She awoke by herself at the moment the landing light went on, and she was as beautiful and refreshed as if she had slept in a rose garden. That was when I realised that like old married couples, people who sit next to each other on airplanes do not say good morning to each other when they wake up. Nor did she. She took off her mask, opened her radiant eyes, straightened the back of the seat, moved the blanket aside, shook her hair that fell into place of its own weight, put the cosmetics case back on her knee and applied rapid, unnecessary make-up, which took just enough time so that she did not have to look at me until the plane door opened. Then she put on her lynx jacket, almost stepped over me with a conventional excuse in pure Latin American Spanish, left without even saying goodbye or at least thanking me for all I had done to make our night together a happy one, and disappeared into the sun of today in the Amazon jungle of New York.
(Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane, Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
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