How many miles did they clock per week? You can do surveys to gather this kind of data, but you’ll never be able to guarantee their accuracy. No, what you want is behavior in the raw. That’s how you target your ads, create your profiles. Is this making any sense to you?”
Mark nods. “Why you, though? Why would they shadow Ryan Bingham?”
“Because I’m an interesting case to them just now. Uniquely interesting. By Friday night I’ll have a million frequent flyer miles, making me one of their most loyal customers. That’s the grail in this industry: loyalty. To keep you on board, buying tickets.”
“I understand that.”
“To them, I’m an optimal outcome,” I explain. “If they could create, say, a thousand more of me, just think of the earnings. The market share. I’m gold. There’s only one problem: Who am I?”
“I’m losing you.”
“How do they re-create me? They need a model. But how do they build this model? They can’t. Too complicated. Because what are the crucial variables? My age? My income? Some mysterious psychological quirk? No, the only way to make new mes, new Ryan Binghams, is to track and study, whole, in real time, in my ‘native environment,’ the actual Ryan Bingham. Right?”
“Okay.”
“You look confused. Your face.”
“I’m fine. Keep talking.”
“I’m everything they dream of in a customer, and that makes whatever I do worth studying, down to how many hours of sleep I get, what sort of rooms I stay in, what I eat. And also worth testing, if possible. They’re testing me. They’re throwing scenarios at me right and left and seeing how I react. A ticket agent rebuffs some special request—do I get angry or do I accept it? A flight attendant spills coffee on my jacket—do I switch to another airline, or threaten to? These are things they’d pay a lot to know.”
“So what are you going to do? If this is true, I mean.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“What can I do? I’m powerless.”
“Tell them to stop it.”
“Tell who? It’s not one person. And it’s not like they’re trying to control me. The elk, remember? They tag it with a beeper, and let it roam. The data I’m providing is only valuable insofar as I’m acting freely, naturally.”
“A beeper. I think that’s crazy, Ryan. I’m sorry.”
“In my case all they’d probably have to do is put a note in their computer system. It comes up whenever I check in for a flight and tells the agent to ask me this or that and call a certain number afterwards. A researcher answers, asks them certain questions, then forwards the answers to whoever’s running this.”
“And who do you think that is?”
“Management. Management and whoever’s advising management. Assuming that this is happening at all.”
“You’re admitting you might be dreaming this.”
“I might be.”
Mark cuts his eyes at the monitor. “My flight.”
I’ve made a mistake. I’ve chosen the wrong confessor.
“You run along. Forget this stuff,” I say. “I’ll think about the house. I really will.”
“I want you to call me, Ryan. Promise me? Make it a social call, forget the house. I’d like to sit down with you. Just two men. No business. There’s a book I read once that really changed my outlook, that pulled me out of a hole I’d stumbled into—maybe we could get together some night and read a few chapters?”
The Bible study come-on. Why won’t they ever just come right out and say it?
Mark shuts his briefcase, stands. “You’ll call? You promise?”
“Mmm.”
“You’re in our thoughts, you know.”
“Hers too?”
“Constantly. Listen, I’m sorry I’m rushing here. About the house, though—it might be what you need. A house can be a real anchor in this world. Take a good look at that literature.”
“Will do.”
Mark’s handshake leaves a moist spot on my palm that I blot on my trousers as I watch him go. In a couple of hours he’ll be home and in her arms, welcomed by jumping dogs and squealing kids, and his decency will forbid a full reporting of what I’ve told him this morning. Tonight they’ll sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places, crowning their mountainside neighborhood with lights, and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip, passing over, blessing them.
Sealed in a tube again, but going nowhere. The rain strikes the windows like handfuls of dry rice as a flight attendant stows the wardrobe bags and another who might be her twin takes Julie’s drink order: club soda with a wedge of lime, no ice. The engines aren’t on yet, so no air conditioning. This is the trick they play that I least appreciate: pushing back from the gate to lock in a departure time, then parking while the cabin steams and swelters.
