One thin strip of paper was entitled “Things For Gerald.” A list of toys and books she intended to buy for Christmas or birthday presents, he assumed; on closer inspection, it proved to be something else. “Spontaneity, joie de vivre, physical confidence.” Good luck finding any of those things in the aisles of Toys “R” Us. That was about as likely as him finding the character traits he’d been searching for in bottles of organic sugar pills and herbal extracts suspended in alcohol. The list covered half the page. At the bottom she’d written, in tiny print, the word “smiles.” This was exactly the kind of scrap he would have celebrated finding if he’d been writing a biography of Jane, but with her sitting next to him, about to fall into a drug-induced sleep, it was embarrassingly intimate.

He reached over to put the book on her tray table, but she touched his hand lightly. “Keep it for me?” The tone of her voice, soft and girlish, made it sound like a plea. “It would be such a vacation for me to not have to think about any of that for the next few days.”

“It’s only fair to warn you,” he said, “that when I’m alone in my room, I’ll probably pore over every word, snooping into your life. It’s part of my job.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s all written in code, and lately I’ve been having trouble keeping the code straight. You’re welcome to all of it, Desmond. I trust you.” A few minutes later, she added, in a voice heavy with sleep, “If you discover anything interesting in there, be sure to let me know, especially if it turns out I’m a halfway decent person.”

The plane flew into a patch of turbulence and then got caught in an updraft that lifted it to a higher altitude. Two men in T-shirts and shorts who’d looked drunk as they’d stumbled into their seats, whooped with delight as if they were on one more ride at an amusement park. Jane had fallen asleep, and as they bumped higher into the sky, her head rolled gently from side to side, barely making a dent in her new curls.

2.