Redman, had reluctantly surrendered to his son’s religious education, and bought two airplane tickets with it. They were the cheapest tickets available, on BookAir (“The Airline for People Who Read”), a cut-rate airline that offered no-frill flights around the world. Instead of fancy electronic entertainment—movies and music and earphones—BookAir offered only rafts of used books left behind by previous travelers. Their flight was scheduled to leave in the early evening from Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, arriving in Atlanta next morning. Andrea’s lack of papers was a problem Ben undertook with some pleasure. He had created numberless fake IDs in high school for his underage classmates. His work had been quite renowned. He had with him an expired driver’s license that had belonged to his sister Clarisse. He pasted a small picture of Andrea over Clarisse’s. He next produced a birth certificate modeled on his own, a painstaking calligraphic work that Xeroxed perfectly. He booked Andrea’s flight under the name Clarisse Redman.
