I put my palm on my wife’s leg after a sudden flashing premonition of a fiery plane crash and a burning plummet to the bottom of the sea.
She smiles and it says not yet, I’m still sleeping and shifts in her seat.
I decided to spend the time trying to calculate how many minutes I’d need to cue up the perfect song to soundtrack our fall from gravity. Something soaring, hopeful, but with chords that know what’s coming. I congratulate myself for thinking of this now, so I’m not wasting time when it happens for real.
Hans Zimmer.
I remember the poster I’ve been walking past every day on my way to work, advertising an upcoming concert of his at Hamer Hall in Melbourne.
It’s perfect.
We should really go to Hans Zimmer, I say to my wife, hoping she’ll store it in her mental refedex that seems to have no limit. She knows both my parents phone numbers by heart and what I did for my birthday in 2017. I, by contrast, still fumble with my phone passcode, which is three digits.
Okay, she slurs sleepily, but not if it’s a tribute show.
Definitely not.
They get you sometimes with the fine print. Remember when we genuinely believed ABBA had decided to come to Tweed Heads RSL?
Don’t remind me.
Never again.
Never.
And not just an orchestra playing his music either.
Agreed. The real deal only. No fakes.
I wonder if she knows I’m suggesting this because I’ve decided it’s the music we’ll both die to. Well, for deaths that are under 5-7 minutes in length. And only if I have the time and physical ability to cue it properly. Because I’d rather have no music at all than start a track halfway through, when you haven’t been on the whole journey of it.
Is that insane?
As we descend through a congress of brooding storm clouds, there’s an announcement over the PA about electrical activity and a potential delay. While we wait, the voice says cheerfully, we’ll cruise at a higher altitude. We pop back up above the clouds like a particularly buoyant dish in a kitchen sink. The one that hasn’t taken on any water yet, but can see what it’s fate will be when the water clears and it can see right through to the less fortunate dishes below.
Why don’t we just stay up here? I say to Aurelia.
What? We are. We’re circling.
No, but why go down there to be inevitably disappointed as it rains on all of our beach holidays? It’s brilliant up here. Look at it. Why not just circle for as long as the engine will allow, then head back home with our wits and expectations in tact? Why force our heads under the clouds?
Aurelia’s expression darkens in the way it only ever does when something I’ve said carelessly hits on something much bigger under the surface. I never ask her what these whales look like, but I can see them swimming in her eyes.
How many rounds of infinite Monopoly could you play before you wanted to die? I ask, breaking the tension on the surface of her daydream.
Six, she lets slip out of the corner of her mouth.
Six?!
What? Is that too little, or too much?
I don’t know. It’s a choice.
I guess I can’t win.
At what?
This game.
Not if you only have six rounds in you.
No, this game. She says, drifting into thought.
Oh baby, I tease softly, we’re all just doing the best we can.
This makes her laugh one of her genuine all-dimples laughs that soothes every buzzing live wire in my body. Over the PA, the jolly steward thanks us for our patience, which was never offered.
I’m quiet for a while before a couple of trolleys start to clatter up and down the aisle, offering bottles of ‘sorry’ water to passengers.
Look, babe. This is a great Australian custom.
What is?
Saying sorry when we don’t mean it.
There another silence.
I feel Aurelia’s elbow in my right side.
Hey. They just announced the new arrival time.
Oh?
Yeah, they just said.
Sorry, I don’t know where I was. What time?
11pm.
What?
Yeah.
Great.
You’ve been picturing the plane crashing again, haven’t you.
Absolutely.
Is that why you asked me about Hans Zimmer?
Absolutely.
Aurelia furrows her brow like she’s trying to solve the problem, which is me. Nothing she can do about the rain, or the plane, so that leaves me as the only option. This year, I’ve watched a good 75% of my friends get their ADHD diagnoses. Every video I thumb past on Tik Tok seems to be a four-part explainer of the signs and symptoms, as told by another beautiful white Millenial recording in their parents’ palatial kitchen or on the balcony of their second investment property. But maybe it’s time I looked into –
Hello, Aurelia says, out of the blue.
Hi, I offer back politely.
No, HA-LO. That would be my song.
Oh!
Yeah, she says confidently, before settling back into sleep.
Yes, I smile at her gently flickering eyes.
Yes, it would.
And we begin our descent.
TN