Chapter 7: Airborne Realities
The first-class cabin felt like a movie set for a life he’d never live. The air smelled of lemongrass and money. A flight attendant with a smile so perfect it looked painful offered him champagne in a flute so thin Marc was afraid his grease-stained fingers would snap it. He shook his head, mumbled, “Just water, thanks,” and kept moving.
He saw her before she saw him.
She was in the front row, window seat, curled into herself. She wore the denim shirt he’d given her—his shirt—over a simple white tank top. It was wrinkled, worn soft at the elbows. She had it buttoned all the way up, the collar tugged high around her neck like a shield. One hand was pressed against the window, the other held a phone dark in her lap. She was staring at the tarmac, at the scurrying ground crew, but her gaze was blank, seeing nothing.
He slid into the aisle seat beside her. The leather sighed.
She didn’t turn. “I didn’t think you’d come,” she said to the window. Her voice was flat, drained.
“You sent a ticket.” He kept his voice low. The cabin was hushed, a temple of quiet privilege. “Said you needed me. Sounded pretty definitive.”
Finally, she looked at him. The blue of her eyes was shockingly vivid against the pallor of her skin. She looked exhausted in a way that sleep couldn’t fix. There was a faint, yellowing bruise on her temple, barely concealed by her hair. “I do need you,” she said, the words simple and heavy. “I just… I don’t have the right to ask.”
“You didn’t ask. You demanded. It was kinda refreshing.” He reached over, his thumb brushing the edge of the bruise. She flinched, a tiny, involuntary recoil. His hand froze. “What happened?”
“Stunt didn’t go exactly as planned. It’s fine. Makeup will cover it.” She caught his wrist, not pushing him away, but holding him there. Her skin was cold. “Don’t. Please. Just… be here.”
The plane began to push back. The gentle thuds and whines of the machinery seeped into the cabin. She finally let go of his wrist and fumbled for her seatbelt. Her hands were shaking.
“Hey,” he said, covering her fumbling fingers with his own. He clicked the buckle for her. “It’s a five-hour flight. We’ve got time.”
She gave a short, hollow laugh. “Time. That’s the one thing we never have.”
Once they were in the air, the seatbelt sign off, the curated calm of the cabin settled around them like a fog. She ordered a gin and tonic, drank half of it in one go, then pushed it away. She leaned her head against the window, closing her eyes.
“It’s eating me alive, Marc,” she whispered, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it over the engine’s drone.
“What is?”
“All of it. The pretending. The smiling. The interviews where they ask about my ‘process’ while their eyes drop to my chest. The director who pats my ass ‘playfully’ and tells me to be more ‘approachable’ for the fans. The total fucking silence in my trailer after a fifteen-hour day. It’s so loud and so empty at the same time.” She opened her eyes, looked at him. “I sent you that ticket because I had a panic attack in my dressing room. I couldn’t breathe. All I could think was that I needed to feel something that wasn’t made of plywood and green screen. Something that had calluses.”
He didn’t know what to say. He was a man who fixed tangible problems. Leaks stopped. Engines turned over. This was a leak in a place he couldn’t see.
“You feel real,” she said, answering his silence. She touched the sleeve of his shirt—her shirt, his shirt. “This smells like your garage. Like you. It’s the only thing that got me through the last two weeks.”
Suddenly, the plane jolted. It was a sharp, vicious drop that made Marc’s stomach lurch. A collective, brief gasp rippled through the cabin. The captain’s voice came on, calm and automated, mentioning unexpected turbulence.
Sydney’s hand didn’t fly to her armrest. It didn’t clutch her chest. It shot across the space between them and grabbed his hand, hard. Her fingers laced through his, squeezing with a strength that was startling. Her eyes were wide open, fixed on his face, not in fear of the plane, but in pure, stark need.
The plane bucked again, a series of shuddering jerks. Dishes rattled in the galley. Someone’s drink tipped over with a distant clatter. Sydney just held on, her knuckles white. She was anchoring herself. Not to the seat, or the plane, but to him. To the solid, unshakeable reality of his rough hand in hers.
The turbulence passed as abruptly as it came, smoothing back into a gentle cruise. The cabin relaxed.
She didn’t let go.
Slowly, the tension seeped out of her shoulders. She loosened her grip, but only slightly, her thumb stroking the scar on his forefinger from a long-ago wrench slip. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be.”
“I’m not scared of flying.”
“I know.”
They sat in silence for a long time, hands linked on the center console. She traced the lines of his palm, the permanent grime under his nails.
“When we land,” she said, her voice gaining a sliver of its old steadiness, “it’s going to be a circus. There will be cars. People. My publicist, who is probably already drafting a damage control statement about you. They’ll try to put you in a suit. They’ll try to get you to talk. You don’t have to do any of it.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Just stand next to me. Be you. The guy with the greasy hands who isn’t impressed by any of it. That’s the only thing that’s going to make any of it bearable.” She looked at their joined hands, then back out the window at the endless blanket of clouds. “They’re reshoots. My character’s big emotional breakdown. I have to cry on cue for twelve hours tomorrow. I don’t know if I can find it in me. I think I’m all cried out.”
Marc lifted their joined hands and pressed her knuckles to his lips. He held them there, feeling the delicate bones under her skin. “You’ll find it,” he said. “Because you’re not pretending when you’re with me. You can borrow some of that. Take it with you into the room.”
A single, hot tear escaped her eye and tracked quickly down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. “I’m taking you with me into the room,” she said. “That’s the whole point.”
The plane began its initial descent into LAX. The glittering, chaotic grid of Los Angeles spread out below them, a vast circuit board of possibilities and nightmares. The flight attendants moved through, collecting detritus with efficient smiles.
Sydney finally released his hand to buckle her seatbelt. The physical separation felt like a loss. She straightened the denim shirt, squared her shoulders. The transformation was beginning again, the soft, vulnerable woman folding inward as the persona prepared to face the world.
As the wheels shrieked against the runway, a jolt of reality, she turned to him one last time before the onslaught. The fear was back in her eyes, but it was now edged with a fierce, defiant resolve.
“Ready?” she asked, not about the landing, but about everything that came next.
Marc looked out at the terminal, the waiting throngs, the blinding California sun. He thought of his quiet garage, his ordered world of tools and torque. He looked back at her—the actress, the woman, the desperate, beautiful mess who had bought him a one-way ticket into her chaos.
“No,” he said honestly. Then he nodded. “But I’m here.”
The seatbelt sign pinged off with a hollow chime.
Sydney unbuckled and stood, a fluid movement that seemed to summon an invisible weight onto her shoulders. She adjusted the denim shirt, rolled the cuffs once, her movements precise and rehearsed. The woman from the flight was being folded away. Marc rose beside her, his body feeling too large and too slow for the narrow aisle. A flight attendant glanced at him, then did a double-take at Sydney, her professional smile tightening into something more calculating.
“Remember,” Sydney said under her breath as they waited for the door to open, “don’t make eye contact with anyone holding a phone. Don’t answer questions. Just keep walking.”
“What if they ask about carburetors?”
A ghost of a real smile touched her lips. “Then you can stop and give a lecture. I’d pay to see that.”
The door opened, unleashing a wave of terminal noise—muffled announcements, the squeal of luggage carts, a distant electric hum. The air smelled of recycled oxygen and faint jet fuel. A woman in a sleek black blazer materialized at the jet bridge entrance, her eyes locking onto Sydney with laser focus.
“Syd. Car’s at Curb 5. We have seven minutes to get there before the schedule breaks.” The woman’s voice was low, urgent. She flicked a glance at Marc, her expression neutral, assessing. “This is him?”
“Marc, this is Lena, my publicist. Lena, Marc.” Sydney didn’t elaborate. She took Marc’s hand, her grip firm, and pulled him forward into the flow of disembarking passengers.
They moved into the main terminal, and the world exploded.
A sea of faces surged behind a velvet rope. Phones were raised like a perverse offering, screens glowing, shutters clicking in a frenetic, insectile rhythm. Voices overlapped, shouting her name, questions bleeding together into a single roar of demand. Flashbulbs popped, even in the bright terminal light, casting jagged shadows. Marc instinctively stepped closer to her, his shoulder brushing hers.
“Sydney! Over here!”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Is it serious?”
She kept walking, her face set in a pleasant, vacant mask. Her eyes were fixed on a point in the middle distance, seeing nothing. Her hand in his was a vise.
Lena walked slightly ahead, talking rapidly into a headset. “We’re moving, west exit, thirty seconds. Yes, him too. No statements.”
Marc felt the stares like physical touches. He saw the lenses zoom in on their linked hands, on his worn boots, on the faded flannel under his open jacket. He saw a man with a massive lens not even pretend to smile, just fire off shot after shot with a cold, mechanical efficiency. Something hot and defensive rose in Marc’s chest.
A shout cut through the general noise, sharp and aggressive. “Sweeney! Is he your mechanic? What’s next, dating a plumber?”
Sydney’s step hitched for a fraction of a second. Marc felt it. He started to turn his head, a low curse forming on his lips, but her fingers dug into his palm, a silent, desperate command. Don’t.
He kept walking, the muscles in his jaw taut. The crowd pressed along the rope line, a living wall of manic energy and entitlement. The noise was a physical pressure against his ears. He leaned down, his mouth close to her hair, which smelled of airplane and her shampoo, a tiny pocket of familiarity in the chaos. “This is fucking insane.”
She didn’t look at him. The polished mask didn’t crack. But her lips moved, the words meant only for him, swallowed by the din. “I just want to be with you Marc nothing else.”
They burst through the automatic doors into the blinding Los Angeles sun. A wall of heat and sound replaced the terminal’s chill. A sleek black SUV idled at the curb, its engine a low purr. A uniformed driver stood ready by the open door.
Lena herded them toward it, a hand on Sydney’s back. “Now, Syd. Now.”
Sydney stopped just before ducking inside. She turned, pulling Marc around to face her, shielding them both momentarily with the open car door. For one second, she let the mask fall. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated with adrenaline and fear. She searched his face, looking for something—disgust, regret, pity.
He saw only the woman from his garage, from his bed, from the trembling plane.
He gave a single, slow nod.
She breathed out, a shaky release, and climbed into the dark interior. He followed, the door thudding shut behind them, sealing them into sudden, pressurized quiet. The outside world became a muted, vibrating hum through the tinted glass.
Sydney sank into the leather seat, the facade dissolving. She brought her hands to her face, fingers pressing into her closed eyelids. Her shoulders slumped.
Lena sat in the front passenger seat, already swiping through images on a tablet. “Okay. Pictures are fine. They’re anonymous-guy-shots. We can work with ‘mystery man.’ It’s better than a named nobody. We’ll roll with it.”
Marc looked out the window at the speeding concrete landscape. “A named nobody,” he repeated, the words tasting flat.
“It’s not personal,” Lena said, not looking up. “It’s packaging.”
Sydney dropped her hands. She looked at Lena, then at Marc. A new, weary defiance hardened her features. “His name is Marc. He’s a master mechanic. He owns his own business. You’ll refer to him as such.”
Lena finally looked back, her gaze appraising. A beat of silence passed. “Okay,” she said simply, and turned back to her tablet.
Sydney reached across the space between the seats, her hand finding his again in the shadowy footwell. She laced her greasy, calloused fingers with his own, a tight, unbreakable knot.
“Take me to work,” she said to the driver, her voice stripped of its earlier tremor. It was a command.
The SUV pulled away from the curb, merging into the relentless river of traffic. The terminal, the shouts, the flashing lights shrank behind them. Ahead lay the studio lot, the fake streets, the waiting soundstage with its controlled climate and manufactured emotion.
Here, in the moving dark, her thumb traced slow circles on his palm. It was the only map that mattered.
It was the only map that mattered. The SUV moved through Los Angeles like a shark through murky water, the tinted windows turning the relentless sun into a dull, bearable glow. Sydney didn’t let go of his hand, not even when Lena turned from the front seat, her tablet now dark on her lap.
“They’ve moved the call time up. Hair and makeup are waiting in your trailer. They need the full two hours for the… adjustments.” Lena’s eyes flicked to the faint bruise on Sydney’s temple. “After that, you’re on set. They’re holding the lighting for you.”
“Adjustments,” Sydney echoed, the word hollow. Her thumb stopped its circles. “Right.”
Marc watched the city scroll by, a endless sprawl of strip malls and palm trees. It felt entirely separate from the woman beside him, who smelled like his garage and whose breath hitched every few minutes like she was steadying herself for a plunge. “What exactly are you reshooting?” he asked.
She looked out her own window, at a billboard for a movie she wasn’t in. “The scene where my character breaks down after her brother dies. It’s a four-page monologue. They said my original performance was… too contained.” She let out a soft, humorless sound. “The director wants snot. He wants heaving. He wants a performance you can smell.”
“Sounds pleasant.”
“It’s art,” Lena said, not turning around.
“It’s a Tuesday,” Sydney corrected, her voice flat. She finally released his hand only to wrap both of hers around his bicep, pulling herself closer, resting her head against his shoulder. She clung to him, not with passion, but with the desperation of someone gripping a rail on a tilting ship.
The SUV slid through an unmarked gate, a uniformed guard nodding them through without a word. The world outside changed instantly. The chaotic city fell away, replaced by a bizarre, quiet village of false fronts and organized storage. They passed a 19th-century saloon next to a spaceship hangar. A man in a cowboy hat sipped coffee next to a rack of neon-colored alien costumes.
“Welcome to the magic,” Sydney muttered into his sleeve.
Her trailer was at the end of a row of identical silver boxes. It looked less like a home and more like a medical unit. As soon as the SUV stopped, Lena was out, opening Sydney’s door, a shield against non-existent observers. The air here smelled of dust, hot asphalt, and freshly cut lumber.
Sydney climbed out, her posture shifting, elongating. She became slightly taller, her gaze turning assessing. Marc followed, feeling conspicuously large and out of place on the quiet lot. A man with a headset rushed over. “Syd, they’re ready when you are. We’ve got the stand-in warming the spot.”
“Give me fifteen,” Sydney said, her voice brighter, lighter than it had been in the car. It was a performance already begun.
Inside, the trailer was cold and overly lit. A woman in black smock immediately guided Sydney to a leather salon chair. “We’ll start with the base,” the woman said, her fingers already touching Sydney’s jawline, tilting her face toward the lights. Another person appeared, lifting sections of Sydney’s hair, frowning.
Lena hovered by the small kitchenette. “Marc, maybe you should wait outside.”
“He stays,” Sydney said from the chair, her eyes closed as a sponge touched her cheek. The command was absolute.
Marc leaned against a counter covered with bottles and powders, a stranger in a strange land. He watched as they erased her. The faint bruise disappeared under a layer of beige. The tired shadows under her eyes were painted away. Her natural complexion was covered, homogenized into something flawless and unreal. She sat perfectly still, a canvas, her gaze distant.
“Remember, Syd,” Lena said softly, checking her phone. “This is the last piece. Then it’s six weeks in Vancouver. You’ll be free of this character.”
Sydney’s eyes opened. They found Marc’s in the mirror. “Six weeks is nothing,” she said, echoing the old, hollow lie from his bedroom. But here, under the clinical lights, it sounded even weaker.
The hairstylist began to pin back her hair, sharp pulls that made Sydney wince. “Sorry, just need to get this volume right for the grieving sequence.”
Marc pushed off from the counter. He walked over and stood behind the chair, placing his hands on her shoulders. He felt the immediate tension coiled there, like steel cable. The makeup artists glanced at him but didn’t stop their work. His own reflection in the mirror was jarring—a grease-stained mechanic in a world of high-gloss artifice.
She reached up and covered one of his hands with hers. Her touch was cold. She clung to him, her fingers pressing his into her flesh, an anchor point in the process of her un-making.
“You know,” he said, his voice low in the quiet, humming room, “I looked at the engine schematic for that ‘71 Bronco last night. The vacuum diagram is all wrong. Previous owner hacked it.”
A real, small smile touched her lips, quickly smoothed away by the makeup artist’s brush. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. Whole thing’s been running at like forty percent efficiency. Explains the rough idle.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I can rebuild it,” he said, his thumbs rubbing small circles on her collarbones. “Make it run like it’s supposed to. No shortcuts.”
She held his gaze in the mirror, her eyes the only familiar thing left in her manufactured face. Around them, the artists worked, blending, pinning, perfecting. Lena typed on her phone. The stand-in outside waited. The lights on set were held.
But for this suspended moment, she just held onto him, her grip tight and real, the only true thing in the room.