Up in the Air

* Automatic courtesy upgrade for reaching 100-night mark in single calendar year. Congrats! —M.

* As I understand it, you’re staying with family in MN and don’t need a car either. Also, sorry for compact in LV, but nothing bigger’s available (they say). And be aware of new policy at Homestead: you must provide Preferred Frontiersman # as well as Compass AirPoints # and proof of qualifying flight at check-in to guarantee Great West mileage credit. Hassle, I know. Have a great one! —Mel Truex, Internal Travel Services

about the author

walter kirn is currently the fiction editor for GQ magazine and a contributing editor to Time magazine. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, GQ, Vogue, New York, and Esquire. He is the author of three previous works of fiction, My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me, and Thumbsucker. He lives in Livingston, Montana.

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

a division of Random House, Inc.

1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin

are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of

Random House, Inc.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Book design by Claire Naylon Vaccaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kirn, Walter, 1962–

Up in the air : a novel / Walter Kirn.—

p. cm.

1. Frequent flyer programs—Fiction.      2. Business consultants—Fiction.

3. Air travel—Fiction.      I. Title.

PS3561.I746 U6 2001

813’.54—dc21            2001028362

Copyright © 2001 by Walter Kirn

All Rights Reserved

July 2001

A section of this book was previously published in GQ.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

eISBN: 978-1-4000-3324-9

v3.0