There was, inevitably, an online version of this story. Someone in row 18 had filmed part of my announcement. It went, for four days, mildly viral on Instagram. The video ended before Priya escorted him to row 31, so the ending got cleaned up in the reposts. In the comments, I got some praise. I also got criticism, which I want to take seriously, because it was not stupid. People said I had humiliated a man in front of two hundred strangers, and that if he had said something cruel in private, a response in private was the appropriate reciprocation, not a cabin-wide announcement. People said what I did was, in its own

way, a kind of bullying — loud, public, designed for applause. I have thought about this a lot. I understand the argument. I think, honestly, that if I had been alone on the plane and he had said it to me, I would have handled it quietly. I don't believe in public shaming for its own sake. But Cass was not me. Cass was a fifty-something woman flying home from her mother's funeral, reading a paperback in 14D, who had done absolutely nothing wrong. And the man in 14E had, in private, counted on her silence. He had counted on the quiet permission of a plane of strangers to say a cruel thing without consequence. He did not get that permission. I refuse to believe the absence of that permission is a bad thing.