Beside her in 15B sat her mother.
The woman was in her late thirties, dressed in an immaculate cream-colored cashmere travel cardigan, four-carat diamond stud earrings catching the overhead reading lamp, her manicured fingers scrolling lazily through an episode of a European melodrama streaming on a high-definition tablet. A dark leather Birkin handbag—an authentic twenty-thousand-dollar piece of calfskin—sat tucked beneath the seat in front of her.
“Excuse me,” I said, pitching my voice to be polite, calm, and audible over the low, sixty-cycle acoustic drone of the General Electric GE90 turbofans outside:
“Ma’am, could you please ask your daughter to stop kicking my seat? The vibrations are driving straight through my spine, and I’m trying to sleep.”
The woman didn’t pause the video on her tablet. She didn’t turn her head. She merely tilted her chin by half an inch, her eyes remaining glued to the screen:
“She’s a child. Deal with it.”
