“Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me,” he said, a mantra which was neither, if truth be told, apologetic nor self-deprecating. On the contrary, he seemed to be rather amused: surely, this was not the first time he had trouble fitting his too-tall too-broad frame down the too-small aisle of a filling airplane, and he clearly derived some sort of comic pleasure out of the ungainly sight and sound of his limbs and briefcase and skull hitting plastic overhead compartments and armrests and seat backs as he moved. I turned back to my newspaper, but before I did, I thought I noticed him heading my way—or, rather, toward the empty aisle seat that was still available to my right.

God, he was cute.

“Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me,” I heard him mutter again, this time with a low chuckle as he made his way further down the aisle to the back of the cabin. And then, upon stopping at row twenty-eight, he said: “Excuse me, but is this seat taken?”

I looked up and feigned surprise as if I had not been watching his painful progress all along. “No.” I motioned graciously with my right hand as if it were my seat to give away, and tried to mask the faint twinge of dread that had crossed my face. Funny and interesting as he had looked coming down the aisle, and great-looking as he was with his dark wavy hair and rimless glasses and big easy smile, he looked like a talker. And while that was what you had to do in order to meet someone—a man—talk—I wasn’t so sure now that he was someone I wanted to meet.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry.” He was now maneuvering himself from storing his coat in the overhead bin to hurtling himself into his seat, causing himself to hit the head of the man in front of him and to graze the left cheek of the woman sitting across the aisle. Landing in his seat with a loud thud, storing his briefcase under the same middle seat where I had slid mine, then leaning as far back as possible into the unyielding cushion of the minimally reclining recliner, he closed his eyes and let out a long, low sigh of relief.

“I just had a vision,” he said, turning to me with his head still back against the pillow. “I do that again, struggling down the aisle, only this time I’m wearing a suit of armor. Chain mail. Wielding a sword. I slash and burn and pillage my way to my seat in the back of the plane as people cower in fear.”

I glanced toward him, smiled politely.

Why couldn’t I, just for once, sit next to someone who wasn’t a violent medievalist?

“No raping, of course,” he added, clarifying. “Just the slashing and burning and pillaging. Deep down, you see, I’m really a pacifist.”

Despite myself, I laughed out loud. So did he. The plane backed out of the gate slowly, then turned, nose first, toward the runway.