I had purchased a newspaper and had seated myself at a table at the airport café in an effort to kill the next couple hours before my boarding time. It was a table next to the window, and I could clearly see the storm outside and the travelers coming and going. The torrent that was attempting to break through the panes of window glass next to me gave an anxious tone to the roaring music created by the muffled burning of jet fuel. The sound of the rain on the window was a steady rhythm: tapping, tapping, like nervous fingers on a tabletop in harmony with the attitude of the nervous travelers wheeling luggage across the bare, glossy floors outside the café. Glancing undecidedly between screens telling of flight plans and departure times and the miniature ticking screens on their wrists, people narrow-mindedly collected themselves and prepared to defy gravity.
So many people doing what they do in airports- leaving those they love, watching those they love leave- it all creates a characteristic atmosphere that is unique to this place of arrival and departures. It’s an atmosphere that is breathed in and out, and we all become a part of it.
A few tables away from me, directly ahead was seated an intriguing creature of a woman. It was almost as if her whole self was wrapped around her coffee cup drawing warmth into her body through her cold, weathered hands. The cardboard sleeve was set aside the way a person sets aside the one they were manipulating and using in order to get to the one with whom they’ve truly found themselves infatuated. There on the napkin next to the used wooden stir-stick was lying, the unwanted barrier between her and her life-giving heat. It was taking in the shameful mockery of the cardboard cup which contained the true object of her affections.
“Would you like to come sit down?” she said.
I flinched and looked around to see if there was someone behind me or beside me who she was addressing. No one. She must be talking to me, but why? I knew my habit of staring was going to get me into trouble one day.
“Yes, you!” she said with a chuckle. “Come keep an old woman company. I’m nervous to go up into this storm and you look like a frequent flyer.”
I could feel my face get hot and I knew it was turning red as it always does when I feel uncomfortable. “Sorry ma’am. I…” She continued to invite me over to her table with an inward wave of the hand. I did not feel the need to say more. I decided I had nothing to lose, so I gathered my things and plopped down across from her at the table by the window.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling awkwardly. She gave me a nod. Her hair was all wrapped up in a scarf printed in earth tones. A doubtful light was cast upon her comment regarding her age as I noticed a certain vitality about her. Despite the creases on her face and the salt and pepper strands peeking out from under the scarf, she couldn’t have been older than half a century. A plain black dress was draped over a spindly body and boney, knobby knuckles stuck out from under its loose sleeves to bring the cup of coffee to her lips again. She looked a little bit eccentric with the same look I remember noticing about an art teacher I used to have. Mrs. Mitchell-Meyers- a strange woman she was; the name sends a shiver down my spine to this day. She was abnormally superstitious and had an exaggerated interest in the metaphysical world. She was always working on some artistic piece inspired by a “transcendent experience” she’d had, which my friends and I would snicker about under our breath. The only “A” I got in her class was on my desperate attempt to complete a painting on time by literally throwing paint at the canvas the night before. She said it had “existential value”; I just thought her head wasn’t screwed on straight and took the good grade.
Anyway, this woman, this woman nestled next to the window had that same detached look about her, yet not in a repellent way. She didn’t seem to quite blend in although the way she carried herself said seemed to indicate that she knew a secret and the rest of us were still in the dark. “Storms like these make me nervous enough, let alone when I’m about to be up inside of them! Where’r you headed?” she asked.
Good question, I thought to myself. “I dunno, I’m just going…”
She had a puzzled look on her face and cocked her head. “What do you mean? Are you leaving or coming?”
“Leaving, I guess. I just bought a ticket to New York to see a friend.”
“Oh really? How long will you be there?”
I shrugged, “You know, I don’t really know. I guess I’m just waiting to see what happens.”
She just looked at me, right in the eyes. There was such beauty there; but not beauty one would notice right away. Those eyes, unadorned except for their frame of crow’s feet in the corners, were deep and searching- a grayish, bluish, greenish shade that seemed to look so intensely through me I didn’t have time to decide what color they were.
“Ah, I see. You’re running away,” she said matter-of-factly.
I immediately jumped on the defense. “Running away? No, I uh, I just wanted to go, I’m still…well, here’s the thing, I’m taking a break from school to sort of figure things out, you know? Things at home, my family, have been…and I have this friend. Not really friend though, and he…well, I just needed to get away for a while.”
She raised one eyebrow. “And you think that while you’re away things are just going to solve themselves?”
I was caught off guard by her frankness. I felt disarmed; my mouth was left empty-handed as any possible response escaped me.
She sat and she sipped. The way she nursed that steaming cup of blackness made it seem as if it was the cup that was suspending her and not the other way around. A fluttering movement drew her gaze to a moth that was flicking itself against the window beside her. We both began to watch its silent and fruitless pursuit of freedom, undaunted by the clear barricade that stood in the way of that outside world. It knew it did not belong in this place, not in this building, this place of waiting, this enclosure for anticipators of synthetic flight. This winged insect was relentless in its attempts to break through. It was jealous of the winged, metal creatures outside. They circled in the air above them, pondering whether it was safe to stretch out their feet and hit the tarmac running. This moth clearly wanted to join them. We both watched it, lost in thought.
“You’d think it would learn after the first several collisions. It’s kind of stupid, but I always feel bad for them when they do that.” I said, attempting to change the subject. I didn’t really feel like divulging any more of my personal information to this woman; I didn’t want any more unsolicited advice.
“Me too,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s how God feels.”
Suddenly a loud banging sound and a bellowing voice and snapped our attention away from the window and pulled our attention to a tumultuous scene that was unfolding at the counter.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard!”
An older man who was clearly unsettled had slammed his fist down on the counter, causing the unsuspecting blonde barista to cower in fear. His brow was crinkled and his bushman eyebrows were slanted downward behind giant yellowing lenses that came from another era.
“ ‘Thank you, have a nice day,’” he said imitating the girl, contorting his voice into a shrill, nasally counterfeit of how she really sounded. “What have I done that made you wish me such good fortune? Honestly, you people astound me.”
The girl stood frozen. The room was filled with an air of tension.
“Give me one good reason why you give a rip whether or not I trip walking out the door and a grand piano falls on my head from twenty stories up?”
The girl had been subconsciously backing up during the course of this outburst. The look on her face was that of disorientation, like she’d just been hit from behind. Her head was tilted slightly downward as she hid beneath her green uniform hat. “Sir, I…”
He cut her off as soon as her words had escaped. “Perhaps they would draw one of those white chalk lines where my dead body was, or is that only if it’s a murder? Who knows, maybe it was a murder. Maybe someone had it out for me.” His elevated tone was dripping with sarcasm and his exaggerated gestures made him quite the spectacle. “Or, maybe it was a freak accident. All things considered, I’ve given you no cause for any further consideration than giving me the correct change. Don’t give me your false courtesy, ‘Have a nice day.’ Garbage!”
“I…you, uh…I just th…” she stammered.
“Shut up. Don’t say anything else to me. I know what you were trying to do, but maybe next time you should think before you feed your fake corporate rubbish, your less-than-genuine fluff to another person whose day could not matter any less to you.”
He stormed out the door, leaving the steam of rage and hot coffee trailing behind him. The employee looked down and sheepishly smoothed her apron. She then turned to the co-worker at the bar and began a tirade of cutting mutterings with a distinct defensive tone. The place was silent for a good few seconds, and I could hear the gentle flicking of the moth against the window. Surely enough, though, just as the gawkers finally speed up again after seeing an accident on the side of the highway, the people in the café slowly began to resume what they had been doing.
I looked at my new acquaintance in shock. “Wow.”
She shook her head, clearly disenchanted by the scene. “You see, that’s what happens when you don’t fix things. You deny them, you push them away, and they fester, just like they did with that man.”
“What do you mean? You don’t just think he was nuts?”
“Nuts? No. Something like that comes from somewhere deep. He let it get that way; that’s what happens. And then it’s too late to do much about it. You keep wrapping yourself up in that cocoon long enough, thick enough, and soon you won’t be able to get out.”
Once again, she turned those searching eyes back to meet mine. She held me there in her gaze for what seemed like an eternity until it was too intense for me to take it anymore. I looked back out the window. I looked back after a few seconds to see if she was still looking at me, but she had flicked out her wrist to look at her timepiece. “Well, I had better be off, my flight leaves soon. You know how security is these days.” She stood and grabbed a small rolling suitcase that had been sitting beside her, adjusted her dress, and picked up her coffee cup.
“It was nice talking with you,” she said.
“Same here,” and then with a grin I added “Have a nice day,” hoping she would catch my reference to the commotion we’d just witnessed.
“You do the same,” she replied with a smile and a wink, “And be careful about that cocoon.”
With that, she vanished from the airport café, and left my presence, yet many of the words we had exchanged continued to resonate in my mind. She had walked out the exit that opened to the rest of the terminal, but there was also another exit leading outdoors right next to where I was sitting. The orange exit sign kept invading my mind, taunting me. I sat for a while. I sat and wallowed in the thoughts of all that had transpired. I thought about how much I wanted to go, and I watched other people get ready to go. I watched families saying their last goodbyes over a cup of coffee. I watched a mother with tears in her eyes as she was holding the hand of a husband in military attire. I watched lonely businessmen with their leash-like neckties tapping their fingers on keyboards of laptops. I watched and I thought.
I looked out the window again and noticed that the rain was diminishing. I watched the line of people getting into cars and exchanging embraces and greetings. I saw the angry man from earlier wave down a yellow taxi. No one had come for him. As I continued to gaze through the window, my eyes focused on movement closer to me and I realized that the little winged friend the woman and I had witnessed earlier was continuing its struggle. It was gradually moving closer to the door. A rough-looking earphone-clad teenage boy had just purchased something cold and sugary with whipped cream exploding out of a dome lid and was headed for the exit. As he opened the door, the moth fluttered through the opening and released himself into the outside world.
After a moment’s contemplation I stood up and started moving toward the exit too. I tore my plane ticket in half, and dropped it into the garbage can. I then took a deep breath and walked out the door, fluttering into the outside world where patches of sunlight were beginning to seep through the storm clouds.
