“You are pondering something. I can see it in your expression,” Timothy said.
I shrugged. “I was just thinking about flying and how all these people do it so casually. They seem blasé, but airplane flight is such an odd concept, climbing into a huge metal object that lifts up and pretends to be a bird with a hundred people sitting inside its belly.”
Timothy smiled and patted my leg. “I love your thoughts, Penelope.”
He reached out with the hand I’d squeezed to death and lifted a strand of my hair to kiss it. “You always smell of coconut and strawberries. It’s a very pleasant scent, especially on my favorite lady.”
“That’s Simone’s choice of shampoo,” I told him, glancing out the window to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything, but we were in the center of a cloudbank. Whiteness had swallowed us.
“It doesn’t smell like this on Simone,” Timothy said, looking bemused.
Bemused? I’d never even thought that word before. How amusing. Next I’d be talking of museums, amusements, plain old muses, and ignoramuses, although I had no idea if the last one was part of the word family.
Snapping my mind out of its silly pathways, I kidded Timothy. “So, you sniff at Simone’s hair, do you?”
His eyes darkened. “She is a friend of long standing, but I have never sniffed her hair, nor had any inclination to do so. This compulsion to touch, taste, and analyze aromas centers exists only with you, my darling.”
I could see that he was about to say more, but then he clammed up. It must be something about being a pooka or about Simone, a thought he couldn’t share. But I wasn’t going to pry, not in a public place. I dropped the subject, deciding that Timothy was much too serious about such statements to tease him any further. I shot another glance out the window. The plane was doing an elevator drop. My stomach felt the movement. “Are we landing?” I asked.