By S. SARGENT

Sunset over Greenland first appears as a swirling cauldron of white, thick and heavy. Below the wing, swollen cotton batting makes its way across the land. Alone, I waited in the dim hall of a business high-rise on a late Saturday afternoon. Everything was closed. I sat, I stretched, did squats and push-ups. I made lists of everything to take with me on my trip. His 30 minutes became three hours. Lotion, lotion, and more lotion and my hands are still like sandpaper. We connected through bad connections on our cell phones. There’s never enough water on these long flights. “Do you hate me?” A rhetorical question. He half sang it, took my hand and seated me. It had been too long. An attractive man’s head was silhouetted against the sun’s rays that made it through the plane and splashed onto the wall behind him. The creamy lemon oval, interrupted only by his shadow, quickly changed to fiery pink, shifted to red-purple, then disappeared, leaving only a hint of red on the flat gray wall. Cinching the black satiny cloth at the nape of my neck, he wasted no time with small talk. His feelings were first on the agenda. Opposite, a simmering red-orange fire burns just above the cloud horizon, followed by a thin gray-violet, then thick pale lemon leads into a tall baby blue. “Most people play games,” he stated, “but I believe in being honest with myself and straight with others.” This made me nervous. Through the window in front of the silhouetted man, the sky is cotton candy pink above a light blue wing. He ran his fingers through my hair and confessed, or so he claimed. A translucent blue, the kind seen only at dusk, hovers over the wing that grows ever grayer. I was quiet afterward, stumbled lamely on a few responses that were clearly half-hearted. He brushed them all aside. Finally, before leaving, I admitted, “I do feel a connection with you, but I don’t know yet what it is for me.” The wing and the sky shift ever closer in shade and in hue. Fine with him. He knows how he feels; he’ll wait for me to figure out my part. The cloud horizon becomes charcoal against a ribbon of burnt orange with a streak of aqua green. It all rests below a vast gray-violet. “Pay what you feel is fair.” Very close now. Fair?! As it deepens, the sky opposite lightens as if over-anodized. The charcoal bands chomp down on the isolated color in the center; the pale orange doesn’t stand a chance. He stared at me quietly, smugly, and waited for me to figure it out. It gave me time to feel, something I’ve been missing with my husband. Why is the need to verbalize stronger than the need to be? The midnight blue begins to glow above a dead gray. It took surprisingly little time for me to know what I wanted to pay. The quietness he offered was peaceful, rare. Beyond the window, the two grays have shifted into a truly seductive, deep blue-violet. He hugged me goodbye, and I welcomed the suppleness of his leather coat against my skin. He whispered, “Let go, I am.” “I know you are,” I chortled. He smiled and pulled away. The luminosity is all that now separates the two fading shades of gray of the plane wing and the sky. His long fingers tugged at the wisp of hair by my ear. One last check of his work, I thought, but he lingered. The seasoned traveler next to me thinks there’s another more stable star than the pilot star. Unexpectedly, my breath caught, then quickened.