Inside is cooler than outside, and cooler too: leather and chrome and a flight attendant on the right side of plump. Asian, maybe. Or Mexican. Jason sits down, is handed champagne, and the door closes, and the plane starts moving. Just like that. Just like a domino falls when a domino next to it falls towards the domino it will then fall into.

The door to the cockpit is closed, the stewardess is behind him and strapped in, so Jason points forward and says to nobody “follow that cab” and laughs and takes a sip of champagne and spills some on himself. Goddamnit. What kind of piece of crap airline are they running here. The lady bug on the seat across the aisle next to him rolls off, hits the floor, and slides towards the back of the plane, out of his sight. Who cares. Not Jason Waterfalls.

“Boy,” the man had said. “We need some new goods. You’re going to go fetch ‘em.”

“Yessir,” Jason replied.

“Like a good boy.”

“Yessir.”

“Like a good dog.”

“Yessir.”

“Doggy like to fetch?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yessir.” Jason didn’t need this shit. Except he did. He’d been a courier, a go-between, a messenger, a delivery boy for a while. He’d been promoted from packages wrapped in cellophane to packages wrapped in cellophane that could be unwrapped, skimmed, and rewrapped. Which he’d done. Ray-Bans Vans and tans. Not a lot, but more than he could afford on a courier’s wages. At least it was worth it. At least he looked good. For fuck’s sake.

“City airport, tomorrow, before noon.”

“When?”

“I just told you. Buenos Aires. You speak Spanish?”

“No. Sir.”

“Neither do they.” He’d handed Jason a slip of paper with an address on it. “Don’t fuck no whores.”

And that was that. Jason Waterfalls could have gotten a baseball bat upside his head, some piano wire around his neck, a few bullets through his heart, a knife in his gut, his own Jason Testicles fed to him. But he’s one of those sons of bitches that charms people. It was an iffy business, and it paid the big guys to give the lucky guys a little free rein, see what opportunities they knocked up.

So he’d gone to the airport at ten AM and wandered around and like a lucky bastard found the desk where they organize the private jets and was lucky enough to get the one gal who thought Ray-Bans were sexy and was still new enough on the job to not think it was weird that a solo passenger on a private jet didn’t know where to go and didn’t ask for a passport and was lucky enough to ignore her terrible directions and find the plane anyway and climb on board and was handed champagne that didn’t spill god damn it and took a nap and ate some rare steak and more champagne and a cup of coffee and decent shit in the airplane bathroom bigger than his apartment in Miami and after eight hours landed just like that. Piece of cake.

Cab, address. Some old dude, wrinkles like ravines, terrible job at shaving, yellow eyes with bursts of red. Backpack. Called it a rucksack. He looked Jason over for a long time. “Abatido” he said.

Jason just shrugged. “Arigato,” he said back.

The old man laughed. You expected, when an old man laughed, a mouth with just a few rotten teeth left. But not this guy. Huge perfectly white teeth. Scary goddamn teeth. Handed Jason the backpack. “Don’t fuck no whores,” he said.

Jason went out and fucked some whores.

Sometime in the night, lost his Ray-Bans. Sometime in the night, lost his Vans. But he never lost that backpack. That shiny red backpack. Never opened it, either. Was tempted. Could use some blow, after that night, those whores. “Como se disse blowjob?” he said. “I don’t speak Spanish, asshole,” the whore said, but in a good natured way, and then she blew him. He paid with stolen cash, but that was all right. He’d stolen it before he’d gotten this assignment, and since they hadn’t killed him, but given him the assignment, that was like permission. Thankfully, she took US dollars. It occurred to him he should check her, see if she was really a dude. He’d heard that sort of thing happened in Argentina. He decided to rely on his luck. The next whore, anyway, had a vagina.

She was actually kind of sweet, a young thing, whimpered a few times as he went at it, a longer session thanks to the earlier blowjob, asked him his name, smiled at him, fell asleep next to him, woke up when he was putting on somebody else’s shoes in the little house she lived in. “Don’t go, Jason Waterfalls,” she said, and if he wasn’t carrying eight pounds of cocaine for a Lupe Blanco and wasn’t starting to feel like he needed a few penicillin shots and didn’t think the water here was going to kill him and didn’t think, all things considered, Buenos Aires was a filthy town which he was rapidly becoming extremely sick of, he might have considered it. But if she wasn’t eighteen she was sixteen and in the morning light he could see she had one of those Latina-girl mustaches so he got up and left.

Cab, airport, tarmac, stairs, champagne, fuck.

The plane levels out and the stewardess walks up, with the backpack, setting it on the seat next to him across the aisle. She sees his empty glass, the wet stain on his shirt, makes a face, trots away. Jason squirms in his seat. The wet on his shirt, the heat in his crotch, an itch in his shoes—he wants a shower, and bad. This is a private jet, right?

The stewardess returns with a towel, crouches next to him.

“Is there a shower on this plane?”

She shakes her head, saying nothing. She dabs at his chest with the cloth. It does absolutely nothing. “Nevermind,” he says, pushing her hand to the side. She growls, slaps him, and goes back to daubing, her face once again calm, betraying nothing.

It had happened so fast he was stunned. It was so out of place, had it happened? He’s about to say “what the fuck?” when she stands up and walks away again. This is not the same stewardess as on the plane on the flight down. That one had been blonde. Not a milf, but, like, older-sister age. This one, Asian one, can’t tell her age. Jason turns in his seat. She’s back in the galley. She’s rattling something around. The clink and clank of what is probably bottles and can sounds like heavier, shinier metal.

He hasn’t had much sleep, has been to some pretty greasy parts of town, has eaten and drunk and smoked and snorted some things, so, clearly, he’d imagined the slap. Some bygone memory from when he was a kid and his mom had done something like that, out of frustration.

He settles back into his seat. She’s bring him lunch, he’ll eat that, take a nap, take a shit, watch a movie, get off the plane, go home for a shower, deliver the rucksack. Just another day in the life of Jason Waterfalls.

The stewardess comes by with a tray, but doesn’t set it in front of him, going instead to the cockpit. Door opens, door closes. She’s in there for a while. The fasten seat-belt light comes on. They hit some turbulence, and the backpack falls onto the floor again. Jason leaves it there. She can pick it up again.

At last, the cockpit door opens. Is the stewardess adjusting her skirt? Is she touching her lips, making sure her lipstick isn’t smeared? The little slut, he thinks. But in an admiring way.

She walks down the aisle, stops at the back pack. “Did you open this?” she says.

What the fuck business is it of yours? Jason doesn’t say. “No,” he says.

She glares at him, picked up the sack, puts it on the seat, shoves it all the way to the window. Walks away again.

Jason rubs his eyes, runs his fingers through his hair, allows himself a mighty yawn. Fuck it. Sleep first, then eat. He closes his eyes.

He openes his eyes. He feels like hes glued to his seat, shoved down into it like a blanket stuffed into a tiny closet. He pries himself up, stretches. Looks back towards the galley—the stewardess is there, strapped into a jump seat, lolled, her legs spread apart just a bit, a little unlady like. He takes a few steps towards her, trying to make out—is there something staining her stockings? He wants to smile, takes another step, almost trips on the backpack. It’s on the floor again.

He picks it up, looks at it. Shiny and red. He’d known his luck could only go so far, and that he was pushing it if he wasn’t careful. Not opening the backpack, it was sort of a gesture. Because after all, nobody told him not to open. Not Blanco, not the old man. The only one who brought it up was the snoring stewardess. And you know what, Jason Waterfalls, she had, indeed, slapped you. So what are you going to do, fuck whores, or take orders from them? He decides to open the rucksack.

And so he does He kneels down, right there in the aisle, and unzips it. There’s a hiss of gas escaping, a truly awful smell. Like what vomit would smell like if it was rotten meat taking a shit. Jason tries not to gag. The stewardess comes instantly awake. She unbuckles and runs towards him.

“What did you do?” she says.

“What the hell is it?” Jason says, knowing she wouldn’t know, but knowing somehow she would know. He wants to look inside, but he wants to be away from the smell. He stands up.

“Pituitary glands. But you broke the seal, and now they’re ruined.”

“It’s not cocaine? I thought I was picking up cocaine.”

“No, you dumb asshole.”

Something funny about her voice. Did Jason think she was Asian? Her mouth seems to have a lot of teeth in them. Her eyes seem to have a lot of yellow, with red bursts in them. He takes a step back. “What the fuck.”

“Well, I’ve got one, I guess I can get another.” She hosld up a hand. Is she holding a knife? No, her fingernails are knives, big long yellow crusty knives. He takes another step back, and then another.

“Where are you going to go, asshole? You’re on a plane.”

Jason turns, jumps at the cockpit door, opens it, slips inside, shuts it, looks for a lock.

The smell of copper, hot copper, Blood everywhere. Every surface, every angle. Pooled on the floor. Jason falls over. Something on the seat, torn clothes and clumps of something meaty and bloody. And heat, the cockpit is tiny, drenched in blood and hot like a sauna. Jason’s head starts swimming.

A wrenching sound, the cockpit door ripped away. The stewardess, skirt torn, blouse torn, stockings torn, not stained, but torn. Covered in hair and muscle. Her nose is getting longer. Her eyes are getting yellower. Jason is trying to scream but he can’t.

“So, asshole,” she says. “Did you fuck any whores?” She leaps. The pain is outside of him. Who was going to land the plane, he thinks, as she stands over him, ripping his body to pieces, scratching huge chunks out of his forehead.