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At 37,000 feet I am, like many airline passengers, terrified, although what I fear most up here is not the chop and nausea; not waggling altimeters and nose-first plummets into icy, fin-mad waters; not the so-called sudden shifts in cabin pressure (I understand that even if the bag is not filling up, the oxygen is still flowing through the mask); not my onerous duties as an Exit Captain; not an inquisitive or a garrulous or a non-hygienic aisle mate; not stray geese or inebriated, overworked flight crews or turbid banks of fog; not the shifting contents in overhead compartments; not the spectacular challenge of the lavatory; not even, I tell you, not even shoe bombs or other unspeakable acts of fanaticism and terror.

Ever see the movie Twilight Zone, where the John Lithgow character watches that air demon vandalizing the wing of the plane in the storm? Well I'm not scared of that, either.

No. What frightens me most, seven miles above the ground, what makes me sweat cold and tremble, what initiates, invariably, a crisis of the soul, is the ominous and inexorable approach of the beverage cart.

There it is, I can see it now, making its way toward me. It has a foot brake, but it will not be stopped for long. It rolls toward me with the steady brute force of Time or Death. It is like the hockey-masked killers in slasher movies who walk or limp and still manage to catch the running, screaming teens. It is silver metallic and cold, impersonal, inhuman. It looks like the kind of hospital machine that kills people by threatening to keep them alive years longer than they should be or want to be. It looks like the very last thing you're attached to before you go.

Jesus, it's coming. The guy beside me looks not worried in the least. He's obdurately working on a crossword puzzle and seems at present not to know a three-letter word for pollen gatherer.

The artificially perky flight attendant is chained to the bev cart like Princess Leia to Jabba the Hut. She does its bidding, reaching into its cold dark bowels and pulling out complimentary beverages, then reaching out to the thirsty passengers with her several arms. I'm trying to read a novel, but I can't concentrate with that bev cart hunching in the center aisle ten seats down. Soon the flight attendant will be here, with her master, and she will loom high above me with too much makeup and a strange scarf-like tie about her neck and the undeniable sex appeal of those in uniform, and she will smile professionally, though absently, and she will ask me, politely, what I would like to drink.

And here's the thing, here's the basis of my fear: I have no idea what I would like to drink.

I never do. The bev cart is offering me a choice of one complimentary beverage and the selection is extensive. There is really no terrestrial analog. Rarely on the earth are you asked to select one free thing from among many free things. This is not paper or plastic, the selection of which, true, I find vaguely unnerving, but which rarely hurtles me into an ocean of self-doubt.

I watch other passengers order with confidence and verve. Watching these people hail their beverages, I am tempted to use words like brio, panache, or moxie. These are coach passengers, mind you, and they are dynamite.

"I'll have a Coke, no ice," says one scruffy college kid in a sweatshirt.

"Grapefruit juice, please," says a middle-aged woman in a smart blue suit. She barely even looks up from her professional magazine as she orders.

There is one extraordinarily enterprising young couple several seats ahead of me. The gentleman orders an orange juice, the lady orders a ginger ale, and then, yes, they mix the drinks into two refreshing cocktails. They will grow old together, no doubt.

These people, they're not cocky, they're not showboating. They just have flair. Such self-knowledge, such unwavering confidence.

The guy beside me appears not to know a four-letter word for hammer target, beginning with an n. He hums to himself faintly and taps his corduroy knee with his palm. I wonder: Does he realize the bev cart is imminent?

I try to collect myself. I close my eyes, I put my feet flat on the floor, I take several deep breaths.

Now: Do I want coffee? Maybe. Yes. I think I do want coffee. The elderly gentleman in 16B just ordered some, and I like his style. At home I drink a half pot every morning, and I haven't had very much so far today, and it is still before noon and I'm feeling a little sleepy. Coffee might perk me up.

And yet: Perhaps I'll want a nap. I got up early this morning and didn't get much sleep last night. I should probably take a nap, so coffee's no good.

But then again, airline coffee is typically so weak and crappy, it probably wouldn't keep me up, so I should probably just go ahead and get some coffee.

But that raises the question: Given a choice of a complimentary beverage, what kind of fool would knowingly order a weak and crappy kind?

No. Coffee is out. No coffee for me.

Soda? It's just sort of boring and adolescent, though ginger ale has a certain sophistication.

There is, of course, an array of fruit juices.

There is special bubbly water.

Booze? It sure would take the edge off, though it's four bucks and you need correct change and what kind of a guy orders alcohol on a plane at ten-thirty in the morning? Well, that fellow in the houndstooth shirt in 18A just did, and without cringe or whisper.

There's always coffee. I was probably too hasty in ruling it out.

The horror of the beverage cart, which I can just about reach out and touch by now, is that it inevitably evokes all of the other choices I have made or must make. Should I have given up piano lessons when I was nine? Should I have gone farther away to college? And what kind of major is liberal studies? Should I have tried to keep Sarah from leaving? Could we have worked things out? What about grad school? Given the floor plan in my apartment and the afternoon light, is my couch in the right place? What about this v-neck sweater I'm wearing? To be honest, I don't really see myself as a v-neck kind of guy. Why am I wearing a v-neck on this airplane? And what about Amy, for Christ's sake, Amy, who will pick me up at the airport in an hour and a half, who will hug me with conviction, who will say, and mean, that it is wonderful to see me. Will it be wonderful to see her? How wonderful? Do I love her? How do I know? If I do love her, what kind of love is it and what do I do about it? Should I have agreed to come on this trip? Should I insist on sleeping on her futon the entire weekend? Should I ask her to marry me? What do I tell her in the dark, when we're done?

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

There is suddenly sunlight, and the cabin, so often dim, is filled with a strange yellow light. I can see dust particles floating in the air, and I can see the glistening shampooed hair of the passengers in front of me. I am tired, and I know what the beverage cart means, it means that things never get any easier, they never get easier, and there is something important about love that I will likely never learn.

The beverage cart slides and then brakes beside me, pinning me in, blocking any possible escape. The flight attendant puts my tray down as if I am a three-year-old at dinner. She leans over me and asks the guy beside me if he would care for a complimentary beverage. I take deep breaths and hide my trembling hands beneath the tray.

The guy beside me says, "I'll have Pepsi."

The flight attendant says, "We have Coke. Is that OK?"

I suddenly wonder if I am thirsty at all. Why do I feel compelled to order a complimentary beverage? Wouldn't there be something sort of glorious in declining a drink altogether? Wouldn't they then know what kind of man they were dealing with here? I feel parched, though. I need a beverage.

The guy beside me says, "Oh. Do you have iced tea?"

The flight attendant says, "No, I'm sorry, we don't."

I know it sounds crazy, but it feels to me as if the bev cart is pulsing and throbbing and slowly expanding beside me. No one else around me seems to notice.

The guy beside me sighs good-naturedly and, without hesitation, says, "I'll have coffee, then."

The flight attendant smiles and pours him coffee.

Here's a guy who seriously appears not to know a five-letter word for log house, and yet he has elegantly prioritized his beverage choices, and articulated them with clarity and assurance. Socrates said, Know thyself, and this guy does.

The flight attendant gazes down at me and says, "And what would you like?" Her name is Carol. It says so on her airline nametag.

My throat gets tight. I can feel the cool dampness under my arms and on my lower back.

I say, "Water."

Carol says, "Water?"

It is not as though she didn't hear me, though my voice did crack. And there is, I truly believe, no recrimination in her voice. She is not incredulous or mocking. Carol has seen it all. She has simply repeated my order as a question the way people in the service industry often do. Still, I can't help hearing it as an accusation, a judgment. Water? You mean, you paid two hundred seventy bucks for a ticket and you're miles above the ground, risking your very life, drinking perhaps your last beverage ever, a free beverage by the way, and you order water?

"No," I say.

Carol, reaching down into the bev cart for water, says, "No?"

I say, "Tomato juice, please." I hear myself say this, Tomato juice, please.

Carol says, "Tomato juice?"

I say, "Yes," and wipe my face and neck with the cocktail napkin.

You should know that I never order tomato juice, never, and the reason is that I don't like tomato juice at all. I find it thick and weird and primitive. And yet there is something satisfying in having decided, in having acted. I feel like Hamlet must have felt after he stabbed Polonius through the curtain.

The beverage cart moves past my aisle and I sip my tomato juice and my heart rate slowly returns to normal. There is relief, yes, but it doesn't last for long, because I've got a bad feeling that Carol will be returning soon, with tongs and a wicker basket, wanting to know whether I would care for a warm towel. Or not.

© 2004 Chris Bachelder