Up in the Air

“I’d like to think we have corporate Denver covered. I certainly hope we are. Listen, you look like hell. Nice boots, but from there on up you’re Guatemalan. If I was a fag I’d reach over and fix your hair. And your ‘I’m too busy to floss’ thing just isn’t working. That may go over fine among the Navajo, but this is white America. Colgate country.”

“What if I told you I’m taping you right now and sending a transcript to Equal Opportunity? You’re going to get ISM sued. You watch your mouth.”

“Me? Our first Diversity Training graduate? I’m covered, brother. I have a framed certificate. Sponsor me on my AIDS walk?”

I should quit now. Retrieve the letter from Boosler’s desk and read it aloud while standing on my chair. Gather the assistants. The cleaning staff. The letter has several flourishes I’m quite proud of and would benefit from an oral presentation. If I had my million miles, I’d do it, too. But it’s ISM’s dime that’s going to put me over, and I can’t afford to lose travel authorization. I recite the letter in my head.

“Until GoalQuest. Anon. Our desert tribal gathering.”

Craig Gregory is going. Walking now. Walking and wagging his ass now. He liked me once. He sent me bursting congratulatory food baskets heaped with blue-veined cheeses and vintage vinegars. Once, he even took a dive for me in a company tennis tournament, vaulting me into the finals. These tokens moved me. Maybe my father was not so loving, after all. Maybe there are holes I’m trying to fill.

“Was that your boss?” says Julie.

“That’s never been clear. We use the new, confusing titles here.”

It must be the briefcase I came for, because I have it now and I’m ready to leave and not come back. I stare at my desk and conduct a mental X-ray of its neglected contents. Family photos? I’m not the type who would bring those to the office—I’d prefer they not know the faces of my loved ones here. Voodoo potential. Somewhere, in some drawer, I stashed a small packet of marijuana once, which I used to use in tandem with my sleep machine during particularly hectic trips. It’s a fossil now, surely. No drug dog could even smell it. What else is in there? A stapler. Old Vicks inhalers. Some cream I bought once when I couldn’t feel my legs, supposed to promote circulation. It caused a rash. Other than that, though, just business cards and tape and microcassettes and ISM logo keychains and scads of paper clips that have mysteriously linked themselves together into the sort of puzzle bright children enjoy. Worth holding on to? Anything? Post-it notes?

They give you a lot of stuff when you’re first hired and you fully expect you’ll use it, but you just don’t.

If earning miles were the chief consideration, I would do better driving the rented Volvo at five hundred bonus points per calendar day back to Salt Lake City. In fact, this is the chief consideration, particularly as of 3 P.M. today, with every other seed I’ve planted lately gone dormant in the clay. Dwight is backpedaling on The Garage; the Pinter Zone concept, while still alive, feels vaporous; MythTech hovers obscurely behind a cloud bank; and Alex still hasn’t called about our Vegas tryst, which I’ve begun to regret arranging anyhow. If my chilled, sluggish legs are any indication, I doubt I’ll be able to muster the blood flow necessary to cap off our evening in my rec-room suite. My assistant was right; it is a lonely scene, even with a woman in the frame. The jukebox plays Sinatra. The balls go smack. You say to your date, ‘Nice shot.’ The hot tub bubbles. And meanwhile, in all four directions, above your head, people you’ve met or may as well have met but at this point will never meet fan out on late-night business that you’re not part of and may never be again. Because you had qualms, and you voiced them, and you’re tired. Tired, with cold numb toes.

Right now, for the first time in years—the first time ever?—I’d rather not get on a plane, though. You listening, Morse? Your calf has slipped the lariat. He’s driving. He’s utilizing the public byways. And still earning chits, still indebting you, through Maestro. Besides the miles I’ll give to charity in the hope some sick child will come vigorously of age and knife you in the street for pocket change, I think I’ll just hoard the rest. To keep you owing me.

Julie, too, would rather drive than fly now. She covered much the same route just yesterday, but in the dark, and she wonders what she missed. The trip should take us about eight hours, she estimates, and will be like old times in Dad’s Chevy, except we’ll eat.

Kara looms. Both bells at the New York Stock Exchange have rung, O’Hare has dispatched a dozen flights to Asia and FedEx Memphis has sorted a million legal briefs and tardy birthday presents, and still no status report for our big sister. I’m sure she finds this unpardonable. I find it racking. The longer we avoid her, the louder she speaks. I hear her voice when our tires stray onto the gravel.