No Name, No Number

(Today's StoryADay.org prompt was to write a third-person limited point of view story. I was feeling a bit tired and burned out after a hard day of residual jaw pain and headaches and wasn't quite up for trying to find a way into this prompt with the series of stories on the inauguration or the book manuscript in progress. I decided instead of trying to play a little. I read a short piece by Sandra Cisneros entitled "Geraldo, No Last Name" in the Crossing Into America collection about an encounter between a narrator and a man who then was found dead. The story reminded me of an encounter I had had several years earlier in Hawai'i, and I decided to fictionalize it a bit.)



He was in the window seat next to her aisle seat. She saw him smile as she sat down, and hoped he wouldn't notice the traces of dried tears that were streaking her face.
"Did something happen to you?" he asked.
She shook her head. "It's nothing."
He looked at her again. "I'm heading for the Big Island. How about you?"
"O'ahu," she said. "Honolulu."
"Back home?"
"Yeah, home."
His casual inquiries about her well-being seemed to shake her out of her funk. She ventured to ask another question.
"What brought you to Kauai?"
"Well, I came here to meet someone," he said. "I also hoped to find work. I work in construction. But it didn't work out."
"My wife left me. I don't really have any place to go. I lost everything I have, and I don't even have a telephone. I'm hoping to try the Big Island. At least I might be able to find work."

She looked at his face. He smiled again and shook his head.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't need to dump all that on you. I've just been down on my luck, and I've been having a hard time."
"It sounds like things have been a bit tough for you," she said. "Maybe it's going around."
"Have you been having it hard, too?"
"Well, yeah, sort of." Her eyes start filling with tears. "Yeah, it's been hard. But ... I'll survive."
"I just wanted to get my life back together. I know I can find work. But I feel like the whole world is falling apart. Sometimes, I just want to fall apart with it."

The fasten seat-belt sign came on, and the plane engines revved up. The flight hostess began speaking into the plane's announcement system, and both he and she stopped talking. Both of them listened to the flight attendants' instructions. Intently. As if they'd never been through the procedure before.
The plane lifted off the pavement, and within two or three minutes was over the ocean.

"What do you do in Honolulu?"
"I'm at UH."
"A professor?"
He smiled as she laughed. "No, just a grad student. Ph.D. program. But I do teach."
"Yeah, you seem too grown up to be a student. You seem like a professor."
"Well, I work at the newspaper, too. I edit and write headlines."
"That's impressive."
"It pays the bills."
"Yeah, we all need a way to pay the bills."

The flight to Honolulu was short. The flight attendant came around with cups of guava juice and coke, and then the plane began its descent. Diamond Head came into view.
"Good luck on the Big Island," she said. "I hope you find work and ..."
Her eyes start filling with tears again.
"I would ask you for your phone number," he says. "But I don't have a phone."
Her mouth starts to tremble. Her lips mouth words, but no sound comes out. She sniffles and wipes her eyes.
"Maybe we'll see each other again, maybe if you come to Honolulu ..."
"What's your name?" he asked. "I never did ask you your name."

Two nights later, she is at the newspaper, editing the police reports on local accidents. A brief from Hilo catches her eye. A single man was found dead on Highway 11 about four miles from the highway. Police reported that the man had been hitchhiking from the airport and had apparently been hit by a car. He was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy was pending.
Police had not released the man's name, and were trying to determine if he had any survivors left on the island.
She typed in a headline: Man dies in hit-and-run.
It struck her as she ran the article through a spell-check that even after she had told the construction worker on the airplane her name, he had never provided his. She wondered if she had been too shy to ask.