Up in the Air

“That’s not a big change for me. You know I’m pregnant?”

This catches me. “No.” I’d guessed it, but it still catches me.

“So what’s your job, exactly?”

“You said you’re pregnant. Let’s go back to that.”

“Let’s work around to it. I’m always amazed by what people do, you know? How many different businesses there are. That’s why that year in Chicago freaked me out. No one I met was doing the same thing. This one guy trades gold—in the future. This woman sues doctors—but only heart doctors. This other guy flies around the country telling zoos how to design the cages for different animals. Does anybody still do anything normal? Who’s sewing the shirts? Who’s collecting all the eggs?”

“I both do and don’t know what you mean,” I say.

“Kara and Mom and I, we talk about you, but really we’re just guessing, we’re making you up. We know you do something, you’ve maybe even told us, but it’s so complicated it doesn’t stick. Is that what’s going to happen to my baby?”

My mobile rings in my jacket, the silent-ring feature that tickles my rib cage just below my heart. I ignore it—ultimate issues are at stake here, at least for one of us.

“Is my baby just going to grow up into some . . . fragment? What happened to cowboys, to miners?”

“You’d better marry him. I think you at least have to try it.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“She left me,” I say. “She gave her ring back. I’ll show you. I carry it. It’s in my bag.”

“You talk about Burt. You’re worse.”

“How far along?”

“It’s like a plum now. Two weeks ago it was a peanut.”

My mobile again. To my father, all phone calls that weren’t cries for help ranked as impersonal noise, like the TV, and therefore had no claims on him. Things change.

“Hello?” An uncertain connection. Rolling static.

“It’s Linda. Finally. Where are you now?”

Women always ask this question. Men don’t. Men find it sufficient that you’re alive and that you’re somewhere. They know the rest is detail.

“I’m in a cab leaving SeaTac.”

Julie looks at me. Sticklers all. I don’t feel I’m lying, though. If this trip had gone the way I’d planned, that’s where I’d be now, driving downtown from SeaTac, and frankly I’d rather stick to that. The plan. The plan had beauty, and I wish to honor it. Perhaps, at some level, it’s clicking along without me, one of Sandy Pinter’s “Artifacts of Consciousness.” His example was the lost formulas of the alchemists, which he hints in one book he recovered in a dream.

“That’s weird. Someone saw you here,” says Linda. “At DIA.”

“I flew out of DIA.”

“And didn’t visit?”

“I’m cutting things close this week. What’s going on?”

Linda says something to someone. She’s at work, which means her news must be important. She takes work seriously. She considers guarding the Compass Club big stuff.

“It’s me again. Don’t be angry, just listen, okay? I’ve been in the computer trying to find you, so I know that you’re not in Seattle. Don’t explain. Before I tell you why I checked your flights, though, you should know about something I saw in your account.”

“Wait,” I say. I ask Julie to pull over. I don’t want to drive out of range of the connection. And I want to be still when I hear this. “Talk. I’m here.”

“You know how you’ve been gunning for a million? You talk about it pretty much nonstop, so I know how important it is. It’s like a symbol.”

I’m disappointed to hear her put it this way. It’s insensitive and inaccurate. She demeans me. The Nike “swoosh” is a symbol. This isn’t that. This is life, this thing, and this is me, and this woman who claims to care for me should understand.

“I knew this. They’re screwing around with me,” I say. I’ve found my bug. I’m angry, exalted, justified. “Linda, hang on. Stay there.” I turn to Julie, who’s facing out her window, still holding the wheel despite having turned the key off. She’s wherever it is that she goes inside herself when some man is calling the shots and not consulting her, or even bothering to make much sense. I suspect it’s her soul I’m seeing.

“Julie? Jules? Something’s happening. Turn the car around. We need to go back to the airport.”

She shakes her head.

“Today’s been exhausting, I know. Just turn the car around.”

“No.”

I give up for now. Back to Linda. To the bug. “What are they doing to me? Lay it out.”

“Redemptions. It could just be clerical, some mix-up, but someone’s been redeeming miles for tickets. I know how you are, so I knew it wasn’t you.”

“Hell no, it’s not me.”

“Hawaii. Alaska. Orlando. All first class. Three in three days, all last week.”

“For future dates? I hope you’re not saying someone used these tickets. You’re saying they’re gone? The points are gone?”

“Relax.”

“I find this sick. I find this worse than sick. This is diseased, what they’re doing. This is dogshit.”

Julie opens her door a crack. For air?

“They haven’t been used. You can cancel them. Calm down. You’ll just have to change your ID numbers or something. Maybe someone hacked them. Those hacker people.”