Perhaps I should be more flexible. I knew this was just a job that gave us money, and we could walk out of the terminal to become something else — a waitress, a manager at Subway, a security guard at a bank. But this was where I had wanted to be. It seemed absurdly arbitrary. Why did anyone decide to hitch his or her feelings to anything? Why one place more than another? All of the crew members wore amiable expressions, smiled at one another, dipped garlic bread into their crab dip, and looked away.
I imagined my coworkers taking my arms and escorting me out of the airport; I could feel their grip on my skin. I sat with them around the table and wondered—What would happen if I were escorted out of the airport? What would happen to me?
A PASSENGER I HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE CAME THROUGH THE SECURITY line. He handed me his driver’s license. He was handsome in a bland way. “John Comet,” I said, and then I looked at the name again.
He laughed. “That is my name,” he said. He was a slight, wiry man, and he was wearing a dark blue suit. It was a little limp around the collar, like an old flower petal. He had very white teeth. He had lush, uncombed brown hair, as though his normal mode of transport was running through wind. I noticed him first because he looked me in the eye. Not like a passenger, but a person. Just looking at who I was.
“Where are you going today?”
“Cincinnati.”
“For what purpose?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?”
This was not a necessary question; I did not know why I was asking it. But he glanced at my badge, absorbed it, and answered.
“I am involved in the marketing of custom luggage.”
“Oh,” I said. He paused. I handed him back his ID.
The others usually picked up their boarding passes and hustled on, removing their shoes, lunging for the plastic bins. He did not move. He stood there, waiting.
“Sir?”
“What do people say when you ask them, for what purpose?”
A question. I regarded him.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He cleared his throat. “Where do people say they’re going to go?”
“People like to visit other people. Or vacations,” I said. “They like to get away from their home. And conventions. There are conventions for everything.”
He stood, his foot softly tapping as I spoke.
“Don’t be scared,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Why do you think I am?” I asked.
He smiled. It was normally the sort of comment that should have gotten him hauled over for questioning.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just a sales guy. I know things sometimes.”
He was right. I was scared. But somehow his asking made it fade for a moment.
“Are you scared, Mr. Comet?” I asked.
He shoulder twitched, just slightly. He was.
“No,” he said. “Just travelling.”
There was a sorrow in his voice that sounded exactly like I felt. I was surrounded by liars. He had nothing to gain by my fear. We were two planets floating, separate, in the blue air. Oddly, that stirred me.
He smiled at me, those bright teeth, and then he walked on to his destination.
HE SHOWED UP AT THE AIRPORT THREE DAYS LATER, AND THEN three days after that. I could see him from far away, his gait quick and clipped as he went through the airport; he slowed down when he began to approach me. Each time, he handed me his ID and asked me a question. The second time, he asked me, “Why do you think people like those conventions?” The third time I yawned when he approached me, and he asked, “Ms. Orson. Did you miss your coffee this morning?” Passengers had to be careful when asking questions, so as not to seem too interested in how this place operated. He seemed merely to believe I had something he wanted to hear. When I answered him the third time (yes, I had missed coffee, in fact), he nodded, his eyelids flickering, and I was startled, for I thought I detected something else about him: he wanted to know who I was.
THERE WERE TWO WEEKS LEFT BEFORE LESTER MADE HIS DECISION. I walked into the airport in the morning, past Deanne, past Joanne, past Fernando, past Harvey, past Lester. I wanted to talk to them but did not know about what. Our conversations had become oddly cheerful and stilted, so that no actual information was being conveyed. Today they were extremely fascinated by their various procedures and for some reason were having trouble looking at me. Joanne leaned forward and brushed my shoulder with her hand. Tenderly.
“How are your roses?” she asked.
It seemed strange to even ask a question; the roses weren’t the point at all. Civility was a form of distraction.
“Great,” I said.
She nodded. Then she got to the point.
“You notice how Lester’s been walking around us?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“He’s been spending more time near you,” she said. “We’ve discussed it.”
My throat felt cold.
“What did you discuss?”
I could see a smile in the crease of her eye; it crushed me to see it.
“I can’t say. There was consensus.”
Joanne stood, arms crossed, sheathed in the armor of this alleged consensus.
“Why were you talking about me?” I asked. Softly.
“We’re trying to help you,” she said. “We’re trying to give you a heads-up—”
“How nice. A heads-up,” I said.
She stepped back, her face reddening. Joanne! I stared at her, noticing the mole on her left cheek, the patch of grayish hair above her forehead, parts of her I had never quite seen before. When had they become part of her? Then I glanced at Fernando, and I saw a birthmark on his ear, and I saw Harvey limp in a way I had never noticed as well. I shuddered. What else had I missed? In them, in my family? Had I missed some flaw in my father’s driving, so that I had let them go to the opera when they should not have gone? Had I made a mistake in telling my mother to get ice cream? Who had we been, truly? I worried that I was having difficulty remembering them. My parents had fought, on and off, during my childhood, trading off in their bossiness; my father’s realm concerned time, his need to be punctual. My mother wanted mostly to treat herself, with pretty shoes and desserts with clouds of whipped cream — those were the ways each one disappointed the other. Sometimes they walked through the house and their words sounded like metal lids pressing down on steam. That’s when my sister liked my voice, when we went into the yard and came up with names for the roses that grew there: the Orange Queen, the Tropicana, the Snowburst; the roses seemed parental in their way, watching us.
But I remembered, too, the moments when my parents loved each other, when their shared hunger for the world was such that they decided to take us somewhere new. Sometimes, we jumped in the car and went to a random place — a donut store in an alley, a tarnished merry-go-round — and they walked beside us, holding each other’s hand.
I didn’t know what about them to remember. As I thought about that last night, my parents became cartoonishly diminished, my father blind, my mother rushing, me oblivious to it all because I just was. Then I remembered getting off the phone and telling my sister that there had been an accident, and not being able to tell her the next fact, my mouth dry, bitter, until I did, and I wondered what she had heard in my voice then, or after, what I had done, ever, that made her fly so far away.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Joanne. She looked frightened, of me? Of herself? “Don’t ask me; ask the consensus.”