The Baggage Handler

by David Rawlings

  Down one side of the room, a glossy white counter ran along the wall. On it sat a bronze alarm clock from another time, its hands standing proud but tired against a burnished and worn face. At the end of the counter, a full-length mirror surrounded by a black steel frame lurched to one side, knocked around once too often. The ceiling and walls of the waiting room pulsed with glossy white, but the furniture was falling apart. The room must be the smoker’s lounge; the bitter residue of smoke clung to every surface.

  David shook his head at the lack of professionalism. What sort of operation filled one of its main rooms—the ones on show to the world—with furniture that needed urgent attention?

  They had stayed true to one corporate expectation. On the far wall, an obligatory inspirational poster was the only color in this monochrome room. But unlike the usual suspects of topics that preached about discipline or persistence, this poster featured one word: forgiveness. A tiny bluebird, its escape from an ugly black cage captured midflight, sat above a solemn pronouncement: To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize the prisoner was you. David shook his head again. Best to leave those inspirational quotes to those corporate team-building weekends.

  David turned to his phone for distraction as the seconds continued to leak away. He flung Angry Birds around, and his knees bounced along with his impatience. He exhaled his frustration.

  Another three minutes smoldered into ash.

  When you need to get a job done properly, you have to do it yourself.

  He stood up with a rush, strode to the door, threw it open, and peered down the corridor, searching for signs of the kid who had disappeared. He saw nothing but a long white corridor, punctuated by white door after white door, disappearing into a black dot on the horizon, not a soul to be seen.

  What was this place? Who in the twenty-first century didn’t slap their branding and corporate colors all over their offices?

  David looked left and then right, expecting movement. Expecting something. Nothing came.

  “Hello?” A single voice came back to him from down the corridor.

  His own.

  David huffed as he retreated to the sofa and again pulled out his phone. He would need an extension on his presentation time the way things were going. This incompetent airline had already chewed a quarter of the two hours of grace he had. He punched in Julian’s direct line but was greeted with a businessman’s greatest fear: no phone service. The veins on his temple throbbed hard.

  The door handle creaked, and David cricked his neck, a warm-up to deliver some customer feedback to this Baggage Handler. Whistling, the young man stepped back into the room, and David unloaded.

  “What on earth is going on here? I had two hours to get back to the head office, and you left me in here for thirty minutes in this joke of a waiting room.”

  Anger pulsated from David as he unleashed. But nothing he said landed. The young man in the navy overalls and cap simply stood in silence, hands clasped as if David’s tirade was water off a duck’s back. David stopped to take a breath.

  The Baggage Handler tipped his cap with one hand and clutched his clipboard with the other. “Are you done?”

  David was prepared for apologetic, groveling defense, and he was prepared for blame-shifting attack. What he wasn’t prepared for was an almost uninterested dismissal of his anger. His mouth flapped open and shut like a goldfish on a sidewalk.

  The Baggage Handler checked his clipboard. “There appears to have been some identical baggage on your flight. I apologize for any inconvenience.”

  “Inconvenience?” David threw his hands up in the air in fuming frustration. “Your monumental mess-up could cost me my career.”

  The Baggage Handler cocked his head. “Actually, if you don’t deal with this, it’s going to cost you far more than that.”

  What on earth did that mean? David clutched his forehead. “What? I need to get out of here. My suitcase wasn’t exactly the same as others; I had red luggage tags from my alumni—”

  “But that was the problem. Several identical bags had red tags. It always staggers me how so much baggage looks the same, but people do nothing about it.” He looked at the suitcase next to David and chuckled to himself. “Why not just get a red suitcase?”

  David stepped forward, his pointed finger zeroed in on the Baggage Handler’s chest. “Look, buddy. I need you to fix this problem so I can get back to work. I’ve got a very important meeting. Missing it is going to cost me my job and the jobs of the fifteen people who work under me in our branch. I can’t afford to lose any more time.”

  The Baggage Handler fixed a gaze on David with clouded blue eyes, a look approaching wistfulness. “I know. Your baggage is slowing you down.”

  David closed his eyes and exhaled hard through clenched teeth at this strange man with the sad eyes. “What are you talking about?” The veins in his temple throbbed again. His stomach gripped him. Again.

  The Baggage Handler nodded at the space behind him. “You’re dragging it around everywhere with you, and it’s stopping you from doing so many things.”

  David reeled. This strange young man looked like a kid but spoke like a wizened old man. Berating him wasn’t working. He needed another plan of attack. His mind fumbled for the right words to use just to get out of this place. He breathed his frustration back deep within him and pressed it down as far as it would go. “All I want to do is deal with my baggage—”

  “Great! I want you to deal with it too.” The Baggage Handler thrust the clipboard under David’s nose. “I need you to sign this, and then I can grab your baggage for you.”

  David snatched the pen on offer and scrawled a hasty signature at the bottom of the page. “Do I need to jump through any other hoops?”

  “I’ll just get your baggage.” He waved his hand toward the white counter. “Help yourself.” He placed the suitcase onto his baggage cart and disappeared again into the corridor, whistling to himself.

  David looked at the empty counter. Help yourself? What on earth was this guy talking about? He shot another glance at the tiny bluebird who had escaped his cage. Lucky so-and-so.

  14

  The sharp tang of dust assaulted Michael as he fumbled behind the chunky TV for the remote control. It wasn’t there either. It was missing, another disappointment in this strange room.

  He wanted—no, needed—a distraction as the seconds ticked away.

  He turned on the TV by hand, and the black of the screen flickered into a shimmering gray. Then, through a checkerboard of static, a man appeared, slumped in a leather chair as if the world had beaten him into submission. His sagging suit clung to him almost in apology, and his eyes flitted around the TV studio beneath lowered lids, apparently seeing everyone but also no one.

  Sitting across from him was a familiar face: Dr. Gabe, trusted confidant dispensing homespun wisdom to millions, a ratings bonanza dispensing cash for TV executives. The man was a knowing toothy smile and chiseled haircut in a suit jacket and T-shirt, piercing eyes hidden behind half-shell glasses that could pinpoint emotional pain from twenty paces.

  Dr. Gabe eased back in his leather chair, his eyeglasses perched on the tip of his nose like an old-school principal’s would. He stroked his chin as he sized up the wreck of a man sitting opposite him.

  Michael munched away on his last sandwich, the saltiness of the ham and the tang of tomato biting into his tongue. Say what you like about their decorator, but their caterer was great!

  Dr. Gabe tapped his top lip with a forefinger, a thought-provoking posture that flagged to his millions of viewers that life’s answers were imminent. “What you’re telling me, then, is that you’re terrified of doing anything with your life because you’re sure you will fail.”

  The man’s head snapped up, his stare on high beam like a deer in headlights. “That’s not what I said.”

  Dr. Gabe slipped off his glasses and pointed them at his patient. “But that’s what your body language is screaming out to me.”

>   Michael, suddenly self-conscious, sat taller on the sofa to hide his slouch.

  “And it’s disagreed with everything you’ve said so far. But may I give you some advice?” A rhetorical question. The advice was coming anyway.

  The man offered a meek nod above the arms he’d crossed as a wall of defense.

  “You will fail.”

  The man’s arms relaxed under the spotlight of truth. People in the audience gasped as they edged forward on their seats.

  Dr. Gabe wasn’t finished with him. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy you’re doomed to repeat.” Heads nodded across the studio audience and applause rippled across the seats in appreciation at this golden nugget of insight.

  Dr. Gabe cocked his head and changed tack. “What do you do for a living?”

  The man mumbled his response into his chest. “I work in sales.”

  Michael skulked to the fridge for another sandwich, his eyes glued to the TV.

  Dr. Gabe again tapped his top lip with a forefinger. “No, that’s what you do for a job. I asked you what you do for a living.”

  The man threw a confused look at the studio audience, then the camera, where it crashed into the confused look Michael threw at the screen.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What you do every day . . . Does it fulfill you?”

  The man gave a pathetic shrug. “Not in the slightest. I despise it.”

  Dr. Gabe leaned into the man with a conspiratorial whisper. “Then why do you do it?”

  Michael made this a three-way discussion. “Yeah, why?”

  Dr. Gabe pointed his glasses at his patient in accusation. “You’re miserable, and yet you keep doing what makes you miserable. Does that make any sense to you?”

  With a slow shake of the man’s head, tears sprang free.

  “What do you want to do with your life?”

  “I want to be an artist.” Michael answered by reflex and then pulled himself up short. What am I doing? I’m talking to a TV show.

  Dr. Gabe continued his cross-examination. “How old are you?”

  The man wiped away the tears and stared hard at his shoes. “Thirty-seven.”

  Michael’s chewing slowed as his future materialized in front of him. This could be me in twenty years’ time. The thought lodged under his skin like a splinter and prodded him to reach for his comfort zone—his happy place, which was always stocked with graphite pencils and sketch pads. His memory flicked through his portfolio and his drawings, and they did their usual trick as he settled. He flicked through portraits of himself, his mother, his art teacher, wildlife from his backyard, his mother’s hands, his girlfriend, Jack Nicholson, his mother . . .

  Dr. Gabe zeroed in on the man opposite him. “You tell me you’ve turned down opportunities to write music, which is your passion, not because you’re bad at it, but because you’ve been told your whole life that writing music isn’t a smart career choice.”

  The eyes of the man on the TV couch welled with more tears. Michael fought to hold back a rising tide of emotion. He glanced around again for the remote—to change the channel, to turn it off. To stop the discomfort.

  Dr. Gabe threw his hands wide. “I’ve got some good news for you. I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. Let me ask you something: what would you say to your seventeen-year-old self?”

  The man fought back tears. “I’d say believe in yourself and that your dad’s not going to make decisions for you.”

  A chunk of tomato fell from Michael’s open mouth and landed in his lap. The studio audience whooped its genuine, spontaneous response to the applause sign.

  “Let me tell you something.” Dr. Gabe replaced his glasses and leaned forward, hand on hip, chin in hand—a sure sign the advice was about to reach its climax of wisdom before a cut to commercial.

  “Yes?” Again Michael responded by reflex and leaned forward.

  “People all over our country are missing out on life, not because they can’t achieve their dream, but because they’re forced to live someone else’s.”

  The camera swept across the studio, capturing the occasional tear and several knowing nods. Michael nodded along with them.

  Dr. Gabe stared down the barrel of the camera, right at Michael. “Including you.”

  Michael’s jaw froze as he was caught in the doctor’s steely-eyed gaze.

  “The message today is that if you’re self-sabotaging your future, it’s not because you want to, but because that future may not be yours.”

  The audience again whooped its appreciation as Dr. Gabe broke eye contact with Michael and hugged his patient in an awkward embrace. He discarded the man and faced the faithful. “We’ll be back after the break to talk to Jenny, who believes she has failed her children because just three of them are doctors. Join us for ‘Why you should stop with mother guilt.’”

  Michael lifted the piece of tomato from his leg, Dr. Gabe’s words ringing in his ears. His drawings were good. Maybe his art teachers were right. He did have talent. Michael allowed the slightest sense of achievement and a feeling of pride.

  Two football players on the TV screen scowled at Michael and then turned to face each other. They scowled again and were obliterated by an exploding stamp across their faces that announced the Tigers would destroy the Rams this week at the Dome. The advertisement for the upcoming football game crushed sprouting pride in his artistic ability as his dad trampled back into his thoughts.

  He quickly returned to his refuge and flicked through his mental design portfolio again. But now his drawings looked bland, the color washed from the pages. The pencil strokes more hesitant and less sharp. The poses he’d sketched less intriguing and more derivative than they’d looked five minutes ago.

  He was looking at them through different eyes.

  Critical eyes.

  Eyes that didn’t understand the value of art, the sweep of the pencil, the detail he’d spent hours crafting or the emotion he’d been mining.

  Eyes that belonged to his father.

  Maybe Dad was right.

  15

  David paced the waiting room like an innocent death row inmate sweating on a last-minute reprieve. Where in the heck was this guy? Another fifteen minutes had been sucked out of his day, and the countdown to the board presentation sped up.

  When you need to get a job done properly, you have to do it yourself.

  He threw open the door and stepped into the gleaming white corridor that seemed to stretch into infinity in both directions.

  “Hello?” Still, the only voice in the corridor was his.

  He ground his teeth. “Hello?” David screamed at the top of his lungs. Nothing.

  This is ridiculous.

  David stepped across the corridor and tried a black handle, which refused to budge. Locked. He shook his head and moved down to the next white door. Its handle refused to budge as well.

  As he made his way down the corridor, handle after handle resisted him. An uneven pounding built in his chest, and his frustration grew with each failure. He crossed the corridor and tried one more handle. Locked. He growled in frustration as he ripped his hand from it, sweat greasing his palms. He shut his eyes and breathed deep in a desperate attempt to regain control as the day swirled faster and faster around the drain.

  David looked back down the corridor from where he’d come. His mind backflipped at a corridor that disappeared into the distance, each door like the one before it and the one after. His pulse thumped in his ears as a numbing realization swept through him. I have to get back, but through which door?

  His heart still pounded, and his breathing threatened to run away from him like a wild horse on a prairie. His stomach growled its frustration. David reached into his pocket for an antacid and popped his last one into his mouth.

  How many doors had he tried? Four? Six? Twenty? Looking down an infinite corridor of doors, it might as well have been a hundred.

  David squeezed his eyes shut to push down a rising sense of panic�
��an unwelcome emotion. The anxiety pushed him into light-headedness. Calm down. Calm down. His rational side waded through the rising tide of his confusion. All you need to do is head back in the direction you came and try doors until you find one that opens. Then, as he looked down the corridor that disappeared into the horizon, his rational side tried to make sense of it, threw up its hands, and waded back out of the conversation.

  Opening his eyes, David managed to keep an unstable lid on his emotions. He strode back down the corridor and counted out five doors. This was the one. He turned the handle with confidence and stepped forward, expecting to walk into his waiting room. Instead he walked face-first into another door that refused to budge.

  His breath caught. Calm down. Calm down.

  He tried the door next to it and met a similar result. Then a third and a fourth.

  The panic threatened to engulf him, and he screamed.

  “Hello? Where are you people?”

  People . . . People . . .

  Silence followed the echo. The corridor spun as the light-headedness threatened to shut him down.

  “What on earth is going on here?”

  On here . . . On here . . .

  David’s anxiety was now joined by a rising sense of indigestion as his stomach attempted to climb out his mouth for its own look at what was going on. He slammed his fists into the nearest white door and shot glances both ways at this impossible corridor. He sank to his knees and screamed, a guttural shriek from the depths of himself. It echoed to both ends of the corridor and reverberated back through him, the vibrations shaking him to his very core.

  I have to get back.

  David closed his eyes and tried to picture his family on the ferry as the vibrations dissipated and soaked into the walls. His breathing slowed, and the thumping in his temples slowed as well, as Caitlin’s laugh chased away the echoing silence of the corridor.

  David regained control and stood as he took a deep breath. He placed his hand on the handle. The door popped open with a gentle click, and David clamored back into the waiting room he had come to think of as his, slamming the door behind him. He sat down on the edge of the sofa, his left hand quivering with a growing tic. Habit forced him to his phone. How had he spent ten minutes out there? He tried to breathe back his self-control, but it wasn’t enough. Unable to stay seated, he paced, thinking movement would help him combat the anxiety strangling him.