Up in the Air

“This comes from the top. This is dogshit from the top. Make no mistake, Linda. These are sad, sick people. These people are losing a proud, established, major American transportation company to their own short-term lusts and half-baked theories, and in consequence they are sick and sad and desperate. You work there. I know. You can’t afford to hear this. I pity your dilemma. But this is truth. Rock-hard cold impregnable truth.”

“There, I’m in the system now. I’m canceling.”

“You’re canceling the mischievous effects, not the intentions behind them. Those persist.”

“What was strange were the dates. The trips were for a year—a year to the day, almost—from the reservations. Someone expected to go to all those places on three consecutive days? It just looked wacky. Or maybe they were keeping their options open.”

“Don’t second-guess the pathological mind. That’s a trap. It’s bottomless. Don’t start.”

The driver’s-side door slams and Julie is out and walking, straight on up the highway, heel to toe, treating the shoulder stripe like a balance beam. Trucks blast past and lift her pretty hair.

“Should I tell you why I was poking through your bookings?”

“Does Morse ever do that walk-among-the-peasants bit, strolling through the airport, shaking hands, patting workers’ backs? Is that a thing of his? The Pope-in-disguise-among-his-children stunt?”

“You mean have I met Soren Morse? I’ve met him. Why?”

“The touchy-touchy type, or more reserved? This is called casing the joint for unlocked windows. Does he ever eat lunch in the food court? The humble act? My guess is he’d go for that California pizza place, the one where they don’t use red sauce, just so-called pesto. That’s more his trip. The pine nuts. The thin, charred crust. Not pizza as you and I know it. Power pizza. Or does he just hang loose at Burger King?”

“You sound bad, Ryan. Are you on stay-awake pills? I used to take those when I worked the red-eyes. They made me like you’re being now.”

My sister is dwindling. It’s flat and vast here and it takes time to dwindle, but she’s managing to and soon I’ll have to catch her. There are rules for when women desert your car and walk. The man should allow them to dwindle, as is their right, but not beyond the point where if they turn the car is just a speck to them. That angers them.

“Listen, I’m at my desk here,” Linda says. “Guests are flashing passes and I’m not seeing them. They might be expired. What I wanted to tell you was that you mentioned Las Vegas the other day and it happens the airline is sending me there tomorrow. I wanted to check if we’d cross. Looks like we will. Which place are you staying? I’m at Treasure Island. I guess it’s a suite.”

“Las Vegas is mostly suites. Underpromise and overdeliver. Like catalogue companies. They say it will come in five days, it’s there in two, and you feel like the Prince of Morocco. It’s a trick.”

“That was uncalled for.”

Julie is tiny now. Is that her thumb out? We’re past the speck point, into the unknown. This will go down as the time I cast her off in northern Colorado or southern Wyoming and will pass to Kara as part of her moral arsenal. In the story it will be over a hundred degrees out or well below freezing, with Julie wearing just socks, and as the years go by and I forget things Kara will remove the socks as well and I will fail to correct her and myths will petrify. She’ll bring out the story at Christmas, with all the others. A house full of women. My father suffered too.

“Ryan?”

“Still here. Just reflecting. I should go.”

“You’ll call me at Treasure Island? Let’s say five?”

“Why would the airline send you to Las Vegas?”

“Some seminar. Career enhancement stuff.”

“I’m going now. I’m really going now.”

I slide over behind the wheel and drive to catch her, two wheels on the shoulder to signal that others should pass. She’s walking normally now, no balance beam, and at a clip. I roll up next to her with the window down and tell her I’m sorry, I must have sounded bizarre there, but I’m recovering now, so please get in. We’ll be in Salt Lake City before dawn. We’ll drive the Mormon Trail, those hard old wagon tracks. We’ll commune with the grizzled ghosts of the frontier.

She starts to walk again. Heel to toe again.

“Think about your baby.”

But nothing works.

twelve