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Lecter takes from beneath the seat in front of him his own lunch in an elegant yellow box trimmed with brown from Fauchon, the Paris caterer. It is tied with two ribbons of silk gauze in complementary colors. Dr. Lecter has provisioned himself with wonderfully aromatic truffled pâté de foie gras, and Anatolian figs still weeping from their severed stems. He has a half-bottle of a St. Estephe he favors. The silk bow yields with a whisper.

Dr. Lecter is about to savor a fig, holds it before his lips, his nostrils flared to its aroma, deciding whether to take all the fig in one glorious bite or just half, when the computer game beside him beeps. It beeps again. Without turning his head, the doctor palms the fig and looks down at the child beside him. The scents of truffle, foie gras and cognac climb from the open box.

The small boy sniffs the air. His narrow eyes, shiny as those of a rodent, slide sideways to Dr. Lecter’s lunch. He speaks with the piercing voice of a competitive sibling:

“Hey, Mister. Hey, Mister.” He’s not going to stop.

“What is it?”

“Is that one of those special meals?”

“It is not.”

“What’ve you got in there then?” The child turned his face up to Dr. Lecter in a full wheedle. “Gimme a bite?”

“I’d very much like to,” Dr. Lecter replied, noting that beneath the child’s big head, his neck was only as big around as a pork tenderloin, “but you wouldn’t like it. It’s liver.”’

“Liverwurst! Awesome! Mom won’t care, Mooaaaahm!” Unnatural child, who loves liverwurst and either whines or screams.

The woman holding the baby at the end of the row started awake.

Travelers in the row ahead, their chairs cranked back until Dr. Lecter can smell their hair, look back through the crack between seats. “We’re trying to sleep up here.”

“Mooooaaaahm, can I have some of his samwich?”

The baby in Mother’s lap awoke and began to cry. Mother dipped a finger into the back of its diaper, came up negative, and gave the baby a pacifier.

“What is it you’re trying to give him, sir?”

“It’s liver, Madame,” Dr. Lecter said as quietly as possible. “I haven’t given—”

“Liverwurst, my favorite, I want it, he said I could have some of it …” The child stretched the last word into a piercing whine.

“Sir, if you’re giving something to my child, could I see it?”

The stewardess, her face puffed from an interrupted nap, stopped by the woman’s seat as the baby howled. “Everything all right here? Could I bring you something? Warm a bottle?”

The woman took out a capped baby bottle and gave it to the stewardess. She turned on her reading light, and while she searched for a nipple, she called to Dr. Lecter. “Would you pass it down to me? If you’re offering it to my child, I want to see it. No offense, but he’s got a tricky tummy.”

We routinely leave our small children in day care among strangers. At the same time, in our guilt we evince paranoia about strangers and foster fear in children. In times like these, a genuine monster has to watch it, even a monster as indifferent to children as Dr. Lecter.

He passed his Fauchon box down to Mother.

“Hey, nice bread,” she said, poking it with her diaper finger.

“Madame, you may have it.”

“I don’t want the liquor,” she said, and looked around for a laugh. “I didn’t know they’d let you bring your own. Is this whiskey? Do they allow you to drink this on the plane? I think I’ll keep this ribbon if you don’t want it.”

“Sir, you can’t open this alcoholic beverage on the aircraft,” the stewardess said. “I’ll hold it for you, you can claim it at the gate.”

“Of course. Thank you so much,” Dr. Lecter said.

Dr. Lecter could overcome his surroundings. He could make it all go away. The beeping of the computer game, the snores and farts, were nothing compared to the hellish screaming he’d known in the violent wards. The seat was no tighter than restraints. As he had done in his cell so many times, Dr. Lecter put his head back, closed his eyes and retired for relief into the quiet of his memory palace, a place that is quite beautiful for the most part.

For this little time, the metal cylinder howling westward against the wind contains a palace of a thousand rooms.

As once we visited Dr. Lecter in the Palazzo of the Capponi, so we will go with him now into the palace of his mind …