Flight

by E. E. Curtis

It is said that if you spend enough time in a largely populated place, you will run into people from your past ...

Sebastian Leon Prado, Photographer

Baggage

He adjusts the duffle strap over his shoulder. It’s a long walk to the gate and he’s been jostled numerous times already, causing the bag to shift uncomfortably. The doors to the shuttle open and he sidles in with her right behind him.

“Oh god,” he says, completely disgusted. “What are the odds of that?” He nods his head slightly towards a man at the front of the shuttle, wearing a sport jacket and tie, who’s checking his watch.

She looks at him, with a question in her eyes. Those eyes he’s taken strength from many times over the years.

“Him.” His throat constricts as he says the word.

All over again he’s that teenager, self-conscious and insecure, feeling like he just walked into the doors of his old high school instead of the shuttle at an international airport. Anxiety threatens to consume him. It’s been decades now. He hates how he allows other people so much control over his feelings. He’s starting to breathe hard when she takes him by the face.

“Look at me and focus,” she whispers. After he takes a few breaths, she gently drops her hands.

The shuttle lurches to a stop and he braces himself to stay balanced. The strap of his over-large carry-on digs into the flesh of his shoulder. Why does he always insist on a carry-on? He looks at her and envies her lightness. They step out together into the dim concrete hallway and onto the escalator.

The jerk is right behind him. All those years ago and still the thought of him clenches his gut, and makes him break into a cold sweat.

She’s quiet as they ascend the escalator. As he adjusts his bag yet again, she speaks, so quietly he barely makes out what she says.

“You shouldn’t have to carry that.”

What? What is she talking about? For a moment he thinks she’s referring to his bag. Then he looks into her eyes and knows what he has to do. He turns around.

“Excuse me.”

The man looks up, blinking with surprise at being spoken to so unexpectedly.

“I’m sure you have no idea who the hell I am, but I just want you to know you tormented me in high school. You and your friends. It was relentless, and I’ve had to deal with it all my life.”

The man clears his throat; his eyes shift around nervously. “I’m sorry. I guess we’re all kind of stupid in high school, right?”

It doesn’t matter that the apology isn’t heartfelt. When he looks at her he sees pride in her eyes. Suddenly everything feels lighter. He doesn’t even notice the bag anymore.

They’ve reached the top of the stairs. At the gate, he heads straight to the counter. He has a bag to check.

Waiting

She goes to the departure board for the tenth time. Plane is still delayed. Looking at the board won’t make the plane come any sooner. When she turns back to her seat she sees him. She recognizes him like the slow dawning of day. At first she thought maybe she was having deja vu. Then she thought maybe it was his doppelgänger come to haunt her. Then he shifts his weight a particular way and she knows.

She resists the urge to put her book in her face and hide like a child. Realization, like a slap to the face, hits her. He won’t recognize her. He hasn’t seen her in maybe sixteen, seventeen years. After the phone calls tapered off, and the cards stopped coming, she’d tried to forget him, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was waiting. All this time. Waiting for him to remember her. Waiting for him to come home.

Now here she is, sitting at an airport, almost right across from the man she’d waited for almost all her life, and he doesn’t even know who she is. Instinct, or anger, or curiosity- she’s not sure which- propels her forward.

“So, where are you traveling to?” she manages to ask.

He looks up and smiles. “Oh, returning home from a business trip.”

She wonders where home is, and asks. It feels surreal to be talking to him after all these years.

He replies.

It feels like the wind has been knocked out of her. Like the time she fell off her bed in the middle of the night and couldn’t even cry because she couldn’t breath. But she manages to compose herself for the next question. The thing she must know now.

“Interesting.That’s where I’m from. How long have you lived in the area?”

“All my life pretty much,” he replies and shifts closer to her.

She barely registers that he’s looking at her in the way that guys look at her when they’re interested. Or think she’s interested. All his life. All her life. She thought he was miles and cities and countries away, and all this time he was right there. He doesn’t even have the excuse of being some non-functioning druggie, by the look of him.

“Maybe we could get together sometime,” he says. She realizes he’s asked for her name and number.

She starts laughing. She can’t stop. His face takes on a stricken look. He’s embarrassed. He shifts, in that way of his. Some things never change.

She could give him her name. Then he’d be in on the joke.

Instead, she turns away from her father, and sits back down, no longer mindful of the wait.

Boarding

He likes to be the last one to go through the gate now. Too many people bunched together in line. Then to be trapped on a stuffy plane. Better to keep his freedom for as long as he can. Even cracked vinyl chairs are better than the no-leg-room seats on a plane. When he was younger he was just like everyone else, rushing to get on, wanting to be first.

He’s debating if he should go ahead and make his way through the gate when a voice interrupts his thoughts. Someone he doesn’t recognize has said his name. It’s a tall, elderly woman with piercing eyes the color of blue glaciers.

“I thought it was you. “ She smiles apologetically up at him. “You won’t remember me but I was your teacher long ago.”

Suddenly he knows her. In a flash of memory he sees himself with a younger version of her, a kind woman with ice blue eyes, reading to him on a rug at school. Forgotten memories he didn’t know he had.

His face lights up, and so does hers. He can tell it makes her happy to be remembered.

“You used to read to me!” he says.

“Yes. I was a kindergarten teacher for thirty years.” Her eyes twinkle.

Mrs. Sharp. He remembers her name.

“As I recall, you weren’t supposed to start school, but your older brother wouldn’t go alone.” She chuckles. “I remember watching you walk to school, leading that big boy by the hand.”

The mood changes, a sudden drop. He swallows a lump in his throat. That big boy, his brother. He used to be so resentful of always having to lead the way for him, of having to take his oaf of a brother by the hand and go everywhere first, giving him the courage to follow. What he wouldn’t give now.

“I read the obituary. I’m sorry honey,” Mrs. Sharp pats him on the arm.

Final call for gate C2. Final boarding call for C2.

“Oh, you best get going.”

He glances towards the jetway, knowing he can’t wait any longer, and gives frail Mrs. Sharp a thankful hug, holding on to this brief totem of his past.

He’s the last one in, just how he likes it. But this time he feels a deep sadness threatening to consume him. He preferred it when he was leading.

The jetway echoes with his footsteps as he makes his way to the plane.

Departure

Every time she’s at an airport the irrational part of her brain hopes she’ll see him. They spent one summer together traveling the world and she’s still never forgotten the thrill of being with him. It’s like Pavlov’s response. Put her in an airport and she wants him all over again.

She can’t help but hope to see him. Fate throwing them back together. She’s sure that he still loves to travel. Maybe one day, despite the statistical improbability, she’ll run into him.

The airline attendant smiles at her and she steps over that crack, where the airplane meets the jetway, feeling the last rush of fresh air mixed with the smell of diesel, as she steps onto the plane. She makes her way through first class. It’s always so awkward, this passage through first class trying to avoid eye contact with anyone.

She knows she will think of him during the flight, that she’ll relive those summer months. Those magical, all-consuming, passionate months when she was more in love than she’d ever managed to be since.

They’d said goodbye at the height of their love. At the time it had felt supremely romantic, like they were lovers in a melodramatic romance novel, and that the ending they’d chosen was the only way to do it. But as soon as she couldn’t see him anymore, she’d known it was a big mistake. Her heart had been homesick ever since.

She passes the exit rows. Her seat’s all the way in the back. Well, almost. She can’t bear to sit all the way in the back where the bathrooms are. In the terminal she’d made the front desk lady change her seat when she’d realized that’s where her seat was assigned.

She checks her ticket again. 22B. She always makes sure she has the right seat. She’s not going to be the dummy (there’s one on every flight) who insists he’s in the right seat, and isn’t.

She puts her bag up and her earphones in. Resting her head, she closes her eyes. As the plane takes off, she doesn’t sleep, yet she dreams of him.

Arrival

He’s in the very back, the worst seat possible on any flight, right next to the bathroom, where the line will form, despite the fact that during every flight they tell people not to form a line in the aisles. But it was a last minute booking and he’d had no choice. Not for the first time he wonders if he should try first class. One of these days. He just can’t bear the thought of all those people passing through to their seats, judging him as they walk past, trying not to make eye contact.

One second he’s thinking about first class and airplane bathrooms, and the next he’s taking a sharp intake of breath. Because there, just two rows in front of him, is the love of his life. She doesn’t look far enough back, doesn’t make eye contact. Before he can even think, she sits down and he’s staring at the back of her head.

The whole flight his mind is filled with thoughts of her, the woman of all the women who he’s never managed to forget or stop loving. All those years apart it felt like she was still part of him somehow.

He frets about what he will do if she goes to the bathroom. His palms sweat like he’s a teenage boy again. All he can do is stare at the back of her.

She never uses the bathroom. When he feels the jolt of the wheels making impact, he’s afraid he’s missed his chance. They will de-plane from the front. She will never turn around and see him.

As people exit their rows, he regrets that he didn’t move two rows up and say something to her earlier. He’s filled with an almost desperate urge to make contact now, as people and space fill up between them and he can’t get to her. He could call out her name, but the silence seems part of the protocol, and his throat is squeezed shut.

He keeps his eyes on her, and walks as quickly as he can to catch up, cursing everyone and their rolling carry-ons that stand in his way. They’re almost out of the jetway. He’ll be able to catch up in the terminal.

He steps out, where seconds before him she had been, and realizes he’s lost her. He scans all the strangers around him, desperately looking for the back of her head. But she’s gone. She’s gone all over again, and it’s too late for him to call out her name.

Stepping outside, he hails a cab.

---

He has to share a cab. As he closes the trunk, his eyes catch something in the back window. That same messy hair he’s been staring at for the last few hours. All around him the noise and bustle of the crowded pick-up area has disappeared. He can barely breathe as he opens the door to go home.