her husband was an incredibly sexy man. I made a mental note to Google him as soon as I got off the plane because my husband is sexy too. In fact, he is the sexiest human man I have ever seen in my entire life.

The fasten seatbelt sign went off, and I turned to my neighbor in the aisle seat. Now, not only did she have an eye mask on and her scarf wrapped around her head, but she was collapsed forward into a strange pillow device I’d once seen advertised to me on the internet. She was snoring into the pillow hole where her mouth went, and it seemed like the last thing on Earth this woman wanted was to be woken up. She had gone to such great lengths to be comfortable. But my pee situation was becoming medically urgent, so I took out my ear pods, popped off my seat belt, and crawled over her back like a nimble bear, trying my best not to disturb her. But then I stumbled over the armrest, accidentally stomped on her tendinitis wrist, and kneed her in the back of the head.

“Ouch!” she screamed into her pillow hole. She removed herself from her layers and looked at me. “My head,” she said, rubbing herself.

“Sorry!”

She glared at me, and then stuffed her face back into her hole, but her little pink ears were peaking out and I noticed she had earpods in, the old ones with the bad noise technology, so I could hear she was listening to the same podcast as me. I was straddling her body and about to leap into the aisle when I heard a tiny Tina Fey detailing what sex with her husband was like. Tina Fey, it seemed, was much more open about her personal life than I would have expected. I pulled the elderly woman’s phone out of the mesh pocket under her tray table and tapped on the screen. I wanted to make sure it was really Tina Fey who we were listening to, but it wasn’t her at all, it was me. The screen showed my name and my face, though a much more glowing and vivacious looking version of it. I put my head up against the woman’s ear to listen better and heard myself telling the podcast hosts that my husband and I were so hot and heavy lately because we’d just reconciled after not touching each other for over a year and a half. It was mostly my fault, I said. I didn’t feel right in my body. The delicate skin around my eyes had started to sag, and I looked tired even when I wasn’t. Also my belly had gone soft where it used to be taut and this made me feel less like a woman and more like a worm creature made from a burlap sack. But I’d fixed it, I’d fixed it all, I exclaimed, and the hosts asked how, and I said that I had spent six months researching medical facilities and scheduling consultations with various doctors and surgeons across the country who told me they could zap me up, zap me right up good using laser technology and a knife made from xenon bulbs to make me look pink and fresh again. Like a fish fillet. The recovery only took eight months, and because it was an elective surgery it only cost $60,000. I had to take out a loan to pay for it, but that was fine. People took out loans all the time. There were many institutions offering them, several of which were credible. I told the hosts that I felt and looked fifteen years younger, and that my husband was sitting in my lap at that very moment, purring like a kitten, so it had all paid off. The podcast hosts clapped. I guess that meant the podcast was taking place over Zoom, or else they probably would have noticed him.

The elderly woman plucked her head out of her pillow and turned to look up at me. I was hovering over her like a gargoyle. “My god, is this true?” she said.

“Of course not. I’ve only had a few consultations so far. That’s what I was doing in LA.”

“What’s your doctor’s name?”

“Dr. Beverly Hills, MD.”

“I know him. He took care of my sister’s turkey neck. Don’t you have to pee?”

“Oh, right.”

I jumped over her and then squeezed down the aisles and smooshed myself into the airplane bathroom. The plane sounds were so loud in there, and even louder when I opened the toilet seat, as if the plane’s engine were inside of it. I peed as fast as I could, fearing the toilet might suck me in and spit me out through one of the propellers. Even though, intellectually, I was pretty sure that’s not how plane bathrooms worked. I washed my hands in the sink. The soap was surprisingly nice and smelled like Rosemary. Then I cautiously looked into the mirror. I feared what I might find because I could tell the lighting was no good, and I really needed good lighting, and there, looking back at me, was someone just like me, but seemingly so very tired and sad. Also her mouth was open just a little, like she couldn’t possibly get enough air through only her nose holes. But I wasn't tired. I had so much caffeine in me I was basically on speed. And I was a very happy person, very happy all the time, ask anyone. And I could definitely breathe, even if sometimes or very often it felt like someone, maybe one of the versions of me, was sitting on my chest. And then I looked at my chest in the mirror and wondered what turkey neck was and if I had one. I left before I could find anything else wrong with me or before one of the flight attendants got suspicious that I was in there smoking a cigarette.

I went back to my seat. The elderly woman in the aisle seat stood up for me so I didn’t have to squeeze past her or walk over her back.

“I’ve heard Iowa City is a nice place,” she said once I’d sat down.

“It’s like a painting of America.”

She nodded her head serenely. “Wake me if someone comes around with pretzels.” Then she folded her entire body into her infinity scarf and stowed herself away in the overhead compartment with very little difficulty. I heard her up there sighing luxuriously as if she had reached nirvana, and I wondered if being both old and at peace was in the cards for me too.

I picked up my earpods. I wanted to turn the podcast back on, hear what else I had to say, but my fingers danced around the play button. The podcast version of me seemed to live in a future realm where all of the decisions I was fretting over right at this very moment turned out perfectly, wonderfully well. I picked up my phone and clicked into the podcast to see if there were other episodes featuring future me. There were hundreds. I scrolled and scrolled until I got the point. I pressed one at random and listened to myself tell the podcast hosts that I’d gotten a job that in reality I had only recently applied to. I hadn’t heard back yet or anything and I didn’t really even want the job, it seemed horrible, but I needed it, or at least I needed money for the same reasons everyone else does and also because I was considering taking out a loan to pay for a series of plastic surgeries. In the podcast, I was talking about how thrilling the job was, how creatively fulfilling it was, how every day presented a perplexing but stimulating new challenge. I told them that it brought me more joy and pride than my own family did, and that it was perhaps the reason I was put on this earth. The hosts asked me what my job was and I told them I was a senior level marketing coordinator at a financial technology company that provides enterprises with a platform to accept, process, and settle payments across all their channels. The podcast hosts gasped and then applauded and the podcast version of me laughed maniacally and announced she was going to attempt a cartwheel. I yanked out my earpods and threw them across the economy cabin. Then I deleted the app that let me listen to podcasts from my phone. If this was my future I didn’t want it. Even if it seemed like I was happy. I always seemed happy. It was one of my key personality traits. I was always smiling because smiling kept my frown lines lifted.

For the rest of the plane ride I stayed away from my phone. I watched the screen in front of me instead where a little airplane was inching its way slowly but steadily across the United States. We went over the Rocky Mountains and crossed a vast desert, and at one point we even flew over Jackson Hole. I looked out the window and saw Yellowstone, where every day an ancient geyser spits boiling water into the sky and people clap. But the geyser doesn’t do it for the applause. It does it for some other mystical reason that’s probably profound. Thinking about it made me relaxed and sleepy, which is incredible if you consider how much coffee was pumping through me. Maybe I’d peed most of it out.

I awoke as we descended into Denver and I could tell by the drool on my chin that I’d been sleeping with my mouth open. We landed, and on my way out one of the flight attendants handed me a flier for a special offer where I could immediately earn 100,000 free miles for signing up for their rewards card. I said no thanks, there would be no upcoming flights in my future, and then I let her know there was a woman stowed away in the compartment above my seat, and to be careful with her wrists.

MEGHAN PROULX is a writer in Northern California. Her short stories have been published in Wigleaf, The Offing, Epiphany, X-R-A-Y, and more. She was ranked as a Top Humor Writer on Medium, and won a Silver Anthem Award.