Flyer Beware

It was early spring. We were gathered at the boarding gate waiting for a flight to Austin, impatient with the fog that kept delaying the plane, jittery from the static of the P.A. system: "Mr. Miller Jeffries, White courtesy telephone, please. Attention passengers: Do not leave your bags unattended…" The waiting area had become a Sci-Fi garden, with people growing out of the flat brown carpet, vine-like legs curling up and sprouting blossoms of white lacey sneakers. Students who'd taken dibs on a pillar propped their backs against it the way ivy pushes itself to a brick wall, some stiff, some limp, one with a loose tentacle arm waving in the air. While they sipped their cappuccinos and talked quietly among themselves, an overdressed African American woman, cheeks flaring out like the petals of a rose, browsed through the new issue of O I'd seen at the news stand. She was one of the lucky ones, with a chair—two chairs in fact, one draped with a sweater to save it for her two children who were at the window, noses pressed against the glass to get closer to the action outside. Across the way, unflinching at the next "Attention" that blared at us, reading a paperback book, sat the elegantly dressed woman who had checked in just before me at the upstairs ticket counter. I'd seen her wave a quaint "toodeloo" to the ticket agent after he wished her a pleasant trip. Ms. Gibbons, he'd called her. All I got when it was my turn to leave for the gate was a "Thank you, Ms. Blackman." That's pretty much all I ever get. Ms. Gibbons, I was sure, was the sort of woman who received little blandishments from clerks and doormen wherever she went. I wasn't. Her pale, glossy hair, manicured nails, and tasteful garnet ring all bespoke money, and the kind of style that seemed to come naturally to long-legged tawny socialites. Women like that always reminded me of deer, and I, whenever I came near one, felt like a weasel—smart, sly, strong and swift, but totally, unglamorously and incurably mangy. Evolution's crap shoot, I thought. Some people get all the breaks. I spied a vacant seat in the row of chairs near the window, and made my way toward it, detouring around the immense backpack of a skinny teenager who was gazing into a compact mirror at her spiked blue hair and ringed nose, so absorbed in her efforts that she didn't say so much as Sorry when I nearly tripped over her road block. And I couldn't have stood another fall. Outside, rushing to get through the crosswalk before the light turned red, I'd tripped and scratched the leather on both boots, and would have lost my boarding pass if a taxi driver hadn't honked at me and pointed. Enough falls for one day. The chair I was headed for was on the end, next to a squat cylinder that used to be an ashtray but today looked like a retirement home for used-up phone cards and wrinkled candy wrappers. Careful not to disturb the man behind The Wall Street Journal in the next seat, I parked my bag in front of me, and sat down. I sat there between the stock market and the former ashtray, staring at my scuffed boots, bored, waiting. I hate unplanned delays; they make me jittery, they seem to put everybody on edge. Ever since the World Trade Towers made their flaming farewell, you expected Security to be a pain in the ass, you allowed for it. You figured on the time it would take to find the roped-off switchbacks and stand in line and show your picture and take off your shoes and remove your transparent toiletries sack and put your purse in the basket and set your bag on the rollies and walk through the alarm arc, and even, if you were really unlucky, to submit to search and seizure and step-aside and special handling. You figured on all the delays, but delays that came on unexpectedly had you looking at your watch every five minutes, as I'd been doing for the last half hour—and I thought I'd been clever choosing Oakland over San Francisco International! No, the truth is, Oakland, Smokeland, no matter where you are these days, you can count on it taking forever to board your airplane. How long before this would turn into a real delay? I knew that a real delay, of two or three hours, say, would get people talking to each other, trading hard luck stories of missed connections, bad weather, relatives holding dinner until you got there, worries of being late for a job interview. A delay like that, you commiserate, make friends. But a short delay like this, all you get is darting eyes. Nobody talks. There might as well be a framed notice from the airport commissioner or the FAA: "Attention Passengers: Mind your own business; you are not at a Russian train station or a Mexican bus stop; speaking to strangers is strictly prohibited." The book I'd brought along was in a zip-pocket of my carry-on "convenience bag." Which pocket? Soon, they'll be selling maps to guide you through the Velcro mazes of your convenience bags; either that, or they'll come out with a French-accented voice prompt to tell you "For Tolstoy, go to zee right of zee travel alarm, three inches below zee bump of your hair dryer." I'd been feeling around the front of my bag. On a hunch, my busy little fingers took a right turn just past the alarm clock, and there he was, just where I left him: Count Leo, tucked in with my spiral notebook and ballpoint pen, accessible without a single high-tech intervention. I brought him out and adjusted my glasses. I gave it a try, but who can block out the ambient scatter enough to read in an airport, let alone track the comings and goings of Russians like Zakharievitch and Pozdnischeff? For that, you'd need the composure of a Ms. Gibbons. I tried to pick up where I'd left off the night before in the thin slice of time between getting my bags packed and greeting Michael when he got home from work. I'd been reading the rant of the man who'd killed his wife for playing passionate duets with a sexy violinist when she should have been cooking supper. For something like that, you needed to be able to concentrate; you couldn't digest a Tolstoy diatribe nibbling at it with little sound bites of attention. Tolstoy was a gourmet meal lit by candelabra; this airport neon stuck you with a diet of Chicken McNugget. Feeling restless, I got up to go to the restroom, and just then, one of the students slouched against the pillar murmured in a friendly Texas drawl: "I wouldn't leave, they're about to start the boarding." Ah, the kindness of strangers. And this wasn't even a Russian train station. Following the fellow's advice, I turned back just as the gate agent slipped behind the desk, lifted the microphone and announced that rows one through seven could come forward. First-class passengers shuffled to their privileged line, laptops swinging in leather carriers and cell phones tucked away discreetly under tailored jackets. Mr. Stockmarket folded his newspaper and straightened his necktie, ready to board. Mom Rose-petal called her scouts from the window and gathered up her luggage. I glanced toward Ms. Gibbons, expecting to find her on her way to the gate, but she stayed in her chair by the window, calmly reading her paperback. She turned a page as if there were all the time in the world. I dawdled until my group of rows was called and it was time to line up. With all my groupers I boarded the large jet and filed down the narrow aisle, trying not to bump anything in the six seats abreast to my right or the pairs of seats almost touching me on the left. I found my row and window seat, and had just finished stuffing my carry-on under the chair in front of me, when to my surprise Ms. Gibbons appeared, heaving her bag into the overhead compartment of my own row. So she would be my seatmate. Fancy that!