Here One Moment

As Chapter 1 begins, passengers are boarding a flight from Hobart Airport in Australia’s island state of Tasmania to Sydney. Later none of the passengers will be able to recall the woman, who is later revealed to be Cherry Lockwood, as she was boarding. She is middle-aged, petite, with gray hair and a silver brooch. She will later be known as “the Death Lady” and will cause passengers great agitation.

The flight takes off after a delay of over 90 minutes. Forty-five minutes later, Cherry Lockwood stands up in the aisle and touches her brooch. Only Leopold Vodnik, known as Leo, notices.

The point of view shifts from omniscient narration to enter Leo’s thoughts. Leo, age 42, is a civil engineer with wild hair and elegant clothes. He is frantic about having missed his 11-year-old daughter’s performance in her school musical. He has flown to Hobart to take his mother to a doctor’s appointment that confirmed her good health. Leo agonizes over missing Bridie’s show and his neglect of his 14-year-old son, Oli, because he is a workaholic.

Leo wonders why the lady in the aisle is not moving. She quietly says, “On the count of three” (13).

The narrative cuts to Cherry’s musings at some point after the flight. Cherry reflects that she once loved a boy who helped her get over her social anxiety about parties and dancing by holding her hand and saying, “On the count of three” (13). At “three” they would enter the event together. She repeated his saying because she was thinking of him.

Leo notices that Cherry’s brooch is a symbol he can’t decipher. Cherry reaches the count of three and points to the “fiftyish” man in her row, saying, “I expect catastrophic stroke. […] Age seventy-two” (16).

Cherry next points to Leo’s seatmate, Max O’Sullivan, who, along with his wife, Sue, is part of an enthusiastic middle-aged couple. Cherry expects heart disease at age 84 for Max. When Sue asks if Cherry recently lost someone, Cherry impatiently replies, “Cause of death. Age of death” (18). Leo realizes Cherry is not diagnosing people but predicting their deaths. She predicts that Sue will die of pancreatic cancer at age 66. Leo will die in a workplace accident at 43, the age he will reach in November. He tries to joke about the prediction, but Cherry only says, “Fate won’t be fought” (19).

The narrative cuts to Cherry’s musings at some point after the flight. Cherry recollects seeing a photo of herself during the flight in the newspaper. She has been told that she said “fate won’t be fought” (21), a phrase of her mother’s, during the flight. Her mother was a determinist who believed one cannot escape destiny. Determinism, as Cherry once learned at a dinner party, means that everything that happens is inevitable because it proceeds from a prior event. If free will really does not exist, Cherry muses, must one apologize for one’s actions?

The narrative returns to the flight. Sue O’Sullivan is an emergency room nurse and a mother and grandmother. Cherry’s prediction means she only has three years to live. She regrets never having left Australia. Sue looks for her favorite flight attendant, an attractive woman named Allegra Patel, as Cherry continues to make predictions.

Sue recognizes signs of dehydration in Cherry and wonders aloud if she is a psychic. Max, a practical person, doesn’t believe in psychics. He and Leo reach for their call bells as Cherry’s predictions go on.

The narrative cuts to Cherry’s musings at some point after the flight. Cherry decides that one should apologize for actions regardless of one’s belief in free will. She herself is “profoundly” sorry.

The narrative returns to the flight. Allegra, the flight attendant, is on duty with her friend Anders, who brought doughnuts that morning for her 28th birthday. One of the pilots, Jonny Summers, took a bite of a doughnut and then dropped it in the garbage, the beginning of a bad day. Sue and Max tell Allegra about the passenger who is predicting people’s deaths. As Allegra goes to investigate, a woman asks for her help with a bag. The bag is so heavy it throws out Allegra’s back.

The narrative cuts to Cherry’s musings at some point after the flight. Cherry reflects that her mother hated doctors and ignored the symptoms of the illness that caused her death before age 60.

The narrative returns to the flight. Paula Binici is a contract lawyer turned stay-at-home mother. Her baby, Timmy, and toddler, Willow, are napping on the flight after crying extensively. Timmy calmed down after a man with a gray buzz cut gave him his keys to play with. Paula is on her way to her sister’s upcoming wedding in Sydney. Cherry predicts Paula will die of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at age 84—and that Timmy will die of drowning at age seven. Paula is horrified and tearful.

The narrative cuts to Cherry’s musings at some point after the flight. Cherry regrets having predicted Timmy’s death. She has brought her profession into “serious dispute.”

On the flight, Allegra chases after Cherry.

The narrative cuts to Cherry’s first-person narration at some point after the flight. The Australian Psychics Association has released a statement condemning Cherry’s actions. Cherry feels the condemnation is deserved. Her mother, a psychic, never told her clients anything distressing about their future. Cherry wonders what the point of telling fortunes might be if events are predetermined. She recalls her mother did it for the money.

Paula wonders how to prevent Timmy’s death from drowning.

Cherry doesn’t feel responsible for the fact that the toddler Willow has vomited on Allegra.

Cherry continues to progress down the aisle.

The narrative returns to Cherry’s musings at some point after the flight. Cherry remembers the day of the flight: how she skipped breakfast and had trouble pinning the brooch she has worn for 30 years. She lives in a one-bedroom cottage in Hobart, where she looks out the window and accidentally waves to a neighbor, who waves back.

The narrative returns to the flight. Ethan Chang is heading back to Sydney after attending a funeral in Hobart for one of his best friends, a peculiar, pessimistic, and sincere young man named Harvey who died of an aneurysm. He and Harvey once worked together as software engineers. Ethan’s arm is in a sling because he tripped on his backpack while trying rock-climbing. Cherry reaches Ethan and predicts he will die of assault at age 30, within the next year. Ethan cries, remembering how Harvey would have said, “Guys like us don’t die young” (72).

The narrative returns to Cherry’s musings at some point after the flight. Cherry is sorry she made Ethan cry. He reminds her of the ticket seller at her childhood cinema, just as Max and Sue remind her of her dear friends Bert and Jill. Eerily, everyone on the flight seemed significant to her in some way, including a bride who seemed to be wearing Cherry’s wedding dress.

The bride, Eve, wakes from a nap and wishes she and her husband, Dom, had not worn their wedding clothes on the flight. Cherry predicts Eve will die of “intimate partner homicide” at age 25 (83).

At some point after the flight, Cherry hopes she didn’t spoil Eve and Dom’s honeymoon. She reflects that people have mixed feelings about psychic predictions.