The Airport

You meet interesting people in the airport. Very interesting people.

There's a guy across from me who looks only a couple years older than me. He's eating a sandwich and he has a bag at his feet that looks like it's designer - for a woman. The man next to him is in a suit, balding with a bad combover. He's reading the paper. Wall Street. There is a woman to my left who only speaks Russian. But despite the fact that neither of them can understand a word the other is saying, the woman seated next to her is trying very hard to get her to understand that our flight has been delayed another forty-five minutes.

I talk a long time with a man from Houston who comes here on business. He flew to New York City on a day trip, which seemed to me to be a very long way to fly simply to do business, but he didn't seem to mind at all. That might be because he has flown to China many times on business, he tells me. We talk about inconsequential things, but he tells me very useful information about Long Island's beaches that I will no doubt use during spring break. Fire Island. It's supposed to be very beautiful. He encouraged me to take Mandarin Chinese in college.

There is a woman across from me who looks like she's in her early thirties. She's playing a white DS. I don't know what game it is, but she's apparently not very good at playing it because she puts her DS away quite quickly. A woman sitting on the wall dividing the terminal from the rest of the airport has tattoos down both arms - almost a full sleeve on her left. It's very pretty; it looks like a koi or a dragon with scaly wings, in blue, with flames. It's elegant. She's reading a dog-eared book. I can't read the title.

Catty-corner from the woman with the DS, a woman with short, highlighted blonde hair has bought The Kite Runner at the airport. I wonder if she knows how heavy the subject matter is, or if she's prepared to cry on the plane. The book is very good, but it's heart-wrenching to read.

One of the women on our flight is upset about the delay. She is worried she won't catch her connecting flight to Phoenix. This is where the Russian woman is going as well. (the Russian woman actually speaks passable English, her accent is just so thick it's difficult to understand what she's saying. She's going to visit family.) The terminal employees have said - twice - that the plane to Phoenix will be held so that people trying to catch the connecting flight will still be able to make it, but the worried woman says she wants Continental to book her for a morning flight to Phoenix, just in case. She is very nice about it, she's just worried.

The elderly woman who gets up to the counter next is not so polite. She is angry that she won't be in Houston at the time they told her she would when she booked the flight. The poor people at the counter tell her they can't do anything about it. I lose track of the elderly woman when I hear the man at the end of my row on the phone, complaining that nobody has told us why our plane was delayed. I know that we were delayed because there is bad weather in Houston and the plane couldn't take off for a while.

The plane is at the gate now, and the passengers from the previous flight have just gotten off. Once the plane is unloaded of all our baggage we will be able to board.

I feel silly when the man in front of me in the combover looks like he is cut off on the phone. I ask him if the service is bad, but he looks at me like he doesn't understand. I have to tell a lie about my wireless not working to get him to think I'm not completely stupid. My wireless works, but LaGuardia makes you pay for internet.

I hope they begin boarding the OnePass members shortly. Not that we will be taking off as soon as we board, but it will be a change of location, which I think everyone in the terminal needs. There are too many people on the flight who have been delayed like I have, for over four hours. They are stressed, and tired, and just want to get on the plane. Once you get on the plane, it's like everything is better. It's like the airline is telling you that everything will be all right. The airline can't go back on themselves once they've gotten you on the plane; once you get on, it's like the airline is telling you that you won't be getting off again until you get where you're going. Boarding is like a promise, between you and the airline. We've got everything fixed now. You're going home.

The people are beginning to line up in front of the door to the gate. I don't understand, because they know that the airline will seat first class and OnePass (like me) first. But the people are very impatient. Many of them are wearing suits. They carry laptops and blackberries and sidekicks and wear suits and ties and shiny dress shoes. Their slacks get wrinkles in them from sitting too long in the terminal seats. They are mostly middle-aged men who look very important. They are the kind of people that you expect to see scurrying through an office building or down Wall Street. They are clones of the man in the combover and the nice businessman I spoke with. They are the kind of people my father flies with.

I see a businessman in the back who is different, because unlike all of his clones, he is much more interested in the book he bought at Borders than in looking at his watch, or his sidekick, or his blackberry, or even in staring at the departure time on the board (because these businessmen think that if they stare at it long enough, it will go backwards - earlier, earlier, earlier until our original scheduled departure time). He is still wearing the crisp navy suit and the starched white shirt and the steel blue tie - but it is a steel blue tie instead of a tie that clashes with the color of his button-down, and he is reading, not fussing, and he wears thin-framed glasses. In my mind, I think he is a professor, not a businessman. The professor is toward the front of the line, but I don't think he would notice if it moved.

There are many more people in the terminal than I think could fit on the plane. Luckily, they will seat me first, so I won't have to worry about being bumped from the flight. I think there will be some angry people before the day is over, even if they will offer them first class status or frequent flier miles.

I think they're starting to board. Two minutes, they say. Two minutes! More people get up and migrate to the door. I will close my laptop and try to get a spot before the end of the line.

 

Now I'm on the plane. I've been on the plane for two hours, I think, but I could be wrong because I never did set my laptop to local time. It's still on Houston time. But we got completely through Blades of Glory, so it has to have been over two hours.

I'm having trouble concentrating on typing because of the people talking in my ears. They put me in the very last seat in the back of the plane, on the aisle, just in front of the bathrooms. People have been lining up to use the bathrooms ever since the movie ended, which I understand because I also need to use the bathroom. But the line is too long, and people keep cutting in front of me because I'm polite enough to step out of the aisle when it looks like someone needs past me. I'll wait for people to finish going to the bathroom, and then I'll go.

The captain just turned on the fasten seatbelt sign, because we're going through some turbulence over what looks like DFW or something. We aren't in Texas yet, I don't think, because I think it's a four hour flight and we've only been on it for two. Or, actually, three, now that I've done the hours conversion in my head. I feel sorry for my mom having to pick me up in an hour from the Houston airport.

They're playing reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond now, because apparently the Continental executives have a deep love of Everybody Loves Raymond. They play it every time I fly with them and they don't have a movie to show. I can never tell the difference, but it looks like the same episode they were playing on my way to New York in the first place.

The line is gone for the bathroom because of the turbulence, but I can't get up. Six for one, half a dozen for the other. I'll just have to make sure to snag it when the seatbelt lights go back off. For some reason last time I turned my mp3 player off, it froze. And since I didn't have time to hit the reset button (or a handy mechanical pencil to hit it with) it ran down the batteries, so now I don't have any music to listen to. I would plug the headphones into the jack and listen to some of the plane radio, but the plane radio always sucks.

Only there's a girl standing up to go to the bathroom now, like she doesn't care whether or not the plane is experiencing turbulence. She walked right past me into the bathroom, and I think I'll go next. The people on my row are alright, or would be if the kid next to me would quit hogging the armrest. The guy in the window seat has done nothing but sleep for the entire flight, and the kid has done nothing but watch TV. On the whole, they've left me alone, which is exactly what I've wanted the entire time.

The wife on Everybody Loves Raymond looks very concerned over some kind of brightly colored box. Maybe there's something in it that's important. I don't think the show is very important, so I'm trying not to get distracted by it, but there isn't much else to do on the flight.

I'm going to try to sleep. After I grab a bathroom.

 

Short Story Navigation

PI: Paranormal Investigators

Trance
Winter in August
Possession

Stand-Alone

The Airport
The Threat