by Nathan Holic
When I drop my suitcase and garment bag off at the security center, two men in white dress shirts and black ties fling my bags onto a clinical table, open them—everyone in the airport now looking, suddenly—and with latex gloves they sift through my boxer shorts, open my toiletry bag, hold up my razor, and it’s Charles Washington on display for everyone. And I smile and cough and pretend everything is ordinary, ordinary, but my suitcase was already disheveled before this inspection and now it’s worse. They sift through several pairs of dirty boxers (which I forgot to toss into my dirty clothes bag…and shit, I forgot my dirty clothes bag, and now how will I keep the dirty clothes separate from the clean?) and then find my other NKE polo and it registers to them that I’m wearing an identical shirt and they laugh.
I don’t see my goal sheets. I thought I’d packed my goal sheets into my suitcase.
My bags—me, my things, my life—are zipped back up, dropped onto the conveyor belt, and they disappear into darkness.
*
At the gate, I learn that my flight has been delayed for mechanical reasons, that the next plane in line will not be ready for at least two hours, so I won’t leave Philadelphia until noon. I could try to spread out and sleep, but I refuse to allow myself to be perceived as a fraternity stereotype, so I find a seat and sit with remarkable posture, no slouching, open my laptop and nod at the Excel spreadsheets on the screen and read through old reports and type and save documents, and this feels good.
Two seats down, a man shouts into his cell phone, “I don’t care what Anderson told you. Is he the General Manager? Listen to me. Cancel that order. Hear me? We’d lose our ass-es.”
Actually, several other blazer-wearing travelers are doing the same. “Friedman, ha!” one yells into his cell phone. Tall, overweight, spilling out of his seat. Looks like he hasn’t paid attention to health or fashion since the day he took his first big job, just keeps shopping at the same men’s store, buying new navy blazers when the old ones go into disrepair, only trims his moustache after he realizes it’s dangling into his coffee. “Ha ha!” he says. “That guy doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground! Wait till December, I’m telling you.”
And I’m typing a report that says, “My meeting with the Greek Advisor at Illinois yielded little insight into their chapter operations. She seemed unfamiliar with both the local chapter and the National Fraternity. Sadly, she didn’t seem to take the entire party situation seriously.” And it doesn’t feel like something that any of these men—these Blazers—would be writing.
“No, we had a conference here in Philadelphia,” one of the men says into his phone. “Yep. Looks like the whole airport was there, couldn’t wait to get out. Ha!”
Indeed, some of the men around me are still wearing nametags over their blazers, the conference logo—“Business 2.0”—in heavy letters.
“Sure,” another one of them says. A different man, but it feels like he’s continuing the exact same phone conversation. “Wave of the future, my friend. Talked to someone whose business doubled after he integrated a social media page. Don’t laugh.”
Still more than two hours until boarding, the woman at the gate tells me, and I’m tempted to shop in Philly’s “Air Mall,” tempted to find a new shirt or new shoes, but I’ve got nowhere to put any of it. Stuff it in my suitcase, my garment bag? No room. I’ve got a pre-assigned shirt for every day of the week, and any new additions would fuck up my system.
Sit in silence. Grab a discarded newspaper so it looks like I keep up with current events.
In less than two months there is a presidential election, but ever since I shut down Facebook, I’ve barely followed. Don’t know what anyone’s thinking, which Sarah Palin videos are being posted and shared, which anti-Obama commentaries are being linked, which friends support which candidate, which issue, who “likes” whose status updates, who is fear-mongering and engaging in comment wars over Obama’s “socialist plans for America,” or McCain’s secret desire to start a war with Iran. I don’t know anything, and I don’t even know how I’d start to know things again.
*
After awhile I relocate to the Sports Nation Restaurant & Bar a few gates away. I can’t tell if I’m hungry, don’t remember the last time I had a meal “on schedule.”
Fall heavy onto a stool far removed from any other travelers. Slick brown bar-top, and underneath the lacquer are zany cartoon drawings of airplanes taking off and soaring, like the airport has to reassure us—even as we order drinks to calm our nerves—that we have nothing to worry about when we board our planes: no twisted landing gear, no ice on the wings, no terrorists brandishing box-cutters.
The bartender, a late forty-something woman, has the same tired look as the woman at the ticket terminal, the look that says, “I’ve worked in too many different places to even pretend that I enjoy working anymore.” When do you first develop such a look? And once it takes over your body and your face, can you ever shake it? Have I developed it? She punches numbers on a computer screen, scribbles something into a calculator-sized notepad, glances back and forth between the computer and the rows of liquor bottles against the wall-length mirror at the back of the bar. It’s barely 10:30 AM, the slow hours, and she’s taking inventory.
I clear my throat, squeak my stool, and the bartender turns around. She’s wearing a gold nametag on her maroon polo shirt, and it says, “Mindy.”
“Hello, Mindy,” I say.
“Give me two seconds.”
A lone man in a gray suit sits at a six-top table in the Sports Nation dining area, has his laptop open on the tabletop, an extension cord dropping from the computer to the floor and extending twelve feet—under several other tables—to a wall outlet. Like so many of the other Blazers, he’s holding a cell phone to his ear and speaking loud enough for everyone in the airport to hear: “You don’t do that in this business,” he says. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to make a decision, don’t we? It’s like comparing apples and oranges, so I don’t even know why we’re having this discussion.” His waitress, the only waitress working, steps carefully over his extension cord, smiles at him even as he turns away and speaks louder into his phone, and she points to his empty glass and mouths “another?” and he nods, disinterested.
Mindy is still taking inventory.
I clear my throat, but she doesn’t look my way.
So I think, fuck it, who’s this guy talking to, anyway? Could be anyone. His brother, his father, his mother, his wife. Could be anyone, but he’s got the Look, like He Matters, so I open my own cell phone, scroll through my call log for someone to dial. LaFaber? No. I haven’t even told him about my flat tire, and that’s a conversation I don’t want to have. Brock? No. He never shuts up; that’s a conversation that would be too one-sided. Jenn? And before I know it, I’m dialing Jenn, dialing her from a Philadelphia airport, and she’s answering the phone, actually answering for the first time since the Greek Life Office in Illinois —
“I was wondering when you’d call me,” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Both.”
“Okay? Did I just wake you up or something?”
“No,” Jenn says and there’s a rustling noise. “I was getting up. Where are you? It’s loud. What’s that beeping noise?”
“I’m at the airport. One of those golf cart things is driving by.”
“What are you doing in the airport?”
“I told you in July,” I say, “back when I emailed you my travel schedule. I told you I’d be flying out West.”
“Whoa, sorry. I didn’t memorize your schedule.”
“You should at least look at it.”
“I do,” she says. “Every now and then.”
“I’m flying to New Mexico.”
“Cool,” she says, yawns.
“I called you yesterday. Several times, in fact.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I got your texts about the truck drivers.”
O
ut there on the side of the highway, no response from Jenn as I called, no response from Jenn when I texted, but I realize now that it’s probably because of the texts I sent: “Fucking call me back! This is important!” And later: “I fucking hate truck drivers! Do they drive like assholes on purpose?” I thought she might read this last text, look away and shake her head and rub her eyes, then examine the words again to make sure she’d read correctly. Did Charles just write that he fucking hates truck drivers? Does Charles remember a single fucking thing about me? And I thought that she might then—so upset by my texts—hit “talk,” and then my phone would ring, and she’d be mad, but we’d be talking again. I’d have her on the phone.
Charles is…trying.
Charles is…is he?
“Oh yeah. The texts. Well, a lot happened yesterday—”
“My battery ran out. Phone’s been acting retarded, so I couldn’t call you back.”
“It was a rough day.”
“A flat tire?” she asks. “Did you change it yourself?”
“Um. I don’t really want to get into it right now. It’s…I’m tired of thinking about it. So what’s going on at the house today?” I ask, then look around Sports Nation at the other Blazers on their cell phones. I could be talking to anyone, a business associate, but I’m asking about her sorority house? And I wonder why the bartender doesn’t take me seriously? “Good stuff, good stuff,” I say when Jenn doesn’t immediately answer. “What’s in store for your Saturday?”
“What’s ‘in store’ for my…who talks like that?”
“Anything big happening down in Fort Myers?”
“Charles,” she says. “Are you still talking to me? Why did your voice just change?”
“Ha ha!” I say. “I don’t know what would make you say that. But I can’t wait to get down there soon. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to that part of the country.”
“I don’t…” she says. “Did you book your tickets for Homecoming?”
“Send me an email,” I say and look around. “Remind me of the specific dates again. I’ll have to input it into my Outlook calendar. I’ve got my laptop with me.”
“Charles, really,” she says. “Next weekend. Did you book the tickets?”
“Oh, I’m fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.”
“What are you talking about? We’re talking about Homecoming.”
“Things are going so great with the consulting.”
“Okay? What does that have to do with anything? You can’t get away?”
“Ha ha!”
A pause.
“Ha ha!” I say.
“This is fucking frustrating,” she says. “Are you even talking to me?”
I smooth my pants, try to laugh again, look around the bar and no one is looking at me, and so I say, “What’s the weather going to be like next weekend?”
“It’s Florida. September in Florida. Same as always, Charles.”
“Ahh, yes,” I say. “Truth be told, I haven’t actually…purchased…the tickets.”
“I knew it. I knew it.”
“I’m just not sure which airport I’ll be at. I have to look into it.”
“Do you remember when you told me you wanted to be a consultant?”
“Yes, I do,” I say. “A noble career. So here I am.”
“What else?” she asks.
“What else?”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. I mean. I can’t remember. Not off-hand.”
“I said that I supported your decision. Do what’s in your heart, all that.”
“Correct.”
“But I also said that the only way we’d be together is if you got some weekends off—not all of them, just some—so you could come back to Florida. That’s what we agreed.”
“Well,” I say.
“Even my father was able to live up to that sort of arrangement.”
Wait, she’s lecturing me? This is my job, I want to tell her. I just got a flat tire and did more than $1000 worth in damage to my Explorer for a job that pays nothing, and you’re out in Fort Myers, waking up at 10:30, en route to the EU pool, en route to pre-parties and drink specials and post-parties at the Kappa Sigma house and alcohol and good times and black mini-mini-skirts and those 1980s turquoise t-shirts you love, the ones with the gigantic necklines where one bare shoulder hangs out and the collar circumference is hula-hoop-large and so it seems like the whole shirt is slipping down your body and I loved it when you stopped by the house wearing one of those shirts, because—if I hugged you just right, let my hand slip over your shoulder, gave the shirt a tug—it would be a puddle of fabric at your feet and I’d say “whoops” and we’d have to fuck right there, wouldn’t we? Back in the house, back in my president’s room, back where there wasn’t a blazer in sight. And that’s what you’re wearing right now, without me, that’s the carefree joy of your life, and you can’t understand where I am now, you just want to lecture me? So I say, “All right then, yep, I’ll get back to you!”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Okay, ha! Talk to you when I land,” I say, end the call and turn off the phone. Clench my fist, my stomach. But strangely, Mindy the bartender is now standing directly in front of me.
“Jack and Coke,” I say. “Rough day. You wouldn’t believe.”
“I’d believe,” Mindy says, and seconds later slides me a Jack and Coke. It’s getting later now, more Blazers arriving from their conference and huddling at tables for early lunches. Sip. Smile every now and then, just in case anyone wants to know whether or not I’m happy.
*
The crowds outside Sports Nation grow as the airport traffic increases in the late hours of the morning—planes skidding to a stop, planes blazing off, mothers and fathers reigning in families of five or six and toys dropped across the tile floors, Blazer after Blazer grunting past with thick-shelled briefcases. Crowds form long lines into Starbucks. Couples—young couples on their first vacations, maybe—hold ice cream cones, the mint chocolate chip dripping down the waffle cones, and they laugh as they race to lick it up. 11 AM, a transition hour. Coffee. Hamburgers. Ice cream. Jack and Coke. The airport a random collection of displaced or re-placed travelers. Gray hair, blonde hair, brown hair, highlights, buzz-cut, mullet, and—what’s this?—from the crowd outside Sports Nation, someone stares back at me. Directly at me, as though my “people watching” is a crime. Someone familiar. A 35-year-old man with hair so thin that he shouldn’t be using gel. Stares at me and laughs. 35-year-old man carrying a laptop case and wearing a short-sleeve blue dress shirt with loosened tie. Clean-shaven, except somehow still rough, looking like he was just involved in gritty combat with a copy machine.
And he takes a step in my direction.
I slide the Jack and Coke across the bar-top so that it might possibly have been left behind by some now-departed patron at the barstool beside mine. Is it bad to drink before noon? I touch my hair briefly: it’s a mess, an ugly smattering of slopped hair. When I stepped out of the shower, I squeezed a glob of hair gel into my hand, plopped it onto my scalp, tussled my hair without even looking to ensure that it had a semi-intentional appearance.
He walks closer, his brown eyes growing darker as he approaches, still smiling like he just got away with something, like he’s the poster-boy for corporate scandal.
My eye twitches, and he’s ten feet away, and just as I catch a whiff of starch from his dress shirt, I place him: Ben Jameson. Ben, who I met back in Kinston, Pennsylvania, when I stayed with Dr. Wigginton; Ben from the University of Pittsburgh; Ben the drunk alumnus with a wife and the two kids who never stop reciting Dr. Seuss. Ben Jameson is in the Philadelphia International Airport, standing beside me, breathing hard, laptop case heavy in his hand.
“Well, howdy,” Ben says, looking down at me.
“My God,” I say. “I never expected…”
“Damndest things happen at airports,” he says. “Crazy fucking places.”
“I
guess.”
“No one’s sitting here, right?” he says and drops his bag on the floor, taking the barstool beside mine. “Long fucking week. I need a drink. Spending the whole damned day in airports.”
I don’t know what to say, so I nod.
“There was this one time,” he starts, then yells “BARTENDER,” then continues: “Out at this airport in Spartanburg, South Carolina? Little shit-hole, honestly. Sunday afternoon, and I’m at the airport wearing this Nike shirt from college. Casual day. This old guy, seventy years old, a Dr. Wigginton type, except with this thick Southern accent, talks all slow like. And he sees my shirt and tells me about his pledge days at the University of North Carolina. Tells me about how they used to—back in the ‘50s, I guess—cover these kids with honey and drop feathers all over them and then drive them out to the middle of nowhere and just leave them there. Crazy stuff. Old School. And those guys from North Carolina are, like, distinguished now. Senators and CEOs and shit. This guy just tells me this stuff, right out of the blue.”
“Crazy,” I say.
“Fucking airports. So where you headed now?”
“New Mexico.”
Mindy arrives and there’s a glimmer of recognition in her eyes, too.
Ben laughs. “Hey there, Mindy. I need a Jack and Coke, but mostly Jack. That’s what you’re drinking, right, kid? So make it two,” and I start to raise an objection because this is an alumnus and I promised the organization—I promised myself—that I would follow a Code of Conduct, I would be a Marathon Man and not a Frat Star and I would elevate the image of fraternities to their rightful place, but Ben just points at my glass as if to say, “too late, busted,” and then he’s talking again: “No shit, New Mexico. There are schools out there?”
“I’m visiting New Mexico State University. So…yeah.”
“Probably all they do is teach English, am I right?” He laughs. “Southwest states, I’m telling you. Over-run by Mexicans. Shit. Schools probably are, too. Not that I’m prejudiced or anything. But they’re taking over down there. Pretty soon, they’ll be spreading all over.”