On A Run

by Livingston, Kimberly

  Hannah struggled to maneuver her carry-on through the check point stand. Once hauling it through, she turned and faced the next step of the gauntlet. There were probably twenty lines in front of her of various lengths. However, people were crisscrossing in multiple different directions to get in seemingly random lines. The line directly across from Hannah appeared the shortest, so Hannah stepped into it behind a family of four with a stroller.

  Hannah watched in fascination as the parents in front of her expertly handled multiple buckets of belongings as well as keeping their two children contained. However, when it was her turn, she had no idea what to do. She tried to follow what the people in front of her had done. She lifted her small suitcase onto the rollers and then placed her purse and laptop bag in one bucket. This wasn’t so different from before, she thought. She then pushed her belongings up the rolling ramp and towards the conveyor belt. Feeling more confident, she began to walk toward the metal detector when she heard a sharp bark.

  “The lap top needs to be removed from its bag and placed on top of it and you need to push your bins into the x-ray machine.”

  One of the security guards, a large African American woman, indicated the opening to where her luggage would be scanned. So Hannah went back to her bags, pulled her laptop out and put it on top, and then pushed until her bag and bucket were all the way onto the conveyor belt and into the machine. She then turned to go back to the metal detector, when yet another guard in front of her redirected her again.

  “Ma’am, you need to remove your shoes,” He said impatiently, as though she should have known. The website had said she may be asked to remove her shoes, not that she had to automatically, but now that she looked around, she saw that no one in the area was wearing shoes. She headed back to the conveyor belt, but her bucket was already well into the machine by this time. Behind her the line of waiting passengers had grown longer. Hannah wondered if she should go and get another bucket, but then worried what might happen to her purse and her laptop on the other side if she wasn’t there to retrieve them. She finally slipped off her shoes and put them onto the conveyor belt without a bin.

  Hannah then approached the metal detector one more time, holding her breath, awaiting what other regulations she had missed. The guard waved her through, and, remarkably, no alarm sounded. Hannah then navigated to the other side to gather her shoes, feeling quite uncomfortable walking around in only her socks. Once she got to the machine, she saw that her suitcase was still under the x-ray, now two security guards were peering intently at the screen at its contents.

  “Do you have a lot of liquids in your bag?” The African-American woman, who told her to push her belongings in, said to her.

  “Yes, but they are in baggies…” Hannah tried to explain.

  As her suitcase rolled off the belt, the second guard moved it to another table and unceremoniously began digging through it, dumping Hannah’s meticulously packed baggies of various toiletries into a single bag, inspecting them as he did.

  “The liquids need to fit in a single one quart size bag, and next time you need to have it out of your suitcase and in a bin.” At least this guard wasn’t barking at her, and he seemed somewhat sympathetic.

  “I’m new at this…” Hannah continued, unnecessarily.

  Meanwhile, Hannah was trying to keep an eye on the rest of her belongings. The first guard was again searching the image of Hannah’s purse under the x-ray machine. A third guard was called over to help with the inspection.

  “Oh c’mon” Hannah heard someone grumble behind her.

  Finally, the large woman guard found what she thought the problem was and produced from the recesses of Hannah’s purse a small metal nail file. The look she gave Hannah as she returned her purse and laptop to her told Hannah everything she needed to know about what the woman thought of people who didn’t understand the new flight rituals.

  As Hannah was repacking her suitcase and putting on her shoes, she caught a glimpse at the line across from her. It seemed like she wasn’t the only person holding up progress, she thought. Hannah watched an Indian family who had been pulled aside to another security area. The father was holding a little boy, who was crying, the mother was standing, looking irritated at best. Hannah couldn’t quite see what the guards were inspecting so closely until she realized that the little boy was still missing his shoes. She heard the woman exclaim in an accent-less English, “Just cut the shoes open if you have to.”

  Hannah gathered her belongings, unable to stand the scene any longer. “What has this world come to?” she wondered, as she finally walked toward the escalator that would take her to her gate.

  Hannah was gratefully seated at her gate. Amazingly, the entire process, car to gate, had taken less than an hour. She still had an hour before her flight and pulled out her laptop to try to work, but was too distracted by the people surrounding her and the fact that Sheila hadn’t arrived yet. Hannah kept checking the time, both on her phone and the laptop. Then she looked at her ticket to make sure she had the right time. She did. She looked once more at her cell phone to see the time, when suddenly it began to ring in her hand. She nearly dropped it before managing to flip it open to answer.

  “Sheila?” no one else knew her phone number.

  “Hannah, I am glad I got through to you.” Sheila sounded like she had just run a marathon. “Listen, I am not going to make it. The baby…..” there was a pause and some noises on the other end of the phone. Hannah could hear commotion in the background, as if Sheila was standing in a busy subway. “The baby thought it was time and I had to go to the hospital….”

  Hannah cut her off, “Sheila I will be right there, where are you?”

  Sheila had to laugh despite the seriousness of her situation. “Oh no, you don’t get out of going that easy. Look, I am sure they are just going to give me some medicine to stop the contractions and put me on bed rest, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still go to this convention. What….?” Sheila’s voice became muffled for a moment then she addressed Hannah again. “Look, the doctor doesn’t understand needy clients so I have to go. You are going to be fine. There will be a car and driver waiting for you at the airport to take you to the resort. They will have your itinerary at check in and they will take good care of you. I will be with you in spirit….. Whoa, ok, I really need to go now. You will be fine.” And she hung up.

  Hannah looked up from her phone and around at her surroundings. There were hundreds of people looking perfectly natural waiting to get on an airplane to go someplace crowded and different. Hannah was not one of them and she wondered if her panic showed. Not that anyone was looking at her. She felt completely alone while surrounded by people in the huge terminal. The feeling overwhelmed her, the long slowly closing darkness of tunnel vision pushed from behind her eyes, her stomach tightened into a knot that threatened to become a spasm. A bitter taste crept into her mouth and she fought to keep the nausea at bay. Hannah found some strength in her legs and pushed up from her seat so she could go to the restroom to splash some water on her face. She stood still for a moment, willing her legs to stay solid under her, and was just about to test their ability for steady movement, when a young man, barely more than a boy it seemed, picked up a handset in front of where Hannah was standing and announced over the loudspeaker.

  “Hello and welcome to Southwest Airlines Flight 621 en route to Los Angeles. In just a moment we will be lining up in numerical order to board the plane. At Southwest airlines we do not assign seats so once you are on the plane you may sit anywhere that you like. We will be boarding ‘A’ seats first followed by ‘B’ seats and so on. Before we board the ‘A’ seats we will be boarding our business select class. So if our business class passengers would like to come up first we will get you on the plane. Hope you have a great flight and thank you for flying Southwest Airlines.”

  Hannah’s chance to escape was now. How angry would Sheila be if she didn’t go through with this lunacy? Surely Sheila would understand the i
mpossibility of the situation.

  “Would you like to go first?”

  Hannah was pulled back to the current situation. She was blocking a line of business men from boarding the plane. Hannah looked at the piece of paper she held in her hand. Sheila had told her something about the boarding process, but she hadn’t heard much of it as she thought Sheila would be here with her, helping her go through it all. She saw the words “Business Select” written in bold letters across the top.

  “May I take your boarding pass?” the boy held his hand out to Hannah, looking apologetically at the man behind her, and a bit perturbed at her.

  “Oh, yes, I am sorry.” Hannah frantically gathered her belongings. She glanced at the people who had been sitting next to her, self-consciously worrying what they thought of her for getting special treatment. She began to hold out her boarding pass to the boy; resigned to inevitability and ready to take her laptop, rolling overnight bag and purse toward the gate and onto the plane, imagining words and stares behind her.

  “I am sorry ma’am, there are only two carry-on items allowed.” Hannah looked as the same boy who now blocked her path. She stood and stared at him a moment, processing what he was telling her. “You have three bags, if you want, we can check your suitcase for you.”

  “But I only have two bags…,” Hannah began.

  “Your purse counts as one. If you like we can check your suitcase for you.”

  Hannah wasn’t about to put any of her belongings under the plane. She had had enough of an event going through the security checkpoint and wasn’t about to try to figure out how to find her luggage at LAX.

  With her last shred of dignity, Hannah took her purse and shoved it into her laptop case. She couldn’t zip the zipper and her purse hung out at all angles, but there, only two bags. She smiled triumphantly at the boy, daring him to deny her this ingenious solution, handed him her sacred piece of paper and walked toward the ramp. Hannah began to nervously giggle to herself, impressed by her audacity.

  “Why not,” she thought. “I am a published author and I am flying business select and going to a resort to give a talk at an author’s convention.” For just a brief moment, she felt empowered.

  The empowerment deflated as other passengers crawled over the top of her to get to their seats, the closeness of their bodies causing Hannah to cringe.

  “At least I have an aisle seat” she thought, until still more passengers kept bumping into her as they made their way down the aisle to the back of the plane.

  Hannah plugged her iPod in and closed her eyes, hoping to somehow sleep through the entire ordeal. She held her laptop tightly on her lap, hugging it close as she would a security blanket, trying to think of characters in her current novel to forget her anxiety about the flight and what lay in store for her. It was beginning to work when she felt a hand touch her on the shoulder.

  Hannah startled, nearly spilling her laptop bag and purse all at once. She looked up to see the same pasted on smile of the boy attendant’s face looking down at her.

  She could hear him say in an exaggerated tone over the music in her earphones, “You will have to store your carry on under the seat in front of you for takeoff and landing, unless you would like me to store it in an overhead bin for you.” He looked annoyed. “Also, you will need to turn off all electronic equipment and it needs to remain off until we give you the ok to turn it back on.” He stood staring her down, waiting for her to comply with his orders.

  Hannah placed the laptop and purse under the seat, bumping her head on the chair back in front of her and dropping her iPod all at the same time. It dangled in the air, hanging from the earphones that were still plugged tightly into her ears. She looked up to see if she was still being watched, and indeed the boy was standing there waiting. She removed the earphones from her ears and placed the iPod in the pocket in front of her, then looked up with an expression of “Are you satisfied?” The boy then turned to go back to the front of the plane where he chatted jokingly with the other flight attendant.

  She saw them both glance in her direction and the color rose to her face immediately. The plane suddenly felt even stuffier than it had a few minutes before. Hannah reached to turn the vent on to full blast above her and glanced at the woman next to her, to see if she had paid any attention to the whole scene. Hannah noticed that on the woman’s lap was a library book, easily identifiable by the label printed on its spine. Hannah felt a rush of excitement when she realized immediately that the book was the last novel she had published, albeit from a while ago.

  Hannah’s mind lurched into a day dream. She pictured herself leaning over to the woman and saying, “I wrote that book.” The woman would look up at Hannah’s face and then turn to the inside back cover to see the picture of her printed there. The woman would be enthralled to be sitting next to the author of the book and would tell Hannah how much of a fan she was of hers and would Hannah please sign her copy of the book.

  The fact that the book was a library copy pulled Hannah back into reality and the day dream soon turned into Hannah’s recurrent nightmare of being laughed at as an author. The woman suddenly seemed to be telling Hannah how she really didn’t like the book and in fact had never liked any of the books that Hannah had published.

  Hannah returned to the reality of the moment on the plane, the woman next to her did not seem to realize the drama that had just played out between them. Hannah turned back, face forward, clenching her teeth and saying nothing, waiting until the moment she could plug her earphones back into her ears.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hannah survived the rest of the flight and landed safely at LAX. She tried to ignore the smug “have a nice night” as she navigated off the plane with her small suitcase, laptop, and purse, which she hadn’t bothered to reconcile into the laptop bag. As soon as Hannah was out into the terminal she stepped out of the stream of people and turned on her phone to check her messages. Hannah had been too preoccupied on the flight to remember to be worried about Sheila and the baby, but as soon as they landed she panicked until she could call her to hear what had happened.

  When the phone booted up a text message came through. “Baby is fine. I’m going to sleep now. You will do great tomorrow. Stop worrying!” Sheila had worked with Hannah long enough. There was nothing for Hannah to do now except go look for the driver. She had no idea of how to go about this in an airport of this size but as soon as she got to the main terminal of the airport a woman in a suit came up to her.

  “Ms. Glen?”

  “Am I that obvious?” Hannah said in return.

  “Your manager called and gave me a description. Do you have any other bags? No? Then the car is right outside if you are ready.”

  Hannah had to laugh to think what description Sheila had given of her. Panicked, slightly green in tint, disheveled, and lost all were descriptors that came to mind.

  The drive to the resort was less scary than Hannah would have imagined. For some reason, she somewhat trusted the woman who was driving the car and was glad to have the entire back seat to herself. She sat herself in the very middle, though, fastening the seatbelt around her and checking it twice to make sure it was secure. Then she kept her eyes focused forward, not looking out at the proximity of the cars in front of theirs as they sped along on the eternally crowded California highways. The woman, gratefully, was quiet as she drove, attending to her task and allowing Hannah time to herself.

  She had no idea how long she had been lost in thought when Hannah startled at the sound of the woman’s voice.

  “There are the fireworks” the driver announced and sure enough, a surprised Hannah saw a massive ball of light dissolving just off to the left of where they were.

  “Is there a special celebration going on?” Hannah racked her brain to try to think of what holiday she might have forgotten.

  “No, they do this every night.” The driver laughed. “Haven’t you ever been here before?”

  “No, I am just in town for a conven
tion.” Hannah waited, cringing, for the driver to ask what kind of convention. She had enjoyed the peaceful drive. She was tired and was not ready to have to start explaining what she was doing here now.

  But the driver didn’t respond as, suddenly, the car pulled up to a gated driveway and she spoke to a man at the gate booth. The gates opened and the car pulled up to a circular drive at the back of a massive log building. Sheila had been right. This place very much looked like the style of homes Hannah was used to in Breckenridge, only the size of this one dwarfed even the multimillion dollar homes there. Hannah’s door was opened by a man with white gloves and a green velvet suit and she slid across her seat to get out.

  “Good evening Ms. Glen and welcome to the Grand Californian Resort and Spa. My name is Doug and I will be assisting you this evening.”

  Hannah stood blinking through her fatigue and the bright lights of the entryway. She was embarrassed to think what she must look like and realized that she had none of her belongings. She turned to collect them from the back seat and found the driver holding her purse out to her, her rolling bag and laptop already being collected by a bellman.

  “If you are ready,” Doug continued, “we can go check you in.”

  Hannah followed Doug into the building, the bellman following behind at a polite distance. Hannah kept glancing back, and offered more than once to take her bag (really, it was just the one bag) but the bellman waved her off smiling. As they walked, Doug pointed out interesting facts and sites: Mickey Mouse figures artfully hidden within the elegant décor of the massive architecture, the hall to the pool and the spa, the hours of the restaurant. Hannah was entranced by the grandiosity of the establishment. She soon forgot about her luggage and followed Doug down the deeply carpeted hallway.