The Passenger

Chapter 1 begins with an unnamed female character, who readers later learn is Alicia Western, having a discussion with another character whose name is the Thalidomide Kid. The Kid and Alicia appear to know each other, as their conversation reveals that The Kid has intimate knowledge of what Alicia thinks. Alicia is a patient at a psychiatric hospital, and her conversation with The Kid reveals that she is considering ending her life. The Kid is a somewhat comic and very coarse character, and he tries to lighten the mood for much of his conversation with Alicia, a fact that does not move her. In fact, she grows increasingly frustrated by The Kid. The narrator hints that The Kid might not be an actual person, describing the character as having flippers for arms. Alicia also thinks that there is a group of others standing outside her door. As this section of the chapter moves along, it becomes increasingly evident that The Kid and the others who are not present are manifestations of Alicia’s imagination. As this section comes to a close, Alicia dreams that she and her brother, Bobby, are chasing a train in the night.

The narrative shifts to the novel’s present (1980), introducing Bobby Western. He and his crew are out on open water in the Gulf of Mexico investigating a recent plane crash. Bobby and his colleague Oiler dive to where the plane rests at the bottom in 30 feet of water, investigate the wreck, and discover certain oddities of the scene, namely that the pilot’s flight bag and the plane’s data box are missing. They come back up to the surface and board their boat, where they begin a conversation about what they saw. Both Bobby and Oiler realize that there is something strange about this wreck. They discuss the kind of plane, and how it might have gone down. They also discuss what it is like pulling dead bodies out from plane wrecks like this one, which as they investigate, has bodies still belted in their seats.

After arriving on shore, Bobby stops at a local bar where a crew of his friends and acquaintances are drinking. One of them is John Sheddan, who calls Bobby “Squire” and who is facing charges of illegally selling prescription drugs in Tennessee. Bobby does not stay long, and after he leaves, John tells a woman named Bianca that Bobby is in love with his sister (Alicia). Bobby inherited a large sum of money but has since blown it all. John also shares that Bobby is a math genius and that his sister is even more of one than he is. Lastly, it’s revealed that Bobby previously lived in Europe as a racecar driver.

After sleeping for a while, Bobby meets Oiler at a bar, where he presses his friend to talk about the latter’s experiences serving in the Vietnam War. Bobby managed to avoid serving because he was in college and considered a math whiz. Oiler tells Bobby gruesome stories of his time in Vietnam. They also discuss the strange case of the plane crash they were sent to investigate. Bobby leaves the bar and returns home to find two men waiting for him. He invites them into his apartment, where they question him about the plane. They ask if he removed a body from the plane and if he or Oiler took anything from the plane. Bobby explains that he’s a salvage diver and they only dive for what they’ve been hired to find. The men have badges, but what kind of agents they are is not disclosed. The men suggest that a passenger is missing from the wrecked plane.

Chapter 2 begins with the same narrative structure as the opening chapter, first focusing on Alicia before returning to the present and Bobby’s curiosity about the plane crash.

The narrator describes Alicia’s first experiences with the hallucinations, in which The Kid appears along with an assortment of other characters. Alicia is at the onset of puberty the first time The Kid appears. Alicia is not sure what to make of the situation and asks The Kid who he is and where he came from. Her questions are avoided and deflected. The Kid then begins an audition as characters appear and read various lines and perform antics. All the while, Alicia insists on knowing who The Kid is and how he ended up in her room. The Kid continues to dodge the questions, and answers some of Alicia’s questions with non-sequiturs and questions of his own. The Kid’s comments make clear that Alicia is a young genius. Lastly, The Kid quotes a passage from Alicia’s diary before ending with a philosophical tangent about the nature of lines, that all lines are broken, and that one cannot retrace a line to its origin without losing where they are.

The second part of the chapter begins as Bobby is at the office of Taylor’s, the company that hires him as a salvage diver. An employee named Lou is there, and Bobby asks questions about the plane crash that he and Oiler were sent to investigate and salvage. Lou knows nothing, and Bobby notes that the crash was not even reported in the news, a fact that he finds odd, though Lou is indifferent. Bobby borrows a boom truck and heads out to Pass Christian, where he rents a boat and drives it over to a bay where he searches to see if anything from the plane may have washed ashore. He spends the rest of the day exploring all the areas near the wreckage, looking for anything that may have washed ashore. Toward the end of the day, in a small cove, he comes ashore and discovers footsteps in the sand, along with tracks that appear to signal that something like a body was dragged ashore. Bobby concludes that the dragged body was most likely the missing passenger that his two badged visitors alluded to previously. The narrative skips ahead two days, and Bobby is meeting for dinner with a friend of his named Debussy Fields. After some discussion, Debussy begins telling Bobby the story of her gender transition, and recalls difficult times from her childhood. Debussy’s name had at one time been William, and she reveals to Bobby that her mother is not accepting of the transition. Debussy talks about her struggles with alcoholism, and her search for spiritual meaning.