A few hours ago I collected a reeking diaper stuck between the seats in the double-decker, and now the long-awaited bubbles came. I gnashed my teeth only to find grains of sand stuck in them, the same sand that had been whipping through the ever-present construction scaffolding in the desert.

As plates of oysters and prawns monopolized the table, Sam winked at me over his wooden pipe.

He knew I was big on seafood.

“It’s too hot...” Marianna stuffed her mouth with prawns.

“Crypto went down,” Sam said, fidgeting with his pipe.

“I can’t wait to fly to LA. America is so diverse! Pass the sauce?” Marianna chirped.

I nodded and ignored her. It dawned on me that the last time I’d seen Marianna was in Poland years ago but the ravages of time were not her problem yet. It was odd, this situation, the two of us at the same table with Sam, the epitome of the undefined involvement between two expats out there, in this mirage.

“I’ll keep on gambling on horses,” said Sam. “I have my favorite, Miss Majesty.”

“That’s so sweet of you, sir!” Marianna winked, apparently taking the compliment for herself.

“Do you ride horses? I used to. I was in a riding club.”

Sam shook his head. “I just admire them.”

“Oh.” Marianna looked him up and down. “And have you been to Beverly Hills? I could literally live there. Pass the sauce?”

“I saw lunatics on meth in NYC screaming in the streets.” I played with my fork. “Right next to our hotel.”

“I’m a California girly in my heart,” Marianna continued. “Have you driven the Pacific Coast Highway? If you're going to San Francisco…Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…”

“I met meth heads in San Fran, too. On Market Street,” I said flatly. “One of them could be, say, my father.”

Sam choked and adjusted the collar of his shirt like it had morphed into a boa constrictor. “What, babe?"

I clocked my reflection in the restaurant's lamp, distorted by the arterial red light and a fissure etching through it. In a second it was gone.

“He jumped ship in the USA when I was a kid.”

Marianna nodded vehemently. “True. What a story. It could be made into a movie. Pass the sauce?”

I sagged back in the chair at the memory of my father, a resistance poet, who couldn’t resist scurrying away like a rat the moment the Iron Curtain cracked open.

“Oh, my,” Sam sighed.

“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes. “He’s probably an illegal immigrant now, who’ll soon be deported by Trump.”

“Actually, my mom thinks he married someone for papers.” Marianna leaned forward. “He was always good with…words, right? A poet? A salesman. Pass…”

I narrowed my eyes, grabbed the sauce pot and shoved it towards Marianna.

“A poet.”

“A poet. Okay. Okay. You didn’t tell him, did you?” Marianna cast a glance at Sam.

“Tell—what?” Sam looked between the two of us like what the heck.

Marianna rubbed the back of her neck. “Don’t stare at me like that. It’s just…life writes the best scenarios, doesn’t it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied.

Marianna sighed. “Come on, Klara! Your father could have been my father. Our mothers used to laugh about it! My mom was supposed to go on a date with Klara’s father, before he was her father, obviously, but he sent his friend, my father for that matter, because he was running late. The times when not every household had a landline phone.”

“And now you’re Ruchała…” I grunted.

“You could have been Klara Ruchała…that even rhymes better!”

I imagined my near-miss of a hedge fund waiting for me at the price of a compromising last name. Doable.

“That’s wild!” Sam exclaimed. “Ruchała…what does that mean?”

“That she likes to fuck. A lot,” I said.

Marianna jerked her head back, her ponytail swinging. I flashed back to Marianna’s high school slut phase, chasing every cock she could mount.

“When you’re young, you need to experience the world.” Marianna nodded.

“I like that one!” Sam said. “Another crazy Polish girl!”

I brushed Sam’s thigh under the table but he lifted my hand away without looking, eyes locked on Marianna slurping oysters, sauce glistening on her lips.

“What brought you here, Marianna?” I asked. “You invited me and I’m hungry so…” she replied, her mouth full of bread dipped in a creamy sauce.

I threw up my hands. “Why are you even here?”

“The girl needs diversity,” Sam chuckled.

“He gets me!” Marianna jabbed a crust of bread at him.

“It’s a short layover. Tomorrow evening I’m flying to Japan. I started learning Japanese recently and decided to go for a language course in Tokyo.” She paused and licked the corner of her mouth. “I knew you’re here– I checked your Instagram, so I thought it'd be great to see you again.”

She was just casually passing through while I was drowning, clutching straws with a mounting credit card debt I should’ve avoided somehow: other cabin crew bought apartments back home, stacked cash in their accounts, why the fuck couldn’t I? We’re no different, father. We both had our own lands of opportunity, and neither of them materialized. You composed poems to the American dream, and I serve champagne 30, 000 feet above it.

“Looks like you’re all in,” Marianna said.

“It’s my passion.” I bit my tongue.

I thought about the last disembarkation, feigning period cramps to lock myself in the toilet.

“I get why people stay. It’s prestigious,” Marianna whispered.

I gagged on my champagne, a single bubble taking a wrong turn. I remembered squeezing into a white creased shirt and slicking my bun so that not a single stray hair stood out. Being here was supposed to open the doors to the ineffable world, however my reality confirmed that when something sounded too good to be true, it usually was. Like a toxic lover vomiting rainbows. Or it was me who destroyed everything. Some people inherit apartments. I inherited this.

“Pass me that sauce over there—no, no, that one, yes.” Marianna pointed her greasy finger at the other side of the table.

I frowned and reached for the pot, but my hand slick with olive fumbled the moment a familiar voice boomed—I had heard that sun-baked twang before. The Australian guy from the Changzhou flight waved to me. The world was too small here. Pretending to ignore Sam, I stood up with a chair scrape, catching him shooting me a gaze, as expected. I felt a surge of adrenaline. I revelled in getting on his nerves, a way to pretend I had control. I wanted to hug the crew guy, but my hands wobbled from sleep deprivation. My knock-off Louis Vuitton fell, vomiting its bowels across the floor. The guy knelt to scoop up the wreckage: Inglot lipstick, tampons, and a stray strawberry condom that landed next to Sam’s loafers.

The Aussie chuckled and held the condom up, inspecting.

“Better safe than sorry, eh?”

A hot flash scorched my neck. I still remembered our drunk kisses in a hotel room, with an escalation that should have been sabotaged by my newly adopted guideline: no condoms, no sex. It wasn’t.

He stood up, patted the table twice, looked Sam in the eyes, and vanished into the terrace overlooking the city's glassy skyline.

“Who was that?” asked Sam, narrowing his eyes.

“A colleague.”

“Did you fly together?”

“Yeah.”

“Where and when?”

“I don’t remember.”

My fingers clasped around the flute glass, and I downed it in one go. Sam’s head was at exactly the same level as mine, and his jaw slackened, revealing a piece of shrimp between his teeth. I flinched. I didn’t want to know he was an actual person who took a dump.

“Why don’t you want to tell me?” Sam asked.

“It’s not that I don’t want to…”

“But what?”

“Fine. China.”

“Why are you making a big deal out of it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That guy!” Marianna intercepted.

“His smile was the first thing I saw after I woke up on the plane.”

I sighed, spearing a shrimp.

“He looks as if he’d fucked the whole city,” Marianna added.

♡

After having gut-stuffed us with prawns and alcohol, we trailed behind Sam like lost lambs too bloated on grass, certain he was the shepherd who knew the way, which in fact, he did. He brought us to a secret party in a villa overlooking a horse racing track.

As always, I lost track of Sam. I stormed outside and followed the path toward the nearby stables. The closer I got, the more noises echoed: horses farting and clopping and cats yowling. I peered inside the horse box only to find an egg-shaped head pivoting in a flash towards me, Sam’s spine bending like rubber. There he was, splayed out like a starfish in agony.

“She’s gone…” he managed to utter between spasms and guttural sounds I couldn’t understand.

His mother. He had told me she was sick, that she’d undergone chemotherapy, but her health had still been deteriorating.

“I’m so sorry…” I knelt next to him.

He grabbed me vehemently, burying his head against my chest like a clinging child. A prickle of maternal instinct went through me, impervious to the stench. A wreckage of a man mourning the only woman he truly loved, I could take that in.

Sam’s hand trailed over my cleavage, pinching my nipples. I shrugged, taken aback by his demeanor, which should have been more toned considering the gravity of the situation.

“I know what you’re going through…” I whispered.

Sam flexed and his eyes opened: big black coins against the shadow of the stable.

“Do you? We always talk past each other…But it means a lot. The moment I saw you…I knew you were more than just another freaky girl getting casually drunk from Monday to Sunday.”

It took a moment for me to pick up that compliment–a hop and a skip from devastation.

“She simply up and croaked.” Sam tousled my hair.

I pushed him away.

“That’s a horrible way to say it.”

“It is what it is.”

We never were on the same wavelength. Sam grabbed my thighs and his mouth wandered across my neck, and I couldn’t stifle a laugh.

“How old was she…?” I asked over my giggles.

I heard hooves scraping against something and Sam snapped the band of my underwear. Seven? That was what he said?

“Seventy-seven?”

“No.” A silly grin spread across his face.

“Seven. My favorite. I always bet on her in the races. Such grace… Arabian mare… Majesty…”

I squinted as if the sun was burning my eyes, but it was night and I was drunk. Sam fished a small wrapper from his pocket and prepared two lines on his phone screen with horse nostrils flashing through the white dust.

I snorted two of them because I didn’t know why I shouldn’t, or perhaps I simply didn’t want to analyze why. Sam showed me videos of Majesty, rearing up, her silver mane wavy, crossing the finish line with such grace, as if she had been made for triumph. I was mesmerized. I had to admit there was something about her, or it was my swimming head.

Later, we had sex in the hay, which was nothing special, and I was almost certain I could see Majesty’s mane through the gaps in the stable.

“Can you hear it?” I asked Sam once he pulled from me.

“Your moans?” He burst out in laughter.

“The horse!”

“We are in a stable. Just saying.”

I snapped my fingers at his attempts to be clever and looked around. A full moon illuminated the enclosure just next to the entrance. A white horse reared up, its long tail flickering in the night’s glow.

“Majesty!” Sam darted toward her, pulling on his pants.

She resurrected in glory. I ran after Sam, fastening my bra with one hand, and putting on my thong with the other. He climbed over the fence and patted Majesty’s rump. She bristled and bucked him in the ass. He was pathetic, with his trousers down, writhing in pain on the ground. To think I had sex with him earlier.

Majesty farted and galloped to the other end of the enclosure, blowing him off. Sam panted, his head leaning against the fence. Clocking the plastic wrap on the ground, I picked it up and tucked it into my bra because plenty is no plague.

♡

October 2, 2026