What the woman finally looked down at was her own handbag, open on the floor between her feet, and the passport, boarding pass, and hotel voucher that had slid halfway out of it and were sitting in a spreading pool of red wine from the glass she had knocked with her elbow while snapping at my grandmother. Grandma had noticed it the moment it happened and had spent two full minutes trying to warn her, politely, three times, while the woman told her to leave her alone.
By the time she looked, the boarding pass was soaked through and the passport’s corner was staining. That was the wink. My grandmother, eighty-four years old and squeezed into a third of a seat, had tried harder to save that woman’s documents than the woman had ever tried to be decent, and the woman had refused to listen right up until it cost her.
