She wanted Rick to move out, but she didn’t say that. Instead she picked at him all evening. He tried to defuse her with sex; he pinned her fists behind her and nuzzled her neck. It didn’t work. Re stropped her leg and showed her his belly, he purred his deep deep purr, but Linda was not charmed.

They went to bed coolly, and each hugged the edge of the kingsize mattress. Linda dreamed again that night that she was falling from a great height to certain death. She experienced the nightmare with ironic bitterness and sardonic disappointment. She woke to find Re’s weight on her right shoulder, his tail around her throat.

Some idiot checked a loaded handgun through on a flight to Miami the next week. When the plane hit turbulence over Georgia the baggage in the compartment shifted and the gun discharged, aimed upwards, into the passenger compartment, where it was stopped in the thick folds of cotton inside a diaper bag under a passenger’s seat. The symbolism was appalling. The local press had a field day.

The following afternoon a passenger to New York vomited blood on the five people sitting closest to him. It turned out that Mr. Boyles wasn’t even that ill – a cough and the pressure change caused a benign throat polyp to rupture – but the incident was vivid and devastating for those who witnessed it. Boyles worked for competitor Down East Air but no one believed his act was deliberate.

Then came the death of Murray the baggage handler. Crushed between a runaway baggage cart and the plane he loved so much! It amazed Linda to later learn that what seemed to be a freak accident was in fact a common cause of death among men in Murray’s line of work. That disaster didn’t make the papers – then – but it demoralized the employees.

It was today’s events that have sent Linda over the edge. First it was Flight 435. Bound for Providence, it dropped its cabin oxygen masks from the overhead compartments soon after take-off. The mandated procedure when that happens is to get the plane on the ground as soon as possible, which would have meant starting over. The pilots couldn’t find anything wrong from the cockpit, so they opted to continue to Providence. The fact that they landed there safely doesn’t mitigate the error. And before Linda could even fire them, the FAA was at her door and threatening to shut her down.

Linda had to think quickly and talk fast to keep her maintenance facilities open. Now she’s flat on her back in her big bed, not asleep, trying to regenerate energy. Generally disgusted with her situation. Tapped out but unwilling to sleep. The nightmare doesn’t scare her but it drains her. It makes her sleep unrestful. It weighs her down like a cat on her chest, like Rick in her every evening.

She’s not that old, yet, and she rented the condominium on a month-to-month basis. She has some money in savings.

She eases her legs out from under the comforter, over the side of the bed. She slide-stands and gropes for jeans, shirt, underwear, shoes. She dresses in the living room and then puts bathroom essentials in her backpack, with laptop and wallet. She adds a US road map and her jewelry. She starts to pick up her keys, reconsiders, decides to abandon even the car.

She’s careful not to let Re out when she opens the door. She prods him gently with her left foot while she eases herself and her pack into the five a.m. air.

Existence, she says to herself. Sex and ice and “ten.” Unfolding the map, she plots: New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, up around the lakes via Ontario, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon. Ten states away and she sees another Portland. She has a destination.

She nods to herself and starts to walk away. She doesn’t think to look back as she inhales deeply, relieved already. She knows she did right to avoid the night’s dream. She’s out from under that oppressive heavy vision, the warm cat, that pushy man.

There’s dew on the grasses at the side of the road Linda walks. It sparkles like ice in the rising light of dawn.