I’m the last passenger to board the plane, banging down the aisle and sweating angrily under my UCLA t-shirt and cargo pants. I just finished sprinting through Mexico City International Airport, a surprisingly plush obstacle course of queues and ticket counters and armed security checkpoints and terminal corridors that seem even longer than they really are. “You’re too late for a seat assignment,” complained the airline employee manning the gate, waving me through. “Just get on board before it pulls away.”

Pulse still racing, I cram my backpack into an overhead compartment and take a window seat in row 26. A chubby Hispanic girl sits in the aisle seat, staring fixedly at a magazine picture of a supermodel in a bikini. She notices me noticing her and glances across the empty middle seat, breaking into a grin. I make smile movements with my face and look away. The stewardesses are doing their parody of a suffocating person reaching for an air mask. Soon the pilot mumbles over the intercom, declaring his intention to assert our unnatural presence in the air.

“I’ve never been to Houston before,” the girl says in Cuban-accented English. “I usually fly into Miami. That’s where I live, where my family lives. I was born here, but we came from Cuba originally.” She’s older than I guessed, maybe thirtysomething, and gabby as hell. “I have an aunt and uncle in Houston, so I’m going to visit them and see my cousins too.”

The plane charges and tears a hole in the air. I watch the smoldering summit of Popocatepetl dwindle and fade. From this height the Valley of Mexico is filled with a chaotic patchwork of humanity. The upscale districts are easy to spot — more swaths of green for yards, public parks, even golf courses. The slums are solidly earth-toned. They flash with reflections from corrugated aluminum shacks. Nooshin is down there somewhere. I can picture her with unnerving precision. She’s a pooch-bellied scarecrow in a Gap hoodie and jeans and Nikes, right eye twitching madly behind her veil of inky bangs, confused — maybe even scared — but trying to be brave.

Suddenly I’m a torch of remorse. I should’ve waited for her at the internet cafe, rendezvousing as planned. I should’ve given her a crash course in Mexican driving. I should’ve said goodbye…

“I was in Mexico City for business,” the Hispanic girl is saying. “Well, mostly business. I managed to have some fun. The company I work for, it has a Mexican subsidiary. Every April my department performs a site audit. This is the first year I’ve been assigned to the site team. Usually I just do remote support during the audit. What about you?”

I stir from my unhappy reverie. “Say what?”

She leans closer, bulging over her armrest. “What brought you to Mexico City?”

How the hell do I answer that question? Admit I got stuck there, waiting to grow a pair of balls so I could UCLA — tell Hercules — that I’m dropping out of the Ph.D. program? Confess that I have no fucking idea how to be a father? Admit my terror at the prospect of whoring for a real job?

Instead I just mutter “I’m a tourist…” and lose myself in a copy of the in-flight catalog. It’s full of Sharper Image crap, like monogrammed golf tees and shiatsu massage chairs and keychain self-breathalyzers. If only Marx was parked in the middle seat next to me, witnessing the future. This is how capitalism triumphs — not by giving people what they need, but by giving people what they want.

“Hey. Mr. UCLA t-shirt! You want something to drink?”

The Hispanic girl is the type who interjects herself into everything. The stewardess hovers in the aisle, slightly annoyed with her conversational antics. Just like me. But I take the pretzels and ask for a Diet Coke anyway.

“I’m an accountant,” the Hispanic girl is telling me, looking older with every word. She rolls a pretzel between her fingers. “This is the first time I’ve been to Mexico City in…five, six years? That’s when we bought the company that became our Mexican subsidiary. I was part of the execution team back then, you know.”

“Execution team,” I echo, contemplating my plastic cup of Diet Coke and ice. “That sounds like fun.”

“Well, actually…” She proceeds to fill my left ear with a litany of corporate gossip — infighting, gross mismanagement, Sarbanes-Oxley violations. From the sounds of it, Enron was nothing compared to her employer.

Outside my thick oval of plexiglass is a field of clouds. If Nooshin was sitting next to me, she’d be marveling at their gossamer beauty. Finding imaginary shapes — “Look, that’s a bunny rabbit!” Laughing in contentment. But I couldn’t take her with me. We only had enough money to buy one last-minute plane ticket, not two.

I glance sideways at the Hispanic girl, whatever her name is. Maybe she gets her paycheck from a corrupt and dysfunctional global megaconglomerate, but I bet she could buy two last-minute tickets if she wanted. And all the geegaws in the in-flight catalog. And a house with rooms aplenty for children.

Her hands are poised above a laptop keyboard, tap-tap-tapping away. There’s no ring on her ring finger. I don’t know what that means — never married? divorced? — but suddenly it’s poignant. She gropes for connection on airplanes and visits her relatives across distant geography. She’s the inverse of…

Brian.

Somehow I managed to block out his name, our awkward brotherhood, everything rushing me back to the same family that drove me away — until now. The Hispanic girl really is the inverse of him, a man who dispensed with connection entirely and isolated himself on the familial plot of corn and soybeans.

The stewardess makes a sweep with a gaping white garbage bag and clears our trays of ripped packaging and plastic cups. Trying to distract myself from this raw and gaping wound, I focus on the breasts jutting beneath her nametag. They’re full, probably C cup, and…not big enough for Brian. My brother was gonzo for chicks with big tits. A boob man.

Flinching, I lean back and close my eyes. Desperate for a distraction, I summon a vision of Nooshin. Sprawled in bed beneath me, wherever that bed might be. Sensual and caramel-skinned and melting into my shape. Giving herself to me like no girlfriend I’ve ever had. Giving herself to me in a way that redefines “girlfriend”, suffusing the word with more power than I ever intended to give her, upending the project plan of my life.

The pilot rouses me with a command to fasten my seatbelt and shut down my electronic devices.

“You don’t like to talk?” The half-statement, half-question drifts across the empty seat between us. The Hispanic girl is putting away her laptop, a pierced annoyance showing in her chubby face.

We descend, ears popping. The plane halts in a flurry of baggage-grabbing. She stands, trying to get into the aisle, but it’s too crowded. She sits back down. Not being able to leave makes her feel like she has to say something else. “Look, I’m sorry to bother you — ”

A dam breaks inside me. “I’m flying home to see my brother. He shot himself in the head trying to commit suicide, and lived. He’s in critical condition at the Mayo Clinic.”

Her eyes flare into dinner plates. She opens her lipsticked mouth to say something…but no words come out. Then she bolts into the crowd of shifting, lunging, grabbing people from all over the hemisphere. Meanwhile I stare out the oval plexiglass at Houston, which hides behind a sleek concrete-and-glass airport terminal. Next stop, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Minnesota. I don’t know how long it takes to drive down to Rochester and the world-famous Mayo Clinic where Brian is clinging to the same life he just tried to end, but it’ll be too fast and not fast enough.