Up in the Air

“Medium short hair. A big vocabulary. Flat but pleasing voice.”

“With that, you pegged me?”

“Great West ran your picture in the employee newsletter. They’ve been updating us on your progress. You’ll be our tenth.”

I’m flummoxed. “You all know my face then? Nationwide? The tone of this little article was positive?”

“Try fawning.” She points a finger down her throat.

“Really? No kidding.”

“Orders from on high,” she says. “Treat the man like a prince. That’s not verbatim, but that’s the thrust.”

“Go on!”

“You haven’t noticed the little smiles everywhere? The big thumbs-up from your teammates?”

I shake my head. “The newsletter said I’m your teammate? Do you still have it?”

“You really haven’t noticed? You’re our Most Wanted.”

“I’m finding this very confusing. Morse said pamper me? The future head of pro baseball said pamper me? Not give me flak?”

“That baseball thing fell through. We hear he’s shattered. He spoke at a prayer breakfast in Boulder yesterday and the word is he sobbed. He lost it for a minute. With the stock price stuck and Desert Air’s big fare cuts and new ‘Let’s Fly Together’ ad campaign, my union’s saying he’s gone within six weeks. Maybe—after that breakdown—even sooner.”

“Reliable high-level gossip? Or car-pool stuff?”

“Union news. And believe me, we won’t miss him. He’s Mr. Bad Faith. Gives an inch, then takes it back, then gives it again later on like he’s some Santa Claus or wonderful rich uncle. He’ll make out fine. They’ll slip him a million and he’ll walk off laughing.”

“He won’t. That not how it feels,” I say.

“Whatever.”

“He’s in for some dark nights, if this is true. Is there a way to contact him directly? How would I get his number? The one he answers?”

“Pray to God. Come on, you hate him, too. All the passengers do. He killed this outfit.”

“You’re still working here.”

“You’re still buying tickets.”

“Soften up on those more fortunate. It’s all a continuum. You’re in it, too.”

“I’ll give her the note. Vocabulary man.”

I’m hoping Pinter unplugged the baccarat brainjack long enough to reach a phone and order some runway foam for me in Omaha. A driver at the gate holding a placard with my name only slightly misspelled in sloppy black capitals would add a certain something to my deplaning. It would help my arrival feel like an arrival and not just another departure in the making.

I call for my two percent and, yes, it’s true—the flight attendant’s smile seems to exceed the parabolic millimetric facial crack diagrammed in her Great West training manual. She’s not a free being as you and I are free, and when her behavior varies, it’s on purpose. Federal regulations rule her life, dictating shift lengths and rest periods and cycles of alcohol and prescription-drug consumption; her contract with the airline covers the rest. Even the bows in her shoelaces have been optimized. Two loops, just so. If she wore laced shoes, that is. It’s forbidden; she might trip on them evacuating, helping some class-ring salesman down the slide.

How I mistook my teammates’ grins and backslaps for mockery and obstruction, I’m still not sure. It’s as though I’ve confused a dinner in my honor for a penitentiary last meal. These two events might look much the same, perhaps—undue attention from people who’ve ignored one, telegrams, reporters, handkerchiefs. Maybe it’s not all me.

Omaha looms in my window, but its looming stems from my expectations, not its grandeur. On past trips the city has struck me as forlorn, a project that’s outlived its founding imperatives and hung on thanks to block grants and inertia and handouts from one or two civic-minded billionaires. This time it may as well be the risen Atlantis. The stubby, aging skyline snags on cloud. The spotty late-morning traffic seems darkly guided. Omaha, city of mystery. Home to MythTech, who guides our hands through supermarket freezers toward rising-crust pizzas and breadcrumbed mozzarella sticks that seem overpriced and skimpy, but what the hell. It’s our money. We’ll spend it as we please.

I want to be in on that thing, whatever it is. To be safe from them one must be one of them. We dock with the Jetway and I join the line. It’s not a job I’m seeking, it’s citizenship, a seat inside the Dome. Key modules in the canopy hang from cranes and not every duct is flanged and sealed, but unless I get in before the structure’s dedicated, I’ll be a spectator. A mark. If MythTech turns out to be seven twenty-five-year-olds shooting wastebasket hoops and munching protein bars, I’ll still want in, if this is where it’s going. Even the big stuff starts in the Garage.