And here was John Comet, pulling along his luggage. His face set in its same expression. He was off today to Philadelphia. No sign of what we had done the night before, or what we hadn’t. He stood in the body scanner, arms lifted as the machine whirred. He was highlighted under his right arm.
“He needs a patdown,” said Deanne, looking around. “Is there a man available?”
There was not.
John Comet looked at me, his face blank as milk. “She can do it,” he said.
Deanne looked at me with eyebrows raised, like, Do you want to touch this weirdo?
I stood very still.
“You good with this, Sally?”
“I’m a team player,” I said, crisply.
We went in a corner.
“Lift your arms, sir,” I said.
He raised them into a T. I could search him however I wanted. I began to slide my hands down his arm. His arm was surprisingly taut and thin in the airport light, as I pressed down the sides for any metal objects. He stared straight ahead, at nothing.
“Done?” he asked.
“Not yet, “ I said.
I squeezed the other arm. Sometimes people set off the machine for no reason. A slight move, a radiance, a ghostly threat only the machine could see. I stood, official, wearing my uniform, but I did not want to let go of his arm.
He let out a breath. Of love? Desire? Annoyance? Did he just want to get on with his day? I lifted my hand off his jacket. Slowly. A fingertip, a palm, the thin material of his suit. Each moment was sorrowful, releasing him. I missed each inch, each cell slowly. Slowly. I let go. Then I stepped back, back into the world of only me.
“All clear,” I said. “You may proceed to your destination.”
His eyelids fluttered. I didn’t know what that meant. He nodded at me, and smiled, a beautiful smile, and took hold of his luggage and walked onto his gate, and I stood in the light, as he went away.
JOHN COMET CALLED ME TWO NIGHTS LATER. HE HAD JUST GOTTEN off his plane. He wanted to see me. Now.
We met in the diner. He wasn’t hungry. He wanted to walk out of the diner into a park. He had the worn, dazed presence of someone who’d crossed a time zone — something had been lost. His hair was damp and sticky. His body had the stale smell of airplane air.
He pressed his mouth to mine the moment we walked into the park. The park black, the grass glistening under the grayish fluorescent lamplight. He kissed me hard, slowly, as though trying to inhale some important element inside of me. Gold. We fell together onto the grass. We were velvet and water and arms and lips, and we were no one, and that was what we wanted, to climb into another person and stretch out into their lovely darkness. To believe another could make room for you, could perhaps keep you safe. That had to be the answer, for I did not want to contain only myself, my rotten sadness. His arms were thin and steely, and the earth was hard and damp under us. We were alive, weren’t we? Didn’t this prove we were alive?
Suddenly, he rolled away. I lay, breathless, beside him.
“I saw my son,” he said.
“Good,” I said. Now, on with it. He stretched beside me, a bar of candy.
“From the street. He ran toward me, and then he was mad.”
“Why?”
“He said I missed all his baseball games.”
He stood up against the starry streetlights.
“I wanted to go,” he said. “How could I convince him? She didn’t tell me about them. She wanted Raymond to go with her. The asshole. Not me.”
He began pacing, as though he wanted to run now, to some other future, as though he could not bear this moment where we were housed.
“Maybe you did something,” I said, a little irritably. “Think for a minute. Maybe you did.”
He stopped and looked at the sky. His face held one feeling. He was distraught. He loved his son, I could tell that. “What?” he said. “Can someone tell me?”
I thought of my parents, leaving the house for the opera. I thought of the last time I had seen them alive. I thought of every gesture they made, one after another, each one leading to the final disaster. Or was each one random? What did any single action mean? I watched them put on their coats, my father’s black wool coat full of holes, changing it for a brown one he didn’t really like, my mother walking around, always ready to leave before he was, and looking at my sister and me and saying, “I have to stop to get something to eat.”
I looked at John Comet, standing there. The earth like a cracker under his feet.
“I can’t tell you anything,” I said. “You can kiss me now.”
I stood up and grabbed his shoulders. I could feel his breath on my face; I wanted to taste it. He took my hand, and we walked out of the park to my car.
He stared at me; his face was utterly familiar to me. Fear.
“Oh,” he said.
We stood, examining each other. He did not move.
“I,” he said. It was a breath, a softness — I. I what? I want to? I don’t want to? I am afraid? I can’t? There was an expanse of air between us. What was the purpose of this? Love? My skin was as thin as silk; it barely contained me. He rubbed his hands over his face and stepped back. I stood perfectly still as he walked away from me.
THE NEXT DAY, WE WERE ON ORANGE ALERT. THE PASSENGERS WERE quiet, obedient during orange, looking at us with a damp-eyed gratitude that we would protect their little beating hearts.
Lester stood, looking official, perhaps knowing already who would go. The rest of us didn’t. I stood with good posture in my uniform. I tried to imagine what I could do to convince him that I should stay. The others schemed in a similar fashion. Everyone was very polite, as though their old selves never existed, as though none of us had ever met.
“Can you pass me some new gloves? I do appreciate it.”
“I’m happy to do X-ray till noon if that would help you out.”
The best manners. Smiling. Who the hell were they? Clouds rolled across the airport, filling the runway with mist. Flights were landing, unloading their passengers back to earth. I saw the passengers, feet just touching the ground, rush out, to their loved ones, that most earnest of gestures; I did not know how I would be part of that eager, massing crowd.
Lester was walking around, looking at his clipboard. He walked over to me.
“Sally,” he said. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
A sec.
We walked over to a corner.
“Well,” he said. He coughed.
I waited. One sec. Then two. My hands froze.
“It’s you,” he said. He coughed again.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m 90 percent sure. I can tell you end of day. You do a good job. I don’t know why anything happens.”
What am I? I thought.
“End of day, I’ll give you the final answer.” He coughed again and walked away.
I walked out from behind the screen. I noticed the others watching me. I did not know what else to do. I went to my post.
John Comet. I could not stop thinking of him. On the grass in the park the night before. It was better to put my mind there, the wet muscular darkness, our breath, to be somewhere other than here.
And then there he was. His luggage rolling behind him. A different suitcase today, one I had never seen. Many compartments.
I tried to look professional, for the last time.
“May I see your ID?”
“Certainly.”
He smiled, his beautiful bright smile. It made me ache to see it.
“Where are you going?”
“Today, Philadelphia.”
“For what purpose?”
He took a breath. “Not sure.”