airport

9:25pm Pacific; 12/24/04

Got to the airport just in time to see the fog roll in, thick like a few nights ago. Fog is fine for walking, but I’d rather not have so much of it on a night I’m supposed to fly cross-country. I’ve already been here for four hours (roughly), though the time’s gone by pretty quick. I’ve been finding ways to occupy myself, such as typing this thing up even though I can’t get on the Internet; hopefully it makes me look more interesting, because there seems to be a lot of single women around, and most of them aren’t half bad looking; though I doubt my ratty Iron Maiden T-shirt and old-ass jeans are doing me any good in that department.

I used to scoff at people on their laptops in the airport—or any public place for that matter. I just always figured it was their feeble attempt to look more interesting, but here I am—being that guy. I hate that guy.

I ended up at the airport bar—had to take the terminal shuttle to get there, since I arrived at 5:30pm and couldn’t check my bags till 9. The terminal my plane’s leaving from has restaurants and shops and the like, but they’re only accessible after you’ve passed through security, and you can’t get through security without a boarding pass, which left me shit out of luck. Well, not entirely, the other terminal was right around the corner.

At the bar, I sat down at a table by the television and ordered a rum and coke. I was asked if I wanted to make it a double. I thought that went without saying.

Sitting at the table adjacent to mine was an older woman, probably in her late 40s or early 50s. She had the bartender put on A Christmas Story, which I still haven’t seen all the way through. Most people scold me when I tell them that. During commercial breaks, she’d turn around and speak to me. She asked me where I was headed, and I told her New York City, and when I asked her the same question, she said she wasn’t going anywhere. I was suspicious at first, but she said she was waiting for her husband.

She told me the past few months hadn’t been the greatest. Her husband was attending a funeral in Iowa, and her mother or his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Some kind of plane malfunction had delayed her husband’s flight; he was supposed to get in around 1pm, but he wasn’t going to land till 10pm. She’d driven all the way up from Phoenix, AZ, and had to get a room at the hotel here at the airport. She told me she was going to grab a pizza and head back there. I felt bad to hear that she was having such hardships this close to the holidays—she seemed like a nice woman—but I felt even worse because I was kinda hoping she was hitting on me.

I can hear two novices talking about NYC, my ugly, pretty, wonderful, shitty hometown; debating where 46^th Street is. Part of me wants to turn around and say “between 45^th and 47^th,” but I’m going to be nice and keep my mouth shut.