peculiarly weak and filtered light, and a breeze stirs the surface of the Great Salt Lake, which appears to be filled with old bathwater this morning. Even the seagulls wind-skating its edges seem reluctant to land and wet their bellies.
“When should I pick you up tonight?” says Asif. I can tell he holds my plan in low regard. Not only is he convinced that Julie needs rest, but this notion of visiting a far-off city without spending the night there baffles him.
“We’ll get in late,” I say. “We’ll grab a cab.”
“How do I explain all this if Kara calls?”
“Her sister and brother needed some family time.”
At the ticket counter I pay full fare for both of us and make my pitch for a pair of first-class upgrades. Julie stands back as I wrangle with the agent, embarrassed by my assertiveness, no doubt. Minnesotans are taught to accept first offers gratefully, but in Airworld you’re nowhere if you don’t negotiate. Unfortunately, the agent is hanging tough. He grants me a seat because I have a coupon, but insists that I turn over ten thousand miles for Julie’s seat—ten thousand miles each way. I roll my eyes.
“Pull up my customer profile. This is crazy.”
Julie cringes and turns her head away. The agent runs his fingers over his keyboard, his mind a symphony of codes and acronyms. Though I’ve never seen him before, I know his story. He’s a lifetime employee who lives for strikes and sick-outs and spends his evenings figuring his pension on his home computer. He’s an officer in the union, undismissable, who sleeps through his annual performance reviews and savors the frustration of his customers, cheerfully forwarding their written complaints to his impotent superiors. He lives for some strange, consuming, pointless hobby—playing King Arthur in medieval fairs or collecting vintage outboard motors—and has come to believe that if not for certain health problems brought on by his stressful work environment, he might have been a man of influence.
“I have your data in front of me,” he says.
“Come on, let’s just go,” Julie whispers.
I wave her off. “How many miles do you see there?”
He lowers his glasses, which are attached to a cord, like an old woman’s. “Nine hundred ninety-five thousand two hundred and one.”
“Drop it,” Julie pleads. The agents smiles at her. He’s enjoying playing us off against each other.
“And what does that tell you about me? Huh?” I say.
“There’s a note in our system,” the agent says. He points a stubby finger at the screen. “Did you lose a bag last week, sir?”
“No.”
He types some more. “I’m showing we found a bag at SLC and sent it on to a Denver residence per the luggage tag: 1214 Gates Street, Apartment 16B. There was no one home to claim it. Is that your address?”
“It was. I moved out.” This isn’t making sense. Although it turns out that I did come to Salt Lake last week, I never check bags, so I couldn’t have lost it here.
“What’s your new address?” the agent says.
“There isn’t one. Listen, I didn’t lose a bag. I’d know.” I look behind me for Julie, but she’s gone. “Are you going to upgrade my companion’s ticket, or do we have to call your supervisor?”
The agent must feel that he’s toyed with me sufficiently; he prints out two boarding passes and hands them over as though all I’d needed to do was ask politely. My platinum customer status leaves him no choice. I ask him if he saw where Julie went and he nods at a newsstand across the terminal, then slips me a card with Great West’s lost luggage number.
Julie is browsing the home decor section of the newsstand’s magazine rack, mooning over photos of claw-foot tubs and built-in stainless steel refrigerators with ice and water dispensers in their doors. Such publications fascinate me, too, though not because I’m about to enter a marriage whose primary solace will be a line of credit at Ethan Allen, courtesy of Keith’s parents, who run an outlet. They intrigue me, these pictures, because the rooms they showcase strike me as buffed-up funeral parlors, basically, designed to display and preserve the upright dead. The flowers, the waxy furniture. It chills me. Lori, my ex, used to drag me to garage sales, convinced that she had a talent for discerning beauty and value beneath the dust and crud. What sorry wastelands. Console TV sets sheathed in chipped veneer. Dressers with sticky drawers and missing handles. The stuff had all been new once, clean and promising, and all I could see in it was depreciation. The depreciation of the owners, too.
I apologize for the confusion at the ticket counter, but Julie goes on reading and won’t acknowledge me. Our morning isn’t progressing as I’d hoped. My plan was to spend an hour at the airport broadening her horizons and introducing her to America’s pumping commerical heart. She’s been in Polk Center too long, it shrinks a person, but this is a place of options, of possibilities.
“Let’s go to the club. I have to make some calls.”
“The club?”
“I’ll show you. The magazines are free there.”
“Ryan, I need to go home.”
“Tomorrow. Thursday.”
“I’m letting a lot of people down,” says Julie.
“Don’t worry. They’ll still be there when you get back.”
“That’s not always true.”
“It’s true in Minnesota.”
The club attendant waves us in with all the graciousness of a royal doorman. I check Julie’s face; she’s
