He went back to 2B and sat down.
"Captain," Billie said.
Gunnar did not seem to hear her. He was looking into the cabin, at row 2, at the back of a gray head and a gray cardigan, at a hand resting on the handle of a white cooler, and Billie saw his face do the thing she had seen it do once before, in Houston, ten years ago, and had never forgotten. It did not get angry. It got settled. It got the look of a man who has been carrying a heavy bag a long way and has finally been told where he can put it down.
"Gunnar," she said.
"One second, Billie." He put his hat on. He walked into the cabin.
She followed him. She did not know yet what she was going to do. She knew that she was following him, and that her heart was going hard and slow, and that she was aware of the forward door standing open behind her and of Esperanza on the jet bridge with her radio and of the cell over Castle Rock coming north at thirty knots.
Gunnar stopped at row 2 and leaned a little into the space over the aisle seat, over Garrison Yancey, who leaned back to make room with a small, satisfied economy of motion, like a man in a theater letting someone into his row.
"Ma'am," Gunnar said. "I'm the captain. Could I see your boarding pass, please?"
Laverne Grier turned from the window. She looked up at him, at the four stripes on his sleeve and the wings on his chest, and then she looked at Billie behind him, and then back at him.
"Of course," she said.