Abruptly, I could not breathe. My lungs labored. There did not seem to be any air in the plane. The plane was silent. The in-flight movie had ended. The reading beams had been extinguished. I could not swallow. My mouth gaped. I was really going to die. In panic I pushed at the emergency button.

The stewardess materialized.

She bent over me.

Pressure clotted my ears.

“I can’t breathe.”

“Would you like an oxygen mask?”

She loosened my collar.

I labored.

All the sustaining air seemed sucked out of the plane. The cabin became a hollow tube. Airless I was hurtling through the transfixed dark.

She reached up and twisted the nozzle of the air valve. A hiss. Night air, blowy, cold. From the great dark outside.

“Breathe,” she said. “Slowly. Deeply.”

I did.

She was all there was in the world. None of the passengers stirred. The magazines lay discarded on the sleeping and indifferent laps.

The pressure unclotted. The laboring diminished. I was able to swallow. The panic ended. It was anxiety. I wasn’t going to die. Not yet. The stewardess went away. Then something paled outside the window and it was morning.

3

At first I could not leave the hotel. I was on the eighth floor. I looked out of the window. I could see the dark wet rocks of Central Park and the stripped trees. The sky was the color of rain. The radiator hissed and then rattled and then hissed. The room was warm enough. I could not leave it. Not yet. It was a sort of well-furnished cave I had crawled into. To die: or to give birth. That’s what caves were for. Mine was opposite Central Park.

In the street a chauffeur polished a Cadillac that was parked at the opposite curb. A man passed. He was reading a tabloid. Then a woman, thin-legged, with a brown leather pocketbook. Then a man in a white raincoat. Rain was expected. I had no expectations. A young man went by, smoking. The chauffeur was still polishing his car. He was polishing the trunk of the Cadillac. He evidently started with the trunk. He did not expect rain or he had orders to polish the Cadillac no matter what the weather. A bald-headed man went by with an Afghan dog. He held the leash loosely and the dog squatted in the gutter. I was tired. I had not slept in the plane. I was afraid to go to sleep after the hallucination of not breathing. I thought I would go to sleep after a while. The chauffeur was now polishing the top of the Cadillac. A girl carrying a paper bag and muffled in a fur coat went by. A girl in high boots. Then three salesmen stopped at the curb. They had three attaché cases and each carried an umbrella. They all expected rain. I had been standing at the window with my topcoat on. Now I took it off. I took my tie off. I went into the bedroom. The bellhop had put my suitcase on a folding metal rack. I unpacked. After I unpacked I went back into the sitting room and I looked out of the window again. The chauffeur was polishing the door handles of the Cadillac. I sat down in one of the two green upholstered chairs in the sitting room. The suite was too expensive. But I was too tired to care about that. I would change later to something less expensive. From the chair only the sky was visible and the broken-toothed line of roofs. I should try to sleep. I stood up and looked out of the window. The chauffeur was inside the Cadillac and he was polishing the steering wheel and the dashboard.