fter rushing out of his last class of the day at 6 (well… a few minutes early) and into a waiting cab, Mike needed everything to fall into place in order to get through the evening Manhattan traffic rush and make it to the Newark airport on time for an 8 o’clock flight to Orlando for a work conference. It was going to be tight.

With some promised bribery the cab driver broke enough rules of the road to get him there barely in time to get through security and make it to the flight that had already boarded. Arriving at the gate looking flustered and out of breath, he was met by a gate agent who notified him that he’d been upgraded to first class because they’d assumed he wasn’t going to make it and had given his assigned seat to someone else. The anxiety of the cab ride and the dash through the airport melted away as Mike settled in to the window seat in the second row and stretched out.

In what would be foreshadowing of what was to come for them, it turned out that while late, Mike wasn’t the latest person for that Continental flight to Orlando that night. One more person came on board just before the door was to close also carrying an upgraded ticket to the fourth row. As it turned out, Keesha was also destined to Orlando in order to hang out with her sister Lauren who was in Florida for a different work conference. Mike, oblivious in his seat marveling at his first class surroundings, didn’t notice this final passenger pass the second row and stop at the fourth row to find that someone was already sitting in her newly assigned seat. The flight attendants were in a hurry to get everyone in their seats so the plane could push off, so Keesha was instructed to just take the empty seat in the second row. By this time Mike was drifting off to sleep and Keesha took her seat to read her magazine.