Up in the Air

Too sad, that remark. And I owe the old man, too, even if he’s dancing with Marlowe now. He did something for me once. He did a lot. The sophisticates may sniff, but it’s all true: in the course of certain American lives, way out in the flyover gloom between the coasts, it’s possible to arrive—through loss of love, through the long, formless shock of watching parents age, through inadequacies of moral training, through money problems—at a stage or a juncture or a passage—dismiss the buzzwords at your peril—when we find ourselves alone in a strange city where no one lives any longer than he must and all of our neighbors come from somewhere else, and damn it, things just aren’t working out for us, and we’ve tried everything, diets, gyms, jobs, churches, but so far not this thing, which we read about on a glossy flyer tucked under our windshields: a breakthrough new course in Dynamic Self-Management developed over decades of experience training America’s Top Business Leaders and GUARANTEED TO GET YOU WHERE YOU’RE GOING!

And we go. And feel better. Because there’s wisdom there, more than we gained at our lousy college, at least, and more importantly there’s an old man’s face—beamed in from California by satellite—which appears to be looking at us alone, the ninety-eight-pound weaklings, and not laughing! A miracle. Not even smirking! Beholding us!

“I win again. Are you watching this?” says Pinter. “Don’t move an inch. I’m tripling my wagers.”

Only for him would I do this: stand around impersonating good luck when I have a flight to catch.

“I’m there! I’m even!”

“You might want to stop now,” I say.

Pinter nods. “Unless you can postpone Omaha.”

“I can’t.”

He pockets the chips he sat down with like golden loot dredged from a wreck. He steps back from the table. Look: no handcuffs.

“I’m sorry about Marlowe. I can’t unsign. I can, however, run up to my room and call Mr. Sarrazin and vouch for you and suggest that he send a car when you get in. When’s your arrival?”

I tell him.

“You brought me back!” He shakes my hand and won’t stop, and though one dreams of someday being thanked by one’s old mentor, one doesn’t want him to cling this way. It’s painful. My favor was so small. I did so little.

Though I guess that depends on how much he was down.

There’s always a change in Denver. It’s unavoidable. A trip to the bathroom out west means changing in Denver. If you’ve done it, you’ve seen the city at its best. Not because the rest of Denver is dull (I’ve been told my old city possesses a “thriving arts scene,” whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks) but because the airport is a wonder. Along with Hartsfield and O’Hare, DIA is one of Airworld’s three great capitals. It’s the best home that someone between homes could ever want.

But today is goodbye. I’ll change in Denver again someday—I’ll still fly, I suppose, though less often, and mostly for pleasure—but this won’t be the same DIA, where I know everybody and most folks at least act like they know me. The ten-minute chair-massage girl who just had twins. The shoeshine guys, Baron and Gideon and Phil. The health-walking retired G-man who shows up every weekday at 6 A.M. to clock his nine miles, shielded from the weather by those soaring conical canopies said to invoke a native teepee village, though to me they’ve always looked like sails.

And Linda, of course, whom I had to go and sleep with, perverting the pristine relationship of kind and competent receptionist and busy man who loved being received.

I stare at them as I walk between my gates. If I catch someone’s eye I make a finger pistol and shoot them a big “Howdy” or “Keep on truckin’.” A few shoot back, but only one person speaks—Sharon, the quickie massage girl. “Flamingo neck, get over here! You need me!”

I mount her odd-looking chair and rest my head, facing down and forward, between two pads. I watch the floor go by. Nothing stays in place; it all goes by. Floors just do it more slowly than other things.

“Hear that Rice Krispies sound? That’s your fascia crackling.” She always brings up my fascia. She pities them. She believes that if people, particularly people in power, “would only listen to their bodies,” war would cease and pollution would abate—and for as long as I’m in her oily hands, I believe it, too. Imagine the red faces if the answer turns out to be that simple. It just may.

I’d tell her “So long,” but I don’t want to confuse her. Of course I’m going away; I’m in an airport.

I walk to the Compass Club desk and ask the woman filling in for Linda to pass a note to her I wrote on the flight in. Not much of a note: “Keep smiling, okay? I’m sorry about last night. I’ll be away. Tell the boys to expect big parcels on their birthdays and yes, you’d make a terrific nurse. Pursue that.”

“Are you Ryan?” the sub asks. “The one she always talks about? You fit the description perfectly. You must be.”

“Describe the description.”