He spoke more loudly now, close to shouting, and his voice rang above the noise of the engine. People glanced our way, over their newspapers and magazines, and glanced back just as quickly. Nobody wanted trouble, not with a drunk. You couldn’t tell what a drunk might do, and here we flew, two miles above the ocean in a metal tube. I myself had begun to perspire. The sweat trickled from my armpits into the sleeves of my best blouse of pale blue crepe, my linen jacket. The boozer was getting angrier, despite the soothing, conciliatory nature of the Englishman’s voice, or maybe because of it. The force of his anger felt like a match in the act of striking, smelled like a striking match, the tang of saltpeter in your nose and the back of your throat. My fingers curled into the seams of my pocketbook.

“I’m afraid not,” said the Englishman.

The boozer looked like he was going to reply. He gathered himself, straightened his back, turned his head. His cheeks were mottled. The Englishman didn’t move, didn’t flinch. The boozer opened his mouth and caught his breath twice, a pair of small gasps. Then he closed his eyes and slumped forward, asleep. The Englishman removed his hand from the boozer’s shoulder and bent to sling the slack arm over his own shoulders.

“I’ll just escort this gentleman to his seat, shall I?” he said to me. “I’m awfully sorry for the trouble.”

No one spoke. No one moved. The stewardess stood in the aisle, braced on somebody’s headrest, hand cupped over mouth, while the Englishman hoisted the unconscious man to his feet and bore him—dragged him, really—toward the empty seat in the second row. The airplane found a downdraft and dropped, recovered, rattled about, dropped again. The Englishman lurched and caught himself on the back of the single seat to the left, third row. He apologized to the seat’s owner and staggered on. The stewardess then dashed forward and helped him lower the boozer into his seat like a sack of wet barley. Together they buckled him in, while the elderly woman to his right looked on distastefully. (I craned my neck to watch the show, believe me.)

Nobody knew what to say. Nobody knew quite what we had just witnessed. The engines screamed on, the airplane rattled like a can of nails. Across the aisle, a man in a suit of pale tropical wool turned back to his magazine. In the row ahead of me, the woman leaned to her husband and whispered something. I checked my watch. Only four minutes had passed, imagine that.