The Start of a Journey

This is a bit of a work in progress, I think. I'm not sure. I am still thinking I might follow it up with something additional... or not. Who knows?

Last night I drove to the airport because I wanted to go somewhere. I’m not sure what I was thinking because I didn’t have a ticket and I had only fifteen dollars to my name. When I arrived at the airport, I got in the wrong lane. I was stopped by a long wooden arm that said STOP. I wound down the window to talk to someone over an intercom.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“I’m dropping somebody off,” I lied. “They’re flying with Air Canada.”

“You’re in the wrong lane. This is commercial vehicles only. You have to reverse and go in the left lane instead.”

I performed this manoeuvre with considerable difficulty. There was a taxi right on my ass, reluctant to concede an inch. I drove up to the departure level, idled and watched passengers wheeling suitcases in and out of the building. They appeared excited and animated.

I woke up to the sound of a honking horn. I turned around. There was an impatient airport shuttle bus behind me. Jesus, how long had I slept? I mouthed out the word sorry and turned around again. I tried the ignition key, but I had run out of gas. Good Christ – what am I supposed to do now? I’ve run out of gas.

For a few seconds, maybe even a minute, I am sitting there with a racing heart, feeling like a fool. The airport shuttle bus honks at me a final time then squeezes past me. The driver makes a point of glaring in through my window.

There is no choice but to get out of the car in search of help. Outside, it is a chilly autumn night. Suddenly I hear a jet, making a deafening roar as if drilling a tunnel through the fabric of the sky. They are going somewhere, I think enviously, and here I am stuck here – without even the gas to drive the twenty kilometers back home. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

The departure lounge is full of commotion. I stop and try to figure some things out. There is a rank of automatic registration machines standing like sentries. People buzz around them – like bees around flowers – alighting only for a moment of business and then moving on. Beyond are cordoned fences, leading mazelike toward the service desks. Real people with real, helpful faces. I search the half dozen faces and find what seems to be the most helpful and pretty one. She is not currently busy. I approach her.

“Hello. Can I help you?”

I wonder if I can describe her. She has a broad, Scandinavian face, expertly rouged, yet there is something very delicate about her. Her eyes are light blue, initially inquisitive, but then skeptical. They are decidedly skeptical now as instead of pulling out a ticket and passport I am explaining my ridiculous predicament. But then she sees the humour in my story and smiles.

“You must have been very tired to fall asleep like that,” she says.

I nod my head and blush. I feel somewhat undressed by those blue eyes of hers. I had been feeling very tired, but I don’t know from what.

“It was stupid,” I reply. “I’ve never done such a stupid thing.”

Her smile subtly changes its aspect.

“Really?” she’s saying. As if implying, I find that hard to believe. As if she’s teasing me. I eye her nametag. Ulrika it says. She is Scandinavian.

“Really,” I reply. “The stupidest thing ever…”

Then I see her eyes focus on something behind me. I turn my head quickly and see that new people have arrived and are waiting for her services. Her attitude becomes more businesslike.

“Here’s what I would do,” she begins. I am wishing that she would say to me that her shift is about to end, that she can drive me to the gas station to get gas, and then we are going to drive to some dodgy truck stop and eat greasy burgers and talk and laugh until the early hours of the morning, and then wander outside as the sun is coming up, and the beauty of it will create a spontaneous moment – a transcendental moment – and we will kiss – and it will be the kind of magic you find in a movie. In fifty years, we will explain the remarkable circumstances surrounding our meeting to our grandchildren. After telling this story, we will sigh, and then my wrinkled face will meet hers, and we’ll kiss again. “The rest is history,” we’ll say contentedly.

But this is not what happens.

“…I would call the parking lot shuttle. They pass by the gas station. Ask if they’ll take you there. Buy a jerry can of gas, and then take the next shuttle back to the airport to fill your car.”

I search her face for a sign that she might have more to offer than this practical advice. But her eyes move beyond mine again to the waiting customers.

“OK,” I respond. “OK. That’s a good plan. A really sound plan.” I am stalling for time. I want desperately to know her better. Where does she live? There’s something about airport personnel… I don’t know what it is.... As if they don’t belong fully to the real world. As if they are between worlds. Or they are guides entrusted with the task of showing others the way from one world to the other.

…Find just one thing to say to her, I tell myself – one spectacular sentence that will make her want to know me as much as I want to know her… My mind is scrambling.

“Maybe I’ll ditch the car,” I say. “Maybe I’ll fly to Omaha instead.”

The spirit of this sentence is supposed to be infectious. I want us to forget all the shit that’s keeping us here – give up this world – and head to another – it doesn’t really matter where… Omaha simply sounded exotic. It was the first place name that entered my head. I want her to know that I’m done with being practical… Let’s give in to our dreams and yearnings – whatever those are… Let’s find out what they are.

“Well sure,” she says. “Sure…” She is still smiling. She’s taking this on a jokey, superficial level. “Or maybe your car has been towed anyway.”

She wants me to leave. I can tell. She needs to help the next people. I turn away from the desk and adopt something of a plodding gait as I return to the outside. I pass a free phone on the way – the one you use to contact the parking lot shuttle. But I don’t use it. I go outside, back to the night and the coldness and the groaning of idling vehicles. I look around. I see someone standing by the side of the pavement, smoking. What I don’t see is my car.

I approach the space where it used to be. It truly isn’t here. How the hell did they get to it so fast? The smoker, obviously seeing my agitation, starts talking to me.

“Your car towed?” he asks.

“I think so.”

He points. “There it is.”

I follow the line of his arm. Just about to descend from the departure level roadway is a tow truck pulling my car. I have another couple of seconds to watch its journey, then it disappears.