Free Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson Page A

didn’t dream.
    He awoke as the traffic began to move in the early light. He drove bumper to bumper, at funeral speeds, until midmorning when, hungry and tired and desperate for a shite, he reached the crash site.
    Angry, emotional policemen were waving the traffic through the one lane they had opened. They were shouting at the drivers, trying to get them to move faster.
    “Come on, pick it up, don’t look. Get a fucking move on.”
    Fraser felt his body contract, then flush hot with shock as he saw half of a plane cockpit sitting sideways in a sheep-grazing field. An image that was already becoming world famous. He drove on for ten miles before he became aware of his tears.
    The traffic opened up but Fraser had to pull into a service station. In the car park he wept uncontrollably.
    Huge tsunami sobs rolling in from his soul.
    He gulped in air when he could but his heart was breaking on every exhale.
    When he got back to Glasgow he went to the Press Bar to get drunk. Everybody got sad drunk for a while. After a few days some sick jokes started and people began to get normal drunk again but every time Fraser got on a plane he thought about Lockerbie. That’s why he had already had four whiskies and a milligram of Xanax by the time his plane took off from Glasgow and headed southwest over the Atlantic.
    * * *
    Fear makes people unreasonable and unpleasant to deal with, and given that the flight attendants of American Airlines were unreasonable and unpleasant to deal with before that dreaded September 11, it would be silly to think they would be any better after it. Fraser knew this but the passenger seated next to him in the small first-class cabin (slightly bigger seat, different upholstery, cheesy nibbles on departure) did not. She was a professional of some sort, thought Fraser through his tranquil, boozy fog, perhaps a lawyer, all pens and gadgets and PowerBook and phone. A tiny phone the size of a small potato, to prove she meant business. Before the women’s movement phones were large and obvious Bakelite gentlemanly affairs; now they were discreet and ruthless.
    Like stilettos.
    The flight attendant, a blond Gorgon, pounced on her like an alarmed cat.
    “You can’t make calls during the flight. Shut it off, now!”
    The professional woman didn’t look up. Didn’t move. Did not engage with the bitter harpy in the nylon dress.
    “I’m not making a call, I’m checking my schedule. It’s also on my phone.”
    “Shut it off, now!”
    The woman still didn’t look up, or stop what she was doing.
    “Please don’t use that tone when you talk to me.”
    Furious, the Gorgon turned and stormed off to get her supervisor.
    Fraser smiled at his fellow passenger’s victory. He almost congratulated her but then remembered she might recognize him and know him to be a disgraced sexual deviant. He sunk further into his chair, guilty under his Lawson’s Sausages baseball cap. Congratulations would have been premature anyway because the Gorgon returned a moment later with her supervisor, Colin. Colin was going to be fifty in two weeks, his lover Barry had just left him for a younger, prettier, richer man, he had hemorrhoids and an in-grown toenail. No bitch was going to back-talk him or any of his girls today.
    “Excuse me, no phones are allowed during the flight. Please shut it off,” spat Colin, the apoplectic Gorgon peeping over his shoulder.
    “I explained to your colleague, although this
is
a phone, it is also a small personal computer and it is in that capacity that I am using it now.”
    Fraser pretended to be asleep.
    “If you don’t turn it off, I will inform the captain that we have an unruly passenger and he will make an unscheduled landing at the nearest airport.”
    “We’re halfway across the Atlantic, the nearest airport is probably Miami, and we’re going there anyway.”
    “That is up to the captain. If I make the report, you will be arrested upon arrival no matter where we land. Please turn off