salty metallic flavors in my own blood.
Margaret is complaining about her wedding ring; “Eddie, it’s just so heavy, it makes my wrist tired.” Eddie looks proud and embarrassed all at once and says, “You may have to start working out, Margaret . . . heh heh heh.”
They keep up this nauseating chatter, all interspersed with unnecessary touching until they kiss goodbye before Margaret passes through the scanner without Eddie. Then they both get teary and actually blow each other kisses. I want to scream, but I keep my head down and know I’ll be thirty-five-thousand feet in the air soon enough.
After Margaret walks through, I approach the scanner, but the TSA officer puts his hand up to stop me and asks the punk rocker to walk through my scanner. I explode with anxiety and shout, “My flight is leaving soon!”
I must have screamed really loudly because the immediate area goes still and both the snowboarder and the TSA officer turn around.
The TSA officer looks me up and down and assesses my level of crazy. Is it Christmas crazy or real crazy? That’s what he’s trying to determine.
“Miss, what time is your flight?”
“Four.”
He checks his watch and looks at me strangely. “You have an hour and a half, miss. I suggest you take a deep breath and calm yourself down.”
I bite down harder as I nod and now I’m swallowing blood.
The snowboarder picks up his bag and his board and moves a few feet to the side. I can’t help looking at him. He is stone cold, completely devoid of emotion. His cheekbones are sharp, like they were carved from rock.
“It’s cool,” he says. “Let her go.”
I nod thanks, mostly because I can’t open my mouth. I put up my hands and pass through the scanner and body check. No alarms go off, so I guess there’s no detector for somebody who’s planning to do bodily harm to herself.
I grab my bag from the tray and walk quickly to the first restroom, where I lock myself in a stall and spit out a little blood into the toilet from where I bit my own mouth. I can barely breathe, so I sit down and cover my mouth with my hands, trying to limit the air coming in and out of my lungs. It works. I gather myself and splash some water on my face from the sink. I look at myself in the mirror and am alarmed at the high color in my cheeks.
Calm down,
I order myself before I walk back out.
I make my way to gate 12 and find a seat. I check the time. Two forty-five. I look at the flight board and pray again that my flight doesn’t get canceled.
I check my watch again, just out of habit; it is still two forty-five. I wonder if I can make it another forty-five minutes. I slide my tongue between my teeth and clamp down. Not too hard, not enough to bleed, but just enough to focus my mind and clear my head.
I’m gonna make it.
I say it over and over.
Chapter 9
T o my relief, West Air actually has their shit together. They board us early and prepare us to lift off early if the controllers will allow it. My seat is three rows from the back and I have a window seat.
I make my way back without incident and without really making eye contact with anybody, including the attendant, whom I naturally don’t trust.
A couple of climbers with large bags come down the aisle, and I pray they don’t sit next to me. They stop in the row in front of me and start unloading their stuff. It’s a lot. And there’s a lot of loud and tedious discussion about a green duffle bag that won’t fit in the overhead compartment, which is finally resolved by stuffing it, with a lot of force, under a seat. Then the captain comes on and asks the flight attendants to prepare the cabin for takeoff.
I finally breathe a sigh of relief: to have a row to myself is simply too good to be true. Then, at the last moment before takeoff, there’s a commotion at the front of the plane. The seat next to me is still empty, though many others are as well. I start muttering to myself, “Please don’t sit next to me, please
Margaret is complaining about her wedding ring; “Eddie, it’s just so heavy, it makes my wrist tired.” Eddie looks proud and embarrassed all at once and says, “You may have to start working out, Margaret . . . heh heh heh.”
They keep up this nauseating chatter, all interspersed with unnecessary touching until they kiss goodbye before Margaret passes through the scanner without Eddie. Then they both get teary and actually blow each other kisses. I want to scream, but I keep my head down and know I’ll be thirty-five-thousand feet in the air soon enough.
After Margaret walks through, I approach the scanner, but the TSA officer puts his hand up to stop me and asks the punk rocker to walk through my scanner. I explode with anxiety and shout, “My flight is leaving soon!”
I must have screamed really loudly because the immediate area goes still and both the snowboarder and the TSA officer turn around.
The TSA officer looks me up and down and assesses my level of crazy. Is it Christmas crazy or real crazy? That’s what he’s trying to determine.
“Miss, what time is your flight?”
“Four.”
He checks his watch and looks at me strangely. “You have an hour and a half, miss. I suggest you take a deep breath and calm yourself down.”
I bite down harder as I nod and now I’m swallowing blood.
The snowboarder picks up his bag and his board and moves a few feet to the side. I can’t help looking at him. He is stone cold, completely devoid of emotion. His cheekbones are sharp, like they were carved from rock.
“It’s cool,” he says. “Let her go.”
I nod thanks, mostly because I can’t open my mouth. I put up my hands and pass through the scanner and body check. No alarms go off, so I guess there’s no detector for somebody who’s planning to do bodily harm to herself.
I grab my bag from the tray and walk quickly to the first restroom, where I lock myself in a stall and spit out a little blood into the toilet from where I bit my own mouth. I can barely breathe, so I sit down and cover my mouth with my hands, trying to limit the air coming in and out of my lungs. It works. I gather myself and splash some water on my face from the sink. I look at myself in the mirror and am alarmed at the high color in my cheeks.
Calm down,
I order myself before I walk back out.
I make my way to gate 12 and find a seat. I check the time. Two forty-five. I look at the flight board and pray again that my flight doesn’t get canceled.
I check my watch again, just out of habit; it is still two forty-five. I wonder if I can make it another forty-five minutes. I slide my tongue between my teeth and clamp down. Not too hard, not enough to bleed, but just enough to focus my mind and clear my head.
I’m gonna make it.
I say it over and over.
Chapter 9
T o my relief, West Air actually has their shit together. They board us early and prepare us to lift off early if the controllers will allow it. My seat is three rows from the back and I have a window seat.
I make my way back without incident and without really making eye contact with anybody, including the attendant, whom I naturally don’t trust.
A couple of climbers with large bags come down the aisle, and I pray they don’t sit next to me. They stop in the row in front of me and start unloading their stuff. It’s a lot. And there’s a lot of loud and tedious discussion about a green duffle bag that won’t fit in the overhead compartment, which is finally resolved by stuffing it, with a lot of force, under a seat. Then the captain comes on and asks the flight attendants to prepare the cabin for takeoff.
I finally breathe a sigh of relief: to have a row to myself is simply too good to be true. Then, at the last moment before takeoff, there’s a commotion at the front of the plane. The seat next to me is still empty, though many others are as well. I start muttering to myself, “Please don’t sit next to me, please
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