The best the desk agent could do was add Will and Whitney to the list in the system. The purgatory to which they’d collectively been condemned. Because of their fare class, the agent was happy to report that they would be placed in Clearing Zone 6—which was, she explained when Will asked if that was good or bad, at least ahead of Clearing Zones 7 and 8.
“So…come back tomorrow?” Will said.
“Oh, no no. No no no. The line, of course, is on the computer. Not a real standby at the airport. I’m not allowed to guess on these things. But if I have to share, the earliest would be two days. What they say on the news is two days to…five, six, seven days.”
Will and Whitney looked at each other and their eyes widened. All around them travelers were pacing, raising their voices with the agents, gesturing with their hands in hyperanimation. Wordlessly, Will and Whitney met the moment at last, accepting that there was nothing to be done, that no amount of effortful human unpleasantness could get them on an airplane today. Whitney pursed her lips and gave a little puff of resignation, the way she’d seen the women of Western Europe do it. She’d been practicing for days, and here, here it came out before she’d even thought it, like speaking a foreign language brainlessly for the first time. It pleased her immensely and she felt convinced that things would work out okay for them in the end.
They thanked the agent. They hailed a cab. They rode back into the city beneath the infinite edgeless sky.
The Greeks had indeed been grounded, the owner of the apartment messaged. They were canceling their trip to Barcelona altogether. The apartment was Will and Whitney’s for at least a few more days, then.
It could have been so much worse. They had jobs, of course, but they had an excuse now. An international incident. A seismic event of superseding magnitude. What could anyone say? They had the limitless Wi-Fi of their adopted apartment. They had laptops with conversion plugs. Coworkers would cover for them, at least for a couple days. And it wasn’t as though they had left children back home with their parents. No cats or dogs or tropical fish. No pending lawsuits or shooting schedules that couldn’t be monitored from the couch of the rental. The houseplant in their studio might die, but they could ask their renters to water it on their way out the door and to just leave the keys at the bodega on the corner. There was nothing left for them to do but extend the trip and pray the internet never cut out. What a convenient week for the world to end.
Before they left the apartment again, they emailed their parents and their bosses. Will held his breath as he checked for an email that he knew deep down wouldn’t have come through early on a Sunday morning. Whitney spent an extra-long time drafting an email of her own, and then posted a picture of the view outside, a picture in natural gray scale that struck a contrast with the view she’d posted the day before, all blues and greens and creams of lucent May. The ashcloud was white in spots and yellow in others, but at all times shadowless-seeming. No dimensions, no curves or ends or holes through which they could spy the heights. The light was soft, the whole world diffuse. It was uncanny but not exactly ominous. It was like winter. Winter but with the ideal temperature. She posted the photo of the view with the volcano icon and the grimace emoji.
They read more about the volcano on their way out the door. How it had last erupted in 1961. How scientists had been waiting impatiently for it to go again for decades. It was a thing Icelanders somehow lived with. Ash and rock and orange-hot lava occasionally spilling into farmland like batter into a cake sheet. There were evacuations from the valley at the volcano’s base and from the fishing town on the water. There was likely extensive destruction. But miraculously no one had died. Not yet, at least. The villagers near Holudjöfulsins had somehow known in advance and fled. It was the one everyone had suspected would be next up. And now it would be finished soon. The experts were fifty percent certain that it would be over tomorrow. But the ashcloud would take days to dissipate, maybe even a week. They couldn’t predict the winds.
They had a free Sunday at their disposal. In their four days, they’d done the things in Barcelona they’d heard they had to do, which meant now they could really start seeing the city. Let Clearing Zones 1 through 5 go on ahead of them and wait out their purgatory at the airport. They’d gladly stay trapped in the city center. They walked down to El Born to toast the convenience of their inconvenience. They chose a bar on a tree-shaded plaza because of the almonds in the window. The server said the almonds were for the cooks, but she brought some over anyway. They ate almonds and cheese and tomatoes and drank glasses of Moritz near a projection of the soccer match. Barça was on the road, in Bilbao, and it looked even worse there. The cameras were heavily fuzzed as they shot through the particulate. It looked the way a sporting event does after fireworks or flares. Whitney couldn’t believe they were putting players out in it, those invaluable pink lungs. They’d never have allowed such a thing when she played. It got worse as the minutes ticked up. And when Barcelona scored, Will and Whitney could tell only by the pitch of the announcer’s voice. There was nothing to see until they cut to a secondary camera on the sideline, and the striker who’d claimed the goal jammed a thumb in his mouth in tribute to his baby.
Before they left
