Up in the Air

“That came out wrong,” I say. “I’m just surprised by this. Usually I can tell. That sounds wrong, too. I’m all off balance now. I adored that man.”

“On what basis?” says Allen. “Occasional proximity?”

As if that’s tiny. As if there’s anything else. The impossible standards these non-flyers set! What were we supposed to do, make love in an exit row? Hand-feed each other peanuts?

“I don’t think I have to justify my grief,” I say. There are open seats across the aisle.

“Completely,” says Allen. “Unlike me. I’m semi. Fridays and Saturdays, major cities only. No anal. Strictly oral. Not Danny, though. He ordered off the whole menu. Completely.”

I move.

Every great corporation does one thing well, and in Marriott’s case it’s to help guests disappear. The indistinct architecture, the average service, the room-temperature everything. You’re gone, blended away by the stain-disguising carpet patterns, the art that soothes you even when your back’s turned. And you don’t even miss yourself, that’s Marriott’s great discovery. Invisibility, the ideal vacation. No more anxiety about your role, your place. Rest here, under our cloak. Don’t fidget, its just your face that we’re removing. You won’t be needing it until you leave, and here’s a claim check. Don’t worry if you lose it.

Still, I’m surprised that Dwight is staying here. He seems like the type who cherishes his vividness. I arrive fifteen minutes early for our lunch, my bags stowed back at the Compass Club for my Vegas flight, and sit in an armchair facing the elevators browsing a gratis USA Today and trying not to imagine Danny’s night as a paying corpse at Homestead Suites, the charges still accruing to his dead soul the way they say dead people’s fingernails keep growing. Had he left his TV on? How many blankets covered him? The paper is written such that I can think these things yet still get the gist of the articles. It’s genius, almost on a par with Marriott’s. How many times did his phone ring? Rest in peace, sir. For all I know, I’m the best friend you ever had.

I consider my strategy for my lunch with Dwight. No more Cub Scout, no more bottom dog. Like we say in CTC, value yourself as you hope the market will and if the bids come in low, discount accordingly but think of it as a one-time-only sale, not a final re-evaluation. At ten I put down the paper and watch the elevators out of an old conviction that there’s an edge in seeing the man you’re negotiating with before he sees you. Business is folk wisdom, cave-born, dark, Masonic, and the best consultants are outright shamans who sprinkle on the science like so much fairy dust. Use a customer’s first name three times in your first five minutes together. Three, not four. They don’t have to notice your shoeshine to feel its presence.

Each parting of the elevator doors discloses another person who’s of no use to me, and after ten minutes of predatory staring, I turn my head toward the registration desk, wondering if Dwight’s indeed a guest here, which of course is the moment when he slips in and taps my shoulder, the better sorcerer.

“Here we finally are,” he says. He’s caught me sitting and I rise to my feet in humiliating freeze-frames and take a hand that’s all aura and no flesh and leaves not the slightest sensation when it’s withdrawn.

“I thought we’d try the Carvery,” he says, “unless you’re stuck on waitresses and tablecoths.” His field, his ball. Resist now or be subsumed.

“No, but I’d like to think our meeting warrants them.”

“The Carvery’s better lit. World-class iced tea.”

“Fine.”

“Your call. There’s McNally’s Bistro, too. They mix their iced tea from a powder. A so-so burger, but that can be remedied at the fixings bar.”

“The Carvery.” I’m a shame to my own name.

Dwight leads the way. What at first looks like a limp reveals itself as a fundamental mismatch between the hemispheres of his egg-shaped body. Dwight’s mass and vitality all come from his left; his right side is just a hitchhiker, an add-on, as if he’s absorbed and digested his Siamese twin. His hair has a complicated, unnatural grain that’s suggestive of camouflaged transplant work, and yet the general effect is masculine, harking back to a time when men fell apart at thirty and could only fight back through tricks of dress and grooming. I thought he was my age once, but I’m unsure now. Too much reconstruction, too much work, to tell.