I put Libby in her early thirties, and I put the last time Libby had slept at last July.

“I’m supposed to give you this.” I handed her my passport.

She took the passport and tossed it into a large manila envelope. She lifted her hands lightly as if to say, “Anything else?”

I gave her a double thumbs-up, then started back to my seat in the third row. It was my first chance to get a good look at the rest of the passengers. In the far back, there was a young woman. She had dark, nearly black hair, large brown eyes, and various colored necklaces around her neck. She was unquestionably attractive and had perfected her don’t-even-think-about-coming-to-talk-to-me face.

Duly noted.

In the row in front of her were two guys who looked like a bad wrestling duo. They were both roughly the same age as me; one black, the other white. The black guy had a thin mustache and was wearing an orange and black Cincinnati Bengals hat. The white guy had a bushy brown beard and a full sleeve of tattoos running down his left arm.

That left one last passenger. He had the fourth row of seats to himself. He had curly orange hair that looked as though it had never been styled in its lifetime, and he was donning a lime-green T-shirt. He was lean, maybe five foot seven, and he was wearing what I can only describe as a look of dread.

I slid into the seat beside him, and he pulled two white earbuds from his ears.

“H-h-hey,” he muttered. His face was pale and waxen.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t fly well,” he said, his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat.

“I’m sure that turbulence didn’t help.” Our ascent had felt like we were in a dogfight in World War II.

“No,” he stammered. “No, it did not.”

“I read somewhere that you’re more likely to die—”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “You’re more likely to die in your car on the way to the airport than you are on the flight.”

I shook my head. “No, I was going to say that I read somewhere you are more likely—” I paused for effect, “—to die in a plane crash than you are to get on The Bachelor.”

His eyes—dill-pickle green, and made even more so by his shirt—doubled in size.

“Or maybe it was that you’re more likely to die in a plane crash than to get on Big Brother.”

He couldn’t speak. Maybe it was the phrase “die in a plane crash” that had his tongue tied. Maybe I should stop saying that.